His ears ring from the blast that ripped through moments ago, but his focus sharpens. Elena has been dragged inside to safety, and that leaves him free, free to become what he has to be.
A butcher.
A king fighting for a throne of bones.
"Push forward!" Dominic roars, voice cutting through the chaos. His men, what's left of them, stumble back into formation. The sand beneath their feet is slick with blood; half of them limp, the other half clutch wounds they don't have time to treat.
The attackers don't care. Whoever sent them, sent them to die. They rush in waves, reckless, guns blazing, bodies falling. Dominic realizes it then,the faceless enemy doesn't fight for survival. They fight only to erase him.
Bullets snap past his face. Dominic dives behind an overturned table, rolls, then rises, double pistols in his hands. He squeezes the triggers without hesitation. One shot throat. Second shot,jaw split open. He continue , firing again and again, each bullet placed with surgical rage.
The enemy keeps coming. For every one that drops, three more appear from the smoke.
His men falter.
"Hold the line, damn you!" Dominic snarls, grabbing a wounded soldier by the collar, yanking him upright. "You die standing, not crawling." He shoves the man back into the fray, then shoulders his rifle, firing into the shadows.
Hours bleed together like minutes. The night refuses to end. The beach, once dressed for celebration, now looks like a graveyard. Tables overturned. White cloths drenched red. Balloons charred and melted, floating like corpses on the tide.
An explosion shakes the ground. Dominic's men scream as fragments of bomb tears through them. Half his flank collapses.
"Circle!" Dominic bellows. "Circle and fire!"
They obey, gathering what remains into a tight formation. It's pitiful. Out of the hundreds of men he started with, barely fifteen remain, each one bleeding, coughing, spitting.
The enemy doesn't hesitate. They rush again.
"Cover me," Dominic growls. He storms forward, teeth bared, a demon in human skin. He smashes the butt of his rifle into a man's face, spins, slashes the throat of another with the blade strapped to his hip. Blood sprays hot across his cheek. He doesn't blink.
A man lunges at him with a machete .Dominic sidesteps, grabs the wrist, twists until bones crack, then buries the blade into the man's chest. He rips it out and keeps moving.
Every kill is a message: I am not finished. Not tonight.
But even as he carves his way through, Dominic sees the truth he is drowning. His army is evaporating. The loyal ones, the ones who swore their lives to him, they fall one by one.
And the others? The men he suspected gone. Vanished into the smoke, untouched.
Betrayal slithers in his gut like venom, but he has no time to dwell. Not yet.
"Boss!" one of his men shouts, voice hoarse. "We can't "
A bullet cuts the man off mid-sentence. He drops at Dominic's feet, face blown apart.
Dominic's eyes burn. He kneels only long enough to rip the ammo belt from the corpse, strapping it across his chest. His voice booms like thunder.
"You can and you will!"
He charges again, dragging his men with him.
For every strike, Dominic feels himself fraying, but rage holds him together. He's not just defending a name or an empire,he's defending blood. Elena. The child not yet born. His family.He's fighting for a safe life for his family …
He won't die here.
Not while breath still fills his lungs.
The hours crawl. The attackers don't relent. But finally, through the endless waves, Dominic sees him the one barking orders, the one who doesn't rush into fire but guides it.
The commander.
Dominic locks onto him like a predator.
"You're mine."
He cuts a path forward, every step fueled by hate. His knife glints. His pistol smokes. When the last guard tries to block him, Dominic grabs the man, slams his head into a wooden beam until bone splits, then pushes the body aside.
The commander freezes when Dominic crashes through.
Dominic lunges, tackles him into the sand. They roll, fists flying. The commander snarls, pulling a blade .Dominic shoves his wrist into the dirt, twists, and the knife clatters free.
"You should've stayed in the shadows," Dominic growls, teeth bared. His fist slams into the man's face once, twice, until blood pours.
The commander spits, grinning through the red. "You can't kill what's already inside your house."
Rage surges white-hot. Dominic lifts him, slamming him against a broken pillar. "What house?"
The commander laughs, lips split. "Look around you, king. Your house is burning."
Dominic presses the barrel of his gun under the man's chin. "Then I'll rebuild it with your skull as the first stone."
The trigger snaps.
The bullet tears through the man's brain. His body slumps lifeless.
Dominic turns. The beach is silent for a heartbeat.
The rest of the attackers commanderless, broken,drop their weapons. They raise their hands. The fight drains from them.
His men, what few remain, stagger closer. Bloodied. Silent. Waiting.
Dominic's chest heaves. Then his jaw hardens.
"Kill them all."
His men obey without hesitation. Gunfire erupts again, short and sharp. The air fills with final screams, then silence. Only silence.
When the last body hits the sand, Dominic stands alone, surrounded by ruin. The sea crashes against the shore as if mocking him.
He turns to count his soldiers. A handful. Barely alive. None untouched.
The empire feels thinner than ever.
Weaker.
Exposed.
Then
CRACK.
A single gunshot splits the night.
The sound echoes across the beach.
For a heartbeat, nobody moves.