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The killing had slowed to an echo.
Outside the dungeon, the missed shift change had finally raised alarms. Boots thundered. Orders snapped. An armored flood of Asgardian soldiers poured down the gilded stair like a living spearhead.
Johnny opened his eyes. Power thrummed through him, heavy and electric. The air around his skin seemed to vibrate.
"Wraith fight with me."
His voice was calm, almost eager.
He launched forward first. Stone shattered under his heel as he blurred toward the exit corridor, the Wraith sliding after him a razor of shadow at his back.
At the gate, the new arrivals halted at the sight: ribcages stacked like driftwood, armor pieces strewn and blood-slick. The captain lifted a fist. "Prisoner breach. Unknown power. Tight formation if it moves, volley!"
The spears in the front rank lit with golden charge.
Johnny hit the corner at a sprint.
A particle-bright bolt snapped from his spear clean, precise and an Asgardian's helm erupted like a firework.
"Fire!" the captain roared.
A wall of energy screamed down the hall toward Johnny. In that instant, instinct hissed danger.
"Wraith!"
The monster flowed in front of him, talons wide, body drinking blasts like a black sail in a storm. Energy tore gouges through its corpse-skin; its skull cracked and blew apart then the whole shadowed form shattered into dark mist and dispersed.
The volley weakened. Johnny raised the round shield. Divine alloy rang like a struck bell as the second wave broke across it. Enough bled through to burn tracks in his leggings and seize his muscles with white-hot pain.
He didn't stop.
He drove straight into the line before their lances could recharge. The first soldier's throat took a spearpoint; the second ate the rim of Johnny's shield bones snapped like dry twigs as the man pinwheeled into his comrades, ruining their aim.
Close quarters favored the one who didn't care about collateral. Johnny was one man; they were a formation afraid to hit each other.
He cut and crushed through the pocket he'd made, moving on muscle memory that wasn't originally his clean spear feints, shield bashes that broke stance, low kicks that turned knees inside out.
A helm exploded. A chest plate caved. A body struck the wall hard enough to crater the stone, then slumped in a boneless heap.
"Surround him!" the captain bellowed, charging in. "Pin him give me a line of fire!"
He never got one. Johnny's speed left the man swiping at afterimages. The captain's parry met nothing; the counter found a shield edge and the pommel of a spear, then a fist like a piledriver. Something tore in the man's shoulder. Johnny's follow-up kick twisted his head a full revolution. The body dropped mid-command.
In seconds, the corridor was quiet again quiet but for the clatter of armor settling and the wet drip of blood.
"Wraith."
Shadow condensed. The Undead Wraith re-knit from smoke and hunger, bowing its bandaged head.
"Feast," Johnny said without looking back, already moving for the stairs.
The feeding sounds rose behind him—rips, cracks, the gnash of teeth on bone—while heat rolled through Johnny's veins in steady waves.
The burning slashes along his thigh and calf tightened, then sealed; the ache in his ribs ebbed to nothing. By the time he reached the final steps, the wounds were memories.
Sunlight spilled across him warm, almost gentle. It loosened the over-tightened coil of his nerves for a breath, then the thought returned, cold and precise:
This won't be contained for long. If Odin marches home with the main host… I'm a smear on the rainbow road.
Johnny scanned the courtyard: spires like spears stabbing the sky, banners snapping, distant drill fields shimmering with heat. Palace guards would be on the way. Patrols would converge. He had minutes maybe less.
There's only one exit that matters.
The Bifrost.
The rainbow bridge wasn't just a myth; it was Asgard's artery for realm-to-realm travel in a single beam. Gatehouse. Bridge. Observatory. And a watcher who saw almost everything that moved.
Hefting his shield and spear, Johnny set his jaw.
"Only one road out," he murmured. "So I'm taking it."
He strode into the gold-white day, a ripple of heat and frost flickering across his irises. Somewhere behind him, the Wraith finished its meal and lifted its head.
And together, Devourer and shadow turned toward the bridge that could carry them off to Asgard or kill them both trying.
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