The explosion hit my telekinetic shield like a freight train dipped in napalm.
The impact nearly buckled my knees as the magic-reinforced barrier flared electric blue, roaring to life and catching the shockwave that would've turned Dean, Sam, and Lena into a Jackson Pollock on the warehouse walls.
"Jesus Christ!" Dean shouted over the ear-splitting ring that followed.
"Not quite," I muttered, sweat already beading on my brow.
Smoke flooded the room. Then—out of that thick, stinking cloud—he stepped through.
Kharon.
Seeing him again was like watching a Lovecraftian fever dream birthed by a cartoonist on drugs. His skin was the sickly green of moldy moss, glistening with slime. He had the squat frame of a toad and the posture of a pompous mortician. Two lidless, yellow eyes blinked sideways like a lizard's, and sitting absurdly atop his lumpy skull was a miniature black top hat.
I blinked. "Dude. What happened to you? Did you lose a bet with a swamp demon?"
"Silence, thief!" Kharon roared, his bulbous throat sac inflating grotesquely. "You dare mock your betters? I am eternal! I am—"
"Yeah, yeah. Ugly, pissed, and seriously lacking in fashion sense," I snapped, letting my bone claws snickt out of my knuckles like adamantium on a budget. "Let's skip the monologue. Nobody here bought a ticket for your TED Talk."
Dean muttered, "He's got a point."
I vanished in a wisp of shadows—Shadow Jumping—and reappeared behind Kharon mid-sprint, going for his hamstring with a bone blade laced in silver fire.
The blade slashed clean through—
—only for Kharon to melt into a puddle of black ooze that hissed across the floor like living oil.
Oh, you've gotta be kidding me.
What followed wasn't a fight. It was chaos incarnate.
Blood spikes hurled from Kharon's reforming mass—ping!—deflected midair by my reinforced shields. My bone bullets drilled through his torso, spraying black ichor, but the wounds stitched themselves shut with impossible speed.
I hurled a fire pillar beneath him—hotter than dragon's breath—but he vaporized into mist, reforming at Lena's flank.
"Marcus!" she screamed, ducking behind one of the support beams I'd shielded with wards.
"On it!" I shouted, teleporting to her side just in time to block a swipe of corrupted claws. The warehouse shook as my shield cracked from the blow.
"His blood!" Lena shouted, pointing to a sizzling smear on the ground. "It's not regenerating where your magic hit!"
I looked. She was right. The parts where my enchanted fire and telekinetic strikes had landed weren't healing. They oozed, festering like infected wounds.
"You're brilliant," I muttered, eyes narrowing.
"Damn right I am."
Sam was nearby, tossing salt canisters and Latin incantations like a priest on Red Bull. Dean, bless his homicidal heart, emptied a clip of demon bullets into Kharon's midsection, buying me a half-second to regroup.
Kharon howled, his voice like a wet vacuum cleaner. "You cannot stop me! I am the End! I am—"
"Yeah, yeah, eternal, I got it the first dozen times." I grinned, circling him. "Funny how every immortal jackass says that right before they get turned into mulch."
I feinted left, Shadow Jumped above him, and came down like a divine guillotine, bone blade glowing with every ounce of magic I could pour into it.
I felt the blade split something soft and vital.
Kharon's head cracked open like an overripe pumpkin, dark goo spraying outward. His entire body collapsed—only to dissolve into a thousand wriggling droplets that hovered mid-air and reformed ten feet away.
He sneered, ichor dripping from his fangs. "Foolish child. You cannot kill what has no form."
"Maybe not," I said, blood dripping from my brow, "but I can sure as hell make you wish I could."
Pain screamed through my skull before I could react.
A whip of coagulated blood lashed across the air, slamming into my face. The tip speared my right eye. POP.
White-hot agony lit up my vision. I fell to my knees, clutching my face as blood gushed down my cheek.
"GAH!"
My vision dimmed. Kharon laughed—actually laughed.
"How does it feel, thief? To be less than whole? To be broken?"
Behind me, someone screamed my name.
I couldn't tell who. My brain was melting.
But my healing kicked in. The pain didn't fade, but I felt the eye knit back together, the nerves reconnecting. My heartbeat slowed just enough for me to think.
And I realized—he didn't see it.
While he monologued, I'd been weaving—quietly, subtly—threads of raw, high-voltage telekinetic filament through the air. Like fishing wire laced with magic. The floor around me shimmered with barely visible sigils. The warehouse's ley lines hummed.
My voice was a ragged growl.
"Hey, Kermit," I spat blood, raising my hand. "Catch."
Boom.
Everything hit at once:
Telekinetic wires snapped tight, locking his limbs in place like marionette strings.
Bone bullets laced with salt and fire tore through his body.
A storm of blue-white plasma—superheated, dragon-forged, and angry—erupted around him.
Kharon's scream was the sound of everything wrong with the universe being torn apart.
"NO! THIS IS NOT—THIS IS—"
BOOM.
The fireball lit up the Kansas sky like a second sunrise. Windows shattered. The force knocked Lena and Sam to the ground. Dean managed to duck behind a steel beam, swearing a blue streak.
And I just stood there, wings flared, smoking, bleeding, alive.
When the dust settled, all that remained was a charred husk...
...that crumbled into ash.
Gone.
Silence.
Then a weak voice—Dean's, coughing: "So… is it dead?"
I stared at the ashes.
"Let's say he's gone. Dead... that's a little optimistic."
Lena limped over, gripping my arm. Her eyes scanned my face, flinching as she saw the blood-streaked mess.
"You okay?" she whispered.
"Peachy," I said. "Lost an eye, killed a god, burned off most of my shirt. Typical Tuesday."
She laughed—wet and tired, but real.
Sam glanced around. "No sign of residual energy. Whatever you did, it stuck."
I didn't answer. Because deep down, I felt it.
Kharon was gone… but...
Something remained.
Something old.
Something watching... fuck!
And as I looked up at the night sky, I couldn't help but feel a cold pit settle in my gut.