Page 95 of The Hyena’s Guardian

Matt saw the exact moment his voice reached Theron beneath the rage.

Theron’s breathing changed. The wildness in his eyes did not vanish, but it shifted, turning away from the edge just enough for him to choose.

Aric screamed as the gold light flared beneath his skin. “Do it,” he begged, voice breaking through the monster. “Please.”

Theron closed his eyes before he moved.

The motion was swift. Merciful.

In the terrible silence that followed, the sound of Aric’s neck breaking was almost impossibly small.

Aric went limp in Theron’s hands.

No one spoke.

Theron lowered him carefully to the stone as though the broken body weighed nothing and everything at once. His hand remained at Aric’s throat for a moment longer, fingers resting where a pulse would never beat again.

Matt stepped toward him. This time Vale did not stop him.

Theron stayed kneeling beside the body, head bowed, one hand braced against the floor. Blood ran down his forearm where Aric’s claws had torn him open, dripping steadily onto the stone.

Matt crouched beside him, stopping just short of reaching out. He waited until Theron gave the smallest sign that he could bear being touched.

For several seconds, there was nothing but the echo of distant water and the heavy breathing of armed operatives trying to process what they had witnessed.

Then Theron spoke, his voice so quiet Matt almost missed it. “He was my second.”

Theron did not look up. “Before the mountain took him.”

Matt reached out and laid one hand carefully over Theron’s bloodied wrist. Theron let him, and Matt kept his hand there.

Baptiste approached, his weapon lowered. His expression had lost all its earlier sharpness. “There may be more.”

Theron’s jaw tightened.

Matt turned toward the open passage, where pale blue light continued pulsing down the stairs. From somewhere below came another sound. Not a roar this time. A voice. Many voices. Whispering from the dark. Theron rose, and Matt stood with him.

Grief still carved deep lines across Theron’s face, raw enough to hurt just looking at him, but beneath it something colder had settled. Not despair. Resolve.

Theron looked into the passage. “The First King isn’t waiting for us.”

Deep below, the whispers multiplied until they sounded less like echoes and more like voices answering one another.

Matt swallowed. “Then what is he doing?”

Theron’s bloodied fingers closed around Matt’s hand.

“He’s opening the tombs.”

Chapter 14 - Matt

Nobody spoke for several seconds after Theron’s final words.

The whispers rose and fell in uneven waves, sometimes faint enough to sound like moving water, sometimes sharp enough that Matt could almost mistake them for real voices forming actual words. The sound crawled unpleasantly along the edges of his nerves.

This was no longer just a prison failing. The mountain was responding to the corruption spreading through it.

Vale stepped toward the open stairwell first, her rifle still raised. “How many tombs?”