CHAPTER 51: THE BRIDGE OF CINDERS COLLAPSES

The Behemoth roared, and the city broke.

Steel screamed as the Rift-Tyrant’s bulk hammered into the industrial blocks, its molten ridges glowing brighter than a furnace. Entire warehouses folded like paper under its weight, and the air split with the stench of burning stone.

The battlefield dissolved into chaos.

"Fall back!" Pike bellowed, his voice nearly drowned out by the quake. His soldiers scrambled, cohesion cracking as fear finally outweighed obedience.

They ran east, back into the city’s labyrinth, trying to get away from the Behemoth’s furnace maw. But the Behemoth didn’t care about direction, it only cared about motion and distance.

Ethan’s group were farther from it.

Why? This was because while Ethan and his group tried to cross the bridge and away from the city, Pike and his soldiers were trying to escape back inside the city where the Behemoth came from.

Its eyes blazed as it slammed a foreleg down, crushing three soldiers in a single blow, their screams silenced under tons of molten weight.

A second swipe tore through a building, sending steel beams cascading like knives as men vanished beneath them.

"Hold formation!" Pike roared, but his words fell into dust. Discipline could not save them now.

He slashed one soldier across the back with his knife, forcing the others to keep running, fear of him competing with fear of the monster. But it was futile.

The Behemoth’s wrath was indiscriminate, its molten shards raining like artillery. Each blast incinerated bodies and left only charred silhouettes against the cracked road.

In minutes, Pike’s cohort was reduced to half.

Yet Pike himself refused to break. Predator’s Instinct burned in his eyes, forcing him to dodge just before a shard impaled him, forcing his feet into survival’s rhythm. Rage twisted his face, but even he couldn’t deny it, this wasn’t a battle.

Rather than a battle, this was execution.

Ethan’s team didn’t run back, they ran forward.

The Bridge of Cinders loomed ahead, blackened girders glowing faintly under Rift scars. The river boiled with reflected fire below it, its current swollen with ash and ruin.

"This way!" Ethan shouted, his voice hoarse but cutting through the panic. His gauntlet sparked into being, clearing fallen rebar from their path.

Kara sprinted ahead, spear spinning as she knocked debris aside.

Jonas held Travis upright with one arm, his other hand clenched into a fist, teeth gritted as he forced himself forward. Mira’s wind shielded them from falling debris, deflecting molten shards as best as she could.

As for Holt, he fired precise shots into weak points of collapsing structures, toppling beams before they fell onto the group.

Reid, still pale and trembling covered their rear, each bullet timed with his slowed perception to buy them seconds.

The Behemoth’s roar shook the girders of the bridge. Ethan looked back once, just enough to see Pike’s men swallowed by fire and stone. Then he looked forward, his jaw clenched.

"Don’t stop! The bridge is our only chance!"

They hit the bridge’s cracked deck at a dead sprint. The steel groaned under their weight, warped and brittle from Rift fire. Entire sections were twisted into jagged angles, and gaps yawned between fractured slabs.

Mira flung her wind downward, carrying Jonas and Travis across one gap.

Ethan fired his grapple launcher, the line biting into twisted rebar as he swung Holt and Reid across another. Kara vaulted with raw strength, landing hard and rolling before pulling Jonas forward.

Behind them, the Behemoth finally reached the bridge.

BOOM!

The impact of its arrival nearly split the bridge in half. Whole girders sagged, molten cracks racing down their length. The road caved in sections, sending burned-out cars into the boiling river below.

"Move!" Ethan screamed. He didn’t even hear his own voice anymore; only the pounding of his heart and the creak of steel giving way.

They ran without looking back, they ran for their lives.

On the far side of the city, Pike had survived where most of his men had not. Blood streaked his face, his knife slick, his chest heaving. Only four of his cohort had made it to the other side, their discipline shattered, their eyes wide with madness.

They looked to him for command, for salvation.

"Run!" Pike barked, finally yielding to the truth he had denied. His voice cracked with a note Ethan had never heard from him before... fear.

But the Behemoth was faster.

It slammed its body into the bridge, and half of Pike’s remaining soldiers vanished in a rain of molten shards. Another stumbled, screaming, as a furnace breath consumed him whole.

Pike himself dove through fire, his Predator’s Instinct pulling him an inch from certain death. He staggered, charred but alive, the unfortunate among his men shrieking behind him as the Behemoth’s weight turned them to ash.

For the first time, Pike wasn’t the predator. He was prey.

Ethan’s team reached the final stretch.

The end of the bridge was close, so close that Ethan could see the fractured road leading west, blackened but stable. Freedom.

But the bridge groaned like a dying beast as girders snapped in sequence. The deck split down the center, the fault racing toward them like lightning.

"Jump!" Ethan roared.

They hurled themselves forward as the bridge finally gave way.

Mira’s wind shoved them the last few feet as Jonas dragged Travis by sheer willpower. Reid stumbled, but Kara caught him, teeth bared with the strain of keeping them both upright as Holt quickly joined them.

Ethan was the last.

The bridge fell behind him in a scream of steel. He hit the far side, gauntlet cracking into the ground to anchor his landing.

The Bridge of Cinders collapsed into the boiling river, a blackened carcass dragging itself into the abyss.

On the far bank, Ethan and his companions lay sprawled, gasping, every muscle screaming. They were alive; they had crossed.

Behind them, the Behemoth howled, its furnace maw blazing as it crushed the last remnants of Pike’s men underfoot. Pike himself clung to the collapsing girders, eyes blazing with hatred even as survival pulled him downward.

The river swallowed the bridge whole, smoke and steam billowing into the Rift-tainted sky.

The city behind them burned.

And on the far side, the survivors stared into the wasteland ahead, knowing they had only traded one nightmare for another.