Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee-Chapter 98: Two Left

I roll Eventide between my fingers. The hilt is warm—warmer than body heat accounts for. The blade knows what’s coming.

The difference is immediate. No more Rank-F fodder stumbling over each other to reach the shield wall. The creatures pouring through the gaps in the shattered front line are Coral and Reef—dense, armored, built to take hits and keep moving. In a war, you don’t get to pick your enemy.

A second volley of light erupts from Lola’s tower. This time a normal shot clears our defensive line by a clean margin and detonates deep in the Tide’s backline.

The thundering sound tears across the battlefield and detonates in a concussive wall of heat and pressure that shoves me two steps backward. Forcing my arm up to shield my eyes.

When I lower it, the battlefield has rearranged itself. The Tide’s rear formation is a smoking crater. The front is in chaos.

A shape clears the pile of dead and lands six feet in front of me.

Coral Drenodor. Rank D.

The thing straightens to its full height—close to ten feet. Reptilian. The body plan is wrong in the way all Thirstfall predators are wrong: recognizable enough to classify, alien enough to make your hindbrain scream.

Short arms, heavily muscled, with webbed membranes stretching between thick fingers. The claws aren’t long—maybe four inches—but they’re curved inward like sewing shears. Designed for grip and tear, not slash. A grappling predator. If it gets a hold, it shreds.

The legs are the real threat. Thick, columnar, built like a dinosaur’s—the kind of legs that don’t need speed because they generate enough force in a single stride to close any distance that matters.

The head is long, narrow, flattened like a crocodile’s. A stretched snout with recessed nostrils and a small ridge of coral bone between the eyes—natural armor protecting the brain case.

It walks toward me. Slow. Each step calculated, clawed feet pressing into the bloody sand, the massive body shifting weight with the patience of something that has killed enough times to stop rushing.

It’s studying me. Gaining space. Circling to my weak side.

I let it.

The skin looks thinner than a Coral Ripper’s plating. No dense carapace. No mineral armor. The Drenodor trades defense for raw destructive power—the opposite of the Ripper’s design philosophy.

Eventide can cut this.

The Drenodor drops its center of gravity. Jaws part. The crocodile skull tilts downward, the snout angling toward my chest—telegraphing a lunge.

It charges.

Not fast. Devastating. The ground shakes under the impact of each stride. Three steps to cover fifteen feet, each one heavier than the last, the massive body building momentum like a freight car rolling downhill.

I don’t meet it head-on. I throw myself right. Roll. The sand where I was standing disappears—the Drenodor’s jaw closes on empty air with a sound like a car door slamming in a cathedral.

The force of the bite displaces sand in a ring around the impact point.

That jaw pressure could snap a Ferredon in half.

I’m on my feet before the dust settles. The Drenodor recovers faster than its size suggests—the head swivels, the small eyes finding me with reptilian precision.

It lunges again. Lateral this time, sweeping the massive skull sideways in a whipping motion designed to catch a dodging target.

I duck under it. The snout passes over my head close enough to feel the scales brush my hair. The wind from the swing carries the stench of rotting fish and iron.

The beast’s momentum carries it past me. Its flank is exposed—the ribcage, the softer tissue between the armored head and the muscular legs.

I slash. Eventide bites into the hide just behind the front leg. The shadow-blade sinks three inches before the Drenodor’s body mass rips it free as the creature pivots away.

Dark blood sprays. The wound is deep but not fatal. The Drenodor roars—a guttural, vibrating sound that resonates in my ribs.

It’s angry now.

The slow, patient predator is gone. The eyes narrow. The claws extend, membrane stretching between the fingers.

It charges again. Faster. Committed.

This time I don’t dodge sideways. I drop.

Flat on my back, I slide under the Drenodor’s body as it lunges over me—the massive belly passing inches above my face, the stench of its underbelly filling my nostrils, the shadow of its mass blotting out the false stars for a second.

I bring Eventide up.

The blade enters at the base of the throat and I drag it along the full length of the torso. Eventide doesn’t cut—it unzips.

The shadow-edge parts flesh and muscle and viscera with the resistance of a hot wire through candle wax. The sound is wet, continuous, and final.

The Drenodor takes two more steps on momentum alone.

Its legs don’t know the body is already dead.

Then the structural integrity fails, the abdominal cavity opens, and two thousand pounds of Rank-D beast collapse into the sand in a heap of steaming organs and twitching muscles.

I roll sideways to avoid the collapse.

A clawed foot stamps the sand where my head was a quarter-second before—the last reflexive kick of a nervous system shutting down.

I stand up.

Covered in dark blood that isn’t mine. Sand caked to every surface. The smell of copper and bile thick enough to taste.

[Devoured Soul: 48/50]

Two left.

[OXI: 1,410/1,600]

I wipe the blood from my eyes and scan the battlefield. The shield wall is holding—barely. Lola’s scatter-shot gutted the Tide’s momentum, but the heavier beasts are absorbing punishment that would have killed the first line of Phase One fodder two times over.

Then I hear it. Oliver’s voice, ragged and desperate, cutting through the comms.

I turn.

Oliver is thirty feet to my right, backed against a section of the shield wall that’s bowing inward under pressure. His warhammer is raised in a two-handed guard, arms shaking from repeated impacts.

In front of him—a Coral Ripper. The same dense carapace that stopped Eventide cold during Phase One. The segmented mandibles clicking together in that mechanical, metal-on-metal rhythm.

Oliver swings. The warhammer connects with the Ripper’s jaw. The beast’s head turns with the impact—absorbs it—and keeps coming.

Oliver doesn’t have a weapon that can break that armor.

I tighten my grip on Eventide and start running.