What Comes Back
The ninth floor was a slaughterhouse of stone.
Zariel and the remaining eight anthros fought desperately against one of their own, a massive Amur leopard whose body had been overtaken by the temple. His eyes burned with violent violet light, and every movement carried unnatural strength. Claws that should have been blocked shattered stone instead. Blows that should have staggered him only seemed to fuel his rage.
In the center of the chamber stood a towering hourglass. The sand was already dangerously low.
The temple’s voice had been mercilessly clear:
“Subdue him before the last grain falls… or every other life in this room will be forfeit.”
They had tried everything.
“Hold him down!” one of the wolves shouted, lunging forward with a length of chain they’d scavenged from the floor. This floor of the temple looked like a back alley in a city that nobody ever cleaned and everyone threw away whatever they had no use for anymore. Another anthro tried to grab the leopard from behind, but the possessed cat twisted with terrifying speed and slammed him into the wall hard enough to crack stone. The anthro went down into a flat truck tire and a pile of papers and garbage.
The borders of the room were still the familar white stone.
“Stop! We can still reach him!” a young wolf pleaded, blood running down his arm. “He’s still in there somewhere!”
Zariel said nothing. He watched. Calculated. The sand kept falling.
The leopard let out a guttural, broken roar and charged again. Another anthro went down, clutching a deep wound across his ribs. The remaining fighters were tiring fast, while the leopard only seemed to grow stronger.
“Zariel!” one of them shouted, voice cracking with desperation. “We can still save him! Just give us more time!”
Zariel’s icy blue eyes flicked to the hourglass. There was almost no sand left.
He had seen this before.
On earlier floors, hesitation had already cost lives. Mercy had been answered with more death. The temple didn’t reward compassion, that he had seen. It rewarded survival.
The last of the sand began to slip through.
Zariel moved.
He snatched up a long, jagged shard of white temple stone from the ground. The edge was razor sharp. Without a word, he sprinted forward, low and fast, while the others were still trying to restrain the leopard.
“Zariel, wait!”
He didn’t.
The leopard turned at the last second, but Zariel was already inside his guard. With a brutal, upward thrust, he drove the shard deep into the leopard’s stomach. The stone punched through fur and muscle with a sickening sound. The leopard’s glowing eyes widened. His claws scraped weakly at Zariel’s shoulders once, twice… then went still.
The hourglass froze.
The violet light drained from the leopard’s eyes. His body went limp, sliding off the shard and crumpling to the stone floor.
Silence.
Zariel stood over the body, breathing hard, white stone dripping with blood. The remaining anthros stared at him in shock and horror.
No one spoke.
The temple’s voice returned, cold and final.
“Trial complete.”
Zariel dropped the shard. It clattered against the stone, loud in the quiet chamber.
Back at the pack house, Cass suddenly jerked upright on the couch with a strangled gasp.
His eyes flared bright bluish-purple, the thin glowing rings around his irises burning vividly. He clutched at his head, body shaking violently as the vision tore through him.
“Cass!” Roan was on him immediately, gripping his shoulders.
Kiran scrambled closer, ears pinned flat against his head, his mouth parted in a worried pant, tail tucked tight as he watched Cass’s glowing eyes with growing fear.
Cass’s breathing came in short, panicked bursts. When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse and distant.
“He killed him… Zariel killed him. The leopard... the temple took him. He was one of them and then he wasn’t. They tried so hard to stop him without killing him. They were begging Zariel to wait, to find another way, but the sand was almost gone and he just did it.”
Kiran made a small, wounded sound. His eyes filled with tears almost instantly.
“No…” he whispered. “No, that’s not, Zariel wouldn’t just… he wouldn’t do that without trying everything first.”
“He did try,” Cass said, voice cracking. “I felt it. He waited as long as he could. But the temple doesn’t care about mercy. It was going to kill all of them if he didn’t.”
Kiran shook his head hard, tears spilling down his cheeks. He crawled in close and pressed his face against Roan’s side, shoulders trembling.
“I hate this,” he choked. “I hate that he’s alone in there. I hate that he has to become this… this person who just ends innocent lives like it’s nothing. That’s not him. That’s not the Zariel who carried me to bed when I fell asleep on the couch. That’s not the one who lets me climb all over him even when he’s tired.”
Roan pulled both of them in, one strong arm around each. His expression was grim, but his voice stayed steady.
“He’s doing what he has to do to come back to us,” Roan said quietly. “The Temple Trials don’t just test your body. They test what you’re willing to become. They strip away the parts of you that hesitate. The parts that still believe everyone can be saved.”
Kiran sniffled against him, voice small and wet. “But what if he strips away too much? What if he comes back and he’s… cold? What if he looks at us and doesn’t feel the same anymore?”
Roan was quiet for a long moment, gently stroking Kiran’s back while Cass’s glowing eyes slowly dimmed into a faint, constant ring of bluish-purple.
“He might be different,” Roan admitted. “I won’t lie to you about that. The trials change people. They have to. But even if he comes back colder… even if he’s harder to reach… he’ll still be ours. And we’ll still be his. We don’t get to abandon him just because the temple tried to break him.”
Cass leaned heavily into Roan’s chest, exhausted from the vision. He listened to the rise and fall of the wolf, trying to anchor himself to Roan as he worried about Zariel. His voice was soft but certain.
“He didn’t want to do it. I could feel how much it hurt him. But he did it anyway… because he wants to come home.”
Roan exhaled slowly, pulling both of them closer as they sat together in the low light of the living room.
“Then we’ll be here when he does,” he said. “No matter what version of him walks through that door. We’ll remind him who he is. We’ll remind him that he still has a pack waiting for him. That’s how we fight the temple now, by making sure he has something to come back to.”
Kiran wiped at his eyes, still pressed tightly against Roan’s side. His voice was muffled but steady.
“…I’m not letting him push us away,” he mumbled. “Even if he tries. Even if he’s all cold and scary. I’m still gonna climb on him and bite his ears until he remembers he’s allowed to be soft sometimes.”
Despite everything, Roan let out a quiet, tired chuckle and pressed a kiss between Kiran’s ears.
“Good,” he said. “Because I’m going to need your help keeping him from shutting down completely.”
Cass stayed quiet, staring at nothing, the faint glow still lingering in his eyes. He could still feel it, the distant pull of the temple, like a thread tied somewhere deep in his chest. It was getting stronger.
He didn’t say anything about it.
Not yet.
The three of them stayed tangled together on the couch long into the night, holding onto each other while one of their own continued to bleed and break in a place none of them could reach.
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