Chapter 223: Blood in the Empty Hall
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The first thing that changed was the smell.
Not the smell of spilled wine or crushed dust or sweat from earlier violence. This was different. This was old. The air itself tasted like iron and winter, like a throat remembering what it had swallowed.
Alex’s gaze did not leave Sekhmet. He took another step forward, slow enough to look polite, heavy enough to feel like a wall sliding into place. Sofia’s silver hair caught the lantern light as she rolled her shoulders once, and Natasha’s black eyes remained flat, the kind of flat that came from having killed too many things to care about one more.
Elena did not retreat. She did not raise her voice. "Last warning," Elena said, tone calm. "Leave..."
Sofia smiled as if she had been offered dessert. "You are brave," she murmured. "Or foolish. We will only leave with him."
Natasha’s voice stayed cold. "Give him to us."
Sekhmet’s blood god will stirred again, sharper now, like a beast smelling a rival’s den. His hunger rose, not the normal thirst he could soothe with a planned hunt, but the deeper hunger that had been fermenting inside him since his blood awakening began. It pressed against the system’s restraint like a fist against glass.
He kept his face neutral through force. Panic was not allowed. Panic got you killed.
He spoke inside his mind, voice controlled. "System. I need guidance. If my body loses control, I need you to keep the target list clean."
The answer arrived in a single bracket, not chopped into cold fragments, but in a tone that felt like someone speaking to him in the dark with a hand on his shoulder.
[System: Understood. If blood gods Will rise during engagement, I can assist with movement efficiency and target selection within the limits you set now.
State priorities clearly: primary target, forbidden targets, and survival condition.]
Sekhmet’s eyes narrowed slightly. "The primary target is the male, Alex. I need his blood. I am feeling a hunger for blood... Forbidden targets: Elena, Lily, Mira, Bat Bat, the twins, Auri, Dawn House staff. Also no civilians, no clerks. Survival condition: keep the fight in this hall. Do not let them break into the city."
Elena’s posture tightened by a fraction, sensing the shift. She did not know what Sekhmet had just done mentally, but she knew the air had changed around him.
Alex’s lips curved faintly. "Good," he said softly, as if he could taste the decision. "You have teeth after all."
Then the three half-gods stopped pretending to be polite. They need to use their full powers. They did that... they started to change.
The change was not dramatic in a theatrical way. It was worse because it was natural. Their bodies simply reconfigured like predators removing human masks.
Sofia’s eyes flashed crimson. Her canines lengthened cleanly, perfect, predatory. Her fingernails blackened and extended into claws that looked like polished obsidian. A ripple of blood control pressure spread from her like a scent, it was thick and refined.
Natasha’s transformation felt colder. Her skin seemed to lose warmth, becoming pale and smooth, her pupils tightening into something more animal than human. Her shadow twisted at her feet, and her claws came out like knives sliding free.
Alex shifted last, and the hall felt it like a heavy drumbeat. His shoulders broadened slightly, not monstrous in shape but monstrous in presence. His chaos energy thickened until the lantern flames shivered. His fangs gleamed white, and his hands flexed as bigger claws emerged, long and sharp, edges humming with ancient blood resonance.
Elena moved. Not toward them. But Into position.
Her arms lifted, not wide, not dramatic, just enough to cut lines of attack. Her stance was clean and grounded.
Sekhmet suddenly understood something he had never fully understood as a child. Elena was not only "strong." Elena was trained to face monsters.
"You will not touch him," Elena said.
Sofia’s smile widened. "Then we start with you."
Natasha’s blood control flared first, not a whip, not a blade, but a wave of thin blood nails pulled from her own skin with terrifying precision. The nails shot forward like rain.
Ping —ping— ping!
They hit the containment lines in the floor and sparked. The hall’s anti-chaos etchings resisted, but the nails kept coming, testing, searching for gaps.
Elena’s hand snapped out. A pale shield of condensed chaos energy formed, not flashy, not glowing bright, simply present like a wall. The nails struck and shattered into red mist.
Sekhmet’s blood control rose instinctively, but he did not waste it on defense. He was not the wall. Elena was the wall.
He was the knife. He stepped forward, eyes locked on Alex.
Alex met him halfway.
The first clash was not a sword swing. It was blood vs blood.
Alex raised his hand and snapped a strand of blood control like a whip, trying to wrap Sekhmet’s throat and yank him down. Sekhmet answered with his own blood threads, not thick, not clumsy, thin like wire. The threads collided, twisted, snapped, and reformed again, like two spiders fighting over the same web.
Sekhmet’s body moved faster than it should have, and he felt the system’s assistance slide into his muscles like a second set of instincts.
[System: I am steering footwork. Keep focus on Alex’s joints and feeding access. Do not chase if he disengages; force him into containment lines.]
Sekhmet’s body obeyed.
He did not lunge. He did not overextend. He stepped sideways, dragging Alex’s attention toward the central containment pattern etched into the floor. Those lines were designed to suppress chaos surges in an auction hall, but they also did something else. They created predictable lanes. Predictable lanes were useful in a fight against something stronger.
Alex attacked with a claw strike aimed at Sekhmet’s face.
It was a Slash!
Sekhmet tilted his head and let the claws pass close enough to cut his hair but not skin. He countered with Blood Sword, forming it instantly — a thin, sharp, serrated now because his blood control had improved.