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But he does not knowthisdarkness.

Shadow tendrils whip from my fingertips, lashing around his arm, his hip, his spine. They tighten, cold and unyielding as steel bands.

“Varakesh.”Invert the limbs.

The shadows constrict and wrench. His shoulder dislocates with a wet, popping crack. His elbow bends backward, and snaps. He screams, a full-throated, primal sound that vibrates across the mountain, and I end it with a single blow.

My fist slams into his throat. Cartilage collapsing beneath my knuckles. Blood vessels rupture beneath his skin, turning his neck purple-black with bruises that spread before my eyes. He gurgles, eyes bulging, and sinks to his knees. His hands claw at his own throat as he topples forward, face contorting in his final desperate attempt to draw breath.

Two remain. They stand back-to-back, chests heaving with panicked breaths. Sweat carves clean lines through the blood spatter on their faces. Their weapons tremble. One calls on gods who haven’t answered in decades, prayers spilling from lips bloodless with terror. The other lowers his crossbow in surrender.

Too late. I don’t stop.

My shadows are already reaching toward them, tendrils curling around their ankles like hungry serpents.

“Kaveth.”Break the bond. Divide the breath.

The darkness surges, swallowing their screams as my blade passes through both bodies in one controlled arc. Their chests split open, ribs cracking apart as their lungs seize. Blood hits the stone. Their bodies fall as one.

When it recedes, I stand alone among six bodies sprawled acrossthe mountainside. The air is thick with the copper stench of blood and the sharper tang of emptied bowels. My breath comes easy. My heartbeat remains steady.

The void withdraws. Sated and content by the violence. The deaths feeding its power, and restoring the energy yesterday’s efforts took from me.

Tisera moves among the dead without hesitation, checking for pulses she won’t find.

“All dead,” she confirms, grim satisfaction coating her voice.

Ellie stumbles backward. Her fingers clench into fists. She stares at me with eyes so wide I can see the whites around her irises. The look of prey suddenly realizing the creature beside them has always been a predator.

She doesn’t know what I am. Not really.

She shakes her head once, then again, the motion becoming more violent, as if the repetition might alter reality and reassemble it into something bearable. Her skin pales to the color of bone. A tremor rocks through her. Then she doubles over, a puppet with cut strings.

The sound of her retching tears through the quiet—raw, uncontrolled, and visceral. Her whole body convulses with the force of it, spine arching with each heave, fingers digging into her thighs hard enough to bruise as she struggles for stability that won’t come. The contents of her stomach splatter across the rocks, spattering her boots. Still she heaves, until there’s nothing left to expel but bile and air. Tears stream down her face, mixing with the spittle on her chin.

Something twists in my chest watching her. This woman whofaced desert, thirst, and the unknown with stubborn courage, now broken by the reality of what I am. What I've always been.

I step toward her. Blood drips from my fingertips, leaving dark speckles on the stone between us.

“Stay back.” Her arm snaps up, palm out, fingers splayed like she could physically push away the horror. Her hand trembles violently. “Don’t … just … stay back.”

I stop.

She wipes her mouth with a shaking hand. Her breathing is shallow, ragged, each inhale catching. Her eyes dart between me and the corpses. Six men reduced to cooling meat. There are flies already gathering at their wounds. Her pupils are blown wide with shock, reducing her irises to thin rings.

“You just—” She licks her lips, then gestures wildly at the massacre, at the blood streaking my face, at the shadows still wisping from my fingertips. “You … you …” The words falter. “They’re all?—”

“Dead. It was necessary.”

Her laugh is sharp, choked. Almost a sob.

“Necessary?” Her voice rises, cracking under the strain. “You didn’t just kill them. You—” She swallows hard. “Youbutcheredthem. Like they were nothing. Inseconds.”

Her horror catches me off guard, although it really shouldn’t. For a moment, I see myself through her eyes. A killer who slaughtered six men without hesitation or remorse. The speed of it. The control. The casual dispensation of death. In my world, it’s survival. In hers, it’s monstrous.

She’s staring at me like she’s seeing a nightmare come to life.

Maybe she is.