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The scream building in his throat becomes a wet gurgle.

His lungs spasm visibly beneath the gaping wound.

Blood floods his mouth, painting his teeth crimson before spilling over his chin in thick rivulets.

His hands flutter uselessly at the wound, fingers slipping in his own blood as he crumples.

His body hits the ground with a thud, twitching in a spreading pool of black.

The officer fires blindly, the mechanical click of his crossbow echoing in the unnatural silence.

I slip through shadow, emerging behind him before he can reload.

One hand seizes his jaw, fingers digging into the soft flesh beneath, wrenching his head back until tendons strain.

My blade slides beneath his sternum and drives upward, the resistance of flesh giving way to the softer penetration of organs.

“ Norav .” Empty the vessel.

His limbs convulse violently against mine.

Veins surface beneath his skin, bulging before blooming black, spreading like ink through water.

His pulse stutters against my fingers, then halts mid-beat as though time itself has stopped within him.

His body doesn’t fall but collapses inward, deflating around the void I’ve carved into his core.

The sound, like wet cloth being wrung out, mingles with the copper scent of fresh blood.

The lieutenant fights differently. When darkness claims his vision, he doesn’t flinch or flail. He cuts toward where I was, not where I am, his movements crisp and deliberate. Muscle memory guides him. Experience steadies him. He knows how to fight in the dark.

But he does not know this darkness .

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 across the 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 who faced 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. “You butchered them. Like they were nothing. In seconds .”

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.

“If even one of them escaped, they would have returned with hundreds more.” The words emerge, clinical and precise. “Stonehaven would have been discovered. Everyone inside would have been executed. Including you.”

She shakes her head again, slower now. Shock settling deeper. A drop of blood—not hers, not mine, but one of theirs—marks her cheek like a brand.

“I’ve never seen anyone die before.” Her voice is barely above a whisper. “Not like that. Not murdered.”

I don’t respond. There’s nothing I can say that will change what she saw.

What I did.

What I am.

“Lord Torran,” Tisera breaks the silence. “We need to move. Others will come searching when these men don’t return.”

I translate for Ellie, who sucks in a shuddering breath. She still won’t look directly at me.

“Something needs to be done with the bodies.” Tisera reminds me.

I extend my hands, and darkness responds to my call. It pours from my fingertips, coiling around the dead soldiers. Their bodies rise from the ground, suspended in tendrils of living shadow.

With a flick of my wrist, I send them over the ravine’s edge. They tumble down, the dull impact of their bodies hitting stone echoing back as they strike the rocks below .

Ellie watches this display with fresh horror, her arms wrapping around herself.

“How can you be so calm?”

“This is war. They would kill us without hesitation."

“War?” The word escapes her with a wildness that verges on hysteria, her voice cracking around its edges. “This wasn't war. It was an execution. You didn't even hesitate.”

“'They would have done the same to us.” I keep my voice level. “With far less mercy and far more pleasure.”

“You call that mercy?” Her eyes finally find mine, and the connection hits like a physical blow. There's something new swimming in that gaze. Not the wary distance she’s held until now, but genuine fear. Not of the danger around us. Of me . And what I can do.

She swallows hard, her throat working visibly. “Is this what you did before? Is this why they locked you away? Because you're a—” She stops, unable or unwilling to finish the thought.

The word she doesn't say hangs between us.

A monster . The truth I've never denied.

The answer would be simple, but the explanation is far more complicated.

“I did what was necessary to protect those who follow me. As I did just now.”

She doesn’t reply, just turns away, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“We really need to move,” Tisera says. “Their absence will be noticed, and we should get inside before night falls. ”

We return to our original path in silence, Ellie keeping a noticeable distance between us. Three paces. Just enough to put her out of arm’s reach. Her shoulders remain rigid, her gaze fixed on anything but the blood drying on my face and hands.

Stonehaven appears as nothing more than a sheer rock face until Tisera places her palm against what seems to be solid stone. The rock shimmers beneath her touch, and parts, revealing a hidden passage.

The guard stationed just inside stiffens at our approach. His hand instinctively moves to the hilt at his waist as we step through the ward. His expression shifts from caution to recognition when he sees Tisera. The tension in his shoulders eases, but doesn’t vanish entirely.

“We received a coded message from Varam at Ravencross saying you’d be bringing two refugees fleeing the Authority.”