Kallum snapped awake instantly to Elyria's urgent whisper, her silhouette stark against the dying embers of their meager fire.
"Quiet—someone's coming."
He surged to his feet, heart hammering a cold, steady beat against his ribs, pulling his cloak tight. Muffled footsteps, the crunch of boots on rocky soil, echoed softly from beyond their sheltered alcove. Whispers, greedy and low, carried faintly on the wind.
Shadows detached themselves from the deeper darkness at the edge of the firelight.
Moonlight glinted off drawn blades, the rusted sheen of ill-kept iron armor. A dozen shadowed forms fanned out, their movements practiced, predatory.
The bandits from Valek's Rest. Led by the mercenary captain. Scavengers drawn to weakness, embodying the casual cruelty Kallum had come to associate with a world abandoned by justice.
The leader stepped forward, pushing back his battered helmet. His scarred face twisted into a sneer in the moon's cold glow, his eyes flat and hungry.
"We warned you," the mercenary growled, voice thick with contempt. "Wandering the wastes, carrying whispers of the Abyss." He gestured vaguely towards Kallum's satchel. "Dangerous cargo you got there. Valuable cargo."
Kallum felt adrenaline surge, but it was a cold fire this time, not just panic. It mingled with the simmering resentment, the memory of the Order's smiling lies, Solen's averted eyes. He glanced sideways at Elyria; she stood poised, calculating, a still point in the building tension. He knew she was capable, but this tide of base greed… this required a different answer.
"We have nothing you want," Elyria warned, her voice low and steady, carrying an icy edge. "Leave us. Now."
The mercenary captain barked a harsh, guttural laugh. "You got everything we want, little wraith. Hand over the relic, your supplies... maybe we let you vanish quiet-like. Refuse?" He grinned, showing broken teeth, malice plain in his eyes. "Refuse, and we'll carve what we want from your bones."
Around them, the others advanced, tightening the circle with predatory grace, weapons held ready. Their eyes held the same casual disregard for life Kallum had seen in the Order's hidden labs. Different methods, same rotten core.
This fight wouldn't just be survival. It felt like judgment.
"Stay close," Kallum whispered to Elyria, moving fractionally ahead, planting his feet. "When it begins, find your opening."
She gave a single, almost imperceptible nod, her pale eyes locked on the advancing figures.
Kallum dragged in a sharp, deep breath, turning his focus inward. He didn't just recall the pain – he focused the burning injustice, the cold fury of Solen's betrayal, the calculated cruelty of the Order's experiments. He gathered the searing memory of wrongs unavenged.
His scar didn't ignite with fire; it bled darkness.
Veins pulsed beneath his skin not with crimson light, but with a deep, smoldering umber, like embers burning at the heart of cooling blood. The energy coalesced around his fist, not as a corona of light, but seeming to harden the very air, crackling with contained fury. Shadowy tendrils seemed to writhe within the dark glow, radiating a palpable cold that warred with an internal heat. This wasn't just agony given form; it was retribution seeking an edge.
The mercenary leader instinctively flinched, not from heat, but from the sudden, unnerving drop in temperature, the sheer wrongness of the energy.
"Kill them!" he roared, shaking off the unease, anger overriding his flickering fear. "Take it all!"
Chaos erupted.
The first attacker lunged, a scarred man with a crude short sword slicing down in a vicious arc.
Kallum moved with lethal fluidity. He didn't just sidestep; he flowed around the attack like a shadow, letting the blade cleave empty air. He surged inward, his movements imbued with cold precision.
His umber-wreathed fist drove forward like a sharpened stake.
Impact.
A sickening crack echoed, sharp and brittle. The energy didn't merely pierce; it seemed to shatter the point of impact. The man's chest buckled inward as the dark energy punched through armor and bone, imploding momentarily before erupting from his back in a spray of blackish ice-like shards that dissolved into smoke.
A fleeting, intricate mark, like a brand of fractured chains, seemed to burn itself onto the corpse's entry wound for a split second before fading.
The bandit collapsed, not limply, but rigidly, as if flash-frozen from the inside out.
Silence slammed down, heavier this time, colder. The remaining attackers hesitated, their bravado visibly cracking under the display of cold, precise lethality.
Greed warred with a primal fear, and greed won, fueled by the captain's bellowed curses.
Two more lunged, trying to overwhelm him with coordinated, flanking slashes.
Kallum met their aggression with calculated economy. He ducked low, letting a wild swing pass overhead, and used the momentum of the first attacker against the second, deflecting a blade with his forearm (the hardened energy there seeming to chip the steel) while simultaneously driving a brutal kick into the first man's knee, shattering the joint with an audible snap.
As the first man screamed and fell, Kallum pivoted, the hardened umber energy flaring around his other fist. He didn't aim for the jaw; he drove his fist straight into the second attacker's sternum.
Thud.
It wasn't an explosion of force, but a deep, resonant impact, like a hammer striking stone. The man gasped, eyes wide with shock, then crumpled, convulsions wracking his body as if his very spirit had been fractured.
"Behind you!" Elyria's sharp cry.
Kallum spun, the movement whip-fast. An axe blade slammed down, glancing off his shoulder, the force jarring but the edge failing to bite deep through the layer of crackling dark energy that now seemed to cling to him. Pain flared, yes, but it was instantly consumed, transmuted into colder fury.
Before the axe-wielder could recover, Kallum's hand shot out, clamping onto the man's wrist like a vise. He didn't just pulse energy; he injected ice.
The attacker shrieked, a thin, terrified sound. Frost instantly spread from Kallum's grip, blackening veins, cracking skin. The man's eyes rolled back as he was overwhelmed not just by pain, but by an encroaching, soul-deep despair radiating from the touch. He collapsed, twitching feebly, frost sublimating off him like smoke.
Elyria was a whirlwind of controlled motion at the periphery, her borrowed blade a flicker of deadly light. She used the fear Kallum sowed, dispatching stunned or hesitant opponents with ruthless efficiency. A parry, a thrust under the ribs, a quick slice across tendons – she created space, guarded his flanks.
But the numbers still pressed. Each strike Kallum delivered, each surge of cold, dark power, chipped away at him. It wasn't the draining emptiness of grief; it was the consuming burn of pure, righteous fury, threatening to scorch away his control, his humanity, leaving only the cold engine of vengeance. His breath grew ragged, frost blooming in the air with each exhale despite the exertion. A tremor started in his hands, born of strain and the chilling power he wielded.
He staggered, vision momentarily greying out after slamming an umber-clad elbow into an attacker's temple, feeling the skull give way beneath the impact.
The mercenary captain, who had hung back, letting his men soften the target, saw the opening. His cruel grin spread wide. "Burning out, are we?" he taunted, hefting his heavy sword. "Time to pay the price!" He charged, blade aimed at Kallum's heart.
"No!" Elyria cried, entangled with another bandit, unable to intervene.
Kallum's head swam. The cold fury threatened to consume his focus. But the sight of the charging mercenary – the embodiment of the casual cruelty, the injustice he vowed to fight – focused him. He dragged up the core of his being – the searing memory of Solen's face turning away, the image of Elara fading, the echoing screams from the Order's labs. It wasn't sorrow he drew on. It was betrayal. It was injustice. It was cold, hard resolve.
The umber energy around both his fists didn't flare; it condensed. It darkened further, absorbing the faint firelight, coalescing into shapes like jagged shards of obsidian, crackling with contained, freezing power. Chains of shadow seemed to briefly writhe and solidify around his forearms. The very air around him grew heavy, still, pregnant with judgment.
He met the charge with a low snarl, a sound utterly devoid of heat.
His fists struck the mercenary's descending blade and armored chest simultaneously.
There was no grand explosion. Instead, a deep, chilling resonance hummed through the air, followed by a sound like immense pressure cracking stone from within.
The mercenary froze mid-strike, eyes wide with sudden, absolute terror. Cracks, like black ice spreading on a pond, appeared across his armor and visible skin, originating from Kallum's fists. With a final, silent gasp, the mercenary captain didn't explode – he imploded, collapsing inward into a nexus of crushing dark energy before violently shattering outward into a thousand razor-sharp fragments of frozen gore and metal that skittered across the ground.
Silence. Absolute, freezing silence.
The last few bandits stared, mouths agape, paralyzed by a terror far deeper than mere death. Elyria, disengaging from her opponent, used their paralysis, slitting one more throat with cold efficiency.
The remaining two didn't just flee; they broke, scrambling away into the darkness as if the hounds of hell themselves were snapping at their heels, their panicked shrieks quickly swallowed by the night.
Kallum stood, swaying violently. The crushing coldness receded, leaving behind not emptiness, but a chilling, hollow ache and a tremor that shook him to the bone. The obsidian-like energy around his hands didn't fade; it seemed to retract, sinking back beneath his skin, leaving his hands raw, bloody, and numb. The ground seemed unsteady, his vision tunneling.
Elyria rushed to his side, her usual calm fractured by undisguised shock and something else – a deep, analytical curiosity mixed with profound unease. "Kallum—"
He sagged against the cliff face, teeth chattering despite the adrenaline. "Alright," he bit out, the word tasting like frost and ash.
She steadied him, guiding him back towards the embers. As she inspected his shoulder wound, her touch was firm, assessing.
"By the deepest rift," she breathed, her eyes flicking from the wound – which seemed almost frozen at the edges – to his trembling hands. "I have studied the Dirges, witnessed Grief's chaotic burn... but that..." She looked at him, really looked at him, her brow furrowed in intense concentration. "The focus... the coldness beneath the fury... the way it shatters... That was not Grief." Her voice held not just awe, but a clinical, almost fearful, intrigue.
"It's my price," Kallum rasped, feeling the consuming chill deep in his marrow. "Every strike... fuels that cold fire. Burns away something... essential. Leaves less... human... behind."
She wrapped his wounds, her movements precise, thoughtful. "Then we must be even more cautious," she said, her voice regaining some firmness, though the analytical curiosity remained in her eyes. "Whatever song you truly carry, Kallum, it seems uniquely potent... and perhaps uniquely dangerous to its bearer." She met his gaze directly. "You must hold onto yourself. Remember who you are beneath that chilling power. It demands a heavy toll, perhaps heavier than most."
He nodded slowly, the tremors starting to subside, replaced by a bone-deep weariness and the lingering cold. He leaned back against the stone, the fragile warmth of the fire feeling distant, inadequate. Alive, yes. But changed. Each battle carving him into something harder, colder.
As they rested beneath the indifferent stars, the scent of blood and something strangely like ozone sharp on the cold air, Kallum felt no gratitude. Only the grim weight of necessity, the chilling certainty of the path ahead, and the cold, unwavering echo of vengeance pulsing steadily beneath his scarred skin.