Klethiar witnessed brokenness redone.

  The first jackal couldn’t even scream. He simply ceased to inhale the sacred air.

  Alric’s spear pierced his head from behind, bursting the nose, carving a gruesome arc through meat and bone, twisting the haft, uncorking the skull like a celebratory wine cask.

  The second turned, but a beat too late.

  The spear was gone, forgotten in blood.

  Alric gripped his shield with both hands and crushed its rim against the jackal’s mouth, rupturing it wide, severing jaw from tissue.

  Mouth dangling, he collapsed, gurgling bloody yelps through crumpled teeth.

  A single stomp made him stop. Bone cracked under his foot, flesh folded like cloth.

  The third beast turned to flee, but Alric’s gaze was already upon him—the living carrion. His shield cut through the air, slamming against the back of his legs, sending him sprawling.

  He tried to rise, but failed under the insistent weight of Alric’s sabaton. The shadow of death loomed over him.

  “PLEASE COMMANDER! WE WERE JUST—” He couldn’t finish.

  The boot came down like an anvil of judgement. The weight of heaven’s scalding wrath accompanying every step.

  Once didn’t suffice. The beast still breathed sacred air.

  Alric marched onward, to a destination long abandoned.

  Twice, thrice, four times. Blood pouring in waterfalls from his sabaton. Teeth littering the ground like broken pearls.

  The screaming stopped. But he did not.

  Again.

  And again.

  Until what was left wasn’t human, simply ruin, simply… reddened mud.

  The commander stood motionless, charred breaths escaping him like cinders from a dying forge.

  Sanity flickered back to life, slowly reclaiming its shattered throne, clawing its way back home. He raised his hands, staring at them as if they weren’t his.

  The ground beneath screamed in blood.

  The skies above answered in water.

  The shapeless wind, their immaterial witness.

  Klethiar could not speak, for language had fled him. Words had failed him. Sound would be blasphemous.

  So, he stood. And watched. And considered the possible shapes his commander might take when he finally moved: if he would be man, or draped in it.

  The woman, dirtied and bruised, alive by wrath’s miracle, shrank as Alric’s gaze found her.

  But no cruelty lingered there. Neither did madness taint it any longer. Only the spent ember of a memory long interred remained.

  She curled inward, burrowing her face into her arms, wrapping them around herself. Trying to ward off fear with the last inch of warmth she could summon, as if darkness would be born of blindness.

  Her body trembled a single plea, deafening in its silence: Do not look at me. Let me vanish.

  Klethiar took in this scene, engraving it into his heart.

  As the dust settled, he sensed his men’s presence.

  His flanks stood populated, reverent, motionless.

  Speaking a sin, thinking a duty.

  Some looked downwards, pensive and inscrutable.

  Others stared astonished, eyes meeting something they no longer recognized.

  Others still, respect redrew their countenance, still and quiet, as if their commander had held a memorial for the fallen here.

  He didn’t catch all of his men’s faces, as his gaze returned to Alric, now turning towards the woman.

  His soul yearned to plead for her, as he felt she deserved this scrap of solace in this hell.

  But the edicts had been given. None were to leave Khal-Drathir breathing. Death’s emissary had been chosen specifically by the regents.

  With trepidation, Klethiar watched as his Lord Commander unsheathed his sword, steel gliding through shafts of light beneath the sun’s dark presence, and began his march.

  Alric’s mind was tangled in emotions not so easily discernible.

  Regret, revulsion, rage, weariness, sorrow, compassion, forgiveness even. All wrapped into a single spearhead, lodged in the chasm between his lungs.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  His body, still drenched in his men’s blood, now moved with singular intent. To reach her.

  He didn’t know what he would do once he did. Only that he had to end what he had started, one way or another.

  Her presence here was a miscalculation. Not on his part, but the world’s.

  He could’ve weathered a hundred curses, but not this… hex of insubordination born of unchecked, corrupting appetite.

  His compatriots, those who’d marched through hell and came the other side reborn, debauched by desire. Undone by sin. Reduced to war-dogs worshipping an image of perversity.

  It shattered something beneath the steel chestplate after all these years.

  Not even his most hated enemies had ever managed to twist him so.

  To reduce him, of all people, into a rabid angel of retribution, unable to recognize his own reflection in the miry clay beneath, was something he never believed could happen to him.

  This ill-fitting coolness felt like a forgery of the soul. Foreign. Bitter. Emaciating in its stringent demand to appear calm and collected.

  But he had to wear it. There was no other choice. Not here. Not now.

  He could not let even a flicker of doubt ignite in his men. Not after what he’d done in their presence.

  So, he gritted his teeth and put on this costume of composure. For himself. For his men.

  This hollow advance continued for a few more steps. Every single one felt performative, devoid of any truth or morality.

  Just like an actor played his part, so did Alric play his.

  The lord commander’s shadow now rested over her.

  His thoughts tore through his conscience, catching onto the snags of his own hypocrisy.

  Savior of women, vanquisher of cities. He laughed bitterly in himself.

  He had been given orders, but his heart, the throne of his emotions, interceded for her, not wanting her to be swallowed up with the city’s fall.

  But his mind, trained in a thousand wounds, whispered treason at the mere thought of mercy.

  This woman needed to die in order to fulfil the silver-gilded edict touched by unblistered hands.

  Still folded in on herself like a broken doll, the woman awaited her sentence, not knowing if her mercy would be delivered by steel, or empathy.

  Looking down, Alric pointed his sword at her and spoke.

  “Do you wish to live?”

  The woman, still curled inwards, answered, her tone brittle, as if unsure she wanted him to hear her at all.

  “What do I gain from being alive?”

  Alric asked, his voice as plain as he could muster.

  “What is your name, woman?”

  With her face now emerging from the shell of her last remaining warmth, her posture seemed to take on human form once again.

  And with eyes scorched by hatred, and tears trailing her soot-stained skin, she replied.

  “Priscilla. But what about it, who cares now? Everyone I know is dead. My city broken and ravaged. My family… butchered and strung up by their skin. My children strangled by smoke. My womanhood defiled. What does it matter who I am now?!”

  At this outburst, he remained silent, unwavering in his posture.

  Meeting his eyes, she continued.

  “Who are you to ask me such a question? Are you, their commander?”

  “Yes.”

  The word hung in the air, a shattered bridge between them.

  “You…” she gripped the ground, digging into it, as if anchoring herself to the earth would keep her from falling deeper into despair.

  “You were the one to bring this devastation upon me, then.”

  With hands still clenching the dirt, she rose, swaying in her feebleness, a reed shaken by the wind.

  She met his eyes with newly surfaced disgust, one born of torture.

  Then, she laughed.

  Slowly at first, weary, jagged, like broken glass crunching underfoot. Sound teetering between sobbing and madness.

  Louder. Louder still.

  One hand covered her face, shoulders trembling, until breath ran out, and silence assaulted her.

  Through clenched teeth, she growled, voice hoarse from strain.

  “Who do you think you are to ask me such a question? Do you seek forgiveness from me, commander? Comfort? Redemption?”

  Staggering, she took a step forward, braving the abyss that divided her, from him.

  “What do you wish for me to say, huh?! That I want to live?”

  And another, invading his space.

  Getting close enough she could view herself mirrored in his armor. Broken, bloodied, frayed and fractured.

  “Do I embody your penance? TELL ME!”

  Her irises held his stoic reflection.

  But beneath the military veneer of control, a maelstrom raged, raking his conscience for attention.

  His own answer had formed in the pit of his soul, but strangled itself before reaching outward, as if fearing the consequence of confronting the duplicity woven in his every action in Khal-Drathir and beyond.

  His hand moved without him realizing it.

  Steel, mere inches away from her face, withdrew at his side.

  She arched an eyebrow, voice cutting through the rancid smell of ash and smoke.

  “You would dismiss me as a plaything? Without granting me even a word?”

  Alric’s mouth tensed, half-forming a word.

  It caught in his throat this time also.

  Her words carved into him, sharp as any two-edged sword had ever been to his body.

  He would not dare dismiss her so easily, as a plaything would be, but neither could he acknowledge her.

  Not because he did not wish to, but because he could not.

  Not as he had presented himself to her through his actions and commands.

  So instead, he acted.

  Slowly at first, but with resolute decision, he reached for his cloak, heavy and sodden with the falling rain, and unfastened it from his shoulders.

  Taking it into his hands, he offered it to her as a free will offering.

  Her gaze fell on the heavy fabric.

  Apparent indecision marred her eyes, caught between dignity and the cruel, malevolent warmth of survival.

  Between them, the wind, cold and howling, stirred the cloak in his hands. The liturgy of sun-wreathed lightnings.

  Rain dripped from his pauldrons, tracing slow, glistening paths down his frame, before falling to the churned sludge.

  The mud grasped at their boots, slick and wet, as if even the ground itself conspired not to let them leave this place.

  As water battered them, Alric remained unmoving, his hands outstretched.

  This sight of him, silent, motionless, offering, incensed her beyond reason.

  With a sudden, graceless motion, she hit the cloak from his hands with hers, dropping it onto the ground with a damp squelch.

  Fueled by fury and wasting exhaustion, her effort turned against her.

  Her footing slipped, and before she could catch herself, she lurched forwards crashing into him with the full force of her fatigued body.

  She wheezed as wet, torn cloth snagged on worn steel.

  He did not recoil. Neither did he move out of the way.

  He stood there unmoving, taking the hit as a monolith undisturbed by the storm, not daring a single touch.

  Her hands reaching out for support, grasped at the hems of his chainmail and his right shoulder.

  She endured this shameful display of weakness a breath longer than pride could allow while collecting her balance, and with a ragged gasp of humiliation and disdain, pushed herself off him with a stumble, crashing to the ground before him.

  Then she looked up at him, a contemptuous half-smile dancing on her lips.

  “Do you enjoy it, commander?”

  Mockery twisted her tone, a snarling jubilation barely hiding the venom beneath.

  “Catching silly little wenches as they fall?”