I looked at every single one of them.
The scum. The filth. The kind of n who rotted the world from the inside out. They stood around now—silent, still, but breathing. Breathing like they deserved to. Like they had earned that right.
Most had weapons in their hands. Swords, pistols, rusted blades held with shaking fingers. They’d had more than enough ti to grab them, to prepare, to decide. But none of them raised a thing.
They were afraid. Not of justice. Not of consequence. Just of .
Yet I could see it—feel it—the fear was fading.
At first, they’d frozen, shocked by the scene. By the bodies laid out in the sun, by the silence I carried like a curse, by the look in my eyes that spoke of a storm far beyond vengeance. But ti is a cruel thing. It softens horror. It dulls guilt. And now I saw it happening—they were adjusting. Rationalizing. Easing into comfort again. Rebuilding the sa filth they always hid behind.
They didn’t et my eyes.
Not when I looked straight at them.
But I caught them when I turned away.
They stared then. At . At the cabin. At the broken pieces of what had once been lives.
And their eyes weren’t full of remorse.
Desire. Fear. Want.
That sa look I’d seen before in worse places, at worse tis. That look that said, How do I get more?
If this were before—before the promise, before the girls, before the weight of seven silent bodies settled into my bones—I might’ve made them regret their very existence. I would’ve broken them down with nothing but my gaze. Made them piss themselves from a single step forward. Made them rember the fear of being prey.
But now?
Fear ant nothing to .
Their fear ant nothing to .
Because fear is for the living. And they? They were already dead.
I needed no fear from dead scums.
I already had sothing much more in .
Sothing heavier than rage. Hotter than fire.
It was there, alive inside —thriving—threatening to burn from the inside out. Burn everything alive if I let it. It felt like a sealed pot left simring too long over open fla. Pressure building. Gases expanding, no vent, no outlet. Just one shy flicker away from full detonation.
I could feel it behind my ribs. In my throat. Under my skin. This wasn’t new. I’d felt this before—brief monts in the past, flaring up, then fading before I could ever give it a na.
But this ti, it stayed.
This ti, it lingered.
This ti... it wanted out.
I’d spent my life trying to make sense of it—wondering if it was fury. That animal kind of rage. The kind that blinds, consus, destroys. Or maybe it was honor, so ancient instinct clawing its way to the surface when everything around reeked of dishonor. So code etched into before I ever knew what it ant.
But even now, standing here on the edge of sothing irreversible, I still didn’t know.
And honestly?
Did it matter?
Did it matter whether the thing boiling inside was rage or righteousness? Whether I was about to act out of wrath or principle?
No.
Not here.
Not now.
Not in a world that had already spat on both.
Because in this place—this broken place—where monsters slept with full bellies and little girls lay cold in the sun, where silence spoke louder than screams and scum held their weapons like toys—there was no space left for philosophy.
No space left for labels. For questioning.
Only action.
And whatever this thing inside was—rage, honor, grief, or sothing altogether naless—it was mine.
And I would use it.
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