The mist had settled low, curling around Ian's boots like smoke of breath from the abyss.
He stood still, his breath slow and steady, the aftershocks of Torkas' fall still echoing in the marrow of the forest.
The red-cloaked stranger hadn't moved. His presence felt like a wound that refused to close—pulsing, taunting, deliberate.
Ian's gray eyes narrowed. A long exhale drifted from his nose.
"What you're looking for…" he began, voice barely louder than the wind, yet honed like glass, "what point is there in seeing it? The mont I let it happen, your curiosity might be satisfied—" he tilted his head slightly, "—but you'll most certainly die. And then who will you report to?"
The man cocked his head to the side, that wretched smile still fixed on his face. "Awfully confident, aren't you?"
Ian's response was imdiate, unblinking.
"This isn't confidence," he said. "Nor is it pride. It's simply fact."
The forest seed to still at that. Even the fog paused, as if listening.
"Forget what strength you think you have… whatever winning card you believe you hold… the mont I release what you seek, it will all beco irrelevant. You'll realize you've gambled with sothing beyond consequence."
The man didn't interrupt. He only watched. Not passive—hungry. Devouring every word.
"You said I held back because I was afraid," Ian continued. "You were right. But not of the world burning by my hands." He shrugged. "I couldn't give two shits about that."
The fog around his feet began to swirl tighter.
"I'm afraid of losing control. And the mont I do—" his voice dropped lower, quieter, like death itself whispering in a man's final heartbeat, "—no amount of pleas for your soul will prevent from taking it."
A mont passed. A single bird screeched far overhead before the forest fell silent once more.
The man chuckled. "You're only making more excited," he said. His tone was almost reverent now. "Now I insist you indulge . Consider it… an offering."
Ian's expression didn't shift. But sothing in his posture changed.
A subtle drop of the shoulders, the faintest shift in his center of gravity.
"You really are foolish," he muttered. "I suppose the only way to deal with your kind… is to end your life in a more controlled, yet still… drastic manner."
His right hand reached behind his lower back, fingers curling around the long hilt sheathed in darkness. He drew it slowly, deliberately.
A faint shhrkkk whispered through the trees, as an impossibly long, obsidian blade slid free of its prison.
It was a katana—but no ordinary one. Its edge glead with a sheen not of steel, but of shadows condensed into form. The surface devoured light. Stars might fall into it and never return. It felt ancient. Terrible.
Ian's voice was almost solemn now.
"Eli and I journeyed to the Blackblood Forest for the second ti," he said. "This ti, we went deeper."
He stepped forward once, the blade humming in the silence.
"Deeper than the roots of the oldest trees. Until we t it."
He glanced at the man, then upward—at nothing—and back again.
"A monster more powerful than anything I had ever encountered. Its presence alone crushed the air from our lungs. Its roar made the earth bleed. And for the first ti in all the ti I'd known him…"
He raised the blade level with the horizon.
"I watched Eli—the Kingkiller—struggle."
The red-cloaked man's brow twitched, faintly.
"Hours we fought. Blood. Bone. Fire. Shadows. But he killed it."
The blade shifted, catching no light—only the suggestion of edges.
"And from its bones, this was made."
A long pause.
"Judgnt," Ian said. "That's what it was called."
There was reverence in the air now. Even the trees leaned in to listen.
The man blinked slowly. Then smiled.
"That's a great story. Truly," he said with a mocking bow. "But why bore with all this blab—"
Then he stopped.
Because Ian had lowered the blade.
Just a fraction.
The man blinked again. Confused. "What—"
Then his expression shifted. Surprise. Then amusent. Then—
He chuckled. Soft at first.
Then louder.
And then he laughed, booming through the forest like a mad prophet beneath a blood moon. It was hysterical, unhinged, sincere.
"You arrogant bastard—" he said, wiping at the corner of his eye.
That's when the first droplet of blood appeared.
It slid down his cheek, not from a cut he could feel, but from a wound he hadn't even known was there.
He looked down.
His crimson cloak was in tatters. A dozen shallow lines marred his skin. Then more. They blood across him like flowering veins. Thin, clean. Perfect.
Shhk.
The first tree split in half behind him.
Then another.
And another.
Each exploded outward—not fell, but cleaved—as if a hundred invisible blades had whispered through their trunks.
The air shivered.
The leaves, too, were second—severed mid-air, suspended a mont in perfect halves before they scattered.
The man's eyes widened.
All around him, the forest detonated in silence. Trees, limbs, trunks—every object in a fifty-ter radius erupted in long, precise gashes before bursting into ragged chunks.
And still Ian stood there. Blade lowered. Not even looking at him.
["A hundred cuts ]
The man stumbled backward slightly, crimson now trailing freely from dozens of wounds. Yet his grin remained.
He touched his chest—his fingers ca back red.
He looked around, mouth slightly agape, watching the trees fall apart like paper caught in a storm.
"That…" he muttered, voice trembling with wonder. "That was controlled?"
Ian said nothing.
He only stared.
The man tilted his head, as if drunk on the thrill of near-death.
"I see," he whispered. "I see now why they show interest for you."
His grin faltered, just for a mont.
"But I want to see more."
The wind shifted. A soft sound ca from the distance.
The rest of the forest was silent—flattened, ruined.
The man's body trembled.
Yet sohow, he stood tall again.
"The blade," he said, his voice cracked but still deliberate. "That wasn't even you losing control."
"No," Ian said.
The red-cloaked man stared.
There was sothing akin to reverence in his gaze now. Like a cultist who had just glimpsed his god and survived.
Then he laughed again—but this ti, it was hollow.
Reviews
All reviews (0)