Leon didn't flinch.
He didn't dodge.
He didn't even raise a hand.
The projectile missed him by a hair, skimd past his cheek, then hit Ragnar's remains with a dull, wet crack - those scraps of flesh that only monts ago had been a formless, butchered heap.
The ice punched through the skull as if it wasn't there.
And then it detonated.
A terrifying burst of frost erupted from the impact point, spilling over the body like white fire. In a single second, Ragnar's entire head was sealed inside a thick, transparent block of ice - warped facial features trapped beneath the surface, jaw frozen mid-grimace.
The air around them dropped several degrees instantly.
Leon turned his head slowly.
Natalia was walking toward him at an even, unhurried pace, as if she'd just finished a routine conversation - not an execution of a man who'd called himself king minutes earlier. Beside her moved Roland, leaning lightly on his cane, but his eyes were sharp and alert, completely at odds with the bored yawns from earlier.
"Even if his life is over," Natalia said coolly as she stopped a few steps from Leon, "we still can't let him turn into one of those zombies."
Her voice didn't tremble.
There was no fury in it.
Only calculation.
Leon watched her for a mont without speaking, then nodded once.
"Right," he said.
Strangely, despite what they'd witnessed - despite his ruthlessness and the way he'd handled Ragnar - their eyes didn't change drastically. There was none of the fear Leon had seen in the survivors upstairs. No disgust, either.
For a second Leon studied Natalia, as if weighing sothing, then without warning he tossed an object at her.
Natalia lifted a hand on instinct and caught it out of the air.
She looked down.
A necklace.
A silver chain with a small, semi-transparent stone inside which thin wisps of wind spiraled.
A System notification flashed before her eyes.
[Rare Grade Treasure - Gale Sovereign's Pendant]
[Description: Contains condensed wind-elental energy. Generates an automatic wind barrier capable of nullifying or significantly reducing incoming physical or magical attacks. Activation limit: 4 tis per day.]
[Equipnt Effect: 15 Intelligence]
Her brows rose, just slightly.
She looked up at Leon, questioning.
He gave a soft snort, like her surprise was pointless.
"I already have a necklace," he said calmly. "That one's useless to . Better you use it than let it go to waste."
There was no grand generosity in it. No heroic flourish.
Just cold math.
If anyone was burning the most mana and standing on the front line, it was her.
Natalia stared at the item in her palm for a beat, then - without further questions - fastened it around her neck. The stone trembled faintly, and for an instant an almost invisible ribbon of wind slid around her body, as if the System were confirming synchronization.
Roland watched from the side, lifting an eyebrow - clearly not expecting that kind of gesture from the boy.
Leon had already turned toward the building.
"Let's clean this place up," he said flatly. "We're already here. No point leaving a ss behind."
***
The building door opened with a long, soft creak that sounded unnaturally loud in the dim corridor - as if the place itself wasn't used to anyone entering without permission.
Leon went in first.
Roland followed a step behind.
A mont later, the sharp, rhythmic echo of Natalia's ice spikes clicked through the hallway silence.
The air slled like blood, sweat, and sothing sour - the stink that gathers in closed spaces when people are too afraid to breathe too loudly.
Leon's eyes swept the interior.
Soone knelt beside an injured man, trying to press a dirty shirt against a bleeding arm. Their hands shook so badly the fabric kept slipping away.
Soone else sat against the wall, holding a crying girl whose eyes were red and whose face was so empty she looked like she hadn't slept in days.
The mont the figures appeared in the doorway, the silence thickened.
There was no screaming.
No chaos.
Sothing worse.
Stillness.
One woman instinctively covered a younger girl's eyes, as if terrified the next thing she saw would beco another scene she'd never be able to forget.
A teenage boy stumbled backward so hard he hit the wall and slid down it a few centiters, never taking his eyes off Leon.
Two n who'd been holding makeshift spears - tal pipes sharpened into sothing resembling weapons - lowered them almost in unison, as if their arms had suddenly gone weak.
One person started to kneel, then froze halfway, unsure if that was the right move - unsure whether it would save them or humiliate them even more.
Leon saw it all clearly.
Fear had many faces.
This one wasn't rebellion.
It was people waiting for a verdict.
Natalia's footsteps clicked again.
Each tap on the floor sounded like a countdown.
Leon took a few more steps into the corridor, stopped, and raised one hand - not as a threat, but to draw their attention.
"Easy," he said without raising his voice. "We're not here to kill all of you."
A few people sucked in breath, like they'd only just been permitted to inhale.
"Ragnar is dead," Leon added matter-of-factly. "And we didn't co here to purge the place. If you don't get in our way, no one's going to hurt you. We can get you out of here."
There was no warmth in his tone.
But there was no threat, either.
And that was exactly why it sounded more believable than any heartfelt promise.
The silence held for several seconds.
Then, sowhere in the back, almost a whisper:
"They killed the king…"
It wasn't shouted.
It was disbelief.
And fear of what ca next.
The silence thickened again.
A man stepped out of the crowd.
He looked well-fed. Broad-shouldered. Wearing a proper jacket that stood out sharply against everyone else's torn clothes. A sturdier knife hung at his belt, and he held his weapon with far more confidence than the rest.
As he moved forward, several people instinctively shifted away from him, avoiding even his eyes - like he'd been soone you didn't provoke only monts ago.
He glared at Leon, accusatory.
"You think you're better?" he asked harshly.
He didn't sound like a hero.
He sounded like soone who'd just lost the ground beneath his feet.
"Ragnar protected us," he continued. "Maybe he was strict. Maybe he did things you didn't like. But we were alive because of him. Without him…" He hesitated for a second. "Without him, we're all going to die in here."
He wasn't defending tyranny.
He was defending structure.
The idea that soone made decisions.
A sharper voice cut in from the side.
Lilianne stepped forward faster than she should've, hair ssy, face pale - but there was still a spark of her old arrogance in her eyes, that status she'd carried just minutes ago.
"You don't have the right!" she snapped. "This was his place! He ruled here! We - we had order!"
Her voice shook.
Not from anger.
From fear.
In that mont, she'd lost her shield in this new world.
Her mind just hadn't caught up to reality yet.
"You think you can walk in here and change everything?" she added, sharper now. "We have our rules!"
Her words hung in the air. A few people nearer to her nodded - maybe from belief, maybe from habit, from always siding with whoever was strongest. Two of Ragnar's "elite" shifted half a step forward, not raising weapons, but positioning themselves to make it clear they weren't ordinary civilians.
And that was when Roland spoke.
He didn't raise his voice.
He didn't make a dramatic entrance.
He simply leaned more comfortably on his cane and looked at Lilianne the way a professor looks at a student who's just delivered a very confident - and very thoughtless - statent.
"Rules?" Roland repeated calmly. "That's an interesting word."
Lilianne frowned.
"Yes. Rules. They're why we survived."
Roland tilted his head slightly.
"They're why you survived… or because you were more afraid of one man than you were of zombies?"
Several people flinched.
Lilianne opened her mouth, but Roland didn't let her cut in.
"Let guess," he continued, almost politely. "You had the best food. The best sleeping spot. Protection. Maybe even the privilege of giving orders."
Her face tightened.
"That's none of your business."
"Of course it isn't," Roland replied lightly. "I only care about one thing. If you were the one sitting there…" he angled his cane toward the hunched girl by the wall, "...would you still be talking about 'rules'?"
Lilianne hesitated.
Only a fraction of a second too long.
Roland caught it imdiately.
"You're not talking about order," he said calmly. "You're talking about the safety a stronger man gave you. And now you're afraid that without him, your position disappears."
"That's not true!" she burst out. "He protected us! Without him we'd all be dead!"
"Protected?" Roland raised a brow. "How many people did he break to maintain that 'protection'? How many did he throw out as bait? How many did he humiliate so you could sleep a little easier?"
Behind her, one of Ragnar's n spoke in a hard voice.
"Easy for you to say. You don't know what it was like in here. At least he made decisions."
Roland looked at him.
"And you?" he asked mildly. "Did you make any of your own?"
The man's jaw clenched.
"You think it'll be better now?" Lilianne cut in, her voice rising. "You think they'll be different? Every strong person does the sa thing! The world changed!"
Roland let out a quiet sigh.
"The world changed, yes," he said. "But people don't have to beco animals faster than necessary."
He stepped closer, still keeping distance.
"You're not defending Ragnar," he said more softly. "You're defending the fact that you felt special next to him. And now you're afraid you'll beco ordinary - just like everyone else."
That hit.
Lilianne went pale.
"Shut up," she hissed. "You don't know anything about ."
"I know enough," Roland said calmly.
A few of Ragnar's people started muttering. One of them took a step forward.
"We won't let you take this place."
Roland swept a long look over all of them.
"Take it?" he repeated. "You still think this is a throne? A kingdom? This is a building full of terrified people who've been living like animals in a cage for a week."
Lilianne clenched her fists.
"Without a strong leader we'll all die!" she suddenly scread, almost hysterical. "We need soone like Ragnar!"
"You need soone to lead you," Roland corrected. "That isn't the sa thing."
Her breathing sped up.
"And you?" she snapped, pointing at Leon. "He's better? Did you see what he did outside? That's not a man - that's a monster!"
A few people nodded uncertainly.
And for a mont, everything went quiet.
Leon stood a few steps away.
Listening.
And for the first ti in a long while, he didn't know what he was supposed to do.
Kill them?
A few precise movents, shadow, silence. The problem would vanish in seconds.
But they were people.
Terrified. Manipulated. Conditioned to live under soone's fist.
Talk?
To people who'd followed a tyrant's orders without question?
Could they even think differently anymore?
He felt sothing tighten in his chest.
Not anger.
Not hesitation.
Sothing in between.
His expression hardened, his features sharpening almost imperceptibly, his gaze growing heavier.
He stood walled in by his own thoughts.
If he killed them, he would beco exactly what Lilianne was screaming about.
If he let them keep spreading fear and division, he risked the entire group falling apart.
And for the first ti in a long ti, Leon truly felt it - this situation couldn't be solved with a single strike.
But before he could think any deeper, Roland vanished from where he stood.
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