of despair, but a declaration of war. With the last vestiges of his strength, he launched himself across the hall, his target the retreating back of the Viscount. He moved with the lethal grace of his training, a predator finally unleashed.
Two of the Viscount's knights turned, their faces grim masks of duty. They moved to intercept him, but Blane was a whirlwind of fury. He snatched a fallen sword from the floor, the steel cold and familiar in his grip. He parried the first knight's clumsy lunge, his blade sliding along the other's to bite deep into the man's shoulder. The second knight lunged, and Blane dropped low, sweeping the man's legs out from under him before driving the point of his sword through his throat.
Seeing their comrades fall, two more knights charged in. Now Blane was fighting for his life against four, their steel a deadly cage. He parried and dodged, his muscles screaming in protest, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He was a master swordsman, but he was exhausted, wounded, and hopelessly outnumbered. A glancing blow from a pommel cracked against his temple, and his vision swam.
Across the hall, a scene of equal horror played out. A guard had grabbed Elara by her golden hair, dragging her broken body toward the exit like a sack of meat. Her eyes, glazed with pain and shock, darted wildly—and landed on a small, discarded dagger on the floor, likely dropped by a fleeing guest. With a surge of primal will, she twisted, grabbing the blade. The guard, laughing, yanked her hair hard. Elara screamed, not in pain, but in fury, and slashed the dagger backward, severing the lock of hair he held. Before he could react, she lunged, sinking the dagger into the hand that held her.
The guard howled, releasing her to clutch his mangled fingers. "AARGH! My hand!"
The sight of his aunt, broken and bleeding but still fighting, sent a fresh wave of adrenaline through Blane. He screamed, a raw, animalistic sound of pure rage. "KILL THEM ALL! KILL THEM ALL!"
Elara looked at him, her eyes finding his across the chaos. A strange calm settled over her features. She knew. They both knew. There was no escape. Not for them. "Blane!" she shouted, her voice surprisingly clear. "You need to live! You need to survive!"
She pushed herself to her feet, swaying. A faint, ethereal light began to glow around her hands, a power Blane had never seen, a secret she had kept to her final moment. "This is for you," she whispered, and with a guttural cry, she thrust her palms forward. A wave of shimmering, concussive force erupted from her, slamming into the three remaining knights. They were thrown back as if hit by a battering ram, their armor clattering as they crumpled to the ground, unconscious or dead.
"Now run, my boy!" she gasped, the light fading from her hands as she collapsed to her knees.
"But you and Uncle... how can I leave you?" Blane cried, rushing toward her.
"Shut up," she said, a weak, bloody smile on her lips. Her gaze drifted to the still form of Lord Elyas. "Your uncle is dead. He lost too much blood." She looked back at Blane, her eyes burning with a final, fierce intensity. "And as for me... this is goodbye. But I want you to remember this. You will have our revenge. You will make them all pay."
Before he could react, before he could even process her words, she took the same dagger she had used to defend herself and, with one last, defiant look at her nephew, drew it sharply across her own throat.
Blane stood frozen, the world narrowing to the horrifying sight of his aunt falling, her life pouring out onto the floor beside her husband.
"RUN!" The voice was not his, but an echo of hers in his mind.
And he ran.
He burst through the main doors of the castle into the frigid night, the cold air a shock against his tear-streaked face. He didn't look back. He just ran, fueled by a grief so immense it had become its own form of energy.
From the doorway of the castle, the Viscount watched him go, a look of annoyed surprise on his face. He had not expected this. He pointed a bloody finger toward the fleeing figure. "Chase that rat!" he roared at his men who were stirring from the magical blast. "Bring him back to me! I want his head!"
The world was a blur of dark trees and flying dirt, the pounding of his own heart a frantic drumbeat of terror in his ears. "Shit, shit, shit," Blane sobbed, each word a ragged gasp for air. "Why is this happening to me? God, please help me. Please, save me!" He ran, but his mind was a prison, replaying the horrors of the night—his uncle's severed leg, his aunt's final, defiant act. Tears streamed down his face, mingling with the blood and sweat that caked his skin. Every muscle screamed, every wound throbbed with a fire that threatened to consume him, but he pushed on, fueled by nothing but pure, primal fear.
But the knights behind him were tireless. Their armor didn't clatter with the effort of a chase; it seemed to hum with an otherworldly energy. They were enchanted, their movements unnaturally fluid and swift, their stamina limitless. They were not men; they were hounds of the Viscount's will, and they were gaining on him.
Desperate, Blane veered off the path, plunging into a denser part of the forest. It was a mistake. The trees thinned abruptly, and the ground simply ended. He skidded to a halt at the very edge of a mountain cliff, his toes hanging over the precipice. Far below, the churning black water of the Frostfang River roared, a serpent of rapids known to be teeming with monstrous, scaled beasts.
"Lord Baron," a knight's voice called out, dripping with mockery as they emerged from the trees behind him. "Did you truly think you could outrun us?"
"Get out! Get the hell away from me!" Blane screamed, his voice hoarse and cracking.
The knights only laughed, a cruel, echoing sound that was swallowed by the vast emptiness of the chasm.
"Look at him," one of them jeered. "Did you see his father? Died screaming in agony, too. Hahahahaha! Like father, like son."
"It's a shame we have such spineless whelps as lords in this kingdom," another chimed in, his voice dripping with condescension.
"You bastards!" Blane roared, his face a mask of fury and despair.
Slowly, methodically, the lead knight took a step forward. Blane instinctively shuffled back, his heel grinding on loose scree that cascaded down into the darkness below.
"You know what we're going to do to you?" the knight taunted, his voice a low, predatory purr. "First, we'll break your arms. Then your legs. We'll cut off your fingers, one by one. We'll chop off your manhood and feed it to the river-beasts while we go back and find your pretty aunt's corpse to have our fun with it. And then, when there's nothing left of you but a whimpering sack of meat... we'll kill you."
"Lord, save me!" Blane shrieked, the plea torn from the last vestiges of his faith.
"Hahahaha! What a fool!" the knights howled with laughter. "He thinks some divine god will save him!"
They approached closer, their swords drawn, their faces twisted in gleeful malice.
"I guess... I guess I have no other option," Blane whispered to himself, his gaze fixed on the raging river below. "It's better to die by the cliff than be caught by these fuckers."
"Oye! He's going to jump!" the third knight shouted, breaking into a run.
But it was too late. With a final, gut-wrenching sob, Blane pushed off from the edge. He threw himself into the empty air, tears flying from his eyes as he fell. As the wind rushed past him, he cursed everything—God, the lords, the king, every single soul who had betrayed his father, his uncle, and him. Because of them, because of their rot and their cruelty, he had lost everything.
And with a tremendous SPLASH!
Blane plunged into the icy, black water of the river. The cold was a physical shock, stealing the breath from his lungs. The current immediately seized him, pulling him down, tossing him like a doll in its powerful grip. His vision swam, the darkness of the river and the darkness of his consciousness blending into one.
Slowly, losing the fight, his eyes began to close. If the gods are not listening, his final, coherent thought echoed in the drowning silence of his mind, then I request the demons. Help me. Grant me revenge. I will devote my life to it.