✦
Cove Outskirts — Night
A small fire crackled in a sheltered dip between weathered boulders, its light flickering across three tired faces seated in a loose triangle.
Dren sat cross-legged, drawing a whetstone along his sword in slow, deliberate strokes. Sylric leaned against a jagged rock, chains coiled loosely around his forearms. Dot sat slightly apart, knees drawn to his chest, staring into the flames. The red in his eyes had faded to a dull ember — but it still sparked faintly when he blinked.
Dren didn't look up from the blade. "We go in quiet. Free the princess. Kill any pirate who steps in the way."
Sylric gave a dry chuckle. "Quiet. Right. Because that worked so well last time."
Dot's voice came low from the shadows. "Quiet won't fix it."
Both men glanced at him.
He kept his eyes on the fire. "We kill their captain tonight, someone else takes his place tomorrow. Another pirate. Another child gets taken. Another mother sells her own just to survive." He paused. "It doesn't end."
The fire crackled. Waves broke distantly against the cove walls.
Dren spoke after a long beat. "You want to burn the whole thing down."
"I want it to stop," Dot said.
Dren snorted. "Since when are we heroes? We're mercenaries. This is the Golden Cloaks' problem."
"Right," Dot said. "You only move when you get paid. Where's your conscience?"
"Conscience." Dren laughed, short and bitter. "This town wanted you dead. Remember that."
"I'm not doing it for them." Dot's voice was quiet but final. "I'm doing it because I don't want any more children to suffer. This place deserves a fresh start."
Something shifted in Dren's expression — quick, gone before it landed. A flash of a much younger Dot, just as stubborn, just as certain. He almost smiled.
Sylric exhaled a quiet laugh. "Kid's got a point. Cut the head off a hydra, two more grow back. So what — slaughter the whole nest?"
A soft footstep sounded behind them.
All three turned at once.
A villager stood at the edge of the firelight — the same older man who had brought water to Dot earlier, when everyone else had fled screaming demon. His hands trembled slightly. He didn't step back.
"I heard you talking," he said.
Dren kept his sword in hand. "And?"
The man's voice cracked. "My daughter is still in there. They took her two months ago." He swallowed hard. "I let them. I thought — I thought it was the only way." Tears ran freely down his face. "I know where they keep the cages. I can show you."
Dot looked up. "You're not afraid of me?"
"I was." The old man met his eyes. "But you didn't hurt us when you could have."
A pause.
"Let us help you," Dot said.
More figures emerged from the dark behind him — villagers, one by one, clutching rusted blades and farm tools, their faces worn down by fear and something that hadn't quite died yet.
Dren studied the old man for a long moment. Then he nodded once.
"Lead."
Pirate Hideout — Pre-Dawn
The camp was deep in celebration.
The cowboy stood atop a crate, laughing loud, tankard raised while pirates cheered and drank stolen rum around him. The old captain's blood had barely dried on the ground.
"To new beginnings!" he roared. "No more fat fool telling us what to do!"
The cheers shook the trees.
He turned to Yiva, bound near the gangplank with the little girl beside her, two scarred guards at their backs. His grin stretched wide and cruel.
"And you, princess. You'll fetch enough gold to make us kings."
"You won't live to spend it," Yiva said.
The cowboy laughed.
Then froze.
A scream from the ridge — cut brutally short.
Another from the sloop deck — wet, gurgling, gone.
The crew looked at each other.
"What was that?" someone muttered.
A chain whipped from the darkness. One guard's head snapped back and he dropped without a sound.
Sylric stepped into the firelight, chains coiling slowly at his sides, eyes flat and cold.
Dren muttered behind him, "Show-off."
Sylric glanced back. "Huh?"
A pirate charged forward, spinning two swords in wide, flashy arcs.
Sylric pointed at him. "Now *that's* showing off."
Dren threw a dagger. It buried itself in the pirate's skull with a dull thunk. The body dropped mid-spin.
Sylric raised an eyebrow.
"Why did you bring the boy into this?" he said quietly. "You knew he'd want it."
"To show you how human he still is," Dren said.
Sylric went still for a moment. Then nodded slowly. "Let's move."
Panic tore through the camp.
Pirates drew blades. Sylric was already moving — chains lashing in every direction, one pirate bisected mid-swing, another yanked off his feet and slammed into the ship's mast with a crack of bone that echoed across the water. Screams poured into the dark.
Dren came in behind him, sword cutting a clean, brutal path through the chaos.
Dot stepped from the shadows last.
He didn't run. He walked.
The first pirate swung a blade. Dot caught it with his bare hand, bent it like cheap wire, and drove his own sword through the man's chest. Blood sprayed hot across the dirt.
The next came with a cleaver. Dot sidestepped, grabbed the wrist, and twisted. The arm broke with a sharp crack. He took the man by the back of the head and drove his face into the ground — once, twice, three times — until there was nothing left to drive it into.
Another lunged. Dot hit him across the throat with the handle of his blade, lifted him one-handed, and slammed him down again and again until the skull caved and the body went limp.
He didn't stop.
The cowboy watched from across the camp, eyes wide. "You're — how are you alive?"
Dot turned toward him.
The cowboy raised his spear gun and fired straight at Dot's chest.
Dot caught the spear mid-flight. Snapped it in half. Let the pieces fall.
The cowboy grabbed Yiva — arm around her throat, backing toward the ship.
Dot followed. Slow. Steady. Eyes locked on him.
They reached the Black Maw — the pirates' ship, massive and dark, creaking against the dock. The cowboy dragged Yiva up the gangplank, Dot climbing after him at the same unhurried pace.
"This is my ship now," the cowboy said, breath already ragged. "Pretty, isn't it." He glanced around the deck. "I grew up here."
Dot said nothing. His face was unreadable. Behind it, something was burning.
He picked up a loose stone and threw it.
The cowboy used his weapon to block — and Yiva wrenched herself free, running.
The cowboy swung his cleaver. Dot ducked under it, grabbed the arm, and twisted until the elbow bent backward with a grotesque pop. The cleaver clattered to the deck.
The cowboy drove a boot into Dot's chest, sending him crashing through a wooden door.
He stood over him, broken arm hanging, bone visible through torn skin, blood dripping steadily onto the planks.
"You're a killer, same as me." He was breathing in short, ragged bursts. "Don't act self-righteous." A pause.
"I don't even remember my parents' faces anymore. That's how the world works. Everyone dies.
My parents lived the life they wanted — where did it get them? Killed by their enemies." His voice dropped. "Everything I do is payback. Those who judge others should likewise be judged. Don't you think, boy?"
He leveled the spear gun again.
"Tell me. How are you still alive?"
"That's the least of your concerns," Dot said, and charged.
The cowboy fired — harpoons tore through wood and rigging, one flying straight at Dot's face. Dot deflected it with his blade without breaking stride.
"*Die!*" the cowboy screamed, grinning through the blood and pain, firing again and again. Smoke began rising from the overheating mechanism. He ignored it, kept firing.
Dot came through it.
He closed the distance, slashed — the cowboy dodged, took a graze across the ribs — and then Dot had him by the collar. He lifted him off his feet and threw him across the deck. The wood shattered where he landed.
Dot stood over him.
His fist came down.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The cowboy's face stopped being a face. Nose crushed. Jaw unhinged. Teeth scattered across the blood-slicked deck. Eyes swelling shut.
Dot raised his fist one last time —
And stopped.
For just a moment, the man beneath him wasn't a pirate.
It was someone else. Someone smaller. Someone afraid.
The image was gone before he could hold it.
He didn't know who it was.
But the hesitation burned in his chest like a coal.
His fist came down.
The cowboy went still.
Dot stood over him, breathing hard. "No one else gets taken."
He turned away.
He crossed the camp to the cages and tore the doors open with his bare hands — the little girl, Yiva, and the others stumbling free into the cold air, some sobbing, some too far past tears for that. They fled toward the tree line, clutching each other.
Dot lifted Yiva gently onto his shoulder. Took the little girl's hand in his.
They walked.
Sylric moved through the burning ship in the opposite direction, stepping past the fleeing crowd without looking at them.
A low, wet laugh drifted from the deck.
The cowboy was still breathing. Barely.
He turned his ruined face toward Sylric as he approached. One eye had swollen completely shut. The other found him.
"You go by Rogue now?" A ragged wheeze. "Lousy name." A pause. "Big brother."
Sylric's chains tightened. Just slightly.
"I was happy thinking I'd get to kill you myself, Sylvester." The cowboy coughed blood. "Funny how things go."
Sylric knelt beside him.
He reached out and closed the cowboy's eyes with careful fingers. Gently. Like it meant something.
"Time to rest," he said quietly. "You've been through enough."
A single tear cut a clean line through the ash on his cheek.
Dren appeared at his shoulder. "Let's go."
Sylric rose and walked away without looking back.
The pirate hideout and ship burned behind them, bright against the dark sky. Villagers gathered at the cove's edge, watching the flames take everything.
The village elder raised his voice over the roar of the fire.
"Today we take back Yutor! The land our fathers gave us!"
The crowd roared back. "*Yeah!*"
Later, when the fire had burned down to glowing embers and the crowd had thinned, a lone figure dismounted from a horse at the edge of the cove.
A katana hung at his side, catching the faint moonlight.
He crossed the ash on quiet feet and knelt beside the cowboy's ruined body.
A faint smile touched his lips.
He looked toward the horizon, his face revealed at last in the dying light.
✦
— To Be Continued —