The Oykot vanguard marched into Oakhaven expecting to find a pacified town of poisoned fishermen.
Instead, they found a graveyard of convulsing villagers, two dead traitors with their skulls caved in, and an eerie, unnatural silence.
“Secure the perimeter!” a lieutenant barked, his saber drawn as he kicked Vane’s corpse over.
“The traitors are dead. Someone else is here. Torch the taverns and sweep the alleys. Leave no survivors.”
Deep in the labyrinth of narrow, salt-stained alleyways, Elian was crammed between two rain barrels.
He was shivering violently, his knees pulled to his chest.
He clamped a bloody hand over his own mouth to muffle his hyperventilating.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Vane slicing into his father’s neck.
He wanted to curl up and die.
He wanted the soldiers to find him and end it so he could be with his parents.
‘If they find you, they will impale you on a bayonet.
Death by abdominal perforation takes three hours.
It is inefficient and agonizing.
The patrol approaching from the east consists of four men.
Standard steel plating.
Blind spots at the inner thigh, the armpit, and the carotid artery.
They are walking heavy.
They are arrogant.’
Elian squeezed his eyes tighter, crying silently into his palms.
I don’t want to kill anyone else, he thought, his chest aching.
I just want my dad.
‘Your dad is rotting meat.
The patrol is fifteen seconds away.
If you do not move, you join him.
Grip the knife.
Reverse hold.
The steel is cheap, but leverage doesn’t care about quality.’
The heavy footsteps grew louder.
The flickering orange light of a torch bled around the corner of the alley.
Elian could hear them laughing, joking about the smell of the poisoned villagers.
Something inside the boy finally snapped.
It wasn’t a heroic resolve.
It was an utter, catastrophic failure of his empathy.
The sheer weight of his trauma collapsed inward, replaced by a cold, suffocating apathy.
The shivering stopped.
His breathing slowed to a perfectly measured, silent rhythm.
A faint, blood-red mist began to seep from his pores, clinging to his skin like a second shadow.
Elian opened his eyes.
The tears were gone, replaced by the dead, calculating stare of an apex predator.
‘First target: torchbearer.
Eliminate the light source to induce panic and exploit night blindness.’
Elian silently pushed himself up the brick wall, wedging his small body between the two buildings, suspended ten feet above the cobblestones in total darkness.
The patrol of four soldiers walked directly underneath him.
Elian dropped.
He didn’t make a sound as he landed perfectly on the torchbearer’s shoulders.
Before the man could even register the weight, Elian drove the boning knife directly into the gap between the soldier’s helmet and his chest plate.
‘Sever the spinal cord at C1.
Total motor failure.’
The soldier collapsed instantly, dropping the torch.
As it hit the wet cobblestones and hissed out, plunging the alley into pitch blackness, the remaining three men shouted in confusion.
“What happened? Who’s there?!” one panicked, swinging his musket blindly.
‘Target two is overcompensating on his right foot.
Sweep the knee.’
Moving entirely by the sound of their shifting armor, Elian slipped beneath a swinging musket barrel.
He kicked the side of the second soldier’s knee with terrifying precision, shattering the joint.
As the man screamed and fell, Elian dragged the serrated knife across his exposed throat.
“It’s in the dark! Fire! Just fire!” the third man screamed.
The deafening crack of two muskets firing blindly illuminated the alley for a split second.
In that flash of light, the soldiers saw a small, blood-soaked boy with dead eyes, standing barely three feet away.
‘Reload time for a standard flintlock: twenty seconds.
They are unarmed.’
Elian stepped forward into the dark again.
He grabbed the barrel of the nearest musket, pulling the terrified soldier off balance, and drove the knife upward into his armpit, puncturing the heart.
The last soldier turned to run, screaming for help.
Elian didn’t chase him.
He simply reached down, picked up a discarded musket ball from the dead man’s pouch, and weighed it in his hand.
‘Target distance: twenty feet.
Trajectory: linear.
Kinetic requirement: maximum.’
Elian threw the lead ball.
Coated faintly in his suffocating red aura, the projectile flew with impossible force, striking the fleeing soldier perfectly in the back of the skull.
The man pitched forward into the dirt, dead before he stopped sliding.
Elian stood in the pitch-black alley, surrounded by four corpses.
He pulled his boning knife from the dead man’s chest.
The blood dripped onto his bare feet.
‘Four down.
Five hundred and ninety-six remaining.
They are spreading out.
They are isolating themselves.
The geometry of this town belongs to us.’
The frightened little boy was gone, buried deep beneath an ocean of red.
For the rest of the night, the Absolute Murderer would hunt.
**Author’s Note — *Typing_In_My_Sleep*** Hey everyone, just wanted to drop a quick note regarding the update schedule for *Reborn as Bogard* going forward.
As the username implies, most of this is being written when I should probably be unconscious.
I’m currently prepping for a major exam in the real world, which means my waking hours are entirely consumed by textbooks, caffeine, and stress.
Writing Elian’s descent into absolute, unhinged calculus is my way of blowing off steam.
This story is the dark, chaotic dream I tap into when my brain is completely fried from studying—literally me just typing in my sleep and letting the subconscious take the wheel.
Because of this, updates are going to be irregular for a while.
I can’t promise a strict schedule, but I can promise that I’ll keep writing whenever the inspiration (or the sleep deprivation) hits.
Thank you all for reading, for the support, and for embracing the absolute madness of this story.
I’ll see you in the next chapter—whenever my dreams decide to type it out.
Stay sharp, **Typing_In_My_Sleep**