For an absurdly long breath, the two men remained still.
Nathan stood there in the doorway, wearing their ’kindness’ back at them. That smile and quiet courtesy resting on a face that should’ve been dead, and a throat that they’d split.
The terror on Perrin’s face was raw and complete.
It was simply spectacular. He’d cut this boy himself. He’d felt the life drip out of him under his own hands as he watched the floor take the rest.
If there was one thing Perrin knew, it was the fact that the dead did not get up. That was the one rule above all the others.
And then, suddenly, the sound of laughter echoed.
It was Hask. His laughter came out low and shaky at first, but then it grew, gradually, turning into a loud, displeasing sound of amusement.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, stood off the crate, and gazed at Nathan, looking him up and down.
This was no ghost. This... was stock.
"Perrin," Hask called, his voice shedding the echoes of fear. "Perrin, are you seeing this? We’ve got an awakened with a regeneration ability!"
"I’m seeing it."
"No." Hask shook his head. "No, you’re not thinking about it." He took a step, his lips curving into a wide and hungry grin. "He regenerated, throat and all. Which means we can cut him, and sell him, and then we wait for him to regrow, and we cut him again!"
With his wide grin still present, he spread his hands like he was showing off a prize. "The same boy! Twice, ten times... this is NOT a body. It’s a bloody damn well! The little bleeder’s going to buy us out of the trade entirely."
Perrin’s fear still lingered, but the whispers of greed began to overshadow it. Greed had always been the stronger of the two in him.
"Get out of the trade on one boy," Hask said slowly. "On. One. Boy." He pulled a dagger from his belt. The short, dark blade gleamed. "We could retire off a corpse that won’t stay one. You know, gods love a fool with a soft throat."
Perrin’s hand went to his own belt, and he too drew out his dagger.
And simultaneously, they gazed at the thing standing in the doorway, and what they saw was what had been true the whole time.
A frail, low-district boy, half-starved, soaked in his own dried blood, one arm bound in rotting leaves. No weapon, barely upright, swaying against the frame with the little strength a fresh corpse gets back.
What the hell could a boy like that do? Had Perrin really been afraid?
"Hold still this time, lad," Perrin said, and the warmth crawled back into his voice now, "and it’ll go quicker."
Hask didn’t wait.
’These bastards. After everything they did, the only thing they can think of is using me as an organ stock?’ Nathan felt a pang in his chest.
He sought to convince himself that they weren’t as bad as he thought, that maybe there was no need to retaliate.
But to imagine their reaction right after they saw him alive was to kill him again.
Time after time, it only seemed as though the world wanted him dead, and he had only tried to ignore it.
Now, he had made his decision.
’If they want me dead, then I can only kill them too,’ Nathan thought with a frown as Hask lunged at him, closing the space in two eager strides, reaching out with a heavy, grease-stained hand to grab Nathan by the shoulder and force him back down onto the floor.
He moved like a man grabbing a sack of grain, careless and confident, entirely convinced of his own weight.
Nathan didn’t step back.
He didn’t raise his hands to defend himself.
He simply looked at Hask’s outstretched wrist with deep, cold eyes, and he reached out his right hand to meet it.
"Blade of Death," Nathan whispered.
The cold didn’t drag out of him slowly this time. It surged.
The moment Nathan’s bare fingers locked around Hask’s wrist, the air between them went dead. A sound like dry leaves snapping echoed through the quiet room as grey rot erupted from under Nathan’s knuckles and raced up Hask’s forearm like spilled ink.
"Wha—?!" Hask, who had expected the weak, frail boy to be grovelling at his feet, jolted back, stunned at what was happening to his hand.
The hide-like skin wrinkled, split, and turned to ash in less than two seconds. Muscle shrank down onto the bone with a sickening crackle, the grey decay chewing straight through meat and tendon right before their eyes.
Hask’s wide, hungry grin shattered into a sound that was barely human.
He shrieked, dropping his dagger as his arm collapsed into a hollow, blackening husk up to the elbow. He tried to pull back, but Nathan held on, the cold in his grip as relentless as an iron vise.
With his left hand, Nathan caught Hask’s falling dagger mid-air.
He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t say a word. In one clean, fluid motion, Nathan drove the short dark blade straight up through the underside of Hask’s jaw, burying it to the hilt.
Hask’s scream cut off into a wet gurgle.
The grey rot exploded outward from his jaw, consuming his face, his neck, his chest, until the man’s entire body turned the dull, powdery colour of cold wood ash.
Nathan pulled the blade back, and Hask’s body fell to the ground with a sickening thud.
[Slaver Hask slain.]
[EXP +30 | Soul Essence +1]
[Soul Claimed. Sea of Souls: 2]
Silence descended on the room, thick and suffocating.
Perrin stood frozen three paces away. The dagger slipped from his trembling fingers, clattering loudly against the stone. The warmth on his face was gone, replaced by a ghastly, translucent pale.
"H-Hask...?" Perrin whimpered, staring at the pile of dust where his partner had been standing a heartbeat ago.
He looked up at Nathan.
Nathan stepped through the floating grey ash, the dark blade held loosely at his side. His eyes were completely flat, showing neither anger nor triumph, just the quiet, terrifying emptiness of a ledger being balanced.
’What sort of ability is that? I’ve never seen anything like it. That’s not regeneration. Could he be a dark mage?’
Perrin stumbled backward, knocking over his stool, dropping to his knees on the cold floor with his hands raised in frantic terror.
"Lad—! Please! Please, wait!" Perrin’s voice broke, tears spilling down his creased, sunburnt cheeks. "It was Hask! It was all Hask’s idea! We can give you the coin! All of it! The cart, the horses, everything! Just let me go, lad, please—"
Nathan stopped in front of him.
He looked down at the kneeling man, leaning in slightly, his face inches from Perrin’s terrified eyes.
"Easy, Perrin," Nathan murmured, his voice low, rough, and laced with the chill of the grave. "Nice and still."
Before Perrin could scream, Nathan swept the blade across his throat.
[Slaver Perrin slain.]
[EXP +30 | Soul Essence +1]
[Soul Claimed. Sea of Souls: 3]
Perrin fell forward, his body hitting the floor, joining Hask in the pond of their own blood.
Nathan stood alone in the quiet room.
He didn’t savour it. He didn’t look at the bodies.
His mind immediately shifted to the only thing that mattered now. ’I killed them.’ But strangely, he didn’t feel anything. Not even the slightest remorse.
But then...
’Two dead men. A blood-soaked room. If anyone walks through that door, it won’t matter that I was the victim. If they’re popular traders people will be here in no time. I have to leave.’
He moved fast. He wiped the blade on a cloth, shoved it into his belt, and snatched up Perrin’s heavy leather coin purse from the table. He grabbed a clean, folded tunic off a shelf, tossed his blood-crusted rags aside, and pulled it over his head.
Then he turned toward the back room.
Kira was still pressed into the corner, staring at the two piles of dust with eyes wide as saucers. Her chest was heaving, her small body trembling so violently her teeth clicked together.
Nathan stopped at the doorway. He looked at her. Small, ragged, silent, with no family and nowhere in the world to go. Leaving her here alone in a room that smelled of death was sentence enough.
He didn’t make a speech. He held out the spare bundle of dry bread and the clean cloth tunic he’d grabbed from the shelf.
"I’m leaving," Nathan said, his voice flat and quiet. "If you stay here, someone else will come through that door. If you want to live, come on."
Kira didn’t move at first. She looked at the bread in his hand, then at the two bodies on the floor, and finally up at his face, at the dark, seam-like scar running across his throat.
Nathan turned and started walking out into the narrow alleyway, not waiting for an answer.
Behind him, the soft rustle of straw sounded in the quiet room. A second later, light, hurried footsteps pattered across the stone floor as Kira scrambled up, clutching the bread to her chest, and scurried out into the daylight right behind him.