The knights of Scarbi surrounded the small stone house from every side, their light armor gleaming under the cold midday sun, while William stood back in silence, watching, arms crossed, his eyes never leaving the closed wooden door. The knights raised their weapons, waiting for any sign that the witch might try to make a run for it.
"Come out... there’s nowhere left for you to go!"
Everyone was certain she was still inside; the street itself had been cleared moments earlier, and the neighboring windows had been shut in a hurry, as though the entire city already knew how to behave in moments like this.
Alexander felt something strange standing among them, surrounding a house whose occupant he hadn’t even seen face to face yet. He felt his left hand resist his commands for a brief moment, as though responding sluggishly, with far more effort than his right hand ever needed.
(Maybe it’s just nerves... or maybe there’s something else about this hand I still don’t understand.)
He looked at his father and said:
"We didn’t bring our swords."
William didn’t answer right away. He pressed his palms together in front of his chest, then said quietly:
"Appear."
And slowly pulled his hands apart, his black sword emerging between them, as though it had been folded away inside nothingness itself, waiting for that exact word.
(He didn’t summon light this time... he summoned the sword itself, from somewhere I don’t understand. A different word, and completely different magic from the Illumination spell.)
Alexander didn’t try to understand how his father had done it — he simply copied him directly. He pressed his hands together, recalled where he’d left his sword the last time, closed his eyes to focus, and said:
"Appear."
His sword materialized the same way, its familiar weight returning to his palm as though it had never left.
William noticed this out of the corner of his eye but said nothing. He stepped forward, trying to push past a few of the knights to end this himself, but one of them stopped him with a firm tone, reminding him that the King wanted this witch alive, so he could personally interrogate her about why she’d surfaced in his city.
William pulled back reluctantly, then ordered three of the knights to accompany him and Alexander to the door.
He approached, placed his palm against the wood, closed his eyes, and began sensing something no one else could perceive.
"She’s in there... but weak. Not moving."
"Let’s go in then, since she’s weak."
"No. I don’t like this stillness of hers... she might be preparing something."
"The longer we wait, the more she recovers."
Alexander had watched enough movies to know that raids like this, back in his old world, would usually end with one or two officers getting hurt at most. But he was beginning to realize the rules here were entirely different, and that danger here couldn’t be measured by the same scale.
One of the knights stepped forward without hesitation, placed his hand on his sword’s hilt, and said:
"Flame."
His blade ignited with a calm blue fire, nothing at all like the glow of Alexander’s sword or the blackness of William’s.
(Completely different magic... seems like everyone here carries their own kind of power. Father’s right — this is a world I’m not going to understand quickly.)
The knight said quietly as he prepared to go in:
"I’ll take her hand off."
William didn’t stop him, letting him go in with the confidence of a man certain he could finish this with a single strike.
His footsteps could be heard fading into the darkness inside...
Then they stopped abruptly.
A scream followed.
It wasn’t a woman’s scream.
It was the scream of a beast.
And after that, the knight’s footsteps were never heard again.
William yanked Alexander’s hand and pulled him quickly away from the door, and at that same instant the entire house exploded under a black aura that tore through stone and wood alike, sending debris and fragments flying in every direction, some of it striking the knights, and some even reaching William and Alexander themselves.
From the heart of the dust and smoke, the creature emerged.
It still wore the tattered remains of a woman’s dress, and still bore strands of a woman’s hair, but its face had stretched and sagged, its body swollen until it filled the width of the alley, its long fangs alone enough to confirm what the knights had said from the very beginning: this was a true black-magic witch.
Alexander had been told that black-magic practitioners always revealed their true forms once exposed, and that the sole price of that power was selling one’s soul to a demon, who then reshaped its owner’s body however it pleased.
Alexander gripped his sword with both hands. He no longer felt the fear he’d felt back on that first battlefield; he’d begun to accept that this world was simply strange by nature, and that he needed to get used to it if he wanted to survive in it.
From amid the wreckage, the witch pointed a long finger at him, something like a smile crossing her disfigured face.
"You’re the Chosen One."
(So I’m here for some reason after all... I don’t know what reason, but for now it’s enough to know I’m not just some passing extra in this story.)
Alexander planted his feet firmly on the ground and said:
"Illuminate."
His sword lit up.
William raised Sword of Light toward the sky and ordered everyone to close their eyes, preparing to use the King’s Blessing. Everyone shut their eyes at once, well accustomed to obeying that word.
But William stopped himself at the last moment; the alley was too narrow to contain the power he’d need to unleash.
Alexander stepped forward alone, facing the beast that had begun closing in on him with heavy steps, while the witch approached from another direction, the black aura still coiling around her body like living smoke.
The instant William turned to strike the beast with his sword, his hand fell severed at his feet from a single blow — he didn’t need a second or third strike after that.
But the beast had never cared about his severed hand in the first place.
It hadn’t been heading for William at all.
William spun around behind him to find the beast had seized Alexander with its remaining good hand, and was now sprinting off with him through the ruins.
"Alexander! Watch out!"
Alexander, who had only just opened his eyes at the sound of his father’s voice, found himself suddenly dangling in the creature’s grip, being carried away at a speed his body had no hope of matching.
William tried to chase after him, but his steps were far slower than the fleeing beast’s.
Alexander struck the creature with his glowing sword again and again, but nothing seemed to affect it, and it didn’t so much as make a single sound of pain.
Then the creature suddenly spoke, in a hoarse voice from a throat that sounded nothing like a human’s:
"Master... master, I have him. The Chosen One is in my hands."
(Who in the hell is this thing talking to?)
Alexander raised his sword with all his strength, and with a rage built up from a past spent weak, capable of nothing but taking hits. He thought of nothing else in that moment: every punch he’d ever lost in the ring, every defeat, came rushing back to him all at once and lifted his arm.
He drove his sword into the beast’s swollen hand, and its scream tore through the ruined alley.
It hadn’t screamed when William severed its other hand with his powerful black blade, but it screamed now, from the stab of a rusty sword wielded by a boy who’d only carried one for a handful of days. Alexander didn’t understand why, but he didn’t stop to ask.
He fell to the ground from the force of the recoil, then quickly got back to his feet, gripping his sword again.
(I only got here yesterday... I’m not leaving it today.)
The beast turned, screaming, and its severed hand began regrowing before his eyes, flesh forming out of nothing as though the wound had been no more than a scratch. Alexander glanced back for any kind of help, but found only ruins and silence.
Just him and the beast, alone, in a ring he never chose to enter.
The beast lunged at him with reckless speed, and Alexander rolled to the side to dodge the attack, then raised his sword in front of his face and said quietly, as though speaking to something truly alive:
"Don’t be a rusty blade anymore... be the sword that kills this witch."
The beast paused for a moment and said:
"Are you talking to your sword?!"
Alexander was startled that the beast had actually heard him, but he didn’t let it shake him.
In a sudden, vicious attack, the beast seized Alexander again, knocking the sword from his hand onto the ground, and Alexander found himself back in its grip, its enormous hands closing around his small frame.
"Don’t resist, human... my master wants you, and I’m taking you to him."
Alexander screamed as he was crushed in its grip:
"You’re even uglier up close than I imagined!"
The witch-beast laughed with a rasping, receding sound as it tightened its grip around his neck, his breath growing shorter and shorter, the world before him beginning to shudder at its edges.
And in that moment, his left hand began moving on its own.
No fear.
No hesitation.
Nothing but that hand, moving by itself, as though it had never once waited for his permission.
Alexander’s left hand seized hold of the creature’s body without him commanding it to, glowing with a red light like molten lava, a light so sharp it nearly blinded him before he found himself lying on the ground, with no memory of how he’d fallen.
He got up, understanding nothing of what had just happened.
The beast stood there, staring down at its own body... then began evaporating into the air.
No screaming this time, no transformation — just a slow evaporation, its flesh crumbling into gray ash carried off on the wind. Its coarse hide vanished first, and beneath it emerged a girl in her twenties, nearly naked, staring at Alexander and his left hand in the stunned disbelief of someone who had just survived a long nightmare.
She raised a trembling hand toward him, a single tear sliding down her cheek, and said:
"Thank you."
Then she too evaporated before his eyes, without a sound, without any visible pain on her face.
(So not every witch sold her soul willingly, then... maybe she was a victim too, just like me, in a world whose rules I still don’t understand.)
Alexander looked down at his left hand, still carrying the faint remnants of that red light, then at the pile of ash in front of him. He didn’t understand what had happened, and he didn’t try to. Exhaustion weighed heavier than curiosity in that moment.
William came up behind him with hurried steps, but stopped a single pace away, not reaching for his son’s hand this time.
He just stood there, looking at it.
He said nothing.
He didn’t ask how, or when, or why.
He simply stared at that left hand, as though seeing in it some old ghost he’d thought long buried.
"Alexander..."
His voice caught on the name alone, and he didn’t finish the sentence.
Alexander looked at him, waiting for him to continue, but William suddenly turned his face away, toward the ruins of the house, as though searching for something else to say instead of whatever was running through his mind.
(Did he see something I recognize too? Or is he just... afraid?)
A long moment passed, heavy as the silence of that first battlefield, before William finally said, in a voice that didn’t sound like his own:
"Let’s get back on the road. We’ll talk."
They walked together in silence, Alexander watching his father from the corner of his eye, trying to read in his grim face what his tongue refused to say.
And in the distance, the bells of the great church began to ring, rapid and relentless, in a rhythm no one in Scarbi had ever heard before.
William stopped abruptly and looked toward the sound, his face — still carrying the mark of his first shock — now bearing a second one.
"That bell..."
He didn’t finish that sentence either.
And for the first time since waking up in this body, Alexander felt that the real danger hadn’t even begun yet.