The B-Rank guild hall wasn't a grand ribcage like the A-Rank one. It was a repurposed ruin, a collapsed structure of something that might have once been a library, now filled with the sound of low conversations and the smell of cheap spirit-ale and anxiety. It was a place for grinders, for hunters who fought not for glory, but for the next meal ticket.
Grace led the way inside, her glaive held tight. The few hunters lounging at makeshift tables looked up. Their eyes slid over her with vague recognition, then locked onto me. The whispers started instantly. The air grew tense.
I ignored them. My focus was on a corner booth where three hunters were hunched over a map. A broad-shouldered man with a hammer, a lanky guy fidgeting with a pouch of throwing knives, and a woman with eyes that constantly scanned the room. Grace's team.
The broad guy saw Grace first.
"Grace? What are you-"
Then he saw me. His sentence died in his throat. His hand went to his hammer. The other two followed his gaze, their postures snapping from relaxed to combat-ready in a heartbeat.
"Relax, Marcus,"
Grace said, her voice strained.
"He's not here for a fight."
"Then why is he here?" the woman hissed, her eyes narrowed.
"Come to finish the job you started, Cinder? Wipe out the rest of the B-Ranks who didn't get eaten by your mess?"
I didn't look at her. I looked at Marcus, who seemed to be the leader. I walked to their table and placed my hands on it, leaning forward.
"I need a team," I said, my voice flat.
A beat of stunned silence. Then Marcus let out a harsh, disbelieving laugh.
"You need a team. To do what? Get more of us killed? We're not signing up for your suicide mission, Cinder. We've got a contract. A safe one. Far away from your crumbling terrace."
"I'm not asking," I said.
The temperature at the table seemed to drop. The fidgety guy with the knives stopped moving entirely.
"You're not in a position to make demands," the woman spat. "Your license is suspended. You're bounty fodder."
I straightened up.
"You're right. I'm not an A-Rank hunter right now. I'm just the guy who incinerated a Nest of Lamentations because they were too loud."
I let my eyes glow, just a little. A faint crimson light reflected in their wide eyes.
"I'm the guy who walked through a pack of Jackals and they ran. I'm the mess. And I'm standing in front of you."
I looked at each of them in turn.
"You have a choice. You can come with me, help me clean up the Fifth Terrace, and walk out of this with a reputation for saving a territory that an A-Rank abandoned."
I paused, letting the offer hang there. It was a good one. They all knew it.
"Or,"
I continued, my voice dropping to a whisper that was colder than hellfire,
"you can take your safe contract. And I will personally follow you to it. I will find you. And I will make sure it becomes the most unsafe, most disastrous contract in Guild history. I will bring every Jackal, every Nakwi, every bottom-feeding horror I can find right to your doorstep, and i will personally drag you to the darkest pits of Hell, near Gluttony."
I leaned in again, my face close to Marcus's.
"You don't have to believe I'm a hero. You just have to believe I'm a bigger monster than the ones out there."
The silence that followed was absolute. It wasn't just fear. It was a cold, brutal calculation. They were weighing a dangerous mission against a guaranteed, personal apocalypse.
Grace was staring at me, her knuckles white on her glaive. She hadn't expected this.
Marcus's jaw worked. He looked at his team, at the sheer, terrifying certainty on my face, and then back at me.
"You're insane,"
he breathed, but the fight was gone from his voice.
"I'm motivated," I corrected him. "Do we have a deal?"
He held my gaze for a long, long moment. Then his shoulders slumped in defeat. He gave a single, sharp nod.
"We're in," he muttered.
"Good," I said, straightening up. The hellfire in my eyes died down. "Gear up. We move now."
I turned and walked away, leaving them to process the threat and the promise. Grace hesitated for a second, shooting her team an apologetic look, before following me out.
Once we were outside, she grabbed my arm, spinning me around.
"What the hell was that? 'I will personally follow you'? I thought we were going to-"
"It worked, didn't it?" I interrupted, pulling my arm away.
"That's not the point! You can't just threaten to get my friends killed!"
"They weren't your friends five minutes ago," I said, starting to walk again. "They were the cowards who left you to die. Now they're useful tools. Be grateful they're still in one piece to be used."
I felt her staring at my back, her previous blush of admiration now completely frozen over. She was seeing a much darker, simpler side of Cinder. The side that got things done, no matter the cost.
I didn't care. I had a team. The first step of the plan was complete.
The climb out of hell had begun. And I was willing to burn down everything in my path to make it happen.
***
The air outside the guild hall was thick with unspoken accusations. Grace's footsteps behind me were heavy, each one a punctuation mark of her fury. I could feel her glare drilling into my back.
I stopped, not turning around. "Do you have a problem, Hunter?"
The title sounded like an insult. She stepped in front of me, her face a mask of conflicted anger.
"Yeah, I have a problem. You just held a knife to my team's throat!"
"And they're still breathing because of it," I said, my voice flat.
"Your sentimentality is a luxury. One you can't afford when your territory is being eaten alive. They made a choice based on survival. I just clarified the options."
"Those 'options' were a death sentence either way!"
"Wrong."
I finally met her eyes.
"One option has a chance. My way. The other was a guarantee. Theirs. I didn't threaten them with death, Grace. I threatened them with me. There's a difference."
She opened her mouth to retort, but nothing came out.
The door to the guild hall creaked open. Marcus, the woman, Lyssa, I'd overheard, and the fidgety knife-thrower, Alex filed out. They were geared up, faces set in grim resignation. They looked at me not as a leader, but as a natural disaster they'd been ordered to evacuate ahead of.
"The Jackals have overrun the central plaza," Marcus said, his voice all business, any previous defiance extinguished. "They're using the old spirit-well as a nexus. They're not just scavenging; they're fortifying."
"Then that's where we start," I said. "Lead the way."
The journey back to the Fifth Terrace was a silent, tense march. My new 'team' moved with the practiced efficiency of survivors, flanking out, checking corners, communicating with sharp hand signals. They were good. They were professional. And they were terrified of the asset they were protecting.
We reached the edge of the chaos quicker than before. The snarls and shrieks were louder now, more organized. From a ridge of shattered crystal, we looked down. The Jackals were everywhere, a seething mass of hungry energy. At the center, the ancient spirit-well, a fissure in the ground that pulsed with soft, stolen light was indeed their focus. They were dragging captured spirit-fragments to it and tossing them in, a grotesque offering to fuel their frenzy.
Lyssa nocked an arrow made of condensed silence. Alex palmed three throwing knives that shimmered with a frosty energy. Marcus hefted his hammer, its head beginning to glow with a dull, earthen light.
Grace looked at me, her glaive ready. "What's the plan, boss?" The word was laced with venom.
I didn't look away from the scene below. "The plan is simple."
I pointed at the spirit-well. "That's the heart. You four are the distraction. Draw them off. Create an opening."
Marcus snorted. "Four of us against fifty of them? That's not a distraction. That's a last stand."
"You'll be fine," I said, my tone leaving no room for argument.
"They're predators. They attack weakness. So don't show any."
"And what are you going to be doing while we're providing this 'distraction'?" Lyssa asked, her voice icy.
I finally turned to them, a faint, crimson glow already igniting deep in my pupils.
"I'm going to cauterize the wound."
Before any of them could protest further, I stepped off the ridge.
I didn't fall. I dropped like a stone, landing in the middle of the plaza with a concussive 'thud' that cracked the ground beneath my feet. Dust and energy billowed outwards.
Every single Jackal head snapped in my direction. The snarling stopped. Replaced by a low, unified growl of recognition and hatred.
I didn't give my team a signal. I didn't need to. The sudden vacuum of attention was their cue.
An arrow whistled past my ear, exploding in a sphere of absolute quiet that disoriented three Jackals. Frost-knives pinned two more to the ground. Marcus's roar echoed as he waded into the flank, his hammer swinging in a wide, crushing arc.
The distraction had begun.
I started walking. Straight toward the spirit-well.
Jackals lunged. I didn't break stride. A flick of my wrist sent a whip-crack of hellfire that didn't just burn one; it carved a line of incineration through three others, their forms dissolving into screeching ash.
I was a scythe moving through a field of wheat. Each step was another blast of controlled, brutal fire. I wasn't fighting them. I was erasing them. The memory of the boy on the bathroom floor was gone, buried under the primal need to purge, to clean, to dominate.
I reached the edge of the spirit-well. The energy pouring from it was sickening, a gluttonous feast of stolen lives.
I raised my hands over the fissure. The hellfire in my chest roared in response, not as a weapon, but as a purifying force. I focused on the feeling of the cold bathroom tiles, the weight of the pills, the absolute wrongness of that memory.
And I let it all pour out.
A torrent of crimson fire, darker and hotter than anything I'd used before, plunged into the well. It wasn't an explosion. It was an annihilation. The stolen light within the well didn't fight back; it was utterly consumed, unmade by a power that was its absolute antithesis.
The light show died. The well didn't just go dark; it became inert, a dead scar in the ground.
The effect on the Jackals was instantaneous. Their unified frenzy shattered. Without the well's energy fueling their hunger, they became just scared, feral animals. Disorganized. Vulnerable.
My team saw it too. Their defensive maneuvers turned offensive. Marcus smashed through a confused pack. Grace's glaive became a whirlwind of precise, lethal strikes. They were mopping up.
I stood by the dead well, the hellfire around me subsiding. The plaza was clearing, the remaining Jackals fleeing into the ruins.
My new team regrouped, panting, covered in ethereal grime and minor wounds. They looked at the scorched, dead well. Then they looked at me.
There was no gratitude in their eyes. No newfound respect.
There was only fear. Cold, hard, unambiguous fear.
I had cleaned up the mess. I had been the bigger monster.
And they knew, without a doubt, that my threat in the guild hall hadn't been a bluff.
"The plaza is secure," I said, my voice echoing in the sudden quiet. "You saw how to do it, you'll be alone in the next sector."
Marcus sighed.
"Okay, we'll leave that for tomorrow."
"Your home is quite far, Cinder.
Do you want to spend the spirit night in our inn?"