The crunch of frost beneath leather boots was the only warning.
Michael stepped into the narrow corridor between the armory and the perimeter wall. He moved with a slow, deliberate grace that belonged to an apex predator. Unlike every other man on the proving grounds, he was perfectly fine. His breathing was even, his posture relaxed, and not a single drop of sweat marred his brow. He looked as though he had just stepped out of a casual morning stroll, not a grueling, muscle-shredding punishment.
Derrick's fingers instantly froze against the bottom of Madeline's mask. He slowly turned his massive head, his eyes narrowing into dark, hateful slits as he assessed the ginger-haired man interrupting his kill.
"What did you just say to me redhead?" Derrick growled, his voice vibrating with a dangerous, unstable rage.
Michael didn't stop walking until he was just five paces away. He let his arms hang loosely at his sides. "You heard me," Michael replied, his tone chillingly calm. "Take your hands off the boy."
Madeline remained pinned against the freezing stone. She stared at Michael, her chest heaving with desperate, ragged breaths. A chaotic storm of relief and utter confusion battered her mind. Why? Why was he stepping in? Only last night, he had looked her dead in the eye and sworn he would step over her corpse. Was he doing this because he truly despised bullies, or did he simply hate Derrick enough to seek out a confrontation?
Derrick slowly, reluctantly, peeled his hand away from Madeline's face. He turned his full, hulking body toward Michael.
The scenario was sickeningly familiar. It was a perfect mirror of their first encounter in the recruitment hall back in the village. That day, Madeline had used the distraction to slip into the shadows and run like a frightened mouse, leaving Michael to face the scarred giant alone.
Every instinct in her body screamed at her to run now. The path behind her was clear. But the memory of Michael's contemptuous whisper—I can't believe I stepped in to defend you, and you just scurry away like a rat—nailed her boots to the cobblestones. She pressed her spine against the wall, her hands balled into tight fists. She wouldn't run. She was terrified of Derrick, but she found she was even more terrified of Michael's disgust.
"What is your absolute problem, lad?" Derrick spat, taking heavy, thudding steps toward Michael. He rolled his massive shoulders, the muscles bulging beneath his wool uniform. "You're always up in my business. Who do you think you are?"
He closed the distance until the two men were standing chest-to-chest, eye-to-eye. Two giants blocking out the morning sun.
Michael did not back away. He didn't even flinch. He just tilted his head slightly, staring into Derrick's bloodshot eyes with a look of supreme, absolute boredom.
"I hate bullies," Michael said quietly. "And you talk entirely too much without taking any action."
The insult hit Derrick like a spark in a powder keg. "Oh, really?" Derrick snarled, his scarred face twisting into a mask of pure, ugly violence. "If you want to see action, you arrogant bastard, I'll show you."
Derrick didn't hesitate. He planted his back foot, twisting his heavy hips, and launched a massive, devastating right hook aimed squarely at Michael's head.
Madeline gasped, pressing her hands to her mask.
The punch connected. The sound was a sickening, meaty THWACK that echoed off the stone walls. Derrick's fist slammed into Michael's jaw with enough force to drop a workhorse.
But Michael didn't fall. He didn't even stumble. His head snapped to the side from the sheer kinetic impact, but his feet remained planted in the dirt like iron roots.
Slowly, Michael turned his face back to center. A thin trickle of crimson blood leaked from the corner of his mouth.
And then, Michael smiled.
It was a terrifying, feral smirk that promised absolute destruction. Before Derrick could pull his arm back to defend himself, Michael moved.
It was not a brawl. It was an execution.
Michael's fist blurred. He drove a horrific, piston-like punch directly into Derrick's solar plexus. The impact sounded like a butcher slamming a meat cleaver into a slab of beef.
Derrick's eyes bulged out of his skull. All the air violently evacuated his lungs in a wet, tearing wheeze. The blow was so catastrophically powerful that Madeline physically felt the shockwave vibrate through the dirt beneath her boots. Derrick's massive frame folded completely in half. He dropped straight to his knees on the frost, wrapping his arms around his shattered stomach.
Blood sprayed from Derrick's mouth, spattering against the pale dirt as he violently gagged, his body instinctively fighting to keep his internal organs from completely shutting down.
Madeline stared in absolute horror. One single blow. One punch had taken the largest, most terrifying man in the barracks and reduced him to a choking, bleeding mass on the floor.
But Michael was not finished.
He looked down at the gasping giant with cold, reptilian detachment. He pulled his right arm back, rotating his torso, and unleashed a second, devastating blow—a brutal, rising hook that caught Derrick squarely on the side of the jaw.
CRACK.
The sound of shattering bone was incredibly loud, like a thick, dry branch being snapped over a knee. Derrick's head whipped backward violently, his eyes rolling back into his skull. He collapsed sideways onto the dirt, completely unconscious before his ruined face even hit the frost.
Silence rushed back into the alley, broken only by the ragged sound of Madeline's breathing and the wet dripping of blood from Michael's knuckles.
Michael stood over the unconscious body for a second, then slowly turned his head. His piercing green eyes met Madeline's wide, terrified blue ones.
Madeline couldn't breathe. A new, much colder terror seized her heart. If Derrick was a monster, Michael was the devil himself. If two blows from him could shatter a man of Derrick's size, Madeline knew with absolute certainty that a single strike would turn her bones to dust. She was entirely at his mercy.
Before either of them could speak, the rapid crunch of boots echoed from the main courtyard.
The guard in the green uniform who had taken over for the Sergeant—rounded the corner, flanked by two armed nightwatchers. He slid to a halt, his eyes widening as he took in the scene: the blood on the frost, Derrick's lifeless, twisted body, and Michael standing over him with bruised knuckles.
"By the Gods," the guard breathed, his hand instinctively dropping to the hilt of his short sword. He looked from Michael to Madeline, his face hardening into a mask of bureaucratic fury.
"What in the King's name is going on here?" the guard demanded, gesturing sharply to the body on the ground. When neither Michael nor Madeline answered, the man's patience snapped.
"Both of you," the guard commanded, pointing a trembling finger at them. "Come with me. Now."
Madeline squeezed her eyes shut beneath her mask. She had survived the push-ups. She had survived the unmasking. But as she fell into step behind Michael, marching toward the main keep under armed guard, she cursed her miserable luck. She had just traded one death sentence for another.