A figure entered the narrow passage from the far end. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Wrapped in a dark, mottled cloak that dripped with fine mist. His face was half-hidden, but his eyes caught the light — hard, unblinking, their whites tinged yellow as old parchment.
A short sword hung at his hip — practical, worn, its leather grip darkened by sweat and long use, without a single flourish beyond the faint smell of oiled metal in the air. On the back of his left hand, a card glowed — dull red-black, the shape of a shattered shield — pulsing like a live heart, warm enough that Lonir could feel the heat from where he stood.
The man spoke first. His voice was low and coarse, like stones ground beneath a heavy boot.
"Kayl sends his regards. He said you were carrying something worth checking."
Lonir turned slowly.
The man — Farkis, though Lonir didn't yet know the name — drew the sword halfway from its sheath. No ceremony. Simple readiness, the blade catching faint light with a cold glint, rain sliding along it in thin channels.
"You're new," Farkis said. "Despair, then. I've never encountered one of yours before. But I've killed enough contractors to recognize that look. Wounded inside. Empty. Dangerous."
Lonir considered him with cold clarity.
This creature is not human, he realized. The sheer mass of him, the density, the thick, dark hair visible at his collar and wrists. A Sasa — one of the great-bodied peoples of the eastern territories, known for their ferocious physical capability. If I'm careless with this one, he'll kill me.
Farkis took one step forward. "Show me the card. Or I take it from your corpse."
Lonir reached — not outward, but inward.
[ The Bleak ] answered.
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The pain arrived the way it always did: total.
His eyes swelled with pressure that buzzed like trapped insects and then burst outward with twin wet cracks that echoed inside his skull. Glassy fluid tracked down his cheeks in thick, tacky rivulets — warm and slick, streaked with black, mixing with the mist on his skin. The smell of his own torn tissue rose sharp and immediate — metallic, like fresh-cut meat.
He staggered once. His legs buckled and then held.
The skin of his face opened — fine fissures accelerating outward from the ruined eye sockets toward jaw and throat, each one accompanied by the sound of wet paper tearing. Then the wounds yawned wide. Flesh dissolved in slow, steaming layers that peeled back with a soft, sucking screech, laying bare gleaming muscle and yellow fat beneath. His cheeks slackened. The white of his jawbone glistened through translucent ruin. His lips dripped into hanging threads.
His chest split down a long vertical line. Ribs cried out with a deep, resonant groan as muscle tore away. His heart hammered against exposed bone — visible, obscene, each beat a wet thud that shuddered through his entire frame. His lungs pulled air through frothing liquid. Every breath was fire.
One arm split to the midpoint of the forearm. Muscle hung in loose strips that slapped his side with every tremor. Exposed bone gleamed cold in the wet air.
He could not scream. His throat had dissolved. He made a sound — a rattling, drowning gurgle — and counted.
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Farkis watched for a moment.
Then he moved.
Fast.
The shattered-shield card on his hand flared dull red. The heat of it — the power of it — was palpable. Endurance. Strength. Violence sanctified as a gift.
He crossed the distance in three strides, shoes spraying water from the puddles. The sword swept in.
It caught Lonir's exposed shoulder — deep enough to scrape bone, sending a stuttering vibration up his arm like a struck bell.
Blood fanned outward — hot, thick, spattering the alley wall with a sound louder than the mist could muffle.
In the same instant, Farkis's free hand closed around Lonir's throat. He lifted him from the ground with a guttural, triumphant snarl.
"It ends here, little ghost," Farkis rasped — his one clear eye bright with the pleasure of the kill, the other still scarred shut from whatever had hit it before Lonir arrived. "Whatever Despair is — it dies with you."
Lonir's expression did not change.
He released The Bleak onto Farkis — a larger wave this time. Charged with a longer endurance.
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Farkis's face distorted immediately. His veins turned black beneath the skin. One vessel burst with a soft, wet sound. His cheeks split wide, flesh falling in heavy folds, exposing jawbone and the motion of his tongue. He roared — not in defeat, in fury — the sound raking the air, and dropped to one knee.
His sword arm did not stop.
He was savage and trained and furious, and he drove the blade into Lonir's thigh with a twisting cut — deep, the steel cold and sharp as it parted muscle, the wound immediately flooding warm and wet down Lonir's leg, soaking into the mud below with an awful sucking sound.
Lonir's leg gave. He hit the ground.
He tried to push The Bleak further — hold it longer, pour more through.
But the regeneration inside him was too slow. New flesh grew in painful increments, burning and itching at the edges, while blood still moved in rhythmic pulses from the thigh. Vision narrowed at the edges. The world contracted to a grey fog.
Farkis — half his face dissolved, one eye swinging loosely with every labored breath — smiled through the wreckage of his own features. His teeth showed where the lips had gone.
"New ones always think the covenant makes them untouchable," he said, his voice thick with blood and damage.
He raised the sword for the killing strike. The mist parted around it.
Lonir ran.
His leg was agony — every step a detonation up his spine — and the blood laid a trail behind him, a warm and vivid line in the mud. His dangling, half-reformed arm was useless. His vision swam. The alley became a blur.
Farkis did not pursue immediately — he was badly hurt, slow, and his cursing filled the air behind Lonir, mixing with the wet scrape of his heavy footfall as he struggled to rise.
Lonir burst from the alley mouth, turned blindly into the tannery yards.
The smell was overwhelming — acrid chemicals that stung the nose, the reek of animal hides in various stages of decomposition coating his tongue like fur. Sheds and warehouses spread across the area, low and filthy, their doors hanging open and creaking in the wind.
He chose one at random: a small, dilapidated stable half-submerged in mud, its roof leaking in steady streams that rang against metal buckets inside. The floor was dark with rotten straw and old dung, the air thick with buzzing flies.
He pushed the door open with his shoulder. Rusted hinges screamed. He pulled it shut behind him.
He collapsed against the far wall.
The straw crackled under his weight. The cold wood met his back.
His leg throbbed in arrhythmic bursts. His shoulder burned deep, the bone aching with every breath. His half-rebuilt arm hung limp, nerves still firing wrongly, fingers numb and tingling.
The chest wound had sealed to a thin, jagged scar, but black veins spread from it across his torso, cold and faintly itching.
He closed his eyes.
The darkness came.
No dreams.
Only a perfect, seamless void.
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