He woke to stillness.
No rain. No mist.
The sky through the stable's cracked door was utterly blue — unbroken, clean, brutal in its brightness after so long beneath clouds. The light fell at a harsh angle and bit at his newly grown eyes like a reprimand.
The air was warm and damp. The mold smelled thicker without rain to dilute it. Flies hummed lazily around his wounds, their wings a quiet drone in the silence.
He sat up slowly — straw crackling, peeling from the back of his bloodstained robe with small tearing sounds.
The wounds had not fully healed. The thigh wound was crusted over in dark scabs, partially closed but still open — muscle visible through torn skin, pulsing with every heartbeat. The shoulder ached deep into the bone. His arm had grown further — pink tissue covering the exposed bone like a fresh scar — but it was still unresponsive, deadened, fingers tingling with vague electrical static.
His chest bore a thin, irregular scar. The black veins had spread wider, webbing across his torso like roots digging beneath porcelain, cold and faintly itching.
He touched his face. His fingers moved over uneven patches where skin had reformed too quickly — rougher now, laced with fine black lines that pulsed under the surface.
The Covenant Anchor felt warmer now. As though it had been waiting for him to wake, the horned figure's thorns gleaming faintly in the daylight.
He stood — his leg buckled once, a sharp bite of pain, but it held.
He stepped outside.
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The city looked different without rain — sharper. Uglier. The puddles reflected the sky in still, glass-like pools. People moved with purpose now, as though the clearing weather had gifted them a false sense of hope.
Lonir walked with a deep, quiet anger.
A fierce desire rose in him — simple and cold and without elegance.
He wanted to kill Farkis.
He thought it through as he moved. Farkis carried the covenant of the God of Violence, which granted him resistance against damage and an almost obscene capacity for force. The attack in the alley had been evidence enough: the man's strikes carried a weight that did not belong to ordinary flesh.
But Lonir smiled to himself.
"That's interesting."
He set aside the reflex to avoid, to survive carefully, to play it safe. None of that would serve him now. Caution would only widen Farkis's advantage.
He placed his hand on the Covenant Anchor.
"I'll kill him. He's powerful and terrifying — but I'll kill him."
He began to search.
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He left the tannery's reek behind, moving away from alleys that swallowed sound. The noise of the city faded with each step until there was only the wind across dry earth, the soft rasp of his wet cloth against his skin.
He reached the open ground at the city's edge.
Flat. Broad. Empty. No walls to hide behind.
The air was cleaner here — but harsh. Cold. It tasted of grit on the tongue.
He found the tree.
An enormous thing. Its trunk was as thick as an old wall, its bark rough and deeply fissured, carved by decades of wind and rain. He pressed his palm to it — the sensation solid, real, unmoving.
"This will do," he said quietly.
He sat.
Cross-legged, slowly, letting his body settle. The ground was uneven, its pebbles pressing through the cloth into his bones. It did not bother him.
He closed his eyes.
Time passed.
The sun moved above him, slow and silent, and the shadow of the tree shifted across his body by degrees.
A thought began to form.
Incomplete. Unclear.
But sufficient.
Perhaps I can reduce the damage I take... no.
He stopped.
He corrected himself.
Not reduce. Direct.
He opened his palm slightly.
And activated The Bleak.
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It did not arrive as a strike this time.
It crept.
Like a cold that slides beneath the skin. Like something living, searching for an exit.
A faint sting appeared in his palm.
Then pressure.
Then a cold heat that began to gather.
He tried to extend it — the way it always moved.
It surged toward the wrist, toward the arm, toward the chest.
Lonir seized his own wrist.
Hard. His fingers drove into the wet skin, his nails whitening at the knuckles.
"Stay here."
Not a request.
A command.
His body shuddered — a violent, involuntary convulsion, his jaw locking. The pressure inside the palm intensified.
The Bleak resisted. It pushed against the constraint, straining.
The nerves began to fire — sharp, staccato signals spiking through his mind like nails.
The skin cracked.
One thin line. Then another. Then both split open.
The flesh in his palm began to liquefy.
Slowly.
Not the explosive wave — a gradual dissolution, layers separating, sliding, dropping to the earth in heavy dark drops.
The smell rose dense.
Iron. Warm flesh. Something burning without visible flame.
The Bleak fought to spread.
He held.
Every muscle in his body locked. His chest pulled rigid. His neck stiffened. His teeth ground until they rang.
"Only here."
The pressure grew.
The skin around his wrist swelled — but did not burst.
Held.
Retreated.
Compressed back into the palm.
The Covenant Anchor shifted against his hip — a small movement.
The horned figure leaned slightly.
As if watching.
Hours passed.
The sun descended from white to heavy gold.
The shadow beneath the tree lengthened, consuming the light around him.
Lonir did not move.
The hand was no longer a hand.
The flesh had become unstable within his palm — cracking, sealing, cracking again, an endless cycle. His palm had grown soft and malleable as dough. The nerves were bare, trembling, gleaming raw pink in the fading light, pulsing with every heartbeat.
The blood did not pour.
It seeped.
Slowly. Heavily.
But something was changing.
The pain no longer tried to flee outward.
It gathered.
In that one place.
He felt it —
A weight inside his palm. Dense. Like a trapped insect turning inside his fist.
Not a passing sensation.
A presence.
As though his palm had become a small vessel — holding something that should not be contained.
His breathing had grown slower. Deeper.
Colder.
He no longer fought the pain.
He was holding it. Compressing it. Packing it.
The light shifted to the red of evening.
Then dimmed.
Lonir opened his eyes.
Slowly.
He looked at his hand.
A mass.
Flesh warped and deeply fissured, threaded through with fine black lines, pulsing slowly — as though alive in the wrong way. Every beat of it was heavy. Wrong.
He whispered:
"Can I store it like this...?"
His voice came out faint. Exhausted.
"...And release it later?"
No answer.
Only the wind.
And the dry rustle of leaves above.
He rose slowly. His knee wavered once — then steadied.
His damaged hand hung at his side. It no longer bled freely. But it had not calmed.
Something inside it was still moving.
Still waiting.
He looked toward the horizon.
Toward where the city began again.
He smiled.
Small. Sharp.
"I'll try it soon."
He paused.
Then added, quieter:
"Wait for me... you bastard."
He was speaking about Farkis.
And somewhere inside the city, Farkis was already moving.
Slow. Patient.
With the clear intent to kill.
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