Zis laughed, a cold cruel smile spreading across his face as he examined Ice's miserable state:
"Tell me… why does silence cling to your lips like that? Is it because you're bound by these chains, or have I sealed that small mouth of yours shut?"
He followed the words with a laugh that rang like a blade striking frozen ice.
With killing calmness, Zis drew twin golden blades — legendary swords that looked like no fire from Java's ordinary furnaces had ever touched them. The light of death danced on their polished surfaces.
He turned slowly, put his back to Ice, and began pacing the room with slow deliberate steps that made the air in the room feel heavier.
He stopped suddenly, placed his powerful hands on the sword hilts, and whispered in a rough, low voice:
"They look like your father's swords. Wouldn't it be the greatest honor for you to breathe your last breath at my hands… and your eternal shame to be slaughtered by your father's blade — the father you failed."
Zis turned his head, his carefully groomed black beard coming into view, and launched a gaze of such sharp intensity it was nearly physical.
Then a mechanical arm extended from the chair with a sickening metallic screech, pressing a strange set of lenses onto Ice's face.
Ice was completely helpless. Pinned like an insect in a monstrous web.
Through those lenses — a crack split through time. Ice saw his parents being killed again, as if he'd been physically dragged back to that moment. He watched them fight the creature known as Iver with everything they had until their last breath.
Zis roared, his voice dripping with contempt:
"There is the killer! Kill him! Didn't you promise your parents vengeance?"
Ice watched the blood scatter in a horrifying scene. Trapped inside the spiritual fortress his mother had woven around him, the killer circled her again and again in an endless loop of agony.
Ice whispered, barely:
"I… can't…"
Zis thundered:
"Of course you can't. Because you're weak!"
In a brutal movement, Zis drove both twin swords into Ice's feet — leaning his full weight onto them until the blades passed through the eight-year-old's body and came out the other side.
Ice screamed. A sound full of nothing but pain and grief.
"Why are you doing this?"
Zis's eyes blazed with a demonic red light:
"Kill him NOW! He's right in front of you! You swore war on them, and now you're nothing but a rat that dreamed it was a wolf! Is crying all you can do?!"
Ice watched the image of his mother's blood soaking into the earth repeat itself hundreds of times.
He looked at the ground, crushed by a suffocating sense of failure.
But Zis wasn't finished.
He reached into his pocket and produced a vile insect — three legs, three pulsing antennae — and forced it into Ice's mouth. The creature began climbing up his throat, tearing through blood vessels and nerves on its way toward the brain, causing an internal torment that made death seem like a beautiful and distant mercy.
While Ice trembled and his gasps filled the room, Zis's voice rose again:
"Fear and terror are traits unworthy of an avenger! I will strip them from you completely. You are worthless — I cannot understand how you ever belonged to a bloodline this powerful."