The market district was a graveyard.
Alinda moved through it like a blade through still water — silent, direct, undisturbed by the chaos swirling around her. Bodies lay in the street in twisted heaps, their blood running in thin rivers between the cobblestones. A merchant's stall had collapsed, its awning torn, its wares scattered and trampled. A cart lay overturned, its horse dead beside it, a spear of hardened blood still jutting from its flank. The screaming had faded here, replaced by something worse: the low, animal moan of the dying and the stunned silence of those who had survived.
Neo followed three steps behind her, and he could not stop looking.
A man slumped against a wall, his hands pressed to his stomach, his eyes wide and glassy. His lips were moving — a prayer, a name, a final curse — but no sound came. A woman knelt in the middle of the street, her dress soaked red, her hands hanging limp at her sides, staring at nothing. An old woman had fallen in a doorway, her cane beside her, her body twisted at an angle that bodies shouldn't twist. A young man — barely older than Neo — sat with his back against a fountain, his legs splayed out in front of him, his chest torn open and empty.
Neo's steps slowed. His hand tightened on his blade.
A child lay near the fountain. A boy, maybe five. His eyes were closed. He could have been sleeping, except for the blood matting his hair, except for the stillness of his chest, except for the small hand still clutching a wooden toy — a horse, hand-carved, its painted mane chipped and worn.
Neo stopped.
"Neo." Alinda's voice was sharp, cutting across the square. She hadn't turned around. She hadn't slowed. "Keep moving."
He didn't answer. He was looking at the boy's hand, at the toy, at the blood pooling beneath the small body. The horse's painted eye stared up at him, blank and unseeing.
"Neo." Alinda's voice was harder now. "There's nothing you can do for them. We find the source. That's what matters."
"I know," he said. But he didn't move.
A sound cut through the silence. Not a scream — a sob. Wet and ragged and utterly broken. It came from the far side of the square, near a collapsed stall where bolts of blood-soaked cloth lay tangled in the wreckage.
Neo turned toward it.
Alinda's hand caught his arm. Her grip was iron. "Don't."
"There's someone alive."
"There are a hundred people alive. We can't stop for every one of them."
Neo looked at her. His eyes — the brown she'd given him, the illusion she'd helped create — held hers for a long moment. "You don't have to stop. I'll catch up."
He pulled free of her grip and walked toward the sound.
Alinda stood motionless for a heartbeat. Her jaw was tight. Her fists were clenched. Then she exhaled — a short, sharp breath through her nose — and followed. She didn't call after him. She didn't argue. But she didn't leave him alone either.
The woman was kneeling in a pool of blood.
It spread around her in a wide, dark circle, soaking into the hem of her dress, clinging to her skin. Her hair — dark, matted — hung in ropes across her face. Her shoulders shook with each sob. In front of her lay two bodies.
A man. His chest was split open, his ribs bent outward like the petals of a flower. His eyes were gone — just dark sockets filled with something that rippled and shifted. His hand was outstretched, reaching toward the second body, his fingers inches from touching.
A girl. Six, maybe seven. Her dark hair was braided with a ribbon that had once been pink and was now dark red. Her body was unmarked except for the blood that had pooled beneath her — her father's blood, still spreading, still warm. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth was slightly open, as if she'd been about to speak.
The woman's sobs were the only sound in the square.
Neo approached slowly. His blade was still in his hand. He didn't sheathe it. "Ma'am," he said quietly. "You need to leave. It's not safe here."
The woman didn't look up. Her shoulders kept shaking. Her hands were pressed flat against the blood-soaked cobblestones, the red running between her fingers.
"Ma'am." He stepped closer. "Please. Whatever did this — it could come back. You need to move."
Behind him, Alinda stopped at the edge of the pool. Her crimson eyes swept the scene — the bodies, the woman, the blood spreading outward in a perfect circle. Something flickered in her expression. Not suspicion. Not yet. But something.
"Neo," she said quietly. "Step back."
He didn't hear her. He was looking at the girl's face, at the pink ribbon, at the small hands that would never move again. "Please," he said to the woman. "Let me help you. We can find somewhere safe—"
The sobbing stopped.
The woman's shoulders went still. Her hands, pressed flat against the cobblestones, curled slowly into fists. When she raised her head, her hair fell away from her face like a curtain parting.
The eyes beneath were not hers. Black sclera. Purple irises, bright and luminous, burning in the dark hollows of her skull. They fixed on Neo with naked delight. But the rest — the tear-streaked cheeks, the trembling lip, the blood-soaked dress — remained. Velmyn stayed on his knees, wearing the mother's grief like a costume he hadn't bothered to remove.
"Hello again," he said, and the voice was wrong — soft, feminine, a mother's voice, the words shaped by a tongue that didn't belong to him.
Neo's blood turned to ice. He stumbled backward, his blade coming up, his heart slamming against his ribs. "You—"
"Me." Velmyn's mouth curved into a smile that didn't belong on a grieving face. "You were so kind. So gentle. Please, let me help you." The mimicry was perfect — Neo's own voice, his own words, played back in the woman's cracked and weeping register. "I was very moved. Genuinely."
Alinda was already moving. Her blade — formed from her own blood, crystallized and sharp — materialized in her hand as she crossed the distance in three swift strides. She placed herself between Neo and the kneeling figure, her body coiled, her crimson eyes blazing.
"Velmyn."
"Alinda." He inclined his head, the woman's dark hair spilling over his shoulders. "Lovely to see you. You look tired. Stressful night, I know. Not my doing, but I'm enjoying the ambiance."
"Get out of that form."
"Why? I earned it. Do you know how long I had to sit here, weeping, waiting for someone — anyone — to stop? The first dozen ran right past. Didn't even glance." His purple eyes slid past Alinda, finding Neo. "But you. You actually stopped. You actually knelt. You saw a woman in grief and you tried to help."
He rose to his feet. The blood that had soaked the dress dripped onto the cobblestones. He looked down at the bodies arranged at his feet — the man with the empty eyes, the girl with the pink ribbon — and then, almost absently, he drew back his foot and kicked the girl's head.
The body didn't resist. The neck snapped with a dry crack, and the head tumbled across the cobblestones, trailing the pink ribbon behind it like a comet's tail. It came to rest against the overturned cart, the girl's closed eyes now facing the sky.
Velmyn watched it go with mild interest. "There. That's better. She was looking at me."
Neo couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. His hands were shaking on his sword.
Velmyn turned back to him. The smile was still there, soft and maternal and utterly obscene. "That's what interests me. You saw a woman in grief and you stopped. You knelt down. You said please. You tried to help." He tilted his head. "Tell me, young Voth — if I'd been Kruul, would a human have stopped for me?"
The question landed like a blade.
"If that child had horns. If her eyes were red on black instead of brown on white. Would anyone have knelt?" He stepped closer, and Alinda's blade came up, and he stopped, spreading his blood-soaked hands in mock surrender. "You know the answer. You've lived it. You've hidden what you are since you were old enough to understand that being seen meant being hunted. And still you stopped. Still you tried." He tilted his head the other way. "That's either very noble or very stupid."
He looked down at himself — at the woman's body, the blood-soaked dress clinging to every curve. Then he cupped his hands under his breasts and pushed them together, lifting them slightly, the gesture lazy and obscene. His purple eyes lifted to Neo, glittering with dark amusement.
He looked down at himself — at the woman's body, the blood-soaked dress. Then, almost absently, he cupped his hands beneath his breasts and lifted once, his purple eyes finding Neo over the gesture. "Or maybe you just saw a pretty woman on her knees," he said. "Grief makes them vulnerable. You could have been the hero. The saviour." His mouth curved. "You were looking. I saw you look."
Neo swung.
He didn't plan it. He didn't think. His blade carved through the air in a single horizontal arc, and Velmyn didn't move — didn't dodge, didn't dissolve — and the edge caught the woman's throat. The impact jarred up his arms. The head separated from the body in a spray of red, tumbling once in the air before hitting the cobblestones with a wet thud. The body stood for a heartbeat longer, blood fountaining from the severed neck. Then it crumpled, joining the dead at its feet.
Neo stood over it, chest heaving, sword dripping. The woman's head lay near the girl's, her purple eyes still open, her smile still frozen on her lips.
Then, from across the square, a voice.
"Like father like son."
Neo spun.
A young man leaned in the doorway of a shuttered shop, arms crossed, shoulder against the frame. Dock worker's tunic. Lean build. Dark hair. Same eyes, same smile. He hadn't been there a moment ago. He must have been. Just standing there, watching.
"That's twice now," Velmyn said. "You're getting faster."
Neo didn't move. His sword was still raised, still dripping, but his feet stayed planted. His breathing was ragged. His hands were shaking. But he didn't lunge.
Velmyn tilted his head. "No? Not going to kill this one too?" He waited. The silence stretched. "Interesting. You're learning."
"What did you mean." Neo's voice was raw. "Like father like son. What did you mean."
Velmyn's smile widened, just a fraction. "Ask Thal." He pushed off the doorframe. "I've taken enough of your time. You have places to be."
He turned and walked away. His footsteps echoed on the cobblestones, unhurried, casual. Then he paused. Didn't turn around.
"I'll see you there."
The dark swallowed him.
Neo stood frozen, sword raised, staring at the empty doorway. The words curled in his chest like cold smoke. Not a threat. Not a promise. Just certainty. As if he already knew how the night would end.
Alinda's hand closed on his shoulder. "Neo."
"He'll be waiting for us."
"I know." Her voice was flat. "Let him."
She released him and turned toward the far end of the square, where the sign of Black Hollow Remedies hung dark and silent above a shuttered door. Behind them, the city kept screaming. Behind them, the woman's smile stayed frozen, her purple eyes staring up at nothing.
Neo looked at the woman's head one last time. At the girl's pink ribbon. At the blood spreading across the cobblestones. Three bodies lay cooling on the stones — the man, the girl, the woman — and somewhere across the city, more were walking and talking and watching, all of them Velmyn, all of them real.
"Like father like son," he repeated.
Alinda didn't answer.
They left the square together, stepping over the dead, heading toward the shuttered door of Black Hollow Remedies.