"No... please, no."
The thoughts weren't even words anymore; they were leaden weights dragging Kennedy down. He pressed his gnarled hands against his temples, his skull thrumming with a rhythmic, searing heat. Through the haze of pain, he looked at his son. Ezekiel remained broken on the floor, his knees dug into the grit, his eyes fixed on a single patch of dirt as if moving them would make the world end faster.
I have to protect him. The thought was a spark in a cold hearth. No matter what.
Kennedy's old bones found a sudden, desperate agility. He threw himself in front of the boy. Ezekiel flinched, his gaze traveling up from the dirt to the trembling, narrow back of his father. He reached out, his fingers catching the hem of Kennedy's worn tunic.
"Father, what are you doing?" Ezekiel's voice was a thin thread, fraying at the edges. "Move! If you don't... he'll..."
"Be silent!" Kennedy snapped. He didn't turn around; he couldn't afford to break his focus on the monster before them. "Let the bastard kill me first. He touches you over my corpse, or not at all."
Darion paused. His body coiled, shifting his momentum as he appraised the sickly old man blocking his path.
"I've lived long enough," Kennedy muttered, more to himself than anyone else. "If it's my time, it's my time."
Darion didn't offer a witty retort. He simply drew back his arm, the crimson rapier singing a high, mournful note as it cut through the stagnant air. Ezekiel's jaw dropped, a raw, jagged scream tearing from his throat—a sound of pure, unadulterated grief.
Darion leaned into the strike, his face a mask of manic glee. But as the blade whistled toward Kennedy's throat, Darion's smile faltered. He didn't see the squinting terror of a victim. He saw a man who had already accepted his grave. He saw dignity.
The rapier never tasted flesh.
A deafening clang shattered the silence of the waste. A new figure stood between them, his own blade locking Darion's rapier in a shower of sparks.
"Darion!"
The newcomer's voice carried the weight of a physical blow. He was imposing, his sharp features framed by a mane of black curls that spilled over his dark robes. Silver and copper rings flashed on his fingers as he strained against the rapier. Around his neck, a silver pendant—a woman's face—glinted in the dim light.
"R-Raphael..." The madness in Darion's eyes didn't just fade; it evaporated, replaced by a hollow, childlike shock. "Why are you here?"
Raphael, the undisputed shadow of the Abyssal Gang, didn't move his blade. "You dare ask that? Look at this mess." He spat the words. "I gave you a limit. A hundred. A hundred lives to settle a grudge. Did you think the balance of this city wouldn't notice a massacre of this scale?"
He shoved Darion back with a snarl of frustration.
"If you slaughter the whole town, who is left to rule? I set the rules for the Rumbling to keep us from becoming kings of a graveyard! You're burning the house down to kill a few spiders!"
Behind them, Kennedy collapsed back toward Ezekiel, his legs finally giving out.
"Raphael..." Ezekiel whispered, his eyes wide. "The Leader... he's actually here."
The air was thick now—not just with tension, but with the cloying, sweet-iron scent of blood. As the shouting continued, the shadows at the edge of the rocky plain began to twitch. Small, hunched shapes emerged: Driunds. They were barely two feet tall, their round bodies covered in spiked hide, their four rows of teeth clicking in anticipation.
"Scavengers," Kennedy hissed, his hand tightening on his son's shoulder.
The creatures ignored the living. They fell upon the heaps of the dead, their claws tearing into vampiric flesh with wet, tearing sounds. In Nefaria, the dinner bell was usually a scream.
Darion stared at the scavengers feasting on his handiwork, his lip curling in a mix of disgust and realization.
"Look at me!" Raphael swung his sword in a wide arc, the steel biting into Darion's chest before the man could even think to parry.
Darion didn't fight back. He let the blade open a jagged red line across his torso. He staggered, the force of the blow sending him to his knees. He didn't clutch the wound to stop the bleeding; he clutched it as if trying to hold a memory inside.
Then, he broke.
"They killed her, Raphael!" Darion sobbed, his fists slamming into the bloody earth. "They took her!"
Raphael's expression softened, the cold fury giving way to a heavy, exhausted sorrow. He sheathed his sword. "I know. Why do you think I let you go this far? But you've had your blood, Darion. More than your share. Don't make me bury you next."
His voice was firm, but there was a flicker of genuine empathy in the way he stood over his broken lieutenant.
Savages, Ezekiel thought, his teeth grinding so hard he feared they might crack. They talk about our lives like they're counting coin.
"Get up," Raphael ordered. "We're leaving."
In a blur of motion, the two leaders vanished, heading back toward the flickering, indifferent lights of Fluxton.
Left behind in the gore-stained clearing, Kennedy let out a long, shuddering breath and sank into the dirt. Ezekiel turned to him, seeing the tracks of tears cutting through the grime on his father's face.
"I'm... I'm just glad you're alive, son," the old man choked out.
Ezekiel looked at the scavenging Driunds, then at the bodies of his neighbors. "Let's go home, Father. Please. I can't... I can't be here anymore."
The streets of Fluxton were already resetting. The sounds of bickering and the clatter of daily life acted as a sensory shroud, covering the memory of the massacre. The older generation, survivors of a dozen "Rumblings," hushed the terrified youths, ushering them back into the grind of survival.
Father and son reached their shack—a leaning, rot-scented structure that had somehow been spared. They moved in a trance, washing the filth from their skin with gray water and sitting on the cold floor.
Neither suggested a fire. In a town of thieves, a warm hearth was a beacon for trouble. They sat in the biting chill, the silence of the house pressing against their ears. They ate their meager rations in the dark, the air heavy with a melancholy that no amount of scrubbing could wash away.
Ezekiel stared at his bowl, but he wasn't seeing the food.
He was seeing the stains on the floor—a pile of laundry that smelled of damp earth and the single, flickering jug of bioluminescent sap that cast long, sickly blue shadows across the room. On the walls, the crude charcoal drawings he'd made as a child mocked him. Back then, those stick-figure knights were his shields against the dark. Now, they were just carbon on stone, useless against the memory of a blade at his throat.
Across from him, his father, Kennedy, ate with a mechanical, desperate focus.
"Hard to believe we're sitting here," Ezekiel murmured. His mind kept tripping over the timeline—the tailor shop owner screaming for them to run, the slick cobblestones of the West, and the moment Darion's rapier had hummed against his father's skin.
And then, the shadow. Raphael.
"I'm glad we're safe, Dad." Ezekiel's voice felt thin, easily swallowed by the darkness pressing in from the corners of the room.
Kennedy paused, a piece of gristle halfway to his mouth. "So am I. I thought the Sovereign had finally looked away from us. For a heartbeat... I believed it was over."
Ezekiel didn't answer. He felt a phantom heat on his shoulder—the memory of a woman's hand, trembling and slick with something warm. I... love you... Ezeki— The memory cut off there, a broken record in his skull. Then came the scream, the sound of something not-human laughing in the carnage.
He gripped his chest, his fingers digging into the thin fabric of his shirt. "Raphael saved us," he said, the words tasting like ash. "But he didn't do it because he cared. He did it because he owns us. He looked at those bodies like they were spilled ale, Dad. Just a mess to be stepped over."
Silence stretched between them, heavy and suffocating. Ezekiel pushed his bowl away.
"How are they so strong, Dad? I thought the 'Red' was for the royals. The High Houses. But the Abyssal Gang... they're just men from the gutters. How do they have enough power to make the King's soldiers hesitate?"
Kennedy sighed, the sound rattling in his chest. He looked older tonight—the lines on his face deeper in the blue bioluminescence.
"Lineage is a map, Ezekiel, but it isn't the only road. There is... an instability. A glitch in the blood." Kennedy leaned forward. "They call it Mutation."
Ezekiel frowned. "Mutation?"
"Sometimes, the blood magic doesn't wait for a crown. It awakens in a commoner like a fever. It's unexplainable, sporadic, and violent. The Gangs... they aren't just criminals. They are Mutants. Men whose bodies have traded their humanity for a spark of the divine fire. To the Royals, they are a nuisance—a gutter-fire compared to a sun. But to us? To the weak?"
Kennedy looked at his scarred hands. "To us, a spark is enough to burn our whole world down."
"People say the Supreme Sovereign allows it," Kennedy whispered. "That he's seeding the world with counters to the King's tyranny."
"Then the Sovereign is a fool," Ezekiel snapped, his voice sharp with malice. "These 'counters' aren't heroes. They're just smaller tyrants. They don't want to break the chains; they just want to be the ones holding the keys."
Miles away, in a manor that smelled of expensive incense and fresh iron, the silence was broken by the wet slap of a lash.
Darion hung from the ceiling, his weight supported by rusted chains that bit into his wrists. His face was a map of purple bruises and jagged cuts. He looked up through one swollen eye as Raphael stepped into the light, his knuckles glowing with a soft, predatory crimson.
"I'm sorry..." Darion wheezed, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. "She was my wife, brother. I couldn't let the tailors—"
CRACK.
Raphael's fist, augmented by a shell of hardened blood, slammed into Darion's ribs.
"Do I look like a man who cares about your domestic grief?" Raphael's voice was a purr, terrifyingly calm. He leaned in, his grin widening until it looked nauseating in the dim light. "You disobeyed a direct order. You put your 'love' above the Gang's reach. Did you think being my brother made you a person, Darion? To me, you are a tool. And tools that bend are broken."
Outside the heavy oak doors, two guards stood frozen. One was shaking so hard his spear rattled against his armor.
"He's... he's laughing in there," the first guard whispered, his face turning a sickly shade of grey.
"Shut up," the other hissed, staring straight ahead with wide, terrified eyes. "Don't even breathe. If he hears you pitying Darion, you'll be the next one on the hooks. Raphael is in a foul mood—he's been twitchy ever since the Night of Crimson was announced."
Inside, the light flickered as Raphael unleashed a flurry of blood-whips, his laughter echoing off the stone walls. He wasn't just punishing a traitor; he was feeding. Every scream from his brother seemed to wash away his own frustrations, leaving him invigorated.
Finally, Raphael stopped. He wiped a spray of blood from his cheek with a silk handkerchief, looking down at the unconscious, shattered remains of his brother.
"That's better," Raphael whispered to the empty room. "I feel much more like myself now."