The three men moved with the practiced coordination of street predators. The leader, a man with a jagged scar running from his ear to his jaw, swung his rusted shortsword in a low, lazy arc. He wasn't trying to kill—not yet. He wanted to clip the boy's legs, to make him fall so the ransom would be easier to negotiate.
Azrakar watched the blade. In his mind, the world slowed into a series of mathematical vectors. He didn't see a sword; he saw a lever. He didn't see a bandit; he saw a collection of pressure points and fragile joints.
Three... two... one.
As the blade neared his shins, Azrakar didn't jump. He stepped onto the flat of the sword.
It was a move that required impossible timing. By using a microscopic pulse of Aura to stick his sole to the metal, he used the bandit's own swing as a springboard. He launched himself upward, his small body spinning in the air like a leaf in a gale.
"What the—?" the leader gasped, his sword hitting the stone ground with a jarring clang.
Azrakar landed on the man's shoulders. Before the bandit could react, Azrakar's fingers, stiffened by a needle-point of Qi, drove into the soft tissue behind the man's ears. It wasn't a lethal blow, but it sent a shockwave of energy directly into the nervous system. The leader's eyes rolled back, and he slumped forward, unconscious before he hit the mud.
The other two froze. Their "easy mark" had just taken out their strongest fighter in two seconds without breaking a sweat.
"He's a mage!" one yelled, pulling a serrated dagger. "A brat from the Southern Magocracy! Kill him!"
"Incorrect," Azrakar said, his feet touching the ground with an eerie silence. "A mage would have used a fireball. A knight would have used a shield. I am simply using what you provided."
The second bandit lunged, driven by panic. He was faster than the first, a man who clearly had some rudimentary Aura training. His skin took on a faint, reddish hue as he pushed his blood flow to the limit.
Azrakar didn't wait. He met the man's charge. He ducked under the dagger thrust, his small frame allowing him to slip past the man's guard. He reached out and grabbed the man's wrist. With a sharp twist—not of muscle, but of Mana-infused precision—he redirected the man's own momentum.
Crack.
The bandit's wrist snapped like a dry twig. As the man began to scream, Azrakar silenced him with a palm strike to the throat. It was calculated; just enough force to crush the windpipe without shattering the spine. The man fell, clutching his neck, gasping for air that wouldn't come.
The third bandit, the youngest of the trio, dropped his weapon and turned to run.
Azrakar picked up the fallen serrated dagger. He didn't hesitate. He didn't feel the moral "weight" a ten-year-old should. To him, this was simply cleaning a path. He threw the dagger.
The blade, guided by a faint trail of Qi to stabilize its flight, buried itself in the back of the fleeing man's thigh. The bandit went down with a howl, tripping over a pile of refuse.
Azrakar walked over to him, the heavy jar of Star-Silt still tucked under his arm. He looked down at the wounded man with eyes that were ancient and cold.
"Please!" the bandit sobbed. "I-I have a sister! We were just hungry!"
"A common refrain," Azrakar murmured. "In a thousand years, the hungry will still use that excuse to justify preying on those they perceive as weak. If I were truly ten years old, you would have sold me into a life of misery. You didn't choose crime because of hunger; you chose it because you thought I was an easy victim."
Azrakar leaned down, his face inches from the man's. "I am kind to those who do me good. You have done me no good. However, you are more useful alive than dead—for now."
He reached into the man's pocket, took the few copper coins the bandit had, and stood up. "Consider your life the price of those coins. If I see you in Oakhaven again, I will not be so 'charitable.'"
He left them there in the dark. He didn't kill them—not out of mercy, but because three bodies in an alley would bring the City Watch, and the Watch would ask questions he wasn't ready to answer. A few injured thugs, however, were just another Tuesday in the Rough Quarter.