Cale

  The reaction came fast. Heat surged up my spine, sharp and instinctive, the kind that begged for motion. This was unacceptable. A child. A girl ten years old.

  I was half a second away from unleashing hell on the whole building.

  Every one of these bastards was going to pay for this. They called me a demon. Fine. I’d show them what a demon did when he stopped caring about the consequences.

  Then I looked again.

  The blood hadn’t settled. It lay where it should have soaked, too clean at the edges, the air around it holding still instead of recoiling. Mana kept its shape instead of collapsing inward, suspended like it was waiting for instruction.

  The scene itself felt unfinished.

  That was enough.

  Cool heads prevailed. I cycled my mana and cast a minor Arcanum Dispel.

  The illusion didn’t break. It failed.

  Color slid sideways, depth thinning as the blood lost weight and faded. The body folded in on itself and vanished, leaving bare stone behind where something real should have remained.

  They laughed—actually laughed—at the thought of murdering a child.

  That decided it. These people were dead.

  I moved as the last of the illusion unraveled, adjusting my thinking as I did. I banked the anger, contained it. It would no longer choose the timing.

  I stopped holding myself back. I didn’t care if they could track my Expression imprint. There wouldn’t be anyone left here to be concerned about it.

  Aura and Elementa Arcanum surged as I let my power invade my whole being, not giving a damn about my Expression trail. I stayed put just long enough to tear away whatever false structure of Illusia lingered.

  Kinetica locked in. Reinforcement threaded through joints and spine.

  The nearest mercenary started to lift his weapon.

  I crossed the space before his intent finished forming. The strike landed with reinforced weight behind it, bone giving way under force that didn’t slow. He hit the wall and stayed there.

  The second, who hadn’t even noticed when I came in, tried to pivot, boots scraping stone as he reached for distance that wasn’t there anymore.

  Momentum carried me through him and out the other side. He fell hard and didn’t move again.

  The impact drew attention.

  Footsteps thundered in from the corridor, fast and heavy. Two more guards burst through the doorway, already moving, already committing to the fight they thought they understood.

  They didn’t get the chance.

  I met the first halfway, redirected his charge, and used his own momentum to put him down. The second hesitated just long enough for me to close. The Elementa Arcanum knife strike to his throat was clean and final.

  Bodies hit the floor in quick succession. The room went still again, the sudden quiet sharper than the noise had been.

  Through it all, the woman in black hadn’t moved.

  Dark makeup framed her face like deliberate contrast rather than disguise—black lines sharp against pale skin, lips stained the color of dried wine. Her clothes followed the same logic: layered black fabric, ceremonial in cut, practical in motion. She looked less like a soldier and more like someone who had decided devotion was an aesthetic choice.

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  A goth princess, I thought distantly.

  She watched me with open interest, head tilted slightly, smile lazy and amused.

  “Well,” she said, glancing at the empty floor where the illusion had been, “that was disappointing. Most people at least scream.”

  I faced her, power held in check by habit.

  “Where is the girl?” I asked.

  She laughed softly, the sound warm and wrong in the quiet room. “Straight to business. No appreciation for the setup at all.”

  I took a step closer.

  “That wasn’t specifically for you,” she continued. “It was a test—whoever was going to walk through that door.”

  Her eyes flicked briefly to the bodies behind me. “Who would have thought that someone so capable was coming to see me.”

  “I’m not here to impress you,” I said.

  “Oh, I know,” she replied. “You’re here because you think you can stop this.”

  She straightened, posture shifting just enough to signal readiness. “I’m Sala.”

  She didn’t offer a hand.

  “I’m Cale.”

  “Cale,” she repeated. “And who are you, Cale? How did you get dragged into this?”

  “You talk too much,” I said, and moved.

  She reacted instantly.

  Sanatio—twisted, corrupted—flared around her in a tight defensive bloom, pale light snapping into place as she twisted aside. The floor where she’d been standing scorched dark as my strike cut through empty air.

  She was fast and clearly trained.

  She came back at me with a healer’s precision turned inside out—hands snapping forward, energy biting instead of mending. The touch scraped my shoulder, heat and numbness crawling outward where muscle should have obeyed.

  I rolled with it, reinforcement tightening before the damage could spread.

  Her smile widened. “Oh. You really are fun.”

  Aura fed speed. Kinetica compressed distance. I stayed inside her reach, cutting off the space she needed to finish the pattern she was building.

  She tried anyway.

  Pain-woven Sanatio lashed out, meant to cripple instead of kill. I took it shallow and kept moving.

  She overextended.

  That was all it took.

  I redirected her momentum and drove her into the stone wall hard enough to knock the air out of her lungs. She rebounded, staggered, tried to reset—hands already moving, eyes sharp despite the pain.

  I didn’t give her time. I flipped her and slammed her into the floor with all my anger. I heard bone crunch and she let out a pained gasp.

  I did not give her a chance to recover.

  The knife slid free and I slammed it into her leg, pinning it to the floor. The strike was precise enough to take leverage without ending anything. Her breath left her in a broken sound as fear finally replaced amusement.

  My mask shifted as I leaned closer. It changed, allowing my visage as the Ghost of the Wastes to materialize.

  The room brightened.

  She saw my eyes and whatever devotion she’d wrapped herself in cracked.

  “You don’t understand,” she gasped. “You can’t—”

  “I lived in the Wastes,” I said quietly. “Long enough to learn two things. One, fire has an amazing way of loosening the tongue, and two…”

  I gave her a cold look.

  “Everyone breaks eventually.”

  I drew the Elementa Arcanum up, calling the flame and focusing it. I did so without shaping it outward. I fed it power, the fire shifting from orange to blue, then white. The purifying edge of it coiled around my hands, steady and deliberate.

  I took hold of her injured leg.

  She screamed.

  “Where are the children?” I asked.

  She looked at me with hatred and a pained laugh. “Would you let me live if I told you?”

  “No,” I said. “Every single person who had something to do with this will die. You don’t get to use a child for your plan and expect to live. But I’ll kill you quickly. I promise.”

  “Then I’m not telling you shit,” she spat. “You’ll burn. The children will burn. The Priest will make sure of it. You Dominion dogs are all the same—”

  “I don’t have time for this.”

  I twisted the knife and burned her. I felt her magic attempt to soften it. Good.

  I did it again.

  And again.

  And again.

  I felt nothing as I did so.

  It didn’t take long before her composure broke.

  “They’re not here,” she sobbed. “Separate building—north side—off the main lodge. They’re gathering them. Preparing them. Sigils. Anchors—please—”

  “Look at me.”

  She did.

  “I wish I could tell you I’m sorry for this,” I said. “I’m not. May you find yourself purified in the Seven Layers.”

  I reached in with an advanced Arcanum I hated using. It wasn’t a clean casting. I was out of practice, and it wasn’t something I was particularly good at.

  I applied the Arcanum and focused it on the protective core of her mind as her Aura and Sanatio swirled around it. I tore through it like a chef’s knife through an onion, breaking the shell.

  Images flooded me in fragments—rooms, children, symbols drawn too carefully, a structure grown deliberately out of sight.

  I saw the building.

  I saw the plan in pieces.

  And more importantly, I saw the intention.

  We were right.

  They were going to use spells that consumed the soul as a trigger, turning people into bombs.

  Oh, good lord.

  I pulled back hard, breathing once as her body sagged, empty now.

  She didn’t feel anything after that.

  I ended it quickly, like I’d promised. Then I lit her corpse on fire and let the thing burn with my anger.

  I retrieved my mask and slid it back into place as the last of the heat bled away from my hands.

  “Bonnie,” I said, already moving. “Off-lodge structure, north side. They’re prepping them now.”

  Her reply came instantly. “I see it. Marking a path.”

  Good.

  I didn’t look back as I left the room.

  There were children waiting. I would save them. Get them out of here.

  Then I was going to come back and wipe out every last one of these people.

  Whatever restraint I had initially been practicing was gone.

  The Ghost of the Wastes was going to turn this place into a graveyard.