After leaving the Dean’s office, I grabbed a quick dinner at the cafeteria before heading back to Lilith’s workshop. On the way, I was reading the labels on the potions I had gotten identified at the apothecary while stocking up on black powder supplies.

  Most of the bottles were standard fare—remedies, antidotes to generic poisons—but four stood out. There was one fast and one slow healing potion, a paralytic nerve agent that could stop a heart in large doses or paralyze someone for a dozen hours with just a drop, and something called Gimp-Pine Extract. It was apparently used in water-element rituals. The label warned never to let it touch skin. The sap of the tree it was extracted from contained micro-shards of silica that would embed under the skin and cause excruciating pain with every movement. It reminded me of the gimpy-gimpy plant back home. According to the instructions, the only way to fix it was to remove all the affected skin entirely and then have a healer reconstruct it.

  I turned the bottle in my hand, trying to think of a practical use for it. Nothing came to mind.

  As I got closer to the workshop, I heard a commotion—furniture shuffling, a woman crying out in pain.

  A memory surfaced. Back at the front, I’d once walked in on one of my own doing the unthinkable. I remembered how it ended: with my boot on his throat. None of us let him make it back home.

  Panic started to rise. I rushed toward the door.

  When I saw the bastard mid-act, something inside me snapped. I was still holding the Gimp-Pine Extract. Without thinking, I uncorked it and forced the bottle inside his dark sun. He toppled over, barely realizing what hit him.

  I didn’t give him time to figure it out.

  I beat his face into a pulp. When he stopped resisting, I flipped him onto his stomach and shoved my dagger in, shattering the glass inside him.

  Without a word, I grabbed him by the hair and dragged him to his feet before grabing back the handle and puppeteering him out of the room.

  “You can’t do this! My dad’s a fucking duke! You’ll pay for this!” he screamed.

  But when he saw my eyes, he shut up. Cold rage poured off me like a thunderstorm. He knew—he knew—I was just barely holding back the urge to finish it right there.

  “Tell your daddy if he wants answers, he can come see me himself. I’m sure he’ll love what I have to say,” I said, cold as death.

  Then I knocked him out with a clean punch and dumped his bleeding ass in the street like trash.

  I stood there for a second, breathing hard.

  Then I turned around and walked back into Lilith’s office, forcing every ounce of will I had not to go back and end that stain on humanity for good.

  When I got back, Lilith was curled up on the ground, sobbing.

  “It’s me,” I said softly, keeping my distance.

  I pulled out the fast healing potion. “He won’t come back. Can I come closer?”

  She nodded weakly. I stepped forward and offered her the vial. “Please drink this—it’s going to help, a little.”

  I sat near her, careful not to get too close. The last thing I wanted was to make her fear me on top of everything else. PTSD was a cruel beast. I didn’t want her carrying that weight if I could help it.

  She began speaking between sobs.

  “Thank you. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “It’s okay. None of this is your fault. You’re the victim here, not the aggressor.”

  “No—you don’t understand,” she said, urgency rising in her voice. “You’re in danger. They’ll probably send someone to kill you. Or torture you. That’s if they don’t go straight to a public execution. He’s the son of a powerful man. You have no idea, Sam. You need to run. Now. Before they mobilize.”

  “Let them come,” I said flatly. “I’m too hard to kill.”

  “No, Sam. They’re nobles.” She spat the word like poison. “They won’t stop. They’ll hunt you, and the law is on their side. There’s nothing you or I can do.”

  “Well, I might not be a noble,” I replied, “but where I come from, even the rich and powerful are scared of dying. If they want to come for me, they’d better be ready. Because I’ll be the one doing the hunting.”

  I patted her gently on the back.

  “How about you take my gambeson? I can’t let you walk through the halls wearing half a dress.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  She nodded timidly.

  “If you want, I can stand guard outside your door tonight—just let me reload my baby.”

  I figured maybe if I shifted her attention to something else—how cool guns were—it might help her escape her own mind for a bit.

  I walked over to the corner of the room, undid my belt, and slowly unbuckled my gambeson before pulling it off.

  “Sorry, it’s a bit sweaty. But better than walking around with your ass kissed by the moon, right?”

  She managed a small nod and took another sip of the potion.

  I came back to the center of the room and handed her the padded armor. When she put it on, it hung down almost to her ankles.

  “Do you have a trusted friend? Somewhere safe you can go for a while?” I asked gently. “I want to make sure everything’s taken care of. Right now, I’m worried that as soon as I leave, they’ll make another move.”

  “I do,” she said quietly. “I already had plans to see her tomorrow, while she’s in town.”

  “Great. Then I’ll escort you to her, and come pick you up once I can guarantee your safety.”

  I paused, guilt twisting in my chest. “I’m sorry I didn’t come in sooner.”

  My eyes drifted to the floor—his pants and belt still lying there like a monument to rot. I picked up the pants without a word and tossed them straight into the forge, watching them blacken and curl in the heat.

  Then I looked through the belt.

  One pouch was filled with coins—plenty, enough to be hush money or bribe fodder. I would count it when i had time.

  The other held letters—sealed and likely incriminating—and a dagger that made my stomach turn. The handle was shaped like a naked woman’s body, detailed and obscene, a ruby embedded in both the breasts and crotch. The hilt was solid gold. I didn’t recognize the blade’s metal, but it had a faint green glow that didn’t sit right with me.

  I put the dagger aside and began reloading the hand cannon—slowly, deliberately—talking as I worked.

  “This,” I said, “is how the reload process goes.”

  I showed her how the powder was measured and packed, how the ball was seated and the pan primed.

  “And black powder? Easy enough to make, if you know what you’re doing. Charcoal, sulfur, saltpeter—three things the world has in spades, just needs to be processed right.”

  I wasn’t just giving a lesson. I was giving her a sense of control, of knowledge—maybe even a little hope.

  I explained to her what firing primers were—how the old flintlock system gave way to percussion caps, how a small explosive compound could be struck to ignite the powder. Then how, eventually, people got smart and started encasing everything—primer, powder, and projectile—into a single metal cartridge.

  “Made firing faster. Safer, too,” I said, holding up a paper cartridge I’d been toying with. “No more fiddling with powder horns and loose shot in the rain while someone’s trying to turn you into red mist.”

  She listened like she’d been starving for it, eyes locked on the weapon, her hands still trembling slightly but more focused now. Like a sponge soaking up water, she took in every word.

  And so I kept talking.

  I explained the evolution of firearms, how revolvers changed the game, how rifling worked, why barrel length mattered, even how black powder wasn’t the endgame—how one day we’d use nitrocellulose and 3d printed ammo and guns and hell, maybe even railguns if the world lived long enough.

  I didn’t even know if she was understanding half of it, but I didn’t stop. Because while I talked, she wasn’t crying. While I talked, she wasn’t curled in on herself like something broken. While I talked… she was still here.

  And maybe that was enough for tonight.

  As we started walking toward her place, I kept talking. I explained the evolution of firearms—the arrival of different mechanisms. But without a chalkboard, and with only one arm free to gesture, even the simplest things like how a falling block or bolt action worked felt like trying to teach physics to a squirrel. Still, I gave it a shot.

  I covered pump actions and lever guns—neat designs, fun in their own right, but nothing I could really replicate yet. “Man, I’m gonna miss slamfiring shotguns,” I muttered. She glanced up at that, confused. I just grinned. Some things needed to be seen to be appreciated.

  Then I went into the good stuff—repeating actions. That was the direction we needed to head, long term. More shots. Less reload. More boom. But now? Now we had black powder and flint, maybe percussion if I was lucky. Still, I couldn’t help thinking about the possibilities. With enchantments? Runes? Hell, this world had magic—there had to be ways to exploit it, fuse it with tech. I didn’t have the whole puzzle yet, but my gut told me there were game-changers hiding in plain sight.

  Eventually, we stopped outside a narrow building just down the street from the academy. Five flights up. No elevator, obviously. I carried her stuff up without complaint, more worried about her than my legs.

  When we got to the door, I nodded toward it. “Can you bring me a chair?” I asked gently. “I’d sit in the stairwell, but I might block the path. Not a great look.”

  She hesitated. Then said, “I have a sofa, Sam. You can come in.”

  Her eyes met mine. “I’m going to trust you. But break my trust… and I will kill you.”

  Fair.

  I passed her the double-barrel. “Keep this by your side,” I said, dead serious. “If I betray you—shoot me. In the dick first. Then the head. Keep it close. As long as I’m breathing, no one lays a finger on you.”

  She nodded, clutching the weapon like a lifeline. We stepped inside.

  Eventually, she made her way to bed after cleaning herself up. The door stayed cracked open a bit—not closed, not quite open either. Just enough that she could still hear me. I figured she wasn’t ready to be alone with the silence yet, so I kept talking.

  I rambled on about ballistics. About how to make something like my hand cannon quieter and deadlier. Subsonic rounds, the kind that stayed under the speed of sound to avoid the whipcrack. Barrel twist rates, bullet shape, ballistic coefficients. Things she didn’t really need to know—but maybe the sound of a calm, nerdy gun rant was better than the echoes of what had happened.

  And she listened. Or at least, I think she did. She didn’t tell me to stop.

  So I kept going. Talking like my voice could put up walls around the hurt and hold the night at bay.

  I started to count the money in the pouch but stopped the moment I recognized a few cult coins.Perfect—something to report to the Inquisition. That might just be the leash I need on him.

  Then I heard movement in the corridor. Four people, trying to stay quiet but not trained well enough to fool my ears. I heard the faint rasp of steel being unsheathed.

  I drew my hand cannon and aimed at the door, breathing slow, steady.

  Waiting.

  Overwhelming aggression—that's how I learned to work, after all.

  I had already moved a chair into the corner of the room that gave me the best angle to stack bodies if things went sideways.

  The saber was prepped and waiting on the coffee table.

  I grinned.