Kalas didn't remember flying through the doorway.

  All he remembered was that one moment he was swinging his sword, and the next he was veritably launched through the door he had first come through. A horrible throb emanated from around Kalas’s left eye, but he couldn’t quite make sense of anything as he writhed on the ground for a few moments. The blow had been so vicious that thought had become difficult, but he instinctively knew he had to get the hell up and make a run for it.

  After forcing lucidity, Kalas scrambled to his feet while peering around the room, trying to figure out where the hell he was. Although his vision wasn’t too great after that damned woman’s blow, he realized he was in a bedroom. Or maybe it was a storage area? Kalas couldn’t quite tell anymore, but he did notice two figures crowding around him in alarm, with a third cowering in the corner.

  Kalas tried to draw a breath to steady himself, but all he could do was gasp, trying to get in as much air through his teeth as possible. Turning his head toward the two figures approaching him, Kalas realized they were the Sun Elf warriors who had accompanied him here.

  The duo had their weapons half-drawn, ready to strike whatever crashed through the door. They stopped themselves in time upon realizing it was Kalas and rushed to his aid. Behind them, pressed into the corner, was their goblin alchemist, a short, green-skinned individual whose eyes were as wide as dinner plates. The terrified being clutched what looked like a bandolier of glass vials to his chest and let out a sound somewhere between a whimper and a squeak.

  Despite being helped to his feet, Kalas felt his world was a whirlwind of pain and disorientation. His head rang as if someone had stuck it inside a church bell and gone to town with a sledgehammer, and the left side of his face simply felt… wrong. It not only hurt but also carried a wrongness that made him start to panic. It was as if the architecture of his skull had been fundamentally rearranged as blood slicked down his face and poured onto the wooden floor like a facet.

  But he couldn’t think about that right now. Pure, distilled survival instinct and adrenaline overrode everything else as he floundered, trying to get his bearings in his two subordinates' hands. Kalas scrambled up, slipping in his own blood, trying to find purchase, because staying down any longer meant death, and he wasn't quite ready to die yet. His boots kicked at the floorboards, finding traction, while his hands grabbed the shirts of those helping him as he forcibly hoisted himself up despite the screaming protests from every nerve ending.

  "K-Kalas?" one of the subordinate Sun Elves stammered with a voice carrying that strange Northern accent. "Are you alright? What—"

  Kalas ignored him. He simply couldn’t process words right now. Hell, he couldn’t process anything except the fact that he'd seen Lysandra's face. And the woman wore an expression of pure, undiluted hatred mixed with something worse—satisfaction. Like she'd been waiting years for this moment and was about to savor every second of it.

  She was the last person in this world—either world—he'd ever wanted to see again.

  His lungs heaved, hyperventilating, trying to get oxygen to a brain that was rapidly shutting down non-essential functions in favor of a pure fight-or-flight response as the blood kept pouring.

  Kalas couldn’t even believe how much blood there was. Was it supposed to be this much? He didn't know. He didn't care. All he knew was he had to find a weapon and get the hell out of here.

  After finally getting his bearings, Kalas found the room tilting at a nauseating angle before his equilibrium caught up with reality. Through the destroyed doorway, he could hear footsteps walking toward him in a measured, unhurried fashion. As if they were a predator that knew its prey had nowhere to run.

  Shooting his hands out, Kalas grasped for something—anything—that could be used as a weapon, and luckily, his fingers closed around wood and metal. With a solid yank, Kalas ripped a runed bardiche from the hands of the Sun Elf who'd been holding it.

  The weapon was a brutal thing—a long ash wood shaft nearly six feet in length, topped with a crescent-shaped axe blade on one side and a wicked spike on the other. The kind of polearm designed for cleaving through armor and shields while retaining the ability to hook opponents off their mounts before delivering devastating strikes from just outside sword range. It was old-world, traditional, the kind of weapon that had been used on battlefields for several millennia, but it never became obsolete.

  "H-hey!" the Sun Elf Kalas protested, reaching for his now-empty hands, his expression shifting from concern to confusion. "Kalas, what are you—"

  The poor man tried to make a plea for his weapon back, but Kalas was already moving. Not toward the doorway where Lysandra's footsteps were getting closer, that was certain death. Neither did Kalas decide to run toward the two warriors who stood between him and any reasonable escape route; instead, the redhead chose the wall.

  These flimsy structures weren't meant to withstand much. It was obvious these buildings were temporary construction, made from thin metal that one could rip with bare hands and truly inadequate timbers, despite the austere environment.

  Which meant it was perfect for someone of his ability, desperate enough to go through it instead of around it.

  Kalas charged, lowering his head and channeling whatever power he could muster, the haze in his head coalescing into pure physical force. His shoulder hit the wall at speed, the bardiche held across his body, and the entire section just gave up.

  Wood splintered and metal sheeting tore as Kalas crashed through the barrier like it was made of wet cardboard and emerged on the other side, the storm outside him like a physical wall. Painful pellets of rain slammed into his face with enough force to feel like hail, making Kalas feel and shield where he was struck as he toppled forward into a controlled fall that he barely managed to turn into a roll.

  Once he managed to clamber to his feet, bardiche still clutched in both hands, Kalas looked around for an escape route. He was already tensed to sprint toward the tree line and into the darkness, or anywhere that wasn't here, but he froze.

  There, all around him in a loose perimeter, stood men in ominous dark attire, oddly shaped helmets with strange devices mounted on them, and they were all staring at him. Each man had their face hidden by these… weird masks that made them look less like a person and more like the demons from children's stories. And in their hands were those horrific weapons the so-called ‘cartel’ used.

  Guns…

  Horrific artifacts that spat death faster than any archer could loose an arrow, that killed from distances no blade could reach, and were more efficient than any spell.

  And every single one of them was pointed directly at him.

  For a split second—maybe less—Kalas's remaining good eye darted around the perimeter, calculating angles, measuring distances, weighing odds. Could he close the gap? Could he reach one of them before they pulled those triggers? His body was enhanced, and he knew people in this world lacked such abilities… Maybe with his so-called supernatural speed, he had a chance, but as clarity returned to Kalas’ mind, all those hopes were dashed.

  They all stood at a disciplined distance, dozens of meters away. Each demonic soldier remained far out of reach. Far enough that even with arcane enhancement, they’d have more than ample time to riddle him with so many holes that he’d just be chunks of meat. To dissuade him further, Kalas noticed they weren't panicking or bunching up. He wasn’t dealing with untrained rabble; these people weren't giving him any exploitable weaknesses in their formation.

  And then the lights came on.

  Dozens of blinding beams converged on Kalas at once, turning the rainy night into white brilliance so intense it made the redhead flinch and cover his single eye, the one he could still see through. The lights ruined everything. Ruined any chance. Ruined any plan.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  "It's very... VERY... good to see you again, Kalas."

  Kalas's blood ran cold at that feminine voice. Colder than the rain seeping through his boots and colder than the frozen hells of the north.

  Spoken in the High Tongue of the Empire with perfect diction, the voice left Kalas in no doubt about who it belonged to. It was an accent from the Eastern Provinces, where the main trade thoroughfares were guarded and where the nobility learned to weaponize words as effectively as steel.

  Turning around, Kalas saw the unmistakable visage of Lysandra standing in the hole he'd just created, backlit by the building's interior lighting. She'd stepped through the wreckage as casually as someone taking a stroll through a garden. In her hand—held low and angled toward the ground—was THAT sword.

  It was a sword he loved to say was rightfully his, forged by the servants of God and bestowed to mortals to slay demons. A legendary artifact passed down through five generations of House Morvayne. The weapon Kalas had carried across the Rift before everything went to hell.

  The white metal gleamed even in the rain, but it wasn't clean. It was drenched in blood, which ran down the spine, dripping from the sharp point in thin streams that mixed with rainwater. Crimson streaked the ethereal white blade, turning something beautiful into something obscene.

  And Kalas knew—knew with absolute certainty—whose blood that was.

  Everyone in that room. Everyone he'd just left behind was no more.

  Lysandra's face—what he could see of it past the eyepatch and strange equipment—wore an expression of sadistic glee. Not satisfaction. Not justice. Pure, malicious joy. It was as if the woman had just been handed a gift she'd been dreaming about for eons.

  She walked toward him slowly, her boots squelching in the mud, unhurried and unbothered. Why rush? He was surrounded and trapped. Lysandra had all the time in the world.

  "I have to say," she continued in a gentle tone that dripped with false pleasantness, "I'm absolutely overjoyed that you delivered your father’s, Lord Ithyca’s, blade directly into my hands." She said ‘father’ with a distinct dose of venom as she lifted the sword slightly, letting the light play across its bloodstained length. "After all these years. After everything. This sword. His sword. The one you carried away from Silverpeak after your treachery."

  Her singular eye narrowed as a tinge of violet danced within her iris. "The one you had no right to touch, let alone wield."

  Then her smile vanished, replaced by something feral and cold. "You disgusting wretch."

  With a wave of Lysandra’s hand and words that Kalas couldn’t hear, the lights that burned brighter than the sun switched off, plunging the area back into relative darkness, broken only by the ambient light spilling from the buildings. Kalas's vision adjusted slowly, even though spots still danced across his retina, but he could see well enough now.

  The demons seemed to relax a little more and began to back up. They never lowered their weapons or took their eyes off Kalas, giving him an opening, but their posture shifted from ‘about to execute target’ to ‘observing with interest.’ They eventually spread out more, creating a wider circle and giving them both space.

  They wanted to watch.

  Kalas knew what was happening. He'd seen it before, in the training yards, on the battlefield, and even on the streets. This was a duel. Lysandra had issued her challenge, and her comrades—these strange human warriors—were going to let her have it.

  She stopped about a couple of dozen meters away, just outside bardiche range, her sword held in a ready position, still dripping with the blood of the only allies Kalas had left in this godforsaken world.

  Sensing he didn’t quite have a choice in the matter, Kalas reached up with his free hand and touched his left eye—or what remained of it. His fingers brushed across something that was just… caved in, wet with blood and something else, something that felt wrong.

  He didn't want to think about it anymore. This was a thought and reality he had to deal with later.

  In an effort to muster his nerve, Kalas let out a growl that had built in his chest. It was part pain, part fury, and part dark amusement at the absurdity of it all. "Me?" he snarled in their tongue. "A traitor?"

  He chuckled—a sound with no humor in it, just bitter acknowledgment of the situation. Surrounded by enemy soldiers. Half-blind, potentially bleeding out, and cornered like a rat. Facing an opponent who'd just murdered what remained of his people with a blade he'd carried for years. No escape. No backup. No way out, even if he managed to cleave this woman in half with the bardiche in his hand.

  "That's funny," he said, adjusting his grip on the bardiche, feeling its weight, preparing for what came next. "Really funny, Lysandra. You calling me a traitor..." He jerked his head toward the circle of operators surrounding them, their weapons, their gear, their inhuman efficiency. "...seeing who you're working with now and what unholy magic you’re using."

  His remaining eye tracked back to the sword in her hand. His father’s sword. The blade he'd taken when... when everything fell apart.

  "Tell me," he continued, his voice dropping lower, more dangerous. "Does serving these unnatural humans make you feel righteous? Does hunting down your own kind wash away whatever sins you believe you're atoning for? Were you always an apostate, using the forbidden?"

  "Really?" she repeated, her voice still colored with dark mirth. "You're trying to throw traitor back at me? Oh, Kalas. Kalas." She said his name like it was something foul she'd found stuck to her tongue. "Kalas… I never swore allegiance to any of you rats. Not to you. Not to the Holy Dominion and especially not to those glib-tongued monsters in the Empire."

  She took a step forward, the sword held loosely but ready. "So tell me, how exactly can I betray oaths I never took?"

  Her smile widened, becoming something predatory and cruel. "But you? Oh, you're precious. You really are. Standing there in the mud, half-blind, about to die, and you have the audacity—the absolute gall—to lecture me about forbidden magic? To call me an apostate?"

  "You." She pointed the sword at him violently, her voice dropping to something colder and sharper. "A treacherous parasite who was banished from the Holy Dominion. Cast out. Excommunicated. Your oaths burned. Your name struck from the Book of the Faithful, and taking your father with you. And you stand there, dripping with hypocrisy, trying to judge me?"

  Kalas's jaw tightened, his grip on the bardiche white-knuckled.

  Lysandra's expression shifted from amusement to something vicious, and when she spoke again, her voice carried the weight of scripture—words he'd once lived by, words that had once guided every decision, every action, every breath.

  "'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,'" she quoted, her tone mocking the formal cadence of the Dominion's holy texts. "'For the tongue that spreads lies shall be cut from the mouth, and the heart that harbors deceit shall be torn from the chest.'"

  She paused, letting the words hang in the rain-soaked air between them.

  "Remember that one, knave?" The title dripped with contempt—the lowest rank in the Dominion's hierarchy, reserved for those who'd failed their trials or disgraced themselves. "From the Ninth Precept? The one you swore to uphold when you took your vows as a Fledgling Crusader?"

  Her singular eye blazed brighter with each word as the violet light intensified until it looked like contained lightning.

  "The same vows you violated when you conspired with the Empire against your own blood? When you whispered poison, fabricated evidence and had your own FATHER charged with treason?"

  She took another step forward, and her voice dropped to something darker, more personal.

  "When you ran this very blade—his blade—through his back while he fought to defend you? When you murdered your mother, Lady Sera, as she begged for your young siblings' lives? When you put that sword through little Aelwyn? Through Thera?"

  Her voice cracked slightly on the children's names, then hardened into pure ice. The silence that followed was broken only by rain and the distant sounds of the compound being secured.

  Lysandra's hand tightened on the sword's grip, and she swung in a vicious arc—not at Kalas, but at the ground. The flat of the blade caught the rain, the water sheeting across the white metal, washing away the blood of those she'd just killed. Crimson that ran down the spine, and stained the edges disappeared into the mud below.

  With the blood washed away, the holy steel began to glow. Not with reflected light, but with its own radiance—pure white, illuminating the area around them like a miniature sun cutting through the storm's darkness. The operators' shadows stretched long across the compound, and the rain became visible as silver streaks falling through that ethereal light.

  Snapping the blade up so it came up horizontally at shoulder height, Lysandra’s point aimed directly at Kalas's face. Pure hatred swam in the woman’s single eye as she met Kalas’s remaining good one across the length of that glowing steel.

  "I'm going to fulfill the scripture you abandoned," she said, her voice quiet but carrying perfectly through the rain. "The tongue that spreads lies shall be removed. But I'm not going to cut it out, Kalas."

  She smiled—a terrible, predatory expression that promised exactly how this was going to end.

  "I'm going to send this blade straight through your disgusting mouth."