The clearing didn't feel like a battlefield anymore.
It felt like a graveyard.
The air was too still, too heavy, as if even the wind refused to disturb what had happened there. Sunlight struggled through the canopy in thin, pale shafts, turning every smear of dried blood into a shadow and every broken branch into a mark of judgment.
Orin sat with his knees pulled to his chest, arms wrapped around them, staring at his hands.
His human hands.
They shook faintly, knuckles raw, skin split and crusted with dirt and drying blood that didn't belong to him alone. No matter how many times he scraped his palms against the grass, the stains only smeared, turning green into a murky brown.
They still felt like claws.
They felt like the hands that had driven through Sonny's chest.Like the hands that had cut Vince down.Like the hands that had silenced Vice.
His breath came shallow, catching every few seconds as if his body kept forgetting how to do something that basic.
Beside him, Lisa's body lay where he'd gently lowered her after her last breath, her hand still cradled in his. Her skin had gone stiff with the chill. Her eyes were closed now; he'd done that much for her. He couldn't stand seeing them half open, fixed on something he couldn't.
A short distance away, the ground was torn open in four rough trenches. Not graves yet—just wounded earth, waiting.
Sonny.Vince.Vice.Lisa.
All gone.
Because of him.
Orin bent forward suddenly, choking. His stomach clenched and twisted, but there was nothing left inside to give. Only dry heaves came, each one sending a bolt of pain up through his ribs and across his chest.
I should've died.I should've died instead.
The forest offered no argument.
Eventually the spasms faded. He stayed on his knees, forehead pressed into dirt that still smelled like blood and crushed leaves. The world narrowed to the harsh rasp of his breathing and the dull throbbing of wounds that were already starting to knit together against his will.
He hated that most of all—that his body kept healing. That his ribs pulled back together, his torn skin crawling closed, while four people he loved lay still and cold.
After a long time, he forced himself to move.
He laid Lisa's hand gently across her stomach and stood on shaky legs. Every muscle felt spent and heavy, but he walked anyway—because there was no one else left to do what needed to be done.
He started with Sonny.
The older man's body was heavier than Orin expected. He remembered Sonny lifting him one-handed as a kid, tossing him onto his shoulder like a sack of grain while Orin shrieked and laughed. Now the weight did not move so easily.
Orin grunted, slid his arms under Sonny, and lifted.
"Hey, kid, you're more trouble than you're worth," he heard in Sonny's voice, echoing in his mind. "Lucky for you, I got patience."
His arms trembled, but he carried Sonny to the first trench. He lowered him slowly, carefully, as if too fast might hurt him. It was pointless—they both knew that—but Orin couldn't do it any other way.
He brushed dirt from Sonny's cheek, thumb lingering there.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, voice hoarse. "I'm so sorry."
He stepped back only when his legs started to wobble.
Vince came next.
Even in death, his face looked like it ought to be mid-argument. Orin half expected him to pop up and complain about the angle he was being held in. Every scratch, every bruise, every stillness contradicted the loud, cocky voice that had filled the inn night after night.
"Come on, Orin," Vince would say, flashing that crooked grin. "You swing like a tired mule. Again. Faster this time."
Orin's vision blurred as he carried him.
He placed Vince beside Sonny, laying one arm over his chest like Vince had simply fallen asleep after boasting too long. It felt wrong and helpless and small and it was still all Orin could do.
Vice was last among the three.
Lighter than his brother, quieter in every memory. Vice had always watched the most and spoken the least. He'd noticed when Orin skipped meals to train, when the boy sat too long in the corner pretending not to listen to stories of hunts. He'd always sat near him then—no big speeches, just company.
Orin lifted him and nearly dropped him halfway. His arms gave out and he sank to his knees with Vice still cradled against his chest.
"I don't know how to be here without you," Orin whispered, voice breaking. "Any of you."
He pressed his forehead against Vice's shoulder for a long moment. No answer came. Finally, he laid Vice down beside his brother and stepped back on legs that didn't feel like they belonged to him.
Lisa was last.
He didn't rush.
He smoothed her hair back from her face, fingers trembling, and memorized her features the way they looked in stillness instead of motion. No faint smirk, no narrowed eyes of annoyance, no soft amusement at how stupid men could be. Just quiet.
"You should've lived longer than any of us," he said quietly. "You know that, right?"
He carried her to the fourth trench, arms straining, and lowered her into the earth beside the others.
For a long time he simply stood there, staring down.
Then he started to cover them.
He worked with his hands, because it felt wrong to use a tool for this. He scooped earth and stone until his fingers split and his nails tore. Roots caught his skin, rocks scraped his palms raw, but he didn't stop. Each handful of dirt hurt to let go, as if dropping it meant admitting something he wasn't ready to accept.
Still, he dropped it.
He didn't speak much while he worked. Words felt dishonest. All that lived here now were actions: lift, drop, cover, breathe.
By the time he was done, the sun had shifted. Four mounds of earth rose from the churned soil, shaped as evenly as he could manage with ruined hands.
He searched the clearing for stones.
He found one for Sonny—broad, solid, with a crack down the middle that reminded him of the man's roughness split by kindness. For Vince, he chose a jagged piece of dark rock that caught the light. For Vice, a smooth, quietly rounded stone with moss clinging to its side. For Lisa, a pale piece of weathered stone veined faintly in red.
He scratched their names into each marker with the tip of his cleaver. The blade shook, making the letters uneven, but he carved until they were clear.
SONNYVINCEVICELISA
By the time he finished, his hands were bleeding again. Tiny red dots spattered the stone, drying in crooked lines.
Night crept in slowly.
He stayed.
When the sky darkened and the sounds of the forest changed, Orin folded himself down in front of the graves and hugged his knees to his chest. A cold breeze brushed his skin and he barely felt it.
"Why did I live?" he whispered into the dim. "Why am I still here?"
No answer. Only the rhythmic chirps of unseen insects and the far-off rustle of leaves.
Eventually his body gave in before his grief did. He slumped onto his side, cheek pressed to the ground in front of the markers, and slipped into a restless, fractured sleep full of claws and fire and blue-silver eyes that weren't his own.
He woke with a strangled gasp.
The graves were still there.The stones were still there.The world hadn't reversed itself overnight.
Morning light filtered through the trees, brushing soft gold over the tops of the mounds. It felt unfair that something so gentle could touch a place like this.
Orin pushed himself up slowly, body stiff and protesting. He didn't feel rested. He doubted he ever would again.
He walked to each stone in turn, laying a hand on the top, bowing his head. No speeches, no promises. Just contact. Proof that he was still here.
"I'll come back," he murmured at last, voice rough. "If I'm allowed to. If I'm still alive. I'll come back."
He turned away before he could change his mind.
His weapons lay where they'd fallen—or been dropped—during the chaos. He found his dual cleavers first, half-buried in churned soil. The hatchet-blade short-swords Sonny had given him for his birthday rested near the shattered tree, where his body had smashed through it before the world went red.
He picked them up one by one.
The metal felt heavier now, as if it remembered more than he wanted it to. He strapped the hatchets to his back, the cleavers to his hips. The weight settled over him like a sentence.
Then Orin Slain left the clearing.
He didn't look back.The walk back to Drill City blurred into one long stretch of motion and white noise.
Trees thinned. The ground shifted from wildroot and stone to more trodden, familiar dirt. Sounds of distant carts, voices, and hammering bled into the wilderness.
His wounds had closed more by then. The worst tears were angry pink lines on his skin, the bruises faded from black-and-purple to dull yellow underneath the dried blood. His body's unnatural resilience made the fight look like days-old history instead of something that had happened less than one.
It made people stare.
The outer guards at Drill City straightened when they saw him. One opened his mouth, then shut it again as Orin's eyes met his—flat and hollow in a face streaked with mud and blood.
No one asked for his papers. No one blocked his path.
Whispers trailed after him instead.
"Is that the Fangs' boy…?""Where are the others?""Gods… look at him…"
He kept walking.
Through the streets. Past the stalls. Past the smithy where Vince once argued about blade balance for an entire afternoon. Past the alley where Vice had broken a cutpurse's wrist with casual precision. Past the corner where Lisa had knocked a drunk senseless for grabbing her.
Every step hurt in a way healing couldn't touch.
The Drills Inn stood where it always had, solid and weathered, warm light spilling from its windows. It felt wrong to approach it without the sound of the Fangs' boots, their laughter leading the way.
He paused with his hand on the doorframe.
For a second, he considered turning around and walking until the world ended.
He pushed the door open instead.The familiar smell hit him first: stew, ale, old wood, smoke. An ordinary day's smells.
Miss Sarah stood behind the counter, wiping a mug with a clean cloth. Her hair was tied back. Her posture steady. A few regulars sat scattered around the room.
She looked up, already smiling the way she always did when her "kids" came back from a run.
Then she saw his face.
The smile died so fast it might never have been there.
"Orin," she breathed.
He tried to answer and failed. The words caught somewhere between his chest and his throat, jammed up behind something that felt like it might suffocate him if he tried to force it out.
Sarah came around the counter faster than he'd ever seen her move.
She reached him in a handful of quick strides, hands rising to cup his face. Her touch was firm and familiar and gentle all at once.
"Oh, baby," she whispered. "What happened?"
His shoulders shuddered.
"Sonny," he croaked. The name tore its way out, scraping his throat raw. "Vince. Vice. Lisa…"
He shook his head, tears spilling down, streaking through the layers of dirt and blood on his cheeks.
"They're— They're—"
The word wouldn't come.
He didn't need to say it.
Sarah's fingers tightened, and she pulled him against her without hesitation. He collapsed into her, knees buckling, the weight of him slamming into her arms. For a moment, he thought he might crush her.
She didn't give an inch.
He sobbed into her apron, ugly and loud and raw. She held him, one hand on the back of his head, the other braced firm between his shoulder blades. She didn't hush him. She didn't tell him to breathe. She just stayed.
It took a long time for the worst of it to burn out.
When his cries faded to shuddering breaths, Sarah eased him into a chair at a corner table, away from the other patrons. They'd gone quiet by then, eyes turned discreetly away. Even drunks knew enough to give grief room.
Sarah pulled up a chair beside him.
"What happened?" she asked softly.
Orin stared at his hands, barely able to keep them still.
"I… changed," he said. The word felt small compared to what he'd become. "The Vrexus… it was too strong. I couldn't keep up. It almost killed all of us. I… I lost it. I turned into something else."
He swallowed hard.
"I killed it," he whispered. "And then I killed them. Sonny. Vince. Vice. Lisa… I tore them apart. I didn't know who they were. I couldn't… stop."
Tears gathered again. He bowed his head.
"It was me," he said. "No matter what happened before or after—it was my hands. My power. My body. I did it."
Sarah's jaw tightened, but she didn't flinch away from his words.
"You didn't walk into that forest planning to kill your family," she said quietly. "You didn't look at them and choose this."
He laughed once, a short, broken sound. "Does that change what happened?"
"No," she said. "But it changes what to blame."
When he met her eyes, she held his gaze without flinching at whatever she saw there.
"There is something inside you that none of us ever understood," she went on. "Sonny knew it. Lisa knew it. The twins knew it. I knew it. You scared us sometimes, Orin. Not because you were cruel, or careless—but because you cared so much and had no idea how big you were on the inside."
She took a slow breath.
"And that," she said, "is exactly why Sonny did this."
She reached into her apron and pulled out a folded, slightly worn envelope, its edges softened by time. There were extra sheets tucked behind it, held together by a simple string.
Orin recognized the handwriting on the front instantly.
Sonny's.
He stared, throat closing.
Sarah set it on the table in front of him.
"He wrote this months ago," she said. "Told me, 'After his next real mission—after his birthday—make sure he gets this. No stalling, no "he's not ready," no excuses.'"
She slid the small packet of pages beside it.
"He also left this with it," she added. "Mission details. Notes about you. A recommendation. Said if you ever needed to prove what kind of fighter you were, or what you survived, you could use this. That way, when you look back on this day… it isn't just the day everything went wrong."
Her voice wavered, but she kept going.
"It's also the day you officially became what he always said you would be—a real hunter. A survivor. Someone who walked into a nightmare and came back out."
Orin's fingers hovered over the envelope, shaking.
"He wanted this to be a milestone, not a curse," Sarah finished softly. "Even if he didn't know how it would happen."
Then she stood.
"I'll give you a minute," she said, and stepped away.
Orin sat alone with the envelope for a long breath. Then another.
Finally, he tore it open.
The letter inside smelled faintly of smoke and stale coffee, like Sonny had written it in the corner of the inn between missions. The handwriting slanted unevenly across the page.
Orin,
If you're holding this, it means you finally got your feet dirty on a real mission. About time.
First thing you need to know: we talk about you more than you think. Lisa, the twins, Sarah—half the time you walk out of a room, one of them says, "That kid's going to be something dangerous one day." Dangerous in a good way. The kind that stands between people and the things that want to eat them.
You don't see what we see. You look at yourself and think, "I'm not enough yet." We look at you and see a stubborn brat who keeps getting back up, keeps learning, keeps carrying more than his share without being asked. That's rare. That's special.
The truth is, the Fangs can only take you so far. We're good—but whatever's burning in your blood? It's bigger than merc contracts and caravan routes.
That's why I've been talking with a few people I trust. I want you to go to Hachi Academy.
Not because we're tired of you. Not because you're a burden. Because you're meant for more than running with a small crew out of Drill City. Hachi can give you training, focus, control—things we just don't know how to teach. They can help you figure out what you are and how to use it without breaking yourself.
You'll probably argue with this. You always think you owe us something. So let me make it simple:
You don't owe us a quiet life. You owe yourself a chance to grow into the person we already know you can be.
In that packet I left with Sarah, you'll find the details of a mission we took you on, some notes about how you handled yourself, and a recommendation with my name on it. If anyone at Hachi asks who you are—hand it over. Let them see what you did and what you survived.
When you go, you're not leaving us behind. You're carrying us with you. Every lesson, every bad joke, every scar.
Whatever you become, remember this: we chose you. We keep choosing you. Every day.
Now quit overthinking and keep moving forward.
— Sonny
Orin read it twice without really seeing the words, tears smearing the ink in places. The third time, the lines sank in deeper.
We talk about you more than you think…You're meant for more…We chose you… We keep choosing you…
He pressed the letter to his chest, eyes squeezed shut. His shoulders shook harder now than they had at the graves.
Sarah watched quietly from across the room, pretending to wipe a clean table.
When he finally lowered the paper, his face was still broken—but something else sat beneath the grief now. Not calm. Not certainty.
Direction.
He picked up the small stack of extra pages. Sonny's handwriting marked mission details and notes about Orin's performance—his awareness, his stubbornness, his refusal to back down even when scared. At the end was a short, blunt recommendation addressed to Hachi Academy.
If you're looking for potential, this boy has more than most of us ever did. He just needs help not burning himself alive with it.
— Sonny Falren, Fang Captain
Orin swallowed hard.
He looked at the letter again. At the mission notes. At his shaking hands.
Then he stood.
His legs didn't feel steady, but they held.
Sarah approached, searching his face. "Well?" she asked softly.
"He wanted me to go to Hachi," Orin said. Saying it out loud made it feel more real. "Said I'm meant for more than… this." His gaze dropped to the letter. "Said I'm supposed to learn control. Use what I have without… destroying everything."
Sarah nodded once. "Then you know what you have to do."
He hesitated.
"If I go," he whispered, "it'll be because they're all gone."
"No," Sarah said, with a firmness that cut through the haze. "If you go, it'll be because they believed this is where you belonged all along. Because Sonny wrote that before any of this. Because this day is horrific, Orin—but it's also proof you need what Hachi can give you."
She put a hand over his on the table, warm and solid.
"You can't change what happened in that forest," she said. "But you can decide what it means. You can let it be the day everything ended… or the day everything started."
He looked at her, eyes red and raw.
"It feels wrong to call it an achievement," he said.
"It is wrong," she agreed quietly. "But Sonny didn't attach that mission report so you'd measure the bodies. He attached it so when you hand those pages to Hachi, you remember that you weren't just a monster in that clearing. You were also someone who stood against a nightmare and lived. Both things are true. Don't forget either."
Orin closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them again, the pain was still there. The guilt still clawed at his insides. But somewhere under the wreckage, a small, hard piece of resolve had formed.
"I'll go," he said. "To Hachi. I'll show them the letter. The mission report. I'll learn control. I'll make sure this never happens again."
Sarah's expression softened with pride and sorrow mixed together.
"And when you can bear it," she said, "you come back and tell me everything you saw. So I can brag about you to anyone who'll listen."
A faint, broken breath left him that might one day become a laugh again.
"I'll try," he said.
He folded Sonny's letter with careful hands and tucked it into an inner pocket close to his heart. The mission pages went into his pack. His weapons stayed at his side.
Later, alone in his small room for what might be the last time, Orin sat on the edge of his bed and stared at his hands again.
They would always remember.
So would he.
He bowed his head, whispered each of their names in turn, and then, with the weight of all of them on his shoulders, he began to plan his journey to Hachi Academy.
The cost of his power had already been everything.
Now he would find out if there was any way left to make that cost mean something.