The woolly hide of the great grey beast did not stir within the windless air of the sanctuary, yet it was sufficient to draw the eyes of the chief and ruler, Murad Xie Ryukzen the Third.
The Mawrkhor a creature that had killed more men in a single strike than any beast in recent memory was no longer anything resembling a controlled animal, even by his generous terms. Its head dangled from a thin cord of nerves. Black miasma sealed each part of its body together, and its hands and legs obeyed nothing, followed no direction. There had been a time when Murad could predict the creature's movements, which had helped him track it across the boundaries of the gates. But now it went right when he went right, and left when he went left mirroring him. Coincidence, he thought. There was a pattern, at least. He followed it. Then he understood there was no pattern at all. It was not instinct either. The beast walked where it wished and struck the men it sensed, and there was no logic in it — only bloodlust. Perhaps it is the miasma, he suspected. But even then, this powerful? he whispered to himself. The black miasma spread through its hooves, which resembled human hands, and spurted from its wounds like ink from a drowning man.
The chief knew what was required. There was no reason to fight it as one fights a beast - there never was. When hunting monsters, soldiers followed clear doctrine: do not damage the body so severely that it destroyed vital resources, do not shatter the bones of a Mawtorus that could have been rendered into goods. But once the black miasma took hold, all preference for restraint became idiocy. Murad understood that. He had to set aside the teachings of the Askardyan ledgers, the rules of war, and the creed of the priests.
He widened his stance, shifted his weight onto one leg, and gripped his blade in the opposite hand.
"Artres! Aim!" His voice tore through the ranks the highest of them while merchants and lesser men cowered in the blood of their comrades. "The legs! Down it!" he roared, and the soldiers followed.
The volley was synchronous. The Mawrkhor's right leg shattered, pieces of black miasma and hardened kneecap splintering outward in a wet crack. It was not enough to fell the beast, but enough to disrupt its uncontrolled motion — the best chance to exploit the gap between ferocious slaughter and grinding pain. If the monster felt pain at all. That gave him another question to consider. If creatures born from black miasma required an intact host's head to function, did they feel anything? He smirked.
Murad raised his arm and pointed toward the hanging cord of nerves from which the Mawrkhor's head lazily swung. "There! Aim for the Flesh Rope!" The soldiers obeyed.
And there it was — the beast shed its uncontrolled nature. Rather than random chaos, its movements became more refined. With each shot, despite having no working ear or eye, it deflected the attacks aimed at its Flesh Rope. One bolt shattered its hooves, another pierced between the joints, the last scraped close enough to graze flesh. None landed true. But Murad said it was plenty.
He saw the monster differently now than he had when it first turned. No living creature willingly sabotaged its own survival unless driven by something greater. Which meant the black miasma had a mind of its own — or like a parasite, it was using the host's head as its instrument.
This is enough, he thought. The true power of humanity: knowledge, and the wisdom to use it.
Murad drew the wired swords from his waist. The thin black wire stretched and caught, and he spun the right blade, then the left. The mechanism, he had once learned, was derived from an ancient weapon called the kusarigama, and refined later by the principles of a child's toy — the yo-yo. The Askardyan ledgers contained no record of it. But Murad had never relied on them alone. The Book of Hyrae provided more, or as much as he could translate.
He changed his stance, launched into an explosive jump, and spun his body, the blades trailing their course behind him like a human drill. The watching soldiers noted it in silence.
This was the Ryu fighting style. He had taught Klein much of it, but not the harmony between all stances simultaneously — not the Ryu Flow State, where the Eastern Foot matched the timing of the Northern Grip while the Western Hand guided the Southern Blades. A pure, unbroken chain of human martial arts.
He threw the first blade. The Mawrkhor rejected it from its veins instantly. Murad pulled it back, spun once more, and launched the other. It missed the Flesh Rope and buried itself instead in the creature's hand, tearing flesh and piercing bone where it lodged. Murad pulled it back. But the Mawrkhor did not yield — it launched itself onto the black wire connecting both blades.
"Worthless beast!" Murad released the wire from his waist, losing the left blade entirely. His eyes moved to the gauntlet, where a faint glow had begun to pulse. Not now. I will not use it. He looked away from the light.
Not all was lost, he reminded himself. He had at least drawn the beast's attention to himself.
He ran, full force, the Eastern Foot working overtime, the balanced Northern Grip keeping him grounded despite the heavy impacts and obstacles the Mawrkhor hurled his way. He spun once more and released the remaining blade. The Mawrkhor countered this time with its horns rather than its hand. The blade lodged fast. Murad roared "Stay dead!" as he pulled the wire, bridging himself and the Mawrkhor closer than ever before. The beast shook its head and launched him sideways. Murad released the wire as he had done with the other — lost the blade.
I will not use it! He took his first step backward as the beast redirected its course toward the other soldiers.
"Scatter! Arm yourselves!" But his armies were thinning. The lesser men he had forced to fight today were being depleted most rapidly. "Don't use it", he whispered. His body was drenched in sweat, the cold having no effect. His grip tightened, and the gauntlet's glow deepened — a red hue, like cooling magma threatening to reignite.
I wouldn't ever rely on you again.. He closed the distance between himself and the beast in a matter of seconds and drove his left hand hard against the Mawrkhor's horns. The gauntlet scraped the horn but held intact. He landed beside the creature, breathing harder now, his breath unnatural in its pace — as though old age had come to collect what it was owed.
His subjects were watching him from every direction. The elites he had served beside did not fret, did not tire. The younger soldiers were fighting back. It nearly gave Murad cause for pride. The piling bodies refused to allow it.
Death had its calculations. More dead meant more food and fewer mouths to feed. The passing of the old and the cripple was acceptable — the death of those fertile enough to carry the burden of bearing children was not. And yet Murad felt the guilt. Guilt for bringing the young into this. He turned his head toward the fallen bodies of Deinne and Akira — no, Akira was still upright, gripping the dead. Klein was beside them. "I must finish this," he said quietly. "I must change things."
"All men! Fall back!" It was not a roar. It was a plea. The elites withdrew.
And Murad drew his sword from behind.
"It brings me pain," he murmured. "Memories I do not wish to remember." He took the Northern Grip — the stance built for stability, not speed or attack — and aimed the great claymore at the Mawrkhor. "To protect. To survive. I alone must carry the weight." He drew his arms back. "The weight of guilt!"
He threw the claymore. The force was sufficient to pierce the thick wool of the beast, but nowhere near enough to reach flesh beneath. The merchants cried out in fear. The elites said nothing, watching their chief with expressions Murad did not wish to examine.
The Mawrkhor ignored him entirely, as though mocking him, and turned toward the nearest targets — Akira, still holding Deinne's body, and Klein, who stood frozen at the sight. The elites, ordered to hold, made no move. Because even if their eyes doubted what they saw, they had been taught to trust the lineage of Idris Xie Ryukzen — and the dreamer of the king.
Murad raised his left arm. The gauntlet blazed. The claymore returned to his hand — the same hand, the same glove — without wire or string to explain it.
"I hate it," he said, and launched the claymore again. And again it came back. The elites scanned the air between blade and hand, faces tight with the effort of understanding. None could find an explanation.
The Mawrkhor was disturbed, but did not stop. Just as it moved to swipe at Klein, Murad threw the claymore — and this time, rather than recalling it on a straight path, he twisted his wrist on the return. The blade did not come back. It turned. It took the monster's arm at a single clean stroke, the severed limb dropping to the stone floor in a spread of dark, reeking blood. Klein and Akira were spared. Klein stared at the creature as its blood bathed them both, and made no sound.
From somewhere behind him, one of the elites — an older man, as weathered as Haveth — began to shout. "He saved us eleven years ago, just like this!" Murad heard him and recognized the voice. He did not acknowledge it. He kept walking toward the monster.
The Mawrkhor, deprived of its arm, moved with renewed fury despite its rotting head swaying from the Flesh Rope. It advanced on Murad. Murad closed the distance.
"Perish."
The two wired blades he had lost rose from the cold metal floor, trailing blood, and returned to him. He spun as he had spun before — the Ryu Flow State, his body finding the old chain of motion — and threw the left blade first. It pierced the monster's belly. He threw the second. It scarred the hooves. And finally, the claymore. Murad closed his fist around the gauntlet.
"Muzair. Rais. Forgive me."
All three blades tore through the impregnable body of the Mawrkhor, moving together, converging — a slow blender of steel and black miasma. The creature was decapitated, its head rolling across the sterile floor until Murad stopped it with his boot.
The elites knelt. The merchants and lesser men dropped to the cold ground — some wept, some laughed with a relief that had nowhere else to go. All of them felt it. All except Murad Xie, who nearly fell and had to brace himself with his cane.
"I saved Klein because losing such a talent puts our survival at risk," he said, to no one in particular. "But why did I save the foreign boy?"
He watched the gauntlet's light fade. The memories came with it. "Muzair," he whispered.
Before the name had finished leaving his lips, Malrvr was beside him, stepping over the celebration as though it were debris. "Close the gates," Murad said, and coughed blood into his fist.
"That power," Malrvr said.
"Yes. I did not want to."
"It is hurting you."
"Do not pity a Ryukzen when you are merely a Nithefort." Murad steadied himself, drawing his posture upright despite the coughing. "Klein. What is his condition?"
"He is being treated. The death of a child can break hearts — even the unbreakable ones."
"Or produce guilt," Murad replied.
The gates closed. The seventh cycle ended, and with it, the harvest. The merchants gathered what they could — a gift from Murad Xie, though one with limits. The rest was consigned to the Dain. The Askardyan ledgers set to work with their customary thoroughness, accounting for every body and severed part: men slain, monsters felled, limbs catalogued. For the first time in recorded history, the dead humans outnumbered the dead monsters. The ledgers noted that the smaller creatures — the Gritmaws — had been fewer this cycle, and that the larger ones had compensated. But with human numbers already reduced, all of the counters arrived at the same conclusion. This harvest had been devastating. More than half the meat produced was corrupted by black miasma and would have to be burned. No one could consume it and survive.
Murad walked the perimeter with Malrvr, reading the dead. He could feel the decline in his bones — not just the body's decay, but the decay of things larger than himself. The gates were deteriorating. What would become of the next cycle? He did not voice it.
"Have Haveth take Klein's place next," he said.
Malrvr hesitated. "Chief... Haveth is—"
He brought Murad to see for himself. Haveth lay in visible agony. The black miasma had entered him — not from a wound, the elites explained, but from accidental ingestion. The man's skin had taken on the colour of old bruising, and his breathing came in shallow, irregular pulls.
"Another soldier made useless," Murad said. "Burn him. Let his soul at least be clean."
"I refuse."
The objection came from behind him, unhurried and deliberate. Only one family within the greater Ryukzen clan held the right to object openly to Murad Xie — the Harshir family, bound to his lineage by blood and old compact. An old woman stepped forward to face him without ceremony.
"I object to his extermination," she said.
"He will die in pain if I do nothing," Murad replied.
"Yes, based on earlier reports. But the harvest has been over for an hour, and he is still alive, is he not?"
"He is stronger."
"Perhaps. But burning him eliminates a considerable body of educational potential." Her voice carried the weight of someone accustomed to being right. The elites, Malrvr included, watched the exchange in silence. They knew better than to intervene. She was Irwana Harshir — among the finest physicians in the sanctuary, and one of the few who spoke to the chief as though they were equals.
"What do you suggest?"
"Give him to me. Do not burn this black sludge anymore. I will find another solution."
There is no other option. This has to be it.
The Harshir family departed with the monster corpses and with Haveth. As they disappeared into the far corridors, Murad turned to Malrvr. "Put Klein on punishment. I will want you to take command."
Malrvr's face did not light with pleasure. He accepted it with a straightened back and a glance of measured respect.
Among the eight influential families — the great allies of the Ryukzen clan — few enough had made it to these lands in force. Of those, the Askardyans and the Krovnic had not hesitated to dirty their white, red, maroon, and green ceremonial robes in the work of accounting. Murad counted them not by hands or heads, but by the children and elders of each family who had come.
He walked past the ledger counters, still tallying.
"Row one — twenty-four dead, mostly lesser men."
"Rows four through eight — fifty-nine dead, Elites."
The Askardyans did not look up as he passed. They were bred for calculation, not observation — they could count every piece of available flesh and still fail to notice the weight of the loss. Murad found a certain dark humour in that.
He stopped beside Akira, who still held Deinne. Klein was gone.
"Where is Klein?" he asked one of the ledger counters. The man shook his head. "Let him rot," Murad said. "Give me the statistics."
"Very well, Chief. The death toll is the highest in centuries, surpassing the last cycle. More food, fewer mouths. But due to the black sludge corruption, most of the edible meat is..." The ledger paused, with the careful affect of a man who understood his words. "Human corpses."
Murad heard him. He knew what had to be done. Several paths opened before him, none of them clean.
The air was beginning to bite with cold. The armies had filtered back into the sanctuary, the young ones among them — though not all. Akira remained outside, alone with Deinne's body. Tears traced new paths down his face with every moment, yet he did not blink, staring into some hollow distance that only he could see. He sat in a silence too complete, Murad thought, even for a child of the sanctuary.
One of the lesser men tasked with clearing the dead approached and tried to pull Deinne from Akira's grip. Murad watched and waited. The boy did not fight — he cried, and the sound had no words in it, only the raw gibberish of grief that does not think. He gripped Deinne's clothes as the taller men overpowered him with practiced indifference, and his cry rose in pitch before breaking into silence.
"Look how he kneels," Murad said quietly, easing the ledger counter aside and moving to stand beside the boy. "He refused to kneel before me."
He did not lower himself to Akira's level. He spoke from his height, as he always did.
"Attachments are illogical. They offer no rational survival value." A pause. "Learning to be without them will open far more to you. Child."
Akira gave no response. He wept into the void.
"What shall we do with the body?" one of the Askardyan ledgers asked from nearby. "It is unheard of to feed the Dain a child's corpse."
Murad turned from Akira. He reached down and picked up the weapon that had belonged to Deinne — bloodied, small, and intact — and held it a moment before handing it to the ledger.
"Treat the child as a soldier. He earned it. Let his memory be his undying servitude to those who follow. Let him feed the young and the strong."
The ledger did not hesitate before writing it down.
Murad walked. And as he put distance between himself and the scene, he heard it — the cry the boy made when Deinne was finally taken from his grip. A sound that reached somewhere specific inside him. Not because of the boy.
Because of the gauntlet.
A scream he had heard eleven years ago.
"Muzair," he uttered.
"Have I played the part well?"