The laughter came first—rough and careless, echoing off stone walls slick with moisture and old blood. It rolled through the corridor like something toxic, carrying with it the stench of cheap alcohol and expensive cruelty.
Jade rose slowly from where he'd crouched beside the girl's cage.
The metal door hung open now, its lock shattered by a pulse of concentrated mana. But the girl—Fourteen—hadn't moved. She sat there in the filth-stained corner, knees drawn to her chest, eyes wide and glassy. Watching him. Waiting.
For what, she probably didn't know anymore.
"Wait here," Jade said again, softer this time.
His voice carried no command, no harshness. Just certainty. The kind that didn't need volume to be heard.
He stepped away from the cage, his boots silent against the cold stone floor. Behind him, the two bodies of the false parents lay crumpled and still, their blood pooling in slow, dark rivers that caught the dim red glow of suppression runes etched into the walls.
Jade's hands flexed at his sides.
The air around him had begun to change.
It started subtly—a faint chill creeping along the edges of the corridor, condensation forming on the metal bars of the cages. The children inside stirred weakly, some lifting their heads, confusion flickering across faces too young to hold such emptiness.
Then the cold deepened.
Frost bloomed across the walls in delicate, intricate patterns—fractals of ice spreading like veins, like roots digging into stone. The moisture in the air crystallized, tiny shards catching the light and glittering like fallen stars.
And still, Jade stood motionless.
His silver-white hair fell past his shoulders, loose now, no longer tied back. Blood speckled his cheek—not his own. His eyes, those strange silver-grey eyes that seemed to hold too much for a child of ten, fixed on the corridor ahead.
Waiting.
The voices grew louder.
"—swear, if they brought another batch already, I'm calling first pick—"
"You always call first pick, you bastard—"
"That's 'cause I pay for first pick—"
Laughter again, grating and hollow. The kind of laughter that came from men who'd long ago stopped seeing the people they hurt as human.
Six of them rounded the corner.
They were a mismatched group; mercenaries, by the look of them. The kind you hired when you needed things done quietly and didn't care how dirty the work got.
Armor cobbled together from scraps and stolen military gear, weapons slung carelessly over shoulders or holstered at hips. Their faces were flushed, eyes glassy with drink and something else,alchemical stimulants, probably. The kind that dulled conscience and sharpened appetite.
The first one,a broad-shouldered man with a scar running from temple to jaw was mid-sentence when he noticed the cold.
His breath misted in front of his face.
"What the hell...?"
He stopped walking. The others nearly stumbled into him, their laughter dying as they, too, felt the unnatural chill settling over their skin.
"Why's it so damn cold?" another muttered, rubbing his arms. His voice carried an edge of unease now, the bravado from moments before beginning to crack.
One of them—lean, wiry, with the nervous energy of a man who'd lived too long on stimulants, noticed the frost creeping along the walls. His eyes widened.
"What... what is that?"
Then he saw the bodies.
The false parents, lying in pools of their own blood, their eyes still open and staring at nothing.
"Shit—!"
The group tensed immediately, hands flying to weapons. The broad-shouldered man drew a plasma pistol, its barrel humming to life with a low, dangerous whine.
"Who's there?!" he barked, voice echoing through the hall. "Show yourself!"
For a moment, nothing.
Only the soft crack of ice spreading across stone, the faint whisper of frozen air moving through the corridor.
Then, from the shadows between two cages, Jade stepped forward.
Small.
Blood-stained.
His silver eyes catching the light like polished glass.
The men stared.
For a heartbeat, none of them moved. Their minds struggled to reconcile what they were seeing—a child, no older than ten, standing alone in a corridor lined with cages and corpses.
The wiry one let out a sharp, nervous laugh.
"It's just a kid—"
"Just a kid?" the broad-shouldered man repeated, eyes narrowing. His gaze flicked to the bodies again, to the blood, to the frost creeping ever closer to their boots. "You see those corpses? You think a kid did that?"
"Maybe he's one of the—"
"He's not in a cage, idiot."
Another man—older, grizzled, with the cold eyes of someone who'd killed before and would again—raised his rifle. "Doesn't matter. Kid or not, he's seen too much."
He leveled the barrel at Jade's chest.
"Sorry, boy. Wrong place, wrong time."
Jade tilted his head slightly, as if considering the words.
Then he spoke, voice soft and utterly devoid of emotion.
"You're right."
The man's finger tightened on the trigger.
"It is the wrong time."
The man's head exploded.
Not figuratively.
Literally.
One moment, he was standing there, rifle raised, confident in his power. The next, his skull detonated in a spray of crimson and white, shards of frozen bone scattering across the corridor like shrapnel.
His body stood for a moment longer, swaying, before collapsing backward in a heap.
The others recoiled, shock and horror twisting their faces.
"What the fuck—!"
"He didn't even move—!"
But Jade had moved.
Not his body—his mana.
He'd reached out with his will, seized the moisture in the man's skull, and froze it. Instantly. Completely. The water in his brain expanded as it crystallized, and the pressure had nowhere to go.
So it went out.
The broad-shouldered man stumbled back, plasma pistol shaking in his grip. "Open fire! Open fire!"
The corridor erupted in light and sound.
Plasma bolts seared through the air, carving molten lines across the walls. Bullets ricocheted off stone, sparks flying. The noise was deafening in the enclosed space, a cacophony of desperation and violence.
But Jade was already gone.
He blinked—a flicker of displaced space—and reappeared ten feet to the left, untouched, unharmed.
Two of the men were still firing at where he'd been standing, their shots punching holes in empty air.
Jade raised his hand.
The floor beneath them erupted.
Spears of ice—thick, jagged, merciless—burst upward with explosive force, impaling both men through their torsos. They were lifted off their feet, suspended in the air, mouths open in silent screams as frost spread through their bodies.
Their blood froze before it could fall.
One of them twitched weakly, still alive, still conscious. His eyes rolled toward Jade, wide and pleading.
Jade didn't look away.
He watched as the ice crept up the man's neck, across his jaw, into his mouth.
Watched as the light in his eyes dimmed and died.
Then he turned to the others.
Three left.
The wiry man broke first.
"Fuck this—!"
He turned and ran, boots slipping on frost-slick stone, his breath coming in panicked gasps.
He made it five steps.
Chains of ice erupted from the shadows, wrapping around his ankles, his waist, his throat. They yanked him backward with brutal efficiency, slamming him to the ground so hard his chin cracked against stone.
He screamed—a high, desperate sound—and clawed at the floor, trying to drag himself forward.
The chains pulled tighter.
"No—no, please—!"
Jade walked toward him slowly, each step deliberate.
The man twisted his head, eyes wild with terror. "I—I didn't want to! They made me! I was just following orders—!"
Jade crouched beside him, his expression unchanged.
"Following orders," he repeated softly.
The man nodded frantically, tears streaming down his face. "Yes! Yes, I swear! I didn't—I never wanted to hurt anyone—!"
Jade was silent for a moment.
Then he placed his hand on the man's.
"You're lying."
The ice didn't spread quickly this time.
It moved slowly.
Deliberately.
The man's scream echoed through the hall as frost crawled across his fingers, into his flesh, crystallizing skin and muscle layer by agonizing layer. The pain was exquisite. Every nerve ending freezing, dying, yet somehow still transmitting agony in sharp, electric pulses.
His fingernails turned black. Then blue. Then white.
"STOP! PLEASE, STOP!"
Jade tilted his head. "Why?"
"I'LL TELL YOU ANYTHING! ANYTHING!"
The ice paused at his wrist, leaving his hand a blackened, ruined thing.
Jade's voice remained soft. Calm. "Who funds this place?"
The words spilled out in a frantic rush, broken by sobs. "Nobles! It's....it's nobles! Councilor families, merchants, they pay us to...to acquire them! The children! For their games!"
"What games?"
"I—I don't know! They don't tell us! We just—we bring them here, and the nobles come and—and—"
His voice broke into incoherent weeping.
Jade's gaze didn't soften. "Names."
"Matthias Draven! Councilor Draven's son! And—and Councillor Carine's nephew, I don't know his name! Baron Theron's heir! Others, so many others—please, I told you everything—!"
"Where are the rest of the children?"
The man's eyes darted toward a door at the end of the hall, half-hidden in shadow. "Back room! Through there! They—they keep the special ones there—the ones the nobles request—"
His voice cracked again, dissolving into desperate, animalistic sobbing.
Jade stood slowly.
"You're telling the truth," he said quietly.
Relief flooded the man's face. "Yes! Yes, I swear—!"
"Good."
Jade drove a spear of ice through his throat.
The man's eyes bulged, blood bubbling at his lips. He choked, gargled, hands scrabbling weakly at the ice embedded in his neck.
Then he went still.
The remaining two men had backed against the wall, weapons raised but hands shaking so badly they could barely aim.
The broad-shouldered one—the leader—was breathing hard, his scarred face pale.
"You... you're not human..."
Jade turned to face them.
His clothes were soaked with blood now, droplets sliding down his arms, dripping from his fingertips. His hair clung to his cheeks, damp with sweat and gore. But his eyes—those silver-grey eyes—were clear.
Focused.
Cold.
"No," Jade said softly. "I'm not."
The last mercenary—a younger man, barely out of his teens—dropped his weapon. It clattered to the floor.
"I—I have a family," he stammered. "A wife. A daughter. Please—"
Jade's gaze lingered on him for a moment.
Then he looked at the cages lining the hall.
At the children inside—some watching, some too broken to care, some who would never watch anything again.
"So did they," Jade whispered.
The temperature plummeted.
Ice erupted from the floor, the walls, the ceiling—a forest of jagged spears that filled the corridor in an instant.
The two men didn't even have time to scream.
When the ice finally stilled, the hall was silent.
Six bodies lay scattered among the frost—some impaled, some shattered, one still frozen mid-scream, his face locked in eternal terror.
Blood stained the ice in streaks of crimson and black.
Jade stood alone in the center of it all, chest rising and falling steadily.
His small hands were covered in frost and blood.
Behind him, the children in the cages stared.
Some wept. Others simply watched, too numb to react.
Jade turned toward the door the mercenary had indicated.
The one leading to the back room.
His expression didn't change.
But his hands clenched into fists.
He pushed the door open.
And stepped inside.
...