A chill brushed against Lothar's ankle, cold and serpentine, like a viper rousing from hibernation. The fine hairs on his neck stood on end.
That was no rainwater, nor the touch of mud—it was something alive.
Lothar's pupils narrowed.
Something black, as thin as a spider's thread and almost indistinguishable from the night, was crawling silently up the seam of his polished leather boot. It moved with a purpose, inching forward like it possessed a will of its own.
"Filth."
The word hissed from between his teeth.
Without even bending down, Lothar tightened his grip on the Holy Flame staff in his left hand. A sphere of pale white light flared to life in his right palm.
The power of sanctity erupted like molten sunlight.
There was no explosion, only a sharp hiss. The black thread vanished at once under the radiance, vaporized without leaving a trace.
Yet Lothar did not relax. His frown deepened.
At the instant the thread was destroyed, he felt something cold and alien slide along his soul, as though an unseen hand had brushed across the surface of his mind.
It was a feeling of being watched—violated—a chill that struck at his dignity as a servant of the Holy Church.
His gaze locked again on the man curled in the mud. All pity drained from his face, replaced by contempt and judgment.
"There is something about you, " he said softly, "something fouler than all the corpses in this graveyard."
The words pierced Cain's ears like knives.
He lay trembling in the mud, his coarse burlap shirt soaked with sweat despite the rain.
He had no idea what that thread truly was—only that in his moment of despair, something deep inside him had reached out and grasped it, nearly tearing his mind apart in the process.
But when the pain subsided, a new power began to flow through him—cold, heavy, and strangely alive.
He forced his head lower, his long wet hair covering his face.
That look of terrified submission—it was the first skill he had ever learned to survive in this world, and the one that had kept him alive the longest.
But beneath the curtain of his hair, his eyes were wide open, fixed on Old Iden's still-warm corpse.
Above it hung a faint, fist-sized glow of dark red light, slowly dissolving in the rain.
He could feel it—that was Iden's despair, his unwillingness to die. It was what Cain had drawn from him. It was food.
And his only hope.
No time to hesitate.
Cain's heart pounded. He stretched out his right hand beneath his body, focusing every ounce of his will. This time, his mind was sharp and deliberate, like the talon of a hawk, seizing the last fragment of that dying red light.
"Enhance your senses, " he commanded silently.
A sliver of that soul's essence burned away.
The world has changed.
Rain slowed, falling like scattered glass. He could see every droplet burst on the tombstones, every tiny splash frozen in midair. The crackling of torches split into a hundred distinct frequencies in his ears. He even heard, far away, a rat gnawing at a corpse's wrappings beneath the earth.
And in that frozen clarity, he caught it—the subtle signs of Lothar preparing another spell: the shift of his throat, the tightening of his chest, the low hum of gathering magic at the staff's tip.
A heartbeat's warning.
Cain didn't think. He rolled sideways with all his strength.
A beam of white fire crashed into the ground where he had just lain. The soil sizzled into blackened glass. Nearby, a pile of dry grass erupted in flames, lighting Lothar's face in furious disbelief.
Cain barely had time to breathe.
He crouched behind another tombstone and summoned the power again—not from the surrounding souls this time, but from within himself.
He could see his fear—black, viscous, like tar.
He seized it, compressed it, forced it into shape. A thread of darkness formed in his palm, thicker, denser, pulsing with his will.
Lothar moved through the firelight, searching. Cain lunged from behind the tombstone like a starving wolf, and with a whip of his arm, hurled the thread.
It no longer crawled like before. It darted, alive, slithering across the wet ground, weaving through puddles toward its prey.
Lothar sensed danger—but too late.
The dark thread brushed against the exposed skin of his neck.
No wound appeared, but agony tore through him as if a heated needle had pierced every nerve in his body.
"Ugh!"
He grunted, staggering. His right arm convulsed and went numb. The staff of Holy Flame slipped from his grasp and fell into the mud with a heavy clang.
Now!
All fear vanished from Cain's eyes, replaced by the raw, savage will to survive.
He pounced, both hands clamping around Lothar's throat, slamming him back against a tombstone.
The deacon struggled, clawing for the silver dagger at his belt, but Cain drove his forehead into the man's face. The bone cracked. Blood splattered hot across his skin.
At that moment, the dark thread around Lothar's neck constricted like a living thing, tightening with Cain's fury.
The holy words died in Lothar's throat.
When the body finally went still, slumping against the stone, Cain staggered back, gasping for air like a broken bellows.
Rain washed the blood from his face. He stared down at his shaking hands, horror and realization colliding in his chest.
So this is what it feels like... to kill.
From the shadow of another grave, a young woman named Sera covered her mouth, trembling. Hot tears mingled with the rain on her cheeks.
She had seen everything—the quiet grave keeper, drenched and trembling, rifling through the corpse for a tinderbox and a silver dagger before vanishing into the endless black woods behind the graveyard.