The scream was a sound of wet tearing.
Ravi stared, frozen, as the man cradled his shattered wrist. The dagger, a pathetic length of rusted metal, clattered to the floor. The man's eyes, wide with shock and agony, were locked on Ravi, but they weren't seeing a victim anymore. They were seeing a demon.
"What did you do?" the man shrieked, scrambling backward. "What are you?"
Panic, cold and sharp, sliced through Ravi's shock. The screaming would draw attention. The guards, the Warden—anyone could be drawn to this sound. Secrecy was his only shield, and this man's pain was a beacon threatening to burn it away.
He didn't think. He acted. He spun on his heel and bolted out of the tavern's back entrance, a collapsed wall that opened into another ruined alley. He didn't look back. The man's ragged, pain-filled curses chased him for a few steps before being swallowed by the oppressive silence of the ruins.
He ran, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. He plunged deeper into the skeletal remains of the city, a maze of scorched stone and grasping, skeletal fingers of collapsed roofs. The scent of rain on cold ash clung to the air. Strange, violet moss grew in the cracks of the cobblestones, pulsing with a faint, internal light. Everything here was alien, broken.
Except him.
As he ran, his mind raced, fitting the pieces together with a terrifying new logic. The axe. The glass shard. The man's wrist. It wasn't a fluke. It was a rule. It wasn't that his body was a shield that repelled force. It was… a shoreline. And everything that crashed against it, no matter how strong, simply broke, its power spent, its form undone. A thrown rock would turn to dust. A sword would turn to scrap. A fist would turn to splintered bone.
The implications settled in his gut like a block of ice. He wasn't just invulnerable. His very existence was a form of violence to this world. His cowardice, his instinctual flinching—the very core of his pathetic identity—was now a weapon of horrifying effectiveness.
He finally slowed, gasping for breath, and ducked behind a towering stone pillar that might have once supported a grand archway. He pressed his back against the cool stone, trying to calm the frantic thumping in his chest. He needed a place to hide, to think, to wait for the cover of night.
A scuffling sound from the other side of the alley broke the silence. Voices. Low and guttural.
"…saw him run this way. The Warden wants the Void-touched, and he wants the girl."
"What's so important about the girl?"
"She has it. The Scrip. Her family were Scribes before the Purge. Now find her."
Peeking around the edge of the pillar, Ravi saw them. Two guards, the same kind who had tried to seize him at the execution. They were cornering a young woman, no older than himself. She had dirt smeared on her cheek and fierce, desperate eyes. Her hands were clutched tightly around a small leather pouch tied to her belt.
"Nowhere else to run, little Scribe," the first guard sneered, his hand resting on the hilt of his shortsword. "Hand over your family's trinkets and we'll make your end quick."
The girl's chin lifted in defiance. "You'll get nothing from me, Key-sworn dogs."
This had nothing to do with him.
The old Ravi—the Ravi from an hour ago—would have held his breath, pressed himself deeper into the shadows, and waited for it to be over. Her fate was not his concern. His own survival was all that mattered.
But he had seen a man's wrist shatter just by touching him.
He was no hero. He wasn't brave. The thought of stepping out there and confronting them made his stomach clench with a familiar, sickening dread. But another, newer thought elbowed its way in: what if I didn't have to confront them? What if I just… stumbled?
The first guard drew his sword. The blade was chipped but sharp. He took a step toward the girl. "Last chance."
Ravi's body made the decision before his mind could veto it. He sucked in a breath, screwed his eyes shut for a second, and then launched himself out from behind the pillar.
He didn't charge. He didn't roar a challenge. He flailed. He let his foot "catch" on a loose cobblestone and pitched forward with a terrified, convincing yelp, arms windmilling, a perfect picture of a clumsy fool running for his life.
His trajectory was a masterpiece of accidental precision. He stumbled directly into the side of the first guard, just as the man was raising his sword.
Ravi's shoulder made contact with the guard's outstretched sword arm. There was that same, hideous crack. The guard screamed—a sharp, high-pitched sound of pure agony—as his arm broke in two places. The sword flew from his nerveless fingers and skittered across the stones.
The second guard whirled around, his face a mask of shock. "What the—"
Ravi's momentum hadn't stopped. His "fall" continued, sending him sprawling forward onto his hands and knees, directly in the path of the second guard. The guard, caught by surprise, took a panicked step back, tripped over Ravi's "panicked, flailing" body, and went down hard.
His helmeted head slammed into the stone foundation of a nearby wall. The helmet, a solid-looking piece of boiled leather and iron studs, didn't just dent. It crumpled with a sickening crunch, the metal folding inward like wet cardboard. The man inside went limp.
Silence.
Ravi stayed on the ground, his face pressed to the dusty cobblestones, his body trembling. The tremors weren't entirely an act. He pushed himself up slowly, looking at the carnage with wide, terrified eyes. One guard was writhing on the ground, cradling a mangled arm. The other was unconscious, or worse, his head encased in a ruined helmet.
He had neutralized two armed men without throwing a single punch. He had won a fight by being the most convincing coward in the world.
He looked at the girl. She was staring, her mouth slightly agape, her fierce eyes now filled with a bewildered awe. She looked from the downed guards to him, then back again. He expected gratitude, maybe fear. He got something else entirely.
She took a hesitant step toward him, her hand still protectively on her pouch. Her voice was a bare whisper, laced with a superstition so deep it was almost religious.
"It's true," she breathed, her eyes tracing the path of his "fall." "The old woman at the gallows… she was a Seer. She saw you appear in the flash of light."
The girl locked her gaze on his.
"She said a prayer of protection had been answered. She said you were a Jinx on the wicked, an accidental saint sent to break the blades of evil."