The world narrowed to a tunnel of smoke, screams, and the coppery stench of blood. Kael's boots pounded the hard-packed earth of the village path, a rhythm he had not marched in half a century. The pitchfork in his hand was no longer a tool, but an extension of a fury he had forgotten he could possess. The scene before him was a grotesque parody of the peace he had just left.
Thatched roofs bloomed with orange fire, spewing embers into the sky like angry fireflies. Dark, scabrous figures—goblins, lean and vicious—darted through the chaos. They were not an army; they were a plague, swarming over Emberwood, driven by a mindless hunger for destruction. He saw one dragging a squealing pig from a pen, another smashing a window with a crude axe, and a pack of three cornering a family trying to flee their burning home.
His gaze swept the scene, the paladin's tactical mind overriding the farmer's horror. Twenty. Maybe thirty. Disorganized. But ruthless. Then his eyes found the watchtower. The sentry, young Tommen, was slumped over the rail, a black-fletched arrow protruding from his throat. The bell was silent.
A coldness settled over Kael, a glacial calm that had once been as familiar as his own breath. The grief, the rage—he channeled them into the ice. They were fuel, not a distraction.
A group of four goblins, their attention fixed on battering down the door of Brenna's bakery, noticed him. They shrieked, a sound like grinding stones, and turned, brandishing rusty scimitars and jagged knives. They saw an old man with a farming tool. They did not see the predator beneath.
Kael didn't break stride. As the first goblin lunged, he pivoted on his lead foot, the movement a whisper of retained grace. The pitchfork, flung with the full force of his body and a lifetime of combat, became a javelin. It wasn't an elegant weapon, but it was brutally effective. The iron tines took the lead goblin in the center of its mass, punching through leather and flesh with a sickening thump, the force so immense it lifted the creature off its feet and slammed it into the two behind it, pinning all three to the bakery's wall in a squirming, shrieking tangle.
The fourth goblin froze, its beady eyes wide with shock.
Kael didn't. He closed the distance in two strides, his left hand snapping out to seize the creature's wrist as it finally brought its scimitar up. He heard the distinct crack of bone. The goblin's shriek was cut short as Kael's right hand, now empty, drew the sword from his hip.
The blade slid from the scabbard with a whisper. It was the sound of a secret being told, a ghost being given voice. He expected to feel the resistance of long-disused steel, the weight of his shame. He expected dead, cold metal.
He was wrong.
A light erupted from the blade, so sudden and so violent it was less an illumination and more a detonation. It was not the warm, golden, life-affirming radiance of Lysander. That light had been like the sun at dawn, full of promise and healing. This was the light of a lightning strike—harsh, silver-white, and utterly merciless. It did not warm; it judged. It did not heal; it revealed. The shadows it cast were sharp as knives, and the very air crackled with a static charge that made the hairs on Kael's arm stand on end.
The power that flooded him was not a gentle stream but a tidal wave of frozen fire. It did not soothe his aged muscles; it scourged them, burning away fifty years of stiffness and fatigue in an instant. It was invigorating, yes, but it was a painful, violent invigoration, like a limb that had fallen asleep now screaming back to life with a million pins and needles. His senses sharpened to an unbearable acuity. He could smell the individual scents of fear-sweat on each goblin, hear the frantic flutter of a moth trapped in a burning window, see the individual pores on the face of the terrified creature whose wrist he still held.
A shield of the same relentless, silver light shimmered into existence on his left arm, not a physical object, but a disc of solidified will, humming with latent power. It felt as natural as his own skin, and as cold.
Then, a voice spoke within him. It had no sound, yet it filled the cavern of his skull. It was not a single voice, but a chorus of them—the crisp verdict of a magistrate, the cold whisper of a headsman, the implacable grind of tectonic plates. It was female, and it was absolute.
"The debt is incurred. The Scale demands balance."
The goblin in his grip, mesmerized by the terrifying light, finally found its voice and screamed.
Kael's body moved before his mind could form the thought. It was not the refined, ceremonial swordsmanship of Lysander's paladins, all sweeping arcs and defensive postures. This was executioner's work. His blade, wreathed in searing silver, moved in a short, brutally efficient horizontal arc. It did not simply cut; it unmade. The goblin's head was not cleaved, but seemed to dissolve into motes of black ash under the light's touch, its body following suit a heartbeat later, collapsing into a pile of soot that scattered on the wind.
There was no blood. Only dust and the smell of ozone.
The remaining goblins, those not pinned by the pitchfork, stared in stupefied horror. Their primal minds understood fire, steel, and blood. They did not understand this. This was divine wrath, and it terrified them.
Kael gave them no time to process. He became a silver storm. He moved through them, and where his sword fell, goblins ceased to be. He did not block their attacks; he met them with his luminous shield, and their weapons shattered against it, the reverberations turning their arms to pulp. He did not dodge; he advanced, his every step a declaration of finality.
A goblin archer perched on a water barrel loosed an arrow. Kael didn't even turn. The shield on his arm seemed to move of its own accord, intercepting the projectile. There was a flash of silver, and the arrow ceased to exist.
He saw a larger goblin, a chieftain by its spiked armor, trying to rally a group near the smithy. Kael pointed his sword. A lance of pure, silver energy shot from the tip, striking the chieftain in the chest. The creature didn't even have time to scream. It simply vaporized, leaving only a scorched mark on the ground and the stunned faces of its followers.
This was not battle. It was eradication.
In what felt like both an eternity and a single heartbeat, the immediate area around the bakery was cleared. The only sounds were the crackle of flames and the ragged gasps of the family huddled inside, now peering through a cracked door. Kael stood amidst the settling dust and fading silver motes, his chest heaving. The divine energy coursing through him was a torrent, both exhilarating and horrifying. It felt… right. Like a key turning in a lock he hadn't known was there.
The voice spoke within him again, quieter now, but no less immense.
"You have carried a burden that was not yours to bear, Kaelen. You enacted the justice your former god was too weak to administer. His was the way of the open hand. Mine is the way of the clenched fist. The way of the Scale. Your service begins anew."
Kael looked down at the sword in his hand. The light had dimmed to a steady, relentless glow, like captured moonlight on a frozen lake. It was not forgiveness. It was vindication. And as he looked up, his winter-blue eyes now holding a glint of that same unforgiving silver, he saw the remaining goblins breaking, fleeing back towards the Murkwood.
He took a step forward, ready to pursue, to hunt, to balance the Scale completely.
But a weak cry from a collapsed hut nearby stopped him. A child, trapped under a fallen beam.
The voice of the goddess was silent for a moment, then issued a new command, one that held a strange, cold mercy.
"The immediate threat is neutralized. Secure the defenseless. Justice is not merely vengeance. It is order."
Kael stood for a moment, torn between the urge to chase down the fleeing monsters and the pull to help. The new power within him hummed, acquiescing to this new directive. He turned his back on the forest and ran toward the trapped child, the silver light of Theron, the Iron Scale, casting his long, decisive shadow across the saved, but forever changed, village of Emberwood.