I stepped over Dominik's cooling corpse, my feet leaving bloody prints on the cold marble. I didn't look back. The manor, once a place of prestige and order, now looked like a hollowed-out carcass, shattered glass, splintered wood, and the stench of death clinging to the walls.
Bernard was gone. I could feel the absence of his cold, oppressive mana. He was a coward at heart, he had used Dominik as a shield to buy himself time to flee.
I took to the sky. My blood-wings beat with a heavy, rhythmic thrum, carrying me high above the jagged silhouette of the manor. I scanned the horizon, my green eye cutting through the morning haze. There, on the northern road leading away from Town Tata, a dust cloud was rising. A convoy of three heavy carriages, flanked by a swarm of mounted bandits, was moving at a desperate gallop.
The King was fleeing his throne.
I banked hard, gravity pulling at my stomach as I dived. I became a crimson blur, a fallen star of vengeance. I hit the rear of the convoy like a landslide. My blood-sword, still extended from my left stump, whistled through the air. The two bandits guarding the tail of the last carriage didn't even have time to draw their steel before my blade passed through their chests, impaling them together against the wooden frame of the transport.
The alarm rang out immediately, a frantic, high-pitched whistle.
"Aerial attack! To the roofs!" a captain screamed.
A squad of archers perched atop the moving carriages scrambled to their feet, nocking arrows with trembling hands. They leveled their bows at me, the sun glinting off their broadheads.
I didn't give them the chance to breathe.
Using the momentum of the moving carriage, I vaulted into the air, my wings snapping shut to reduce my profile. As they loosed their first volley, I moved like a flicker of shadow. I landed in the center of their formation, the marble-hard blood-blade at my side spinning in a continuous, lethal circle.
I moved too fast for their eyes to follow.
Squelch. Squelch. Squelch.
In a single, fluid motion, I sliced through the throats of four archers. Their bows clattered to the road as they slumped over the side, their lifeblood adding to the crimson trail I was carving through the dust.
I stood atop the speeding carriage, my hair whipping in the wind, my naked body covered in fresh gore. I looked toward the lead carriage, the most ornate one. Bernard was in there. I could smell his fear, sharp and acrid, even over the scent of the horses and the road.
The convoy sped on, but the distance between me and the man who ordered my torture was shrinking with every heartbeat. I raised my blade, the crimson light of my wings casting a long, terrifying shadow over the fleeing wagons. The "deceased" was coming to collect.
The lead carriage groaned as I landed on its roof, the wood splintering under my weight. I didn't bother with the handle. I swung my body over the side and used my blood-slicked hand to rip the door clean off its hinges, tossing it into the wind where it shattered against a following horse.
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of expensive cologne and cheap sweat. Bernard sat huddled in the corner, his face a mask of pale, twitching terror. Beside him stood a bandit captain, a veteran with cold eyes who didn't hesitate. He lunged across the cramped space, a jagged, poisoned dagger aimed straight for my throat.
I didn't even blink.
My blood-blade hissed through the air in a vertical arc. It caught him right between the eyes. The sound was a wet, heavy thud as the blade cleaved through his skull and down into his chest, splitting him in half before he could even register he was dead. His body slumped in two different directions, painting the velvet interior of the carriage in a spray of hot, dark crimson.
Bernard stared at the remains of his guard, his breath coming in shallow, pathetic hitches. Even now, with death sitting across from him, his arrogance tried to find a foothold.
"You... you're a monster, Eirene, look at you. You've lost your soul. You're a naked animal, a tongueless freak. You think killing me changes anything? You're already dead to the world!"
Bernard hissed, his voice trembling as he backed into the corner, his eyes roaming over my naked, gore-drenched form. He didn't wait for a response. He scrambled for the opposite door, trying to throw himself out of the moving carriage into the dusty road.
I wasn't about to let him have the mercy of a quick fall.
As he reached for the latch, I flicked my wrist. A thin, whip-like strand of hardened blood lashed out from my blade. It caught him right across the back of his ankles.
"Ahhhh… damn you knave!"
The blade sliced through his achilles tendons with surgical precision. Bernard let out a high-pitched, curdling shriek of agony as he collapsed onto the floorboards, his legs useless. He tried to crawl, but his heels were nothing more than a mess of severed white bone and shredded muscle. He was trapped in the very cage he had tried to flee.
I stepped over the bandit's corpse, the blood on the floor squelching beneath my feet. I loomed over him, my massive red wings filling the small carriage, casting him in an eternal, crimson shadow.
Bernard looked up at me, the mockery gone, replaced by the realization that he was no longer a lord, he was just the next piece of meat on the butcher's block. I leaned down, the tip of my blood-sword resting right against his trembling throat.
"No... more... talk," I rasped,
The words thick with the copper taste of the vengeance I was finally about to swallow. Bernard collapsed into a heap of expensive silk and pathetic desperation. He tried to use his hands to back away from me, his useless, severed heels dragging across the blood-slicked floorboards.
"Wait! Eirene, please! I can give you everything! Gold, land, a new identity! I can make you a queen in a different province! You want fame? I can fix the records! Just let me live!"
The words felt like maggots crawling in my ears. I looked down at him, and every memory of the last six days crashed over me in a suffocating wave.
I remembered the salt. I remembered the sound of the sledgehammer turning my shins to dust. I remembered the smell of my own rotting toes and the way he had watched it all with a look of clinical boredom, as if my agony were merely a footnote in his ledger. I saw the faces of the demi-humans I had seen chained in the marketplace, the bruised faces of the maids Dominik had slaughtered for sport, and the cold, corrupt heart of Town Tata that he had cultivated like a poisonous garden.
He thought this was a game. He thought everything had a price.
The Blood Curse within me surged, the crimson light from my wings glowing so brightly it turned the interior of the carriage into a vision of hell. I felt the pressure build in my scarred throat. I didn't just want to kill him; I wanted him to hear the soul he had tried to break.
I leaned down, my face inches from his. I forced my lungs to expand, pushing past the numbness and the missing tongue, using every ounce of my mana to vibrate the very air in my chest.
"You... Are... Nothing," I roared.
Bernard's eyes went wide, his jaw dropping in a final, silent plea.
I didn't use a clean stroke. I drove the jagged blood-sword straight through the center of his chest, pinning him to the floor of the carriage. I twisted the blade, feeling his ribs snap and his heart burst beneath the hardened ichor. He let out a choked, wet gasp, his hands clutching weakly at my arm before his eyes glazed over, the light of his corrupt life finally flickering out.
The carriage continued to rumble down the road, but the silence inside was absolute.
I pulled my blade free and stood up, stepping out of the carriage and onto the roof. The wind caught my hair, clearing the scent of death. I looked back at Town Tata, the silhouette of the manor growing smaller in the distance.
The deceased girl had finished her work. The lords were dead, the cellar was empty, and the salt was washed away in a river of their own blood. I spread my wings wide against the morning sun, a naked, broken, and beautiful monster, finally free of the cage.