Page 1
"Watch out!"
Maria's voice cuts through to the father like a blade.
He spins — but he already knows. He's half a second too late.
The third soldier is right behind him. Sword raised high, poised to drop across his neck.
Then—
A blade tears through the soldier's face at blinding speed. He crumples without a sound.
The father turns. Maria stands there, face drained of color, her arm still outstretched from the throw.
He whispers, his voice fractured:
"Stay behind me… you're still too new to this."
But before she can answer, the fourth soldier explodes out of the darkness — charging with a long spear.
The father plants his feet. His breath comes in jagged bursts. But his eyes still hold a fire that hasn't gone out.
Page 2
The spear screams past his chest.
Wood scrapes against armor with a sharp cry of metal.
In one razor-focused instant, the father seizes the spear with both hands. His knuckles go white.
Page 3
One motion. He snaps it clean.
In the same breath, he drives the broken end into the soldier's throat.
He falls.
Then — a sound that shouldn't exist.
He turns.
Another soldier had been behind Maria. His sword now buried in her body — driven through while she was shielding her husband's back.
She took the blow meant for him.
Page 4
Time stops inside the father's mind.
Maria…
The soldier wrenches his blade free from her body. The sound is obscene. She folds onto the ground. Blood pours from her without mercy.
The father's eyes go wide. His face turns to stone.
Then it shatters.
"MARIAAAAA!!"
A scream that tears open the forest. The scream of a man watching everything collapse at once.
He launches himself at the soldier with animal fury. Fists landing before thought. He throws himself on top of him — punch after punch, the crunch of bone, blood spraying — he can't hear, he can't see, he can't stop. His hands find the soldier's throat and he squeezes with everything left in him until the body beneath him goes completely still.
The father's tears fall into the soldier's blood.
Page 5
A spear punches through the father's back from behind.
The pain is fire and lightning and nothing else.
But he stands.
Slowly. Barely. His body shaking like a building about to fall. His face is a mask of blood, sweat, and tears.
He looks at Maria. Blood at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes searching the darkness for him.
He reaches back. Finds the spear lodged in his side. Bites down hard. Pulls.
He turns and hurls it into the chest of the soldier who threw it.
The man drops.
Three soldiers stand before him now. Not one of them moves.
Fear is doing their thinking for them.
Page 6
The father's voice comes out raw and broken:
"If you won't come to me…"
He takes one step forward.
"…then I'll come to you."
He throws himself forward with everything that remains.
His sword punches through the first soldier's chest. Gone.
The second stabs him in the side. The father roars — and answers with a punch that staggers the man, rips the blade free from his own flesh, and cuts him apart in a single stroke.
A knife appears from his sleeve. He buries it in the third soldier's eye. The man screams and writhes. One step. The sword finds his chest.
Silence.
Page 7
The father stands in a field of the fallen.
But the soldiers don't end. They keep coming — wave after wave from behind Bumer, like the tide has no memory of the shore.
Bumer laughs from atop his horse. Savoring every second.
Maria on the ground. Bleeding out. Her eyes growing dim.
The father is riddled with wounds. Blood runs from his mouth.
He does not fall.
Page 8
A sudden, strange stillness.
Only his own ragged breathing fills the space — and Bumer's distant, scattered laughter.
Every eye is on the father.
A wounded beast that hasn't died yet. A thing that should be dead and isn't.
Page 9
Then his knees betray him.
He goes down on one.
Too much blood lost. The world tilts and spins.
Bumer advances alongside Kazuko, unhurried, and calls out with contempt:
"Look at him! The strongest General in the kingdom… on his knees in the dirt like a dog!"
Page 10
The father looks down.
His blood runs over the orange of his armor. The same color he once wore with pride.
Inside his mind, one voice. Just one:
Mabu… Maria… I cannot lose them.
His breath has become short, painful gasps. Every wound on his body is screaming.
Page 11
Bumer smiles — cold, unhurried.
"I think this is the end, General. You fought well…"
A pause.
"…but you never quite met my expectations."
Page 12
The father stands.
Against everything. Against his own body.
He raises his sword in a trembling hand.
"I am only a man trying to protect his family…"
He takes one step. Then another. His body fighting him with every inch.
"…and none of you will let me."
Page 13
A coward's blow from behind.
A sword tears through his back with savage force.
His eyes go wide — the shock arriving before the pain.
Then the pain arrives.
And it wins.
Page 14
He falls to his knees for the last time.
His sword slips from his fingers and strikes the earth beside him.
The dirt clings to his warm blood.
Page 15
He falls onto his side.
He tries to move.
He cannot.
The world contracts around him. Sounds grow distant. Darkness crawls toward his eyes — slow, methodical, without mercy.
Page 16
The soldiers move in. They bind the father and Maria in cold iron chains.
They drop them beside each other in the dirt.
Bumer's voice fills the forest like a proclamation:
"This is what becomes of those who betray me."
Page 17
Maria — through the pain, through the wounds — drags herself toward her husband.
Hot tears streak down her face.
The father watches her with half-closed eyes. Silent.
A look that carries everything: pain, love, and the unbearable weight of regret.
Page 18
A soldier steps forward, his voice sharp as a blade:
"Our informant told us you had an infant with you. Where is the child?"
The father presses his shackled hand against his wound.
He says nothing.
Page 19
Bumer waves a dismissive hand.
"Even if that child escaped — there is no chance it survives in a forest like this."
Page 20
He turns toward the dark trees:
"Deputy Linsan… carry out what we agreed upon."
Then turns to his son:
"Kazuko… what would you suggest we do with them?"
Kazuko smiles — a thin, cold thing. He takes a moment, as if weighing each word on a scale.
"Take them to my castle. Burn them alive. Then place their remains at the gate of the capital — so that everyone understands what awaits those who betray us."
Page 21
Bumer stares at his son.
A long moment of silence.
Then he throws his head back and laughs — loud, genuine, proud.
"THAT'S my son! Ha! You've grown, Kazuko — you've truly grown!"
His laughter echoes alone through the silent forest.
Page 22
From the darkness, a masked figure approaches.
Unhurried. Deliberate.
Bumer notices. The laughter dies.
The figure leans close and whispers something in the King's ear. No one else hears a word.
Page 23
Bumer speaks low:
"…Very well. That is our arrangement. You are free to do as you see fit."
The masked figure turns.
Slowly. Toward the father lying broken on the ground.
Each footstep is quiet. Too quiet.
Page 24
The figure crouches close to the father's face.
And whispers — words that belong to no one else in that clearing.
The father's exhausted eyes snap open.
Shock.
Then — against everything — a smile.
Small. Unreadable. Heartbroken.
Continued in Chapter Three: What Fled With the River