The night did not whisper this time.
It came heavy.
The Inland Sea was restless, waves breaking harder than they should have, wind pushing in erratic bursts as if the air itself were agitated. Clouds choked the moons, leaving the coast in uneven darkness—long stretches of blind black broken by brief flashes of silver.
Kael felt it an hour before the first blade moved.
Too many absences.
Too many places where sound should have been.
He did not make camp.
He walked the shoreline instead, boots sinking into wet sand, spear replaced by a shorter weapon scavenged from a dead mercenary weeks earlier. He flexed his hands slowly, feeling how easily they obeyed, how ready his body felt despite the ache that should have been there.
"Too many," he murmured.
They did not come as a wave.
They came as a net.
The first arrow took him in the shoulder.
Not a warning shot.
A killing one.
It should have punched through muscle and shattered bone.
It didn't.
The impact spun him, pain flaring bright and sharp, but the shaft lodged shallow, refusing to bite deep. Kael ripped it free and felt blood spill—real blood, hot and immediate—then slow as if the wound itself understood it had no time to waste.
That was when the night exploded.
Figures poured out of the rocks, the dunes, the shallow surf itself. Blades flashed. Crossbows snapped. Knives flew from angles designed to overwhelm, not test.
Professional.
Organized.
Paid very well.
Kael ran straight at them.
Not because it was brave.
Because stopping meant being buried.
The first man died with his knife still halfway out of its sheath. Kael crushed his throat with the heel of his hand and used the collapsing body as cover as two bolts slammed into it from behind.
He rolled, came up low, and drove his blade into a knee. The leg folded wrong. The scream was cut short when Kael severed the man's jaw with the backswing.
Blood sprayed warm across his face.
There was no time to think.
Only sequence.
Move.
Strike.
Break.
Move again.
They came in groups of five and six, rotating attackers to keep pressure constant. Some fought to kill. Others fought to pin him, slow him, bleed him out for the next wave.
Kael stopped trying to disengage.
He went deeper.
He took wounds—real ones. A blade slid between ribs. Another split his thigh. A hammer cracked against his forearm hard enough to numb it completely.
He fought through it anyway.
He used bodies as barriers.
Used momentum as a weapon.
Used fear when he saw it flicker.
One assassin lunged too hard. Kael caught the wrist, twisted until bone shattered, then slammed the man headfirst into another attacker. Both went down. Kael stepped on one skull until it caved with a sound like breaking pottery.
The sand turned black with blood.
Then slick.
Then treacherous.
Kael slipped once.
Three blades came down.
He caught one, took another across the back, and drove his forehead into the face above him. Teeth shattered. He rolled, seized a dropped axe, and began using it without finesse.
This was not clean anymore.
It was survival.
He hacked through tendons.
Crushed spines.
Split armor at joints where protection failed.
Men screamed.
Others didn't.
Some tried to retreat.
Kael did not let them.
Not out of cruelty.
Out of understanding.
If one escaped, this would happen again—larger, cleaner, deadlier.
So he kept moving until his arms burned and his lungs screamed and the night was nothing but red motion and breaking flesh.
At some point the assassins stopped coordinating.
At some point they stopped being professionals.
They became afraid.
That was when Kael became truly dangerous.
Fear made them hesitate.
Hesitation got them killed.
By the time the last of them fell, the tide had crept halfway up the beach, waves lapping at bodies tangled together in grotesque piles. Armor clinked softly as the sea tried to reclaim what it could.
Kael stood alone in the wreckage.
He was drenched in blood that was not all his own.
His hands shook—not with weakness, but excess.
Every breath scraped.
And still—
He was standing.
Dozens of wounds marked him.
None were killing him fast enough.
That terrified him.
He dropped to one knee, gagged, and vomited into the surf. Salt burned open cuts. He welcomed it. Pain was proof something inside him had not yet crossed a line.
When he finally forced himself upright, the beach was silent except for the sea.
Nearly a hundred bodies lay scattered across the sand and rocks.
Human.
Skilled.
Erased.
Kael looked at his hands.
"Now you understand," he said softly, to the night, to the councils, to the invisible weight of belief pressing down on him. "This is what you make when you push."
At dawn he burned what he could.
Not out of respect.
Out of necessity.
He buried nothing. Graves created questions. Ash answered none.
When the sun finally rose, Kael stood at the edge of the Inland Sea, exhaustion hollowing him out at last. His body was already sealing wounds, already redistributing pain, already preparing to keep going.
He hated that most of all.
Across the water, haze blurred into promise and threat.
Azhakar waited.
Storms.
Empires that had already broken.
Belief too old to bend easily.
Distance again.
Not to escape.
To survive what he was becoming.
Kael paid passage without bargaining.
As the ship pulled away from shore, Vaeloria shrank behind him—its forests, plains, and cities collapsing into memory.
Behind him, belief screamed, furious at being abandoned.
Ahead of him lay anonymity.
Or the next mistake the world would make.
Kael closed his eyes as the ship cut through dark water.
Not in rest.
In grim acceptance.