Time seemed to stretch.
Processing what had just happened wasn't easy.
Victor rose to his feet, shaking his head as if to clear the fog from his mind. He stumbled out of the alley and into the open. A shaft of sunlight struck his face. He blinked, then let out a dry, breathless laugh.
"I can't believe I'm still alive."
The street opened into a small market square. The air was thick with the stench of sweat, smoke, and spoiled vegetables. People shouted over each other — some selling meat and bread, others sitting on the ground with baskets at their feet. The noise pressed on his ears, too loud, too alive.
An old woman crossed his path, limping under the weight of a bundle of herbs. Her clothes were in tatters; her lips cracked and dry. A small child followed her closely, thin as a shadow, clutching her sleeve.
She stopped when she saw him. For a moment, her face softened, almost kind. Then she hesitated, dropped to one knee, and looked up at him with clouded eyes.
"What are you doing?" Victor muttered.
Her trembling hand rose and brushed his cheek. "Poor boy… you look kind. But kindness won't keep you alive here."
He frowned. "What's that supposed to mean, old woman?"
"This city eats people whole," she whispered. "The strong take what they want. The weak vanish." Her voice shook as she stepped back. "You should go before—"
A sudden tug at his coat made him whirl around. The boy's small hand was buried in his pocket.
Victor caught his wrist. "Thief."
The child cried out in pain, eyes wide with terror.
"Please!" the old woman begged, "he didn't mean—he's hungry, please!"
Her words grated against Victor's ears. Something tightened in his chest — not anger exactly, but pressure, a restless pulse beneath his skin. He'd felt it before. It always came when the world felt too loud, too close, as if all his frustration wanted to burst.
The market's noise swelled and shrank like a tide. People looked but no one interfered; life was tough and no one was willing to risk themselves for some beggars.
Victor stood motionless, his hand still clamped around the boy's wrist. The child's cry seemed to stretch forever, thin and desperate, before it dissolved into the din of the crowd.
"Please," the old woman begged again, voice trembling. "He didn't mean to! Let him go, sir, he's—"
Her words faltered as Victor looked at her. There was no anger in his eyes, no sense of judgment — only a cold, distant curiosity, as if he were watching something small crawl across the ground.
He let go, his eyes hiding a sinister light.
The woman tugged the boy away. "Come, Charles—"
Victor took a slow step forward, giving off an eerie air.
"Run," the woman whispered to the boy. She pushed him back, turning toward Victor as if to block his path. Her arms trembled, but she tried to stand straight.
The woman's thoughts came in fractured flashes—run, Charles, run—but her legs were mud. The boy's mind was white static; terror and pain consumed him.
"Please," she rasped, "we have nothing—"
Victor closed the distance in two slow strides, fingers clamping her shoulder like a butcher testing joint.
A single thought pulsed behind his eyes: How loud will she scream?
His hand rose—not in a fist, but open, fingers relaxed, the way a man swats a fly.
The flat of his palm met her cheekbone with a sound like a crate of crockery dropped on stone.
She twisted; cartilage crackled.
Victor smiled—not cruel, curious—and the market held its breath.
Skin split first, a thin red zipper that instantly fattened.
Then the deeper architecture gave: he felt the bone flex, hesitate, and finally buckle, a wet crack traveling up his wrist.
Her jaw slewed sideways, completely shattered; teeth—small, yellowed, still holding the morning's bread crumbs—flew like trajectories in the air.
She folded without a scream, only a hiss of air through torn lips that now hung in flaps, scarlet and obscene, revealing gum tissue glistening like raw chicken.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh—"
The boy's cry climbed an octave, raw enough to scrape paint.
Victor caught him by the hair—fine as silk, surprisingly strong—and lifted.
The child's feet skittered, toes scraping for traction that wasn't there. His cries, as pitiful as they could be, made the onlookers turn their heads in shame.
He brought the face down once, experimentally, against the nearest cobble.
A dull thunk, the soft give of cartilage.
Again, harder; this time the nose burst sideways, a cherry-red smear across the granite.
On the third impact the forehead split in a star-pattern, skin peeling back to reveal the pale curve of bone beneath.
Blood sheeted down into the boy's eyes, turning his frantic pleas into gargles.
Victor found a rhythm—lift, drop, lift, drop—each impact a little softer as the skull lost its shape.
By the seventh strike the face was no longer a face: it was a bowl of crimson pulp, featureless except for one white tooth stuck to the upper lip like a misplaced pearl.
He let go.
The body slumped sideways, one small hand still twitching, fingers opening and closing as if trying to catch the last of the daylight.
Victor straightened, rolled his shoulder until it clicked.
Everyone stared in horror; the sight before them was the sort of cruelty no one expected to witness in a lifetime. The market froze—then erupted. Women screamed, vendors frantically bundled their goods and fled, and a few stood rooted, unable to comprehend what had just happened.
Victor, unbothered, studied his palms: a shallow laceration across the meat of his thumb, someone's hair between two knuckles.
Nothing that wouldn't rinse.
He cleaned his hands on the old woman's shawl, now bloody like a butcher's cloth, stepped over the shaking child, and walked away, looking for what the city wanted next.
He exhaled, almost a sigh.
"What a mess," he murmured.