Chapter 286
Killing intent
IAM blinked a few times as consciousness slowly seeped back into him, the first thing he felt being the sting of little pieces of glass pressed against his cheek. There was dried blood beneath him too, rough and flaky against his skin, and for a moment he simply lay there, gathering enough strength to move. With a low grunt he pushed himself up, his muscles complaining, and lifted his head to take in his surroundings.
He was completely alone.
The room felt strangely hollow without Blaze's chaotic presence. The blood around him had turned dark and stiff, forming a brittle crust that cracked under the slightest shift of his body. Judging by how thoroughly it had dried, he must have been unconscious for quite some time.
Not too far away, something on the ground caught his eye—KASSARA. It seemed that at some point it had slipped out of Blaze's bullet wound. That alone was surprising; IAM had been certain he had driven it in as deep as physically possible. He stared at it for a moment, still trying to piece together how it had fallen free.
Whatever the reason, he silently thanked the fact Blaze hadn't taken it with him.
IAM reached down and picked up KASSARA. Then he turned toward the corner, where his blazer lay crumpled on the floor. Despite everything, it was overall unharmed—only a few faint blood stains and scattered flecks of glass clung to the fabric.
He let out a breath and slowly walked over to retrieve it.
He picked it up and slid KASSARA back into its holster. Then he lifted his blazer and shook off a few stubborn flecks of glass before slipping it on, the fabric settling over his shoulders.
He reached into the inner pocket, pulled out his phone, and glanced at the screen. The hour made him exhale through his nose—it was already edging deeper into the night. In fact, it was almost time for his regular sword training with Henry. A short, humourless breath escaped him. Henry was probably not expecting him to show up today.
IAM lowered the phone and sat down in the corner, drawing his knees slightly up as he leaned back against the cold wall. The motion came naturally, almost instinctively. This ritual of sitting, thinking, replaying—he had carved it into himself during those harrowing hallucinations, when reflection was the only weapon he had left.
It had helped him survive then, and it helped him survive now. Reviewing every mistake. Learning how to kill better. How to run better. How to live, even when everything tried to pull him under.
One of the first things that surfaced in his mind was that overwhelming killing intent.
He had finally understood its origin.
It wasn't random.It wasn't something he suddenly "awakened."It was born there—from that world.
For now, IAM decided to give it a name. Something that matched the place it had sprouted from.
Dushlok.
Dush meaning bad, corrupted, impure, evil.
Lok meaning world, realm, plane of existence.
Put together, the meaning was painfully literal—the bad realm, the corrupted world, the evil plane.
Dushlok was a place where the strong ate the weak, and the stronger ate the strong, and the truly vicious devoured them all. It was a world built on a single, brutal rule—one that pressed against your throat every waking second.
You could only rely on yourself there.
Every moment was fraught with danger. Kill or be killed—there was no middle ground or space to think about anything else. Survival wasn't a goal; it was an instinct that clawed at you constantly.
And though IAM had erased most of those memories—the ones that refused to fade were enough to tell him exactly where that killing intent came from. It wasn't an emotion. It wasn't anger. It wasn't even something he deliberately summoned.
It was something he developed as he killed.
And killed. And killed again. Until it no longer felt like an action, but an instinct wired so deeply into him that it became the only intent he possessed in that world. A reflex sharper than his thoughts.
But now that he was out here, in the real world, that instinct—once necessary, once the only reason he survived—was no longer just out of place.
It was beginning to hinder him.
For example, as Riley—his old teacher from the Hold who had turned out to be part of the Circle of the Accursed—had taught him, intent was everything.
It shaped your actions, sharpened your decisions, and determined the very purity of your strikes. Without intent, an ascender's ability to fight became scattered and dull, a blade swung without aim or conviction. Your movements lost focus, your decisions wavered, and your strength amounted to nothing if your mind lacked a direction to point it in.
During that fight, IAM's intent had been simple, to incapacitate Blaze.
But the killing intent he carried—the one born in Dushlok—kept crashing violently against that goal. One intent trying to subdue, the other trying to annihilate. The conflict had twisted his instincts, muddled his precision and battle prowess. As an ascender, you couldn't afford to be indecisive or internally divided; hesitation was the quickest path to death. You had to commit to your intent fully.
And this… this was a problem IAM couldn't do much about.
He couldn't simply switch off something that had once been the very thing keeping him alive. All he could hope for was that, with time, it would fade—soften into something less consuming. Otherwise, he would have to be careful. Very careful. And maybe avoid getting himself dragged into too many fights until he found a way to tame it.
Another issue was his use of his path. He had only managed to use it twice, and both times to little effect, aside from distracting Blaze with [PIERCE]
IAM understood the problem almost immediately.
His path methods were built around the assumption that he would always have a proper sword with him, something to complement KASSARA and complete the cycle of movements the methods required.
Without that second weapon, without the balance and form it enforced, he couldn't bring out even a fraction of the path's actual potential.
This was something he could fix—at least partially. For now, he would simply have to make sure he always had a sword on him. And maybe… later on… he would need to make some adjustments of his own.
Another was that while he had gained a massive amount of experience in combat in Dushlok, it was, at the end of the day, a really long illusion he had found himself in—not real life. It didn't matter how vivid it had felt or how deeply it had cut into him; the truth was that none of it had happened to his physical body.
In his mind, he could envision doing things—movements, sequences, reactions—that he had practiced thousands of times in that world. Perfect counters. Perfect footwork. Blows executed with precision. But his body couldn't follow the way his thoughts demanded.
His muscles didn't respond with the same sharpness, the same instinctive brutality. They hesitated in places where his mind didn't. They lagged behind, slightly delayed, slightly weaker, slightly slower.
His body hadn't gone through what he had gone through.
So naturally… it was behind.
It was inevitable, really. He carried two different sets of experiences now—one mental, one physical—and they didn't match yet.
He would have to train himself accordingly, force his body to catch up to the version of himself he had become in Dushlok. Only then would his instincts and movements align. Because if his body had been up to par—if it had even been somewhat close to the level of his mind—he could have ended the fight with Blaze far earlier.
IAM thought for a moment, before deciding he would go to his training with Henry. He needed to test himself further, to see how far his body had caught up with his mind.
With one final glance around the room, taking in the faint stains of blood, scattered shards of glass, and the cold emptiness that now seemed so quiet, he stepped toward the door. The sliding door moved smoothly behind him, sealing the room once more.
For a few seconds, everything was still. Then, as if sensing that it was empty, small segments of the walls began to shift. Hidden panels slid inward, gears and mechanisms whirring softly behind the muted hum. Jets of vapor hissed out briefly, loosening dust and lingering blood. Small mechanical arms extended, sweeping the floor and brushing fragments of glass and dirt into recessed compartments. The minuscule sensors scanned every surface, as if searching for the last hidden speck of debris.
Within moments, the room, which had felt heavy and oppressive with the echoes of battle, was returned to its neutral, pristine state. Silently restoring itself for the next occupant.