In this world—this cruel, rotting world of Knights and Nobles and War—kindness is a weakness. It was a target painted on your back.
Yara had died because she was weak. His parents had died because they were weak.
And he... he was still alive. Why?
Because for a moment, in that interrogation room, he hadn't been kind. He hadn't been good. He had wanted to kill. He had wanted to destroy.
And in that moment of pure hatred, the iron had snapped. Norvin slowly pulled his legs under him. He rose to a crouch, the chains clanking heavily.
The tears on his cheeks began to dry, leaving tracks through the dirt on his face. He didn't wipe them away this time. He let them crust over, a testament to the boy who had died in this cell.
He closed his eyes and reached into the back of his mind, past the grief, past the sorrow, until he found the voice of his grandfather.
"The blood that flows in you does not know how to kneel."
Norvin opened his eyes. In the pitch blackness, his pupils dilated, adjusting to the dark like a predator.
"I won't kneel," he whispered. His voice was different now. It was steady. Cold. "I won't die in the mud."
He grabbed the heavy chains binding his wrists. He just held them, feeling the cold metal, the symbol of his slavery.
Norvin said to the darkness. "You took her. My parents bowed, and you took them. I tried to just live... and you took everything."
A strange rhythm began to beat in his chest.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It was the melody Thane had heard. The drums of war.
"Fine," Norvin hissed.
He stood up fully, his spine straightening, the bruises on his body forgotten. He channeled his focus inward, searching for that heat the Red Ghost had spoken of.
He felt it. It was deep in his gut, a dormant volcano. It felt like burning magma. It felt like hunger.
"If kindness gets you killed," Norvin vowed, his voice rising, echoing off the stone walls, "then I will strip it from my soul."
He gripped the chains tighter. His knuckles turned white. The muscles in his forearms rippled, veins bulging like snakes beneath the skin.
"I will become stronger. Stronger than Gareth. Stronger than the goddamn Knights. Stronger than any asshole."
The metal links began to groan. A high-pitched whine of stressing iron filled the cell.
"I will become the Master," Norvin snarled, baring his teeth in the dark. "I will be the Master of this entire damned world."
Heat radiated from his body, drying the damp air around him. The Numen flooded his limbs, a rush of intoxicating power that banished the fatigue and the pain.
"You took everything from me," Norvin whispered to the invisible world outside his cell, to the gods, to the kings, to fate itself.
CREAK.
The heavy chain link in his left hand began to elongate.
"Now," Norvin said, his eyes burning with a terrifying new light, the light of absolute, bottomless Greed. "Now... it is time for me to take everything from you."
SNAP.
With a violent jerk, Norvin ripped the chain apart.
He held the broken ends in his hands, breathing heavily, not from exhaustion, but from the thrill of it.
He wasn't crying anymore. The sea of tears had been drained. In its place, a fire had started. A fire that would burn the world to ash.
Somewhere above him, a muffled explosion rocked the ceiling. Screams erupted in the distance. The distraction had begun.
Norvin looked at the iron bars of the cell door. He didn't see a barrier anymore. He saw the first thing he was going to break.
BOOM.
The ceiling of the dungeon shook violently, sending a shower of limestone dust raining down onto Norvin's head.
He looked up, his eyes gleaming in the dark. 'She did it', he thought.
From the corridor outside his cell, he heard the heavy stomp of boots.
"Breach on the upper levels!" a guard shouted, his voice cracking with panic. "floor 4 is compromised! All units, move up! Move up!"
The heavy iron door to the stairwell clanged open, and the sound of rushing feet faded as the guards abandoned their posts to handle the chaos above.
They didn't think twice about the boy in the hole. Why would they? He was just a slave.
Norvin bend the bars of his prison, he stepped out. The corridor was empty. The torches flickered, casting long, dancing shadows.
He inhaled the air. It tasted like opportunity.
He sprinted toward the stairs. But instead of sneaking, he moved with the heavy, thundering purpose of a bull. He reached the floor above him.
Rows of cells lined the walls. Inside, he could see faces pressed against the bars—criminals, thieves, war slaves. Men who had been left to rot.
The upper floors were merely cages for the weak—petty thieves, exhausted slaves, and common criminals held by rusted iron and bored guards. But as the stairs spiraled downward, the air grew heavy with Awen suppression seals and the silence of the grave. The deeper you descended, the greater the threat. The bottom floors were not built for men, but for monsters, S-tier criminals, and political prisoners too dangerous to see the sun, locked behind blast doors thick enough to stop a siege engine.
Norvin stopped in front of the first heavy door. He didn't look for a key. He grabbed the iron lock with both hands.
The heat flooded his arms. The metal groaned, twisted like soft clay, and snapped. Norvin kicked the door open. The prisoner inside, a scarred bandit, stared at him in shock.
Norvin didn't stop. He moved to the next cell. Snap. Kick. Next. Snap. Kick.
He moved like a whirlwind, tearing doors off their hinges. Within moments, the corridor was filling with confused, terrified men.
Norvin stood in the center of the hallway, the chaotic mob looking at him—a small, bruised boy who had just ripped steel apart.
"How does freedom taste?" Norvin shouted, his voice echoing off the stone walls. He pointed to the stairs leading up. "Go! You are free! RUN!"
The hesitation broke. With a collective roar, the prisoners surged forward. They didn't need weapons; they were a stampede. They rushed the stairs, creating the perfect meat shield, the perfect chaos.
Norvin watched them go. He felt the building shake again. This tremor was different. It was violent. It came from high above.
Norvin frowned. He looked at the ceiling. 'Is that... her?'
Doubt crept in. The Red Ghost was weak. She was fading. Could she really cause this much destruction? Unless... unless she had forcibly possessed someone again? But that would kill her. She would burn out her remaining awen in seconds.
'She helped me*',* Norvin thought, his jaw tightening. 'I don't leave debts unpaid.'
If she was causing this chaos, she was dying for him. And if she wasn't... if she was still trapped somewhere...
His eyes darted to the stairs leading down.
The prisons were structured by threat level. The deeper you went, the heavier the chains. He was on underground floor 3. and there were 7 floors below. The isolation wards. The places where they kept men who could use numen and awen, dangerous criminals.
"I have to get her out," Norvin muttered.
He turned his back on the freedom of the surface. He ran down. He descended past his own level, into the suffocating depths of level four, the five, searching though all cells, until he reached level eight.
The air here was stale, heavy with the metallic tang of Awen suppression seals. The doors were thicker here, engraved with runes.
He rounded a corner and skidded to a halt. The guards here hadn't left.
Three of them stood blocking the heavy blast door that led to the lower depths. They were not the standard jailers. These men wore the full plate armour of the Bronze Falchion elites.
They turned as Norvin appeared. "A slave?" one of the guards said, his voice muffled by his helmet. "How did he get out?"
"It doesn't matter," the second guard said, drawing a sword. "Kill him."
Norvin didn't flinch. He didn't have a weapon, so he became one. He charged to meet them.
The first guard swung a mace. Norvin ducked under the swing, moving faster than any untrained human should. He slammed his fist into the guard's breastplate.
CRUNCH.
The armour dented inward. The guard gasped, the wind knocked out of him, but he didn't fly back.
'Numen', Norvin realized. 'They are using Numen too.'
"Die, rat!" the second guard shouted, thrusting a spear.
Norvin side-stepped, the spear tip grazing his ribs. He grabbed the shaft of the spear, yanked the guard forward, and headbutted him.
Norvin's forehead split open, blood blinding his left eye, but the guard went down, unconscious.
"You rat!" the third guard roared. He was a giant of a man, wielding a Greatsword—a massive slab of steel that was easily as tall as Norvin himself.
The guard brought the sword down in a vertical cleave.
Norvin rolled to the side. The sword smashed into the stone floor, sparking violently.
Norvin didn't retreat. He jumped onto the guard's arm, scrambling up like a feral cat. He wrapped his legs around the guard's helmeted head and squeezed.
He poured every ounce of his hatred, every ounce of his new strength into his thighs.
SNAP.
The guard's neck gave way. The giant crumbled. Norvin landed in the blood-slicked dust, panting heavily. He looked at the fallen giant.
He reached down and grabbed the hilt of the fallen Greatsword.
It was ludicrously heavy. Norvin grabbed it with one hand. He grunted, his muscles screaming as he channeled the Numen. The veins in his arm bulged like cables.
He lifted it. The tip of the blade dragged on the floor, but he held it.
"Come on!" Norvin screamed at the darkness.
More footsteps. The door behind the guards opened. Four more elites poured out.
Norvin swung. The Greatsword whistled through the air. The sheer weight of it shattered the shield of the first attacker, sending him flying into the wall.
But there were too many.
A sword slashed Norvin's back. A mace clipped his shoulder.
Norvin roared, swinging the giant blade wildly, keeping them at bay, but he was getting tired. The Numen was burning him up from the inside. He was bleeding from a dozen wounds.
'Is this it?' he thought, parrying a strike that rattled his bones. 'I freed myself... just to die a few floors lower?'
He was backed into a corner. Three swords were raised, ready to impale him.
He looked up, gripping his oversized sword, ready to take at least one more with him.
BOOM!
The ceiling directly above them didn't just crack—it exploded inward.
Debris, massive chunks of stone, and a cloud of freezing mist crashed down into the corridor. The guards were thrown back by the shockwave.
Through the hole in the ceiling, a figure dropped down, landing in a crouch amidst the rubble.
Ice crystallized instantly on the walls. The temperature plummeted.
The figure stood up, holding a sword made of transparent, razor-sharp ice.
"NORVIN!"
Norvin blinked, wiping blood from his eyes. It wasn't the Red Ghost.
The man standing there, chest heaving, looking like a vengeful spirit of winter, was Remus.
"Old man Remus?" Norvin croaked, the giant sword slipping slightly in his grip.
The joy Norvin felt was a sharp, aching thing in his chest.
It wasn't the joy of survival. It was the joy of being seen. For the first time in his wretched life, someone had come back for him. Not to use him, not to beat him, but to save him.
Remus looked at the guards, then he looked at Norvin. His eyes widened. He saw the broken bodies of the elites. He saw the blood. And he saw his small friend, standing amidst the carnage, wielding a Greatsword that belonged to a giant with a terrifying, raw strength.
"You..." Remus stammered, shock overriding the adrenaline for a split second. "You're using Numen?"
One of the guards groaned, trying to stand. Remus snapped back to reality. His face hardened. He stepped in front of Norvin, raising his ice blade.
"We talk later," Remus shouted. "Stay behind me!"
Norvin struggled, the massive Greatsword scraping against the stone floor. "She's down there! I have to go back! I owe her!"
"You go back down there, you die!" Remus snapped. "And if you die, then all this means nothing!"
Remus didn't wait for an argument. He stomped his foot.
A slide of solid ice erupted from the floor, propelling them forward. Remus steered them violently, drifting around corners, bypassing the confused guards who were still scrambling toward the lower levels.
They ascended rapidly, Remus using blasts of freezing mist to blind anyone who got too close. They reached the third floor above the ground—high enough to be clear of the dungeon, low enough to survive the fall.
"We're leaving," Remus announced, spotting a balcony overlooking the grounds.
"Remus, please!" Norvin pleaded, his face a mask of desperation. "I need to do something. I promised!"