The morning sun streamed into The Brown Bar, painting the polished wood in a light that felt like a lie. I'd scrubbed away every trace of last night. But the anxiety remained, a low hum in my blood.
The bell jingled.
He stood in the doorway, a tall, lean silhouette against the light. He wore a dark traveler's coat, and his eyes were the color of forgotten grave markers. I didn't know his face, but I knew his type. An enforcer. This one moved with the silent, fluid grace of a scorpion.
"What can I get you?" I asked, not looking up from the glass I was polishing.
"I'm not a customer." His voice was quiet, flat, and final. He stepped inside, letting the door swing shut. "You are Penance. You will come with me."
"You have the wrong man. The name's Arthur Glass."
He didn't even acknowledge the lie. His gaze swept the room, cataloging exits, assessing all the drinks on my shelf and the few early regulars, as he walked towards me. "The alternative to compliance is disassembly. Of this place. Everyone in it."
The words were a guillotine blade, cold and final. My options, the paths I had walked a thousand times in my mind, narrowed to one. Fight, and paint a target of blood on everyone here. Or go, and contain the destruction to myself. The math was brutal, but simple. The Penance had always been good at math.
The bell jingled again, a painfully cheerful sound. Lily bustled in, a basket of fresh pastries in her arms. "Arthur, wait until you try the apple— oh." She stopped, her smile dissolving as she felt the deathly stillness in the air.
For one heartbreaking second, I could see the normal, sunny morning we were supposed to be having, a future that was now irrevocably gone.
The enforcer's eyes, Slade. I decided that was his name, flicked to her. "I advise you leave, barmaid."
"Lily," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "Go to the back. Now."
She hesitated, clutching the basket, her eyes wide with confusion and fear.
Slade sighed, as if bored by the entire interaction. In one fluid motion, his hand went to his belt and came back with a hand-axe, a thick, dark chain welded to its haft. The links pooled at his feet. The serrated edge gleamed with a sickly purple light—a Runescribed weapon, made to pierce magical defenses.
"Last chance," he said, his voice still that infuriating monotone. "Come willingly."
"Arthur, what's happening?" Lily whispered, her voice trembling.
Slade's arm snapped forward. The axe shot straight forward like a piston, the chain whipping behind it. It wasn't aimed at me. It was aimed at the pastry basket in Lily's hands.
I moved.
I didn't think. My body crossed the space before the chain had fully extended. My left hand, hardened by channelled qi I pretended not to possess, slapped the chain aside. The force was immense, a jolt of necrotic energy that numbed my arm to the elbow. The axe head veered, smashing into a shelf of bottles behind the bar. Glass exploded in a shower of sweet ale and shards.
A cold, greasy feeling seeped up my veins, the runes on the axe hungrily trying to devour the qi in my body. I had to consciously force my circulation to purge the sensation.
The patrons screamed and scrambled for the door.
I stood between Lily and Slade, my right hand still holding the pristine white polishing cloth. I hadn't even dropped it.
Slade's eyes showed their first flicker of emotion: not surprise, but a cold, clinical interest. He yanked on the chain, the axe dislodging from the wreckage and slithering back into his hand like a living thing.
"I see the Ledger didn't exaggerate," he murmured.
"Get out of my bar," I said.
He smiled his thin, cruel smile. And then he looked past me, at Lily, who was sobbing against the back bar. "No."
He lunged around me. The axe was a distraction. His other hand held a simple, unadorned dagger, and it was headed for her throat.
I could have broken his arm. I could have shattered his spine. But winning this fight would paint a target on Lily's back that no power of mine could ever remove. They would never stop coming for her.
The calculation was instant, the conclusion grim.
So I made a choice. Not the choice of Arthur Glass, the bartender who wanted to live. Not the choice of the Penance, the weapon that wanted to destroy. But the only choice that mattered: the one that saved the innocent.
The choice to lose.
I let the mask of Arthur Glass shatter, and the colder, older calculus of the Penance take over.
I turned, putting my back to his lunge, and the dagger bit deep into my shoulder. I grunted, absorbing the fire, and used the momentum to pull Lily into a crushing embrace, shielding her with my body.
Over her shoulder, I met her terrified eyes. My voice was a low breath, meant for her alone. "Thank you, Lily. For the peace."
I released her, my face hardening into the Penance's mask as I turned and offered my wrists to Slade. "Alright. You win. I'll come. On one condition. This bar never existed. You never saw her and she forgets any of this happened."
Slade watched me, the dagger still dripping with my blood. He gave a slow, approving nod. "A clean extraction. Acceptable."
He produced a pair of heavy, rune-etched manacles from his coat. As he clamped the cold iron around my wrists, I heard Lily's broken whimper behind me.
I didn't look back.
As Slade led me out into the morning sun, I turned my head slightly. "The name is Slade, isn't it?"
He didn't answer.
"A word of advice," I said, my voice low. "You're not putting a man in chains. You're bottling a storm. Be very, very careful not to crack the glass."