The market district was a graveyard.
Alinda moved through it like a blade through still water, silent and direct, undisturbed by the chaos swirling around her. Bodies lay in the street in twisted heaps, their blood running in thin rivers between the cobblestones. A merchant's stall had collapsed, its awning torn, its wares scattered and trampled. A cart lay overturned, its horse dead beside it, a spear of hardened blood still jutting from its flank. The screaming had faded here, replaced by something worse: the low, animal moan of the dying and the stunned silence of those who had survived.
Neo followed three steps behind her, and he could not stop looking.
A man slumped against a wall, his hands pressed to his stomach, his eyes wide and glassy. His lips were moving. A prayer, a name, a final curse. But no sound came. A woman knelt in the middle of the street, her dress soaked red, her hands hanging limp at her sides, staring at nothing. An old woman had fallen in a doorway, her cane beside her, her body twisted at an angle that bodies shouldn't twist. A young man, barely older than Neo, sat with his back against a fountain, his legs splayed out in front of him, his chest torn open and empty.
Neo's steps slowed. His hand tightened on his blade.
A child lay near the fountain. A boy, maybe five. His eyes were closed. He could have been sleeping, except for the blood matting his hair and the stillness of his chest. One small hand still clutched a wooden toy: a horse, hand-carved, its painted mane chipped and worn.
Neo stopped.
"Neo." Alinda's voice was sharp, cutting across the square. She hadn't turned around. She hadn't slowed. "Keep moving."
He didn't answer. He was looking at the boy's hand, at the toy, at the blood pooling beneath the small body. The horse's painted eye stared up at him, blank and unseeing.
"Neo." Alinda's voice was harder now. "There's nothing you can do for them. We find the source. That's what matters."
"I know," he said. But he didn't move.
A sound cut through the silence. Not a scream. A sob, wet and ragged. It came from the far side of the square, near a collapsed stall where bolts of blood-soaked cloth lay tangled in the wreckage.
Neo turned toward it.
Alinda's hand caught his arm. Her grip was iron. "Don't."
"There's someone alive."
"There are a hundred people alive. We can't stop for every one of them."
Neo looked at her. His eyes, the brown she'd given him, the illusion she'd helped create, held hers for a long moment. "You don't have to stop. I'll catch up."
He pulled free of her grip and walked toward the sound.
Alinda stood motionless for a heartbeat. Her jaw was tight. Her fists were clenched. Then she exhaled in a short, sharp breath through her nose and followed. She didn't call after him or argue. But she didn't leave him alone either.
The woman was kneeling in a pool of blood.
It spread around her in a wide, dark circle, soaking into the hem of her dress, clinging to her skin. Her hair, dark and matted, hung in ropes across her face. Her shoulders shook with each sob. In front of her lay two bodies.
A man. His chest was split open, his ribs bent outward like the petals of a flower. His eyes were gone. Just dark sockets filled with something that rippled and shifted. His hand was outstretched, reaching toward the second body, his fingers inches from touching.
A girl. Six, maybe seven. Her dark hair was braided with a ribbon that had once been pink and was now dark red. Her body was unmarked except for the blood that had pooled beneath her. Her father's blood, still spreading, still warm. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth was slightly open, as if she'd been about to speak.
The woman's sobs were the only sound in the square.
Neo approached slowly. His blade was still in his hand. He didn't sheathe it. "Ma'am," he said quietly. "You need to leave. It's not safe here."
The woman didn't look up. Her shoulders kept shaking. Her hands were pressed flat against the blood-soaked cobblestones, the red running between her fingers.
"Ma'am." He stepped closer. "Please. Whatever did this, it could come back. You need to move."
Behind him, Alinda stopped at the edge of the pool. Her crimson eyes swept the scene and settled on the blood, spreading outward in a perfect circle. Something flickered in her expression. Not suspicion. Not yet. But something.
"Neo," she said quietly. "Step back."
He didn't hear her. He was looking at the girl's face, at the small hands that would never move again. "Please," he said to the woman. "Let me help you. We can find somewhere safe..."
The sobbing stopped.
The woman's shoulders went still. Her hands, pressed flat against the cobblestones, curled slowly into fists. When she raised her head, her hair fell away from her face like a curtain parting.
The eyes beneath were not hers. Black sclera. Purple irises, bright and luminous, burning in the dark hollows of her skull. They fixed on Neo with naked delight. But the rest remained: the tear-streaked cheeks, the blood-soaked dress. Velmyn stayed on his knees, wearing the mother's grief like a costume he hadn't bothered to remove.
"Hello again," he said, and the voice was wrong. Soft and feminine, a mother's voice, the words shaped by a tongue that didn't belong to him.
Neo's blood turned to ice. He stumbled backward, his blade coming up, his heart slamming against his ribs. "You..."
"Me." Velmyn's mouth curved into a smile that didn't belong on a grieving face. "You were so kind. So gentle. Please, let me help you." The mimicry was perfect: Neo's own voice, his own words, played back in the woman's cracked and weeping register. "I was very moved. Genuinely."
Alinda was already moving. She crossed the distance in three swift strides and placed herself between Neo and the kneeling figure, her body coiled, her crimson eyes blazing.
"Velmyn."
"Alinda." He inclined his head, the woman's dark hair spilling over his shoulders. "Lovely to see you. You look tired. Stressful night, I know. Not my doing, but I'm enjoying the ambiance."
"Get out of that form."
"Why? I earned it. Do you know how long I had to sit here, weeping, waiting for someone, anyone, to stop? The first dozen ran right past. Didn't even glance." His purple eyes slid past Alinda, finding Neo. "But you. You actually stopped. You actually knelt. You saw a woman in grief and you tried to help."
He rose to his feet. The blood that had soaked the dress dripped onto the cobblestones. He looked down at the bodies arranged at his feet, the man with the empty eyes and the girl with the pink ribbon, and then, almost absently, he drew back his foot and kicked the girl's head.
The body didn't resist. The neck snapped with a dry crack, and the head tumbled across the cobblestones, trailing the pink ribbon behind it like a comet's tail. It came to rest against the overturned cart, the girl's closed eyes now facing the sky.
Velmyn watched it go with mild interest. "There. That's better. She was looking at me."
Neo couldn't breathe. His hands shook on his sword.
Velmyn turned back to him. The smile was still there, maternal and obscene. "That's what interests me. You stopped." He tilted his head. "Tell me, young Voth: if I'd been Kruul, would a human have stopped for me?"
The question landed somewhere soft.
"If that child had horns. If her eyes were red on black instead of brown on white. Would anyone have knelt?" He stepped closer, and Alinda's hand came up, fingers rigid, and he stopped, spreading his blood-soaked hands in mock surrender. "You know the answer. You've lived it. You've hidden what you are since you were old enough to understand that being seen meant being hunted. And still you stopped. Still you tried." He tilted his head the other way. "That's either very noble or very stupid."
He looked down at himself, at the woman's body, the blood-soaked dress. Then, almost absently, he cupped his hands beneath his breasts and lifted once, his purple eyes finding Neo over the gesture. "Or maybe you just saw a pretty woman on her knees," he said. "Grief makes them vulnerable. You could have been the hero. The saviour." His mouth curved. "You were looking. I saw you look."
Neo's blade came up.
He didn't plan it. He didn't think. The rage carried him a step forward, his arm already drawing back, and then something in him locked. His arm stopped. His blade hung in the air, trembling, a hand's width from the woman's throat.
Alinda didn't hesitate. Her hand cut through the air in a single horizontal arc, fingers rigid and flat as a knife, and Velmyn didn't even try to dodge. The edge of her hand caught the woman's throat. The head separated from the body in a spray of red, tumbling once in the air before hitting the cobblestones with a wet thud. The body stood for a heartbeat longer, blood fountaining from the severed neck. Then it crumpled, joining the dead at its feet.
Neo stared at Alinda's hand.
It was red to the wrist, dripping in a slow, steady patter onto the stones. Her hand. She'd done it with her hand. He'd seen her bleed and heal, seen her move faster than anything should move, but he had never seen this. A woman's head, gone, as easily as brushing crumbs from a table. His own blade was still up, still clean, and he couldn't remember how to lower it. The sounds of the square had gone thin and far away, like he was hearing them from underwater.
Then, from across the square, a voice.
"Thal wouldn't have stopped."
Neo's head jerked toward it.
A young man leaned in the doorway of a shuttered shop, arms crossed, shoulder against the frame. A dock worker, lean and dark-haired. Same eyes. Same smile. He hadn't been there a moment ago. He must have been. Just standing there, watching.
"You wanted to, though," Velmyn said. "I saw it in your face. Right up until it mattered."
Neo said nothing. The tip of his sword wavered.
"What do you know about Thal?" Neo's voice was raw.
Velmyn's smile widened, just a fraction. "More than you." He pushed off the doorframe, and something almost reverent crept into his voice. "Thal doesn't stop. Thal doesn't freeze with his blade a hand's width from a throat. When Thal decides something will happen, the world bends around him until it does." His purple eyes settled on Neo, amused. "You look up to him like he hung the stars. But you've never really seen him, have you? Not the way I have." He let that sit. "You'll never be like him."
He turned and walked away. "I've taken enough of your time. You have places to be." His footsteps echoed on the cobblestones, unhurried, casual. Then he paused. Didn't turn around.
"I'll see you there."
The dark swallowed him.
Neo stared at the empty doorway. The words curled in his chest like cold smoke. Not a threat. Just certainty, as if Velmyn already knew how the night would end.
Alinda's hand closed on his shoulder. "Neo."
"He'll be waiting for us."
"I know." Her voice was flat. "Let him."
She released him and turned toward the far end of the square, where the sign of Black Hollow Remedies hung dark and silent above a shuttered door. Behind them, the city kept screaming. Behind them, the woman's smile stayed frozen, her purple eyes staring up at nothing.
Neo looked at the woman's head one last time, then at the girl's pink ribbon. Then at Alinda.
She had pulled a cloth from her belt and was wiping her hand as she walked, slow and thorough, working the red from between her fingers and out from under her nails. She didn't look at it. She'd done this before. When she was finished, she folded the cloth over the stain and tucked it away, and her hand was clean again, as if nothing had happened.
Three bodies lay cooling on the stones. And somewhere across the city, more were walking and watching, all of them Velmyn, all of them real.
"Thal wouldn't have stopped," he repeated.
Alinda didn't answer.
They left the square together, stepping over the dead, heading toward the shuttered door of Black Hollow Remedies.