That is the problem.
It feels like being sealed behind glass, thick and soundless. He can see the guard’s hand on Elyssara’s hip. Can see the slight hitch in her breath, the way her fingers tense inside the linen sleeves. He can see Laryn’s jaw lock, the calculation flickering behind his eyes.
Kael knows what should happen next.
Stand down.
Wait.
Do nothing.
Pass through the wall.
Maintain anonymity.
The thoughts form cleanly. Sensibly.And it never reaches his body.
Something cold unspools through his veins—not pain, not heat, but authority. Endless black threads through his blood, tightening, aligning him like a blade drawn true.
The Decay does not argue with him. It doesn’t need to—it simply does not consult him.
Kael tries to speak. To warn. To stop this before it becomes irreversible.
His lungs do not obey.
He is screaming through water now—every instinct pounding uselessly against the inside of himself as his hand lifts, already moving, alreadydeciding.
This will cost everything.
He sees it with terrible clarity: the gates, the guards, Kiva’s face when the consequences arrive. He sees Elyssara’s resignation when she realizes what this will mean for them.
Still, his body advances.
The Decay is not rage.
It is not impulse.
It is executive authority.
He knows exactly what is about to happen, and cannot stop it.
Shadows coil at his wrists, precise and restrained, silver-threaded and lethal. They do not flare. They do not warn. They move with the certainty of something that has ended countless lives before and learned devastating efficiency from each one.
The guard finally looks at him.
Too late.
Kael watches—trapped behind glass—as the man’s breath stutters, as shadow wraps his throat like a verdict passed without appeal. He feels the satisfaction register somewhere deep and alien, a cold rightness that does not belong to him.
This is not punishment.
It is correction.
The guard collapses with a sound like fabric tearing, veins blackening in an instant as his body caves inward under the weight of a power that does not care about mercy.
Kael does not look away from Elyssara.
He cannot.
