Because if he looks anywhere else, this becomes easier.
His mouth moves. The words are soft. Final.
“I said,” he hears himself whisper, voice steady and utterly unkind, “don’t touch her.”
He feels the Decay grin with wicked pleasure—temporarily satiated by the taste of death.
Elyssara stares back at Kael through the thick glass he lives behind. He can’t hear her, but her words are unmistakable all the same. “What have we done?”
Laryn shoves him, forceful and unforgiving. “Move!” he screams.
And chaos detonates.
The Decay tightens its grip—squeezing the resistance from his veins and replacing it with destruction.
Guards flood the gateway.
Elyssara rips her Starforged blade from inside the pipe on the cart, and brandishes it like she’ll fight every guard in Caeloria.
“Laryn—go! You were never here,” she orders.
He shakes his head in stubborn refusal, reaching inside the pipe for his own blade.
But Elyssara lets out a vicious, unwavering growl. “Go home, Laryn. This isourfight. Now!”
Laryn weighs up the situation, taking in the numbers—twenty guards. “I can’t,” he breathes, resignation heavy in his voice.
“Take the horse. The cart. Return to Kiva. I will not have your blood on my hands, too. Go!” Elyssara snaps.
Something in her voice makes the Decay purr in delight:the promise of violence.
It likes that she feeds it. That she doesn’t turn away.
The guards move in, approaching slowly.
Elyssara’s eyes land on Laryn, callous and calculating. She closes the gap between them, and before Laryn has even registered the movement, the unerring edge of her blade presses into his throat. “I will not ask again,” she chokes out between bared teeth. “Leave.”
Yes—leave.Not his voice.More kills to claim.
Laryn raises his hands in surrender, backing away one step despite his muscles coiling tight as if he’s fighting his own instincts by retreating. But the fire in his eyes flares. “End them all,” he says in a low snarl, withdrawing Kael’s weapons from the cart and tossing them at his feet. He reaches for the reins, yanking on them as the horse resists, her head thrown back in a wild arc. He disappears into the boundary, and the horse vanishes with him—leather, breath, and the brown-flecked fight in its eyes swallowed whole.
The guards take another step, muttering plans, whispering snide remarks. But Elyssara doesn’t notice. Her eyes land on Kael’s, a leader commanding a warrior. “Leave no witnesses,” she breathes between gritted teeth.
And he knows without question: she is not talking to Kael.She is talking to the Decay that owns him—and it does not hesitate.
The Decay does not fight like a man.
It fights like a verdict.
Kael moves forward and the world simplyfailsaround him—stone cracking underfoot as shadow lashes outward, compressing armor, crushing ribcages inward until breath has nowhere left to go. A guard raises his spear and the shaft disintegrates mid-thrust, splintering into blackened fragments that tear through his own throat.
Another turns to run.
But his Death-shadows reach through him.
Not metaphorically.
Through.
