# **TRUE PIECE**
## **Chapter 15: The Strongest Killer**
### **The Diner Arc — Part 4**
Power remained on one knee.
Blood poured from the split across his forehead.
It traveled over both eyes, down the bridge of his nose, and fell from his chin in heavy drops.
Each drop struck the western hull of the **Last Stop Diner**.
**Tap.**
**Tap.**
**Tap.**
Ten thousand five hundred members of the Power Fleet watched.
No one moved.
Their captain had been hurt before.
His scars proved that.
They had seen him return from wars with bullets beneath his skin. They had watched him carry broken ships while three ribs punctured one lung. They had seen him stand after storms stripped every sail from an entire fleet.
But they had never seen another person meet him evenly.
They had never seen Power forced to one knee while his opponent remained standing.
Eullian Hound leaned against the ruined chimney.
His left forearm was fractured.
His right fist remained trapped inside damaged splints.
His breathing scraped through injuries Chief Asia had left inside him.
Blood ran from his forehead too.
The difference was that Eullian was smiling.
On the diner's eastern side, customers cheered.
"PEACE CREW!"
"PEACE CREW!"
"PEACE CREW!"
Pirates struck cups against tables.
Marines shouted beside people they had intended to arrest.
Cooks lifted pans.
Prisoners raised broken chains.
Runa Above-Storm threw both enormous arms into the air and nearly removed the diner's roof by accident.
Mira Cale stood beside the central support with her braced wrist trembling around the Open Ledger.
Tallen Vey lifted his empty long-range weapon.
Hijo Albino remained surrounded by white threads, his injured fingers barely maintaining them.
Analog stood behind the counter with blood covering the handles of both serving trays.
For one moment, the Last Stop Diner sounded large enough to defeat ten thousand five hundred people through noise alone.
Then Commander Quiet Toll's bells stopped moving.
All one hundred.
Not gradually.
Every bell became still at the same instant.
Toll's closed eyes opened.
He faced the western horizon.
"Stop cheering."
The diner continued.
He raised his voice.
"Stop."
Analog heard something in the old commander's tone.
Not authority.
Fear.
Analog struck both trays together.
**CLANG.**
The sound cut through the celebration.
People looked toward him.
Quiet Toll tilted his head.
His face had lost color.
"I cannot hear the western fleet."
Exact Sera turned toward him.
"Clarify."
"I hear the northern formation."
One bell near his ribs moved.
No sound emerged.
"The eastern medical ships."
A second bell shifted.
"The southern supply line."
His eyes narrowed.
"But the western ships are gone."
Sera looked toward the dark sea.
"They remain visible."
Hundreds of yellow lanterns still floated upon the water.
Black fists moved across sails.
Crew members stood along rails.
The ships were there.
Quiet Toll shook his head.
"I hear waves touching their hulls."
His voice became quieter.
"I do not hear the hulls answer."
Power rose.
His blood-covered face turned toward the horizon.
The cheering ended completely.
Eullian pushed away from the chimney.
"What is it?"
Power did not answer.
Carry Bole stood upon the captured Capability Exchange submarine.
His enormous chest expanded once.
His hands opened.
For the first time since arriving, the commander whose purpose was to carry the fleet looked uncertain that anything could be carried.
Exact Sera raised two yellow flags.
"Western formation, respond."
Three hundred ships should have answered with lantern movements.
None did.
Sera changed the signal.
"Movement check."
Nothing.
"Personnel check."
Nothing.
Her arms lowered.
"The fleet is standing."
Mira studied the distant vessels.
"That is not obedience."
Tallen changed lenses.
One.
Two.
Three.
His fourth lens brought the western fleet closer.
He saw crew members standing along the rails.
Their mouths were open.
Their bodies did not move.
A man held a rope that had already separated between his fingers.
A woman stood beneath a mast that no longer touched the deck.
A child looked downward at a line passing through the hull.
Not painted.
Not carved.
A gap.
Perfectly thin.
The western fleet had been divided.
The ships had not realized it yet.
"Tallen?" Mira asked.
He swallowed.
"They have been cut."
"How many?"
"All western ships."
"With what?"
Tallen shifted his lens farther toward the horizon.
A black shape stood between moonlight and sea.
Small.
Narrow.
Approaching.
"I don't know."
The first western ship moved.
Its upper deck slid six inches to the left.
The crew remained standing upon it.
Then the lower hull slid right.
The vessel separated into seven horizontal layers.
Water entered all of them simultaneously.
The ship collapsed without an explosion.
The sea swallowed the lanterns.
A second vessel split vertically.
Its mast fell between the two halves.
A third folded inward after every support beam separated at the same angle.
Then the entire western formation died.
Hundreds of ships opened.
No two in exactly the same way.
One became strips of timber.
Another separated around every nail, leaving boards momentarily suspended before they fell.
A medical ship lost only its keel.
The upper structure remained intact for three seconds, floating through habit.
Then the ocean entered from beneath.
Troop carriers split through occupied decks.
Cargo vessels released mountains of grain into dark water.
Training platforms dropped thousands of people at once.
The western sea turned yellow with fallen flags.
Then red.
The sound arrived after the destruction.
Not one cut.
Thousands.
A dry whisper traveled across the Empty Route.
It resembled paper being torn inside a library where no one was permitted to speak.
Exact Sera stared.
Her training demanded numbers.
Her mind refused them.
"Western ships," she whispered. "One hundred eighty-four."
Quiet Toll corrected her.
"One hundred eighty-seven."
Three had been traveling without lights.
Their wreckage surfaced between the others.
Power walked toward the edge of the diner.
"Rescue formation."
Sera raised her flags.
"Western survivors—"
The northern fleet split.
Not every ship.
A line traveled through the formation.
It crossed eighty-three vessels.
Hull.
Mast.
Bodies.
Water.
Everything touched by the invisible path opened along one continuous plane.
The ships fell apart as though the sea had briefly become a blade.
People dropped into the water.
Some screamed.
Many could not.
Power's voice crossed the diner.
"RESCUE THEM!"
The fleet moved.
Then the eastern formation died.
A single dark line passed through ship after ship.
Not at deck height.
At the waterline.
One hundred twelve vessels lost their lower hulls.
They sank vertically.
Crews climbed masts that followed them beneath the surface.
Medical ships turned.
Supply vessels broke formation.
Training barges lowered boats.
The Power Fleet attempted rescue while still being killed.
Exact Sera's flags moved faster than Eullian could follow.
Red.
White.
Yellow.
Blue.
Abort.
Rescue.
Separate.
Turn.
Count.
Her commands struck the fleet like desperate birds.
The black shape continued approaching.
It did not hurry.
A narrow piece of wreckage carried one person across the water.
Not a boat.
A section of mast no wider than a dining bench.
The stranger stood upon it with one foot slightly ahead of the other.
He wore a black coat reaching below his knees.
The inside was dark red.
A wide hat shadowed the upper half of his face. Its brim curved downward at both sides, resembling an eye that had chosen to close.
Long black hair moved behind him.
His skin was pale beneath the moon.
A thin beard followed his jaw.
His body was neither enormous nor visibly muscular.
One hand rested inside his coat.
The other held a weapon longer than he was tall.
It was not a sword.
It had no cutting edge.
A black metal rod narrowed toward one end until it became almost impossibly thin. Near the tip, an oval opening passed through the metal.
An eye inside a needle.
The weapon's opposite end widened into a circular handle wrapped in red cord.
No reflected light touched its surface.
It did not look sharpened.
It looked final.
Power stared at the approaching man.
Blood continued falling from his forehead.
"Blood Q. Eye."
The name passed across the fleet.
Some heard it.
Those people stopped helping others.
A woman abandoned the rope she had thrown to a drowning crewmate.
A man climbed beneath an overturned boat and refused to emerge.
Several people dropped their weapons despite Blood still being more than a mile away.
Eullian looked toward Power.
"You know him."
"Yes."
"Who is he?"
"The strongest killer."
Hijo became still.
Not the strongest swordsman.
Not the strongest warrior.
Not the most powerful person.
The strongest killer.
Mira opened the Ledger.
"Affiliation?"
"None."
"Bounty?"
"Withdrawn."
"Why?"
Power watched another line pass across the sea.
Sixty ships separated.
"The Supreme Government stopped publishing a number after collectors began hunting him for it."
"How many collectors?"
"All of them."
"That is not a number."
"It became one."
Mira's pencil stopped.
Power continued.
"He does not conquer territory. He does not steal cargo. He does not build crews. He does not accept contracts consistently."
"Then why kill?" Eullian asked.
"No one knows."
"That answer keeps being terrible."
Power looked toward Blood.
"People have asked."
"What happened?"
"He answered."
Another cut crossed the fleet.
This one did not touch ships.
It touched people.
A thin line passed through eight decks.
Crew members standing above it remained unharmed.
Crew members standing within it separated.
Bodies fell in opposite directions.
Blood crossed the sea without changing posture.
He had not visibly moved his weapon.
Runa stared.
"How cut far?"
Tallen's four lenses remained aligned.
"I cannot see the motion."
"Then faster?"
"No."
Tallen's voice lowered.
"There may not be a large motion."
Hijo watched the wreckage.
"He is not cutting through every ship."
Mira looked at him.
"What is he doing?"
"Finding where each one is already failing."
Old repairs.
Weight imbalance.
Stress cracks.
Weak beams.
Overloaded decks.
A ship was not one object.
It was thousands of pieces persuaded to remain together.
Blood did not overpower the entire structure.
He touched the answer that ended the persuasion.
The black rod shifted in his hand.
Only an inch.
Another hundred ships died.
Quiet Toll's bells erupted.
Every bell rang differently.
He covered his ears.
"Four thousand…"
Exact Sera turned toward him.
"How many?"
"Too many voices ended."
Sera looked across the sea.
Her lips moved.
She counted lanterns.
Ships.
People visible in water.
Formation positions.
Empty places.
Her mind forced horror into numbers because numbers were what she carried for the fleet.
"Original personnel," she said. "Ten thousand five hundred."
Power did not look away from Blood.
Sera continued.
"Current confirmed movement…"
Her fingers shook around the flags.
"Five thousand seven hundred seventy-five."
Silence.
Mira calculated automatically.
"Four thousand seven hundred twenty-five."
Sera nodded.
"Forty-five percent."
Forty-five percent of the Power Fleet had died.
Not injured.
Not missing in an ordinary battle.
Dead within minutes.
Every vessel had been struck.
Some still floated in pieces.
None remained functional.
All seven hundred-plus ships of the Power Fleet had been destroyed.
The surviving 5,775 people occupied wreckage, lifeboats, diner platforms, floating cargo, and the captured submarine.
The sea that had carried an empire of strength now carried splinters.
Power stepped onto the diner railing.
Eullian grabbed his arm.
Power looked down.
"What?"
"You're injured."
"Yes."
"You just fought me."
"Yes."
"Almost half your people are dead."
"Yes."
"And you're going to attack him?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Power pulled his arm free.
"He killed my fleet."
"That's why you shouldn't attack stupidly!"
Power's expression hardened.
"He killed my fleet."
The repetition was not an explanation.
It was the entire space where one should have been.
Power had built his life upon strength becoming responsibility.
Ten thousand five hundred people had trusted him because no force in the four main seas could move him.
Now 4,725 were dead.
Every ship was destroyed.
If Power did not challenge the cause, his belief collapsed before his body did.
He bent his knees.
Exact Sera shouted, "Captain!"
Power jumped.
The Last Stop Diner sank several feet from the departure.
Water crossed the counter.
Bowls floated.
The western hull cracked completely in half.
Power flew over the Empty Route.
His body became a dark projectile aimed at Blood Q. Eye.
Blood remained upon the narrow mast.
He did not lift his weapon.
Power crossed a mile in seconds.
His fist pulled the air behind it.
The sea beneath the attack divided into a trench.
Survivors clung to wreckage as water rose on both sides.
Power roared.
Not the name of an attack.
The names of his dead.
Too many to speak individually.
So the sound carried all of them without language.
Blood Q. Eye turned his head.
Nothing else.
His hat shifted.
The shadow beneath its brim moved.
One eye became visible.
The iris was dark red.
Not glowing.
Not transformed.
Red in the way old blood became almost black when left upon iron.
Power saw it.
His fist stopped one foot from Blood's face.
The air blast continued.
It struck Blood's coat.
The fabric moved slightly.
Power's body remained suspended above the mast.
His arm shook.
The strength inside his punch had not vanished.
His body had.
Every muscle released at once.
Power's eyes lost focus.
Blood had not attacked.
He had allowed Power to understand.
One glance showed Power every route by which the attack ended in his death.
The black needle entering beneath his fist.
Turning one knuckle into a line through the wrist.
The wrist into a break through the forearm.
The forearm guiding the rod into the elbow.
The elbow folding toward the chest.
Bone entering lung.
Heart losing room.
Power did not imagine the sequence.
His body recognized it.
All living things carried ancient knowledge of danger beneath thought.
Blood spoke directly to that knowledge without words.
Power nearly lost consciousness.
His body fell.
One knee struck the narrow mast.
The wood should have thrown both men into the sea.
Blood remained balanced.
Power's hands caught the surface.
He breathed once.
Nothing entered.
Again.
A fraction.
His vision darkened.
He remained standing.
Slowly.
Painfully.
He raised himself before the man who had killed 4,725 of his people by moving a weapon no one had seen.
Blood watched.
No admiration.
No surprise.
A fact being recorded.
Power lifted his fist again.
His arm stopped at chest level.
It refused to rise farther.
Blood turned his head away.
Dismissed.
Power's knees bent.
He forced them straight.
The effort broke something inside his wounded head.
Blood poured from his nose.
He remained standing.
"You killed them."
Blood did not answer.
"Why?"
No answer.
"They had not attacked you."
Blood looked toward the remains of the fleet.
His expression carried less emotion than Chief Asia's pistol.
Power stepped closer.
"Answer."
Blood moved the black needle.
Power did not see it.
A red line appeared across his chest.
Not deep.
Thin enough that his body remained unaware for one second.
Then the skin opened.
Blood flowed.
Power fell from the mast.
Carry Bole jumped from the diner.
The commander crossed the water and caught his captain before Power struck the sea.
Both disappeared beneath the surface.
Carry rose with Power across his shoulders.
Power remained conscious.
Barely.
His eyes stayed on Blood.
Eullian climbed onto the diner's broken railing.
"HEY!"
Mira grabbed the back of his shirt.
His injuries almost pulled both of them overboard.
"What are you doing?"
Eullian cupped his functioning hand around his mouth.
"HE IS MY FIGHT! NOT YOURS!"
Absolute silence crossed the wreckage.
Even drowning survivors seemed to pause.
Blood Q. Eye looked toward the diner.
His red eye found Eullian immediately.
The distance between them meant nothing.
Mira felt the gaze pass over her.
Her body begged to move.
Hijo's threads tightened without instruction.
Tallen's hands became cold around his empty weapon.
Analog's trays lowered by one inch.
Runa's enormous shoulders rose.
Every person near Eullian felt how easily the man on the mast could select them.
Not defeat.
Select.
A ship could resist damage.
A fighter could block force.
A killer did not need to destroy everything.
Only the exact portion required for death.
Blood's attention reached Eullian.
The injured young man stood upon a broken diner held together by chains and stubbornness.
One hand useless.
One arm fractured.
Lung damaged.
Leg unstable.
Blood-covered forehead.
No weapon.
No understanding of who he had challenged.
Eullian felt the same recognition that had nearly dropped Power.
The black needle through his throat.
The mast fragment entering his eye.
The split railing cutting his remaining artery.
Blood could kill him using the diner.
The water.
His own bandages.
A grain of salt driven through the correct point.
The feeling entered Eullian's body.
It did not ask whether he was afraid.
He was.
His damaged heart accelerated.
His legs wanted to bend.
His breathing shortened until almost nothing entered.
Blood had killed thousands who believed bravery meant lacking fear.
Fear remained older than belief.
Eullian stared back.
He did not flinch.
Not because Blood lacked the ability to kill him.
Because Eullian had already understood something.
Blood was not attacking.
Yet.
Fear did not get to decide that he had.
The killer's red eye narrowed.
Interest entered it.
Small.
Almost insulting in its size.
More interest than he had shown while destroying an entire fleet.
Eullian pointed toward Power, who remained across Carry Bole's shoulders.
"We weren't finished!"
Blood looked at Power.
Then back at Eullian.
Eullian's anger remained real.
Not manufactured courage.
Not a performance for the fleet.
He was genuinely offended that a massacre had interrupted his fight.
Blood's mouth shifted by less than the width of a thread.
Not a smile.
The possibility of one.
Hijo stepped past Eullian.
His wounded leg dragged.
Mira caught his sleeve.
"No."
Hijo looked toward her.
"Yes."
"You saw what he did."
"Yes."
"He is stronger than Chief Asia."
"Strength is not the relevant category."
"He killed 4,725 people in minutes."
"Yes."
"You cannot use two fingers correctly."
"Yes."
Mira's grip tightened.
"Then why?"
Hijo looked toward Blood.
"Because he is called the strongest killer."
The white book inside his coat felt heavier.
One hundred and nine names.
Three innocent.
Answers found before death.
Answers still unresolved.
Hijo had built his life around killing as a final conclusion.
Blood Q. Eye appeared to have built his around killing as the first language.
Hijo needed to know the distance.
Not between their power.
Between their answers.
He stepped onto the railing.
Eullian looked at him.
"What are you doing?"
"Challenging him."
"You're injured."
"So are you."
"I make bad decisions."
"Yes."
"That wasn't permission."
Hijo removed his white book.
He handed it to Mira.
She stared.
He had never surrendered it willingly.
"Protect this."
"Hijo."
"If I die, do not remove my name from it."
Her expression broke.
"No."
"Record the evidence I saw."
"No."
"The evidence I missed."
"Hijo."
"And who prepared both."
Aven Cale's words.
Mira's hand closed around the book.
Her eyes filled with anger.
"I hate that you learned something useful from him."
"So do I."
Hijo looked toward Tallen.
"Can you send me there?"
Tallen examined the distance.
His weapon had no ammunition.
Analog placed a metal skewer upon the counter.
Tallen looked at him.
Analog pointed toward a coil of service rope.
Tallen loaded the skewer into his shortened barrel.
The fit was poor.
He adjusted the second chamber.
"This may kill you."
Hijo stepped into a loop of rope.
"Noted."
Tallen fired.
The skewer crossed the sea and entered the mast beneath Blood's feet.
The rope pulled tight.
Hijo's white threads wrapped around it.
He stepped from the diner.
The line carried him above the wreckage.
His wounded thigh reopened during the swing.
Blood watched him approach with visible boredom.
Hijo landed upon the far end of the narrow mast.
The wood dipped.
Blood adjusted nothing.
Hijo did.
His injured leg nearly sent him into the sea.
White threads caught the mast.
He steadied himself.
Up close, Blood Q. Eye looked less human.
Not because of monstrous features.
Because nothing in his posture was accidental.
Chief Asia had possessed perfect balance built through experience.
Blood possessed no visible balance at all.
His body leaned slightly.
His shoulders rested unevenly.
One foot stood near the mast's edge.
Any ordinary fighter using that position would be vulnerable.
Blood did not have a stance.
A stance prepared for danger.
He existed after preparation had become unnecessary.
Hijo raised both hands.
His two injured fingers failed to separate fully.
White cutting threads spread around him.
Blood looked at the scars across Hijo's fingers.
Then at the pale lines.
His boredom increased.
"Hijo Albino," Hijo said.
Blood's expression did not change.
"The Absolute Killer."
No reaction.
Hijo's jaw tightened.
"I have killed one hundred and nine people."
Blood glanced toward the sea containing 4,725 new bodies.
The comparison required no sentence.
Hijo continued.
"Three were innocent."
Blood looked back at him.
"I carry every name."
Nothing.
"I kill only when no reliable answer exists."
Blood's red eye settled upon the white threads.
Hijo lifted his chin.
"I challenge you."
The Empty Route remained filled with sinking ships.
Survivors cried for help.
Diner workers lowered ropes.
Power Fleet members pulled enemies and friends from the same water.
In the center of it, Blood Q. Eye looked bored by the challenge of another killer.
Hijo's white threads tightened.
"Do you accept?"
Blood moved one hand inside his coat.
Hijo prepared.
The black execution needle remained in Blood's other hand.
He did not raise it.
From inside the coat, Blood removed something small.
Brown.
Smooth.
Ordinary.
A wooden needle.
Not a blade.
Not even a proper combat weapon.
Analog saw it through Tallen's lens.
His expression hardened.
"That's mine."
Tallen looked at him.
"What?"
"A trussing needle."
Analog used them to bind stuffed fish and large cuts of meat before roasting.
Blood must have taken it when his invisible cut crossed the diner's western storage wall.
The wooden needle was six inches long.
One end narrowed to a blunt point.
The opposite end contained a small hole for kitchen cord.
It could pierce softened food.
It could not cut steel.
It should not survive contact with Hijo's threads.
Blood held it between two fingers.
Hijo's face became still.
"You insult me."
Blood offered no denial.
The black weapon remained lowered.
The wooden needle became his answer.
Hijo attacked.
White threads filled the space between them.
Not one pattern.
Dozens.
Lines crossed at changing heights.
Some aimed for Blood's wrists.
Others his throat.
Ankle.
Eyes.
Hat.
Weapon.
Coat.
Every thread carried a different possible conclusion.
Hijo did not seek death immediately.
He sought restriction.
Information.
A reliable answer.
Blood stepped forward.
Not backward.
His wooden needle touched the first white thread.
The thread should have cut it.
Instead, the needle entered the tiny curve created where Hijo's injured finger had failed to maintain equal tension.
Blood rotated his wrist.
The thread wrapped around the wooden shaft.
One line captured.
He moved the needle downward.
The captured thread pulled three connected lines out of position.
A gap opened.
Blood stepped through it.
Hijo changed the pattern.
Threads tightened around Blood's neck.
The wooden needle moved.
It passed through the eye of one white loop.
Then another.
Blood did not block the threads.
He threaded them.
Hijo's web became cord passing through a sewing tool.
Blood pulled.
The tension reversed.
Hijo's broken fingers opened.
Pain crossed his face.
Blood advanced.
Hijo sent threads around the mast itself.
He cut the wood beneath Blood's forward foot.
The mast separated.
Blood stepped upon the falling half.
Its movement carried him closer.
Hijo's eyes widened.
He had removed Blood's support.
Blood used the loss as transportation.
Chief Asia had done similar things through planning.
Blood did it without appearing to think.
Hijo crossed both arms.
Threads formed a narrow field around Blood's chest.
Not enough room to move.
Every direction cut.
Blood flicked the wooden needle.
It entered one thread junction.
The entire pattern changed.
Not broke.
Changed ownership.
The thread around Blood's left shoulder traveled through the needle's eye.
The one below his ribs joined it.
Then a line near his knee.
Three separate restraints became one continuous thread.
Blood pulled once.
The loop collapsed away from his body.
It wrapped around Hijo's right wrist.
Hijo tried to release it.
His injured fingers did not respond quickly enough.
The white thread tightened.
Blood moved the needle again.
It passed beneath another line.
Then through another.
He was sewing with Hijo's technique.
Every stitch stole part of the web.
Hijo retreated.
The mast beneath him ended.
His heel entered empty air.
A white thread caught the diner rope and held him above the sea.
Blood touched that thread with the needle.
Hijo released it immediately.
He fell.
Then sent three lines toward a broken ship below.
They caught.
His body stopped inches above the water.
Blood stepped from the mast.
Onto one of Hijo's threads.
The line should have cut through his bare boot.
Blood placed his weight at the exact angle where tension traveled along the thread rather than against its edge.
He walked toward Hijo.
Across the cutting line.
Hijo had never seen anyone do that.
Neither had Chief Asia.
Neither had Mira.
Tallen whispered through his lens.
"He understands Hijo's threads after touching one."
Analog watched the wooden needle.
"No."
"What?"
"He understood before."
Hijo pulled every thread simultaneously.
The line beneath Blood's foot changed direction.
Blood stepped off it.
Onto the next.
Hijo formed a blade of parallel threads and swept upward.
Blood lowered the wooden needle.
The blunt point touched one line.
Only one.
The entire blade divided around him.
Not cut.
Its tension redirected so every thread passed beside his coat.
Hijo's attack opened like curtains.
Blood stood between them.
Close enough to touch.
Hijo's pale eyes widened.
Blood lifted the wooden needle.
It rested against the hollow beneath Hijo's collarbone.
A small point.
No force.
No blood.
Yet Hijo understood.
The needle could enter there.
Pass beneath the clavicle.
Avoid bone.
Pierce the vessel carrying blood toward his arm.
Continue through the upper lung.
Catch the nerve controlling breath.
Angle behind the heart.
Exit beneath the opposite shoulder.
One push.
Death before his threads completed another pattern.
The wooden needle was enough.
Not because the wood was powerful.
Because Blood knew exactly where life had failed to defend itself.
Hijo did not move.
Blood's boredom returned.
Hijo looked into the red eye.
"You could kill me."
The needle remained touching his skin.
"Yes."
Blood had spoken?
No.
The answer had come from Hijo himself.
Blood still said nothing.
Hijo's expression hardened.
"Then do it."
Blood's eye narrowed.
Hijo lifted his uninjured hand.
A white thread formed behind Blood's neck.
Blood did not turn.
The wooden needle moved.
It entered Hijo.
Not through the collarbone route.
Lower.
The point pierced the white scar in Hijo's right palm.
Passed between two metacarpal bones.
Exited the back of his hand.
Hijo gasped.
Blood caught one of the white threads emerging from Hijo's scar.
He passed it through the eye of the wooden needle.
Then pulled.
Hijo's own cutting thread followed the needle through his hand.
Skin opened from inside.
Blood rotated the needle.
The thread changed direction.
It traveled across Hijo's wrist.
Around the forearm.
Blood stepped closer.
The needle entered Hijo's upper arm.
The white thread followed.
Hijo attempted to sever it.
His fingers would not obey.
Blood withdrew the needle.
Inserted it below Hijo's ribs.
Pulled the thread through.
Hijo's own power stitched his arm against his torso.
The white line cut through muscle.
Not skin alone.
It entered him.
Exited.
Entered again.
Blood moved the wooden needle with the calm rhythm of someone closing a wound.
Except every stitch created one.
Right palm.
Forearm.
Upper arm.
Rib muscle.
Abdomen.
Back.
Shoulder.
Hijo's body became part of his own thread web.
Blood passed the needle through the flesh beside his spine.
The line tightened.
Hijo's right arm was sewn against his body.
His torso curved around the pattern.
Every attempt to move pulled cutting thread deeper through him.
Blood had transformed Hijo's greatest skill into restraint, weapon, and injury at the same time.
Hijo's scream crossed the sea.
Eullian stepped toward the rope line.
Mira blocked him.
"You cannot reach them."
"I'll jump."
"You cannot jump that far."
"I'll try."
"You will land among sinking ships."
"Hijo's dying!"
Hijo was not dead.
Blood had chosen every stitch carefully.
The thread passed beside major arteries.
Along the surface of one lung.
Through abdominal muscle without entering the stomach.
Near the spine without severing it.
Every placement demonstrated the route death could have taken.
Every placement refused it by less than an inch.
Blood pulled the final stitch.
Hijo's body locked.
The white thread tightened from hand to shoulder to ribs to abdomen to back.
His blood traveled along the line in bright beads.
The wooden needle remained through the flesh beside his heart.
Hijo could feel the point moving with each beat.
One pull would turn the final stitch inward.
One inch.
Death.
Blood held the free end of Hijo's thread.
Hijo hung above the water, supported by the same line cutting through him.
His face had become gray.
His breathing came in short, wet sounds.
Blood looked at him.
Boredom gone.
Not replaced by respect.
Assessment.
Hijo tried to raise his free hand.
It shook.
"You…"
Blood waited.
"You kill without answers."
The red eye remained still.
Hijo coughed blood.
"That makes you…"
His lung pulled against the thread beside it.
Pain broke the sentence.
He forced it out.
"…incomplete."
The sea seemed to recoil from the word.
Blood's fingers tightened around the thread.
The wooden needle moved one fraction closer to Hijo's heart.
Hijo's body convulsed.
He did not retract the statement.
Blood could kill anything.
Bodies.
Ships.
Armies.
Perhaps intentions.
But Hijo saw no book.
No names.
No answer preserved after death.
Only perfect endings.
Blood Q. Eye looked at Hijo for a long moment.
Then he released the thread.
Hijo fell.
Eullian tore free from Mira and jumped from the diner.
He could not reach Hijo.
Runa did.
Her enormous arm extended over the water.
She caught Hijo in one hand before his body struck the wreckage.
The white thread tightened as his position changed.
He screamed again.
Runa froze.
"Do not move!" Mira shouted.
Analog climbed onto Runa's arm carrying knives, clamps, and towels.
He saw the stitching.
His face became cold.
"He used my needle."
Hijo's eyes barely opened.
"Return it…"
Analog looked toward Blood.
The wooden needle remained embedded beside Hijo's heart.
"No."
Hijo's lips moved.
"Wasteful…"
Then he lost consciousness.
Analog placed both hands around the final stitch.
"Do not pull any thread."
Runa's breathing shook.
"Will he die?"
"Yes."
Her eyes widened.
Analog continued.
"If we move incorrectly."
"That answer is bad."
"It is accurate."
Mira climbed onto Runa's wrist.
Her braced hand could not perform fine work.
She held Hijo's white book against her chest.
"What do you need?"
"Light. Heat. Hijo conscious if possible."
"He isn't."
"Then he will be less cooperative."
Tallen kept his lens on Blood.
The strongest killer stood alone upon the remaining mast section.
The Power Fleet had become wreckage around him.
Power remained across Carry Bole's shoulders.
Exact Sera coordinated survivors from the diner's roof.
Quiet Toll listened to thousands drowning, breathing, crying, and falling silent.
Blood looked at none of them.
His interest remained on Eullian.
Eullian stood on the diner's shattered western railing.
Fury shook his injured body.
Hijo had challenged.
Hijo had lost.
Blood had left him alive.
Not from mercy.
To prove that living could be the more precise wound.
Eullian cupped his hand around his mouth.
"BLOOD!"
The red eye found him again.
Eullian pointed.
"When I find you again…"
Mira looked toward him.
Power Fleet survivors stopped pulling one another from the water.
Tallen's breathing paused.
Analog kept his hands around the thread near Hijo's heart.
Eullian's voice crossed the dead fleet.
"I WILL PUNCH YOUR FACE!"
Absolute silence.
Blood Q. Eye stared.
Eullian did not look away.
He had seen the fleet die.
He had felt Blood's attention show him his own death.
He had watched Power nearly lose consciousness from one turn of the killer's head.
He had seen a wooden cooking needle defeat Hijo's entire life of killing skill.
He remained angry.
Not because he believed himself stronger.
Not because he understood Blood.
Because Blood had entered someone else's battle.
Killed 4,725 people.
Destroyed every ship.
Wounded Hijo.
Then tried to leave as though no one remaining had the right to object.
Blood turned away.
For one moment, it appeared he would ignore Eullian completely.
He stepped toward the narrow piece of mast.
His black coat moved over the water.
Then one corner of his mouth lifted.
An interested smirk.
Blood Q. Eye spoke for the first time.
"Good."
The single word traveled farther than Chief Asia's altered voice.
Blood placed one foot upon the mast fragment.
The wreckage moved beneath him.
No sail.
No paddle.
No current in the correct direction.
The broken wood accelerated anyway, carrying him west through the graveyard he had created.
No one pursued.
Not Power.
Not his commanders.
Not the Peace Crew.
They watched the black figure become smaller between sinking yellow flags.
Then a shadow.
Then a closed eye against the horizon.
Then nothing.
Blood Q. Eye left behind:
Seven hundred destroyed ships.
Four thousand seven hundred twenty-five dead.
Five thousand seven hundred seventy-five survivors without a fleet.
Power unconscious but standing until his body had been carried away.
Hijo stitched together by his own killing threads.
And one promise shouted by an injured idiot from a broken diner.
Eullian remained at the railing after Blood disappeared.
His left forearm trembled.
His right fist remained splinted.
His lungs hurt.
His fight with Power remained unfinished.
The diner was sinking on one side.
Thousands of people needed rescue.
Hijo might die if the wooden needle moved the width of a fingernail.
Eullian stared at the horizon.
Then lowered his arm.
"Analog."
The cook did not look up from Hijo.
"What?"
"Keep him alive."
Analog's amber eyes hardened.
"That is not an order you can make simple."
"No."
Eullian turned toward the wreckage.
"Then tell me what makes it possible."
Analog looked at Hijo.
At the thread crossing his lung.
At the wooden needle beside his heart.
At Mira holding the book.
At Runa holding the body.
At Tallen watching Blood's empty horizon.
Then Analog answered:
"Everyone."
The Peace Crew moved.
Behind them, the last visible trace of Blood Q. Eye vanished into the night.