Kael stood over the fading particles of the dude he just sent back to the lobby.
His mind was a mess.
It felt as if someone had taken a library's worth of instructional manuals on "How to Murder People with Sharp Objects" and shoved them directly into his hippocampus with a hydraulic press.
It wasn't just data.
It was memory.
He could feel calluses on his hands that didn't exist.
He could remember thousands of hours of sparring in locations he had never visited.
He knew the exact weight of the sword in his hand down to the gram, the balance point, the steel composition.
He looked at his hand.
It was trembling, but not from fear.
It was trembling with anticipation.
'What the hell just happened?' Kael thought, horrified.
He didn't even know when he grabbed his sword and stabbed the guy in his face, his arm just... did it.
Out of instincts. A very familiar instinct.
It felt like scratching an itch. A very violent itch.
The clearing was dead silent.
