The Reaper took a step back, the obsidian blade still vibrating from the impact against the white steel. He circled Kaelen like a wolf, waiting for the breach that hatred would surely open. Bishop Arlan, however, stopped his walk toward the exit. He seemed to be enjoying himself too much to leave now.
Arlan tucked his plump hand into the deep folds of his crimson cassock. With a slow and ceremonious movement, he withdrew a small metallic object. It was a silver brooch, a heraldic seal shaped in the form of a gardenia intertwined with swords. The personal emblem of Lady Valerius.
— You recognize this, don't you, Kaelen? — The Bishop held the object out between his thumb and forefinger, letting the candlelight dance over the tarnished metal.
Kaelen felt his stomach drop. The glint of the silver was like a silent scream. He tasted iron in his mouth and his vision began to turn red at the edges.
— Yes... I recognize it — Kaelen's voice came out like a growl from the bowels of the earth. — It's my mother's seal. The one that was on her dress when she was taken.
— Ah, yes. Exactly — Arlan smiled, running his thumb over the emblem with a sickening delicacy. — She fought a little, you know? Impressive fiber for a woman of your lineage. But this brooch... it was fastening the fabric so firmly, so... obstructively. I had to rip it off with my own hands. It was getting in the way, you understand? The cold metal against her warm skin was a distraction I could not tolerate.
Kaelen let out a trembling breath, cold sweat mingling with the blood trickling from his forehead. Each of the Bishop's words was a nail being hammered into his soul.
— Do you know what she said when I pulled it off? — Arlan continued, his voice now a whisper of pure malice filling the void of the chapel. — She didn't cry out for your dead father. She didn't cry out for the Church. She whispered your name, Kaelen. She thought her "gentleman" son would come to save her. Little did she know that her son is now just an errand boy for a high-end prostitute like Vespera.
The Bishop let out a low, guttural laugh.
— I kept it as a souvenir. Of her scent, of the sound of silk tearing under the brooch. You see, Valerius, the Lupanar is a place of transactions. But what I did with her... that was purely spiritual.
— SHUT UP! — Kaelen's scream was not human. It was the sound of something breaking definitively.
He lunged. It wasn't a fencing attack. It was a snap of blind fury. The Reaper of the See moved to intercept him, the obsidian dagger tracing a lethal arc toward Kaelen's exposed ribs.
High above, Nyx gripped her bow so hard the wood groaned. She saw the mistake. Kaelen was attacking with his heart exposed, ignoring defense, ignoring the professional assassin who was about to pierce his lung.
— He's going to kill himself... — Nyx murmured, her finger hesitating on the bow's trigger.
Kaelen blocked the Reaper's strike desperately, metal grinding against metal. He was face-to-face with the grey assassin, but his eyes were fixed on the Bishop, who merely watched with a satisfied smile, dangling Kaelen's mother's seal between his fingers.
The sound of the precious metal colliding with the cold marble echoed like a funeral bell. Bishop Arlan dropped Lady Valerius's seal and, with a deliberate and slow movement, crushed it under the heavy leather sole of his boot. The snap of the silver bending was muffled by the sound of the cleric's dry laughter.
— See that, Kaelen? — Arlan twisted his heel over the emblem, grinding it into the dirt of the floor. — This is what your lineage represents now. Something that can be easily stepped on. Something that bends under the weight of those who truly hold the power. Your family is not a legend; it's just the trash I wipe from the soles of my shoes before entering the Lupanar.
Kaelen felt the world lose focus. The sound of the rain outside, the beating of his heart, Vespera's words... everything disappeared into a white, deafening hum. The traumatic shock didn't turn him into a legendary warrior; it paralyzed him. His mind was a whirlwind of images: his mother's face, the flash of the seal being crushed, the smell of incense. He was static, the white sword trembling in his hand, his eyes fixed on the floor, where the only piece of his dignity had just been disfigured.
The Reaper of the See did not wait.
The grey assassin advanced with the icy efficiency of an automaton. He didn't seek the fatal blow immediately; he wanted to bleed the prey that no longer fought. The obsidian dagger traced a quick cut on Kaelen's shoulder. Then, another on the thigh. And one more on the forearm.
Kaelen felt the cold stings, but it was as if they were happening to someone else. Warm blood began to soak his tunic, drawing red maps over the white linen. He tried to raise the sword, but his reflexes were drowned in mental agony.
— React, Valerius! — The Reaper whispered, his voice coming out like the scraping of knives, as he cut the side of Kaelen's face, opening a gash that began to blind his left eye with blood.
High above, Nyx felt her stomach turn. She had seen men die in a thousand ways, but watching Kaelen surrender to that passive slaughter was different. It was pathetic. It was painful.
— Dammit, Kaelen! — Nyx gritted her teeth, her fingers pulling the bowstring to the limit. — If you die like this, I'm personally going to hell to kick you for being a coward!
She saw the Reaper prepare for the final blow: a direct thrust to the throat, taking advantage of Kaelen being on his knees, looking at the crushed seal with the expression of a lost child. Bishop Arlan was already at the door, laughing, satisfied with the spectacle of a man's total destruction.
The Reaper of the See saw the opening. Kaelen was on his knees, his guard down, his eyes lost in the twisted metal under the Bishop's boot. To the assassin, it was no longer a fight; it was the execution of an animal that had given up on breathing.
The obsidian dagger descended in a vertical arc, a strike designed to enter through the base of the neck and find the heart.
In the deafening silence of Kaelen's mind, time did not slow down; it stopped. The Bishop's laughter became a distant echo. What filled the void was not his mother's voice, but the image of Elara. He saw his sister's face, not in the past, but in the immediate future: her eyes wide, her small hands searching for his in the darkness of the Lupanar, while Bishop Arlan opened the door to her room with that same hideous smile.
"If I die here... he goes to her."
The perception was like a lightning bolt of pure voltage hitting a dead system. The traumatic shock did not disappear; it transformed into an internal combustion.
The Reaper's strike happened.
But instead of the sound of tearing flesh, there was the sound of grinding bones.
Kaelen didn't use the sword. In a movement that defied the physics of his broken body, he raised his left hand and grabbed the obsidian blade.
The black steel of the dagger sank into Kaelen's palm, piercing through flesh and muscle until it stopped against the metacarpal bones. Blood gushed instantly, hot and shimmering, running down the assassin's arm. The Reaper froze, his eyes hidden under the hood widening in shock. No one, not even a maniac, blocked an obsidian dagger with a bare palm.
Kaelen lifted his face. Blood from the cut on his forehead ran down his left eye, painting half of his vision crimson. He didn't look like a cadet anymore. He didn't look like a man anymore.
— You don't... touch... her — Kaelen hissed. The voice was no longer human; it was the sound of metal being ground.
He squeezed the blade harder, ignoring the nerves being severed. With his right hand, he didn't strike with the tip of the white sword. He pivoted his body with the torque of a steel spring and used the iron pommel of the sword to strike the Reaper's face with the force of a war hammer.
The snap of the nasal bone breaking echoed through the entire chapel. The Reaper was thrown back, but Kaelen didn't let him go. Since he was still holding the dagger impaled in his own hand, he pulled the assassin back to himself.
High above, Nyx felt a chill run down her spine. She lowered the bow, her fingers trembling slightly. — By the gods... he woke up.
Bishop Arlan, who was already at the threshold of the door, stopped. The smile vanished instantly, replaced by a mask of pale horror. He saw Kaelen Valerius rise slowly, his left hand still impaling the enemy's dagger, his right arm extended with the white sword that now glowed, not with divine light, but with the reflection of pure hatred.
Kaelen ripped the dagger out of his own hand with a guttural scream that drowned out the sound of the thunder outside. He didn't feel the pain. The nervous system had been flooded with so much adrenaline and fury that he was, in that moment, a corpse operating by sheer will.
He took a step toward the dazed Reaper.
— My mother said my name? — Kaelen asked, his voice low, lethal. — Good. Because the last thing you're going to hear is the sound of your own neck breaking under the weight of a Valerius.
The Reaper tried to draw a second blade, but Kaelen was faster. He didn't fight like a gentleman. He fought like the monster Vespera wanted. He lunged with a brutal headbutt, feeling the enemy's skull give way, and then delivered a horizontal slash with the white sword.
The white steel didn't just cut flesh; it seemed to sing as it tore through the throat of the Reaper of the See, sending a spray of blood over the golden altar.
Kaelen stopped for a second, his breath coming out in clouds of vapor. He turned his neck slowly, his bloodied eye fixing on Bishop Arlan, who was now retreating, tripping over his own cassock.
— Now... — Kaelen said, taking the first step toward the cleric. — Let's talk about what you did to her brooch.