The silence after the Speaker vanished was worse than the noise.
No wind. No echoes. No movement from the sky. Just the wet shine of blood still pooling where the man had been pulled apart, and the knowledge that nothing was coming to save them.
People began to move.
Not all at once. Not with purpose. Just small, frightened shifts—feet dragging, shoulders turning, eyes darting from face to face. No one wanted to be the first to speak again. No one wanted to be the next example.
Caelum stood among them, breathing slow, counting each rise and fall of his chest. He could feel the floor's warmth through the thin soles of his shoes. It pulsed faintly, like a vein.
Someone sobbed nearby.
Another voice whispered, "We should stay together."
A lie. Everyone knew it, even as they nodded.
Groups formed anyway. Desperation demanded structure, even false structure. People huddled, murmured plans that went nowhere. No exits revealed themselves. No doors opened. The sky remained a sealed bruise.
Time stretched.
Then someone screamed.
It wasn't loud at first—more of a gasp that tore itself into a cry as bodies shifted and scattered. Caelum turned with the rest, watching as two figures collided near one of the torch pillars that had begun to flicker to life along the floor's edges.
A man. A woman.
They crashed together hard enough that both nearly fell. Panic made them clumsy. The woman—Elara, someone screamed her name—scrabbled backward, her heels slipping on the stone. Her eyes were wide, pupils blown, breath coming in broken bursts.
The man—Gideon—didn't look at her like a person.
He looked at her like a solution.
"No—wait—" Elara stammered, hands raised, palms out. "Please, I don't—"
Gideon lunged.
There was no technique to it. No grace. Just mass and terror. He slammed into her, driving her into the stone wall hard enough to knock the air from her lungs. She screamed as his hands found her throat, fingers clamping down with frantic strength.
Her nails went for his face immediately.
She clawed, gouged, scraped skin from cheekbone and brow. One finger slipped into his eye socket, pressing hard. Gideon howled, staggering back half a step—but he didn't let go.
Blood streamed down his face, blinding him, but his grip tightened instead of loosening.
Elara's feet kicked uselessly. Her body convulsed as her airway collapsed under the pressure. She gagged, choking on spit, on panic, on the sound of her own strangled breathing. Her hands fluttered, then returned to violence—fists hammering his jaw, her teeth snapping forward to bite into his forearm.
She tasted blood.
Gideon roared again, a raw, animal sound, and slammed her head into the wall.
Once.
Twice.
The crack echoed across the chamber. Elara's movements turned erratic, her strength bleeding away with every impact. Still, she fought. Still, she refused to die quietly.
They slipped together, sliding down the wall into the growing slick of blood beneath them. Gideon's knee came down wrong with a wet pop. He screamed, but his hands never left her throat.
Witnesses screamed now too.
Someone vomited violently. Someone else froze, hands over their mouth, eyes glassy and unblinking.
Elara's vision tunneled. Her face darkened, veins standing out like bruised cords beneath her skin. Her legs kicked once more, then slowed. She reached up one last time, nails tearing into Gideon's eyes again, driving deep.
He shrieked, blinded, sobbing, shaking—but he didn't stop.
Because stopping meant dying.
He smashed her skull against the stone until her resistance ended. Until her body went slack. Until the only sound left was his ragged breathing and the wet slap of blood dripping from his face.
Elara lay still.
For a heartbeat, no one moved.
Then the body vanished.
It didn't fall. It didn't collapse. It simply ceased to exist, erased so completely it left only the blood behind.
The chamber went unnaturally silent.
A sound like iron tearing through the sky split the air.
Something fell.
It struck the stone near Gideon with a deafening crack, spraying blood and shards of obsidian outward. A weapon—dark, heavy, wrong—embedded itself point-first into the floor, vibrating faintly as if alive.
No one spoke.
Everyone understood.
Caelum felt the shift ripple through the crowd like a sickness. Fear curdled into calculation. Eyes changed. Distances widened.
People began to hunt.
The second kill happened quietly.
A woman named Lila never screamed.
She had been watching the weapon when Raziel stepped behind her. She sensed movement too late, turning just as his arm looped around her throat from behind. His grip was practiced. Controlled.
"Don't fight," he whispered into her ear, voice calm, almost gentle. "You'll just make it hurt."
Lila tried anyway.
Her hands clawed at his forearm, nails scraping uselessly against muscle. Raziel adjusted his hold with surgical precision, fingers digging into the soft places beneath her jaw. He lifted her slightly, forcing her onto her toes.
Her gasps turned shallow, wet. Her face flushed red, then darkened to a bruised purple as oxygen fled her brain. Her eyes bulged, blood vessels bursting one by one, staining the whites red.
Raziel held her there.
He watched her.
He did not look away as her tongue protruded, swollen and blue. As her body shuddered in involuntary spasms. As warmth ran down her legs.
Around them, people pretended not to see.
Those who did watch learned something worse than fear.
They learned intent.
When Lila finally went still, Raziel eased her to the ground carefully, almost reverently. Her eyes stared sightlessly upward, mouth frozen in a final, silent plea.
The silence snapped again.
Her body vanished.
The sky screamed.
Another weapon fell—this one lighter, sleeker—striking the stone with a sound like judgment.
Raziel didn't smile.
He simply reached for what Hell had decided he deserved.
Caelum watched it all.
He felt no rush. No thrill. Only certainty settling cold and heavy in his chest.
This was the rule.
And soon—
He would have to decide how to break someone with his hands.