Decisive motion finally stirred the thick, liquor-scented air, still vibrating with Deimos’s rage and Merikh’s damning accusations.

  Kalabhiti’s good eye narrowed to a slit, his gaze cutting toward the heavy oak door. With a grunt of impatience, he pushed himself off the couch, the worn leather sighing in relief. He took two purposeful strides toward the exit, his acid-stained boots scuffing against the pitted stone. His hand was already dropping to the pitted hilt of his sword, his intent to depart written in the tense line of his shoulders.

  He did not take a third step.

  Before the sound of his second footfall had finished echoing, Merikh was simply there. There was no blur, no rush of displaced air. He was leaning against the wall one moment, and the next he was standing directly in Kalabhiti’s path, having moved with a silence that defied physics. It was as if the shadows between the barrels had condensed and reshaped themselves into the armoured sentinel.

  Merikh’s movement had been precipitated not by sight, but by sound. He had heard the specific, telling tension in Kalabhiti’s calf muscles, the minute shift in his balance that preceded directed motion, and had reacted faster than thought could follow.

  One of Merikh’s longswords, “Stillness,” formed a simple, unyielding barricade across the narrow space between the furniture and the casks, instead of striking. He tilted his head slightly to the side, and his dark hair partially obscured his steel-grey eyes, which fixed on Kalabhiti with unnerving focus.

  Kalabhiti jerked to a halt, his boots scraping hard against the floor. The chemical haze around his own blade wavered in agitation. “What the…?” he breathed, genuine shock breaking through his usual corrosive demeanour.

  “Where,” Merikh asked, his voice a low, even hum that seemed to emanate from the cool metal of his armour, “do you think you are going, Kalabhiti?”

  Kalabhiti’s scarred lips pulled back from his teeth. He didn’t dare push past the barrier of the blade; he knew better. Instead, he leaned into the confrontation, his good eye burning with impatience. “I know where Mephistopheles would head,” he stated, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  The memory struck Kalabhiti not as a gentle recollection, but as a shard of ice driven into his temple. The mention of the note, the reality of Aham’s death, pulled him from the heated present into a past that now felt colder and more significant.

  5 YEARS AGO, IN A SUNLIT ANTEROOM OF BALISARDE SUMERNOR CASTLE

  The air had been different then. It wasn’t thick with liquor and threat, but with dust motes dancing in broad sunbeams that slanted through tall windows. Aham had been waiting for him, a figure of calm composure amidst the stone. His samurai armour, a deep lacquered blue, was immaculate, the twin katanas at his hip resting with a silent, patient gravity. His face, which was younger and unlined by the final despair Merikh had just described, usually showed thoughtful reserve, but an uncharacteristic weight filled his eyes.

  “Hey, Kalabhiti. I have something to tell you,” Aham had said, his voice even, devoid of its battlefield command.

  Kalabhiti, younger himself, his face bearing fewer fine scars, had leaned against a pillar, his own sword, less pitted then propped beside him. “Oh, what is it, Aham?”

  “If I ever die,” Aham stated, the morbidity of the words clashing with the sunlit room, “I want someone to take this note.” From a compartment in his armoured sleeve, he produced a small, folded piece of parchment, its edges softened from handling.

  He extended it. Kalabhiti took it, his fingers, then unmarked by acid burns, unfolding it with a skeptic’s frown. The ink was blurry, water-damaged or smudged by sweat, rendering most of the message an illegible grey cloud. Only two characters in the corner remained stark.

  “It’s smudged,” Kalabhiti had grunted, holding it up to the light. “And the only thing I can make out is ‘T 13.’ What exactly does that imply?”

  Aham’s gaze had drifted to the castle walls around them. “I believe it has something to do with the Tabularium Room on floor 13.” A pause, heavy with unshared history. “Balisarda Sumernor gave it to me. For a reason.”

  Kalabhiti had let out a short laugh, the sound echoing in the quiet room. It was the laugh of a man who saw the world as a series of immediate, solvable threats. “Why,” he’d chuckled, “would he give you a note?” The question was genuine, born of a mindset that couldn’t reconcile the lord of their world engaging in cryptic, paper-based sentiment.

  Aham had simply looked at him, the depth in his eyes refusing to offer a satisfying answer. He didn’t need to explain. The note itself, and the act of giving it, were the explanation. It was a chain, and he was passing Kalabhiti, a single, fragile link.

  PRESENT TIME | LIQUOR STORAGE ROOM, 12TH FLOOR OF BALISARDA’S CASTLE

  The name ‘Tabularium Room’ had just left Kalabhiti’s lips when Merikh’s head snapped toward the closed door, a minuscule motion that for him was as dramatic as a shout. His steel-grey eyes lost focus, looking at nothing in the room, seeing everything beyond it.

  “Where is he going?” Merikh asked, though his distant tone made it clear he was not questioning Kalabhiti, but confirming a trajectory he alone could hear.

  “The Tabularium Room,” Kalabhiti repeated, his hand already gripping the pitted hilt of his sword, the air around it beginning to waver with heat.

  Merikh’s focus snapped back into the room, sharp and commanding. “You’ll stay here, Kalabhiti. You shall not fight Mephistopheles.”

  Kalabhiti took a step toward the door, his scarred face a mask of incredulous rage. “Why is that, Merikh? Someone needs to kill this bastard for what he has done!”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “First,” Merikh’s voice was low, leaving no room for argument, “he has killed two Principals already. That shows you nothing of his danger? I want no more to perish.” He took a step, positioning himself subtly between Kalabhiti and the exit. “Second, I will go. But not now.”

  “Why not now?” Kalabhiti spat, the acid scent intensifying. A drop of something clear sizzled on the floor by his boot.

  Merikh didn’t answer in words. Instead, he went utterly still, his head tilting again. The mantle of wolf fur on his shoulders seemed to bristle. A deep, unsettling silence fell over him, as if he were drawing all sound from the room for himself.

  “Don’t you hear it, Kalabhiti?” Merikh finally whispered, his voice taut. “I am sure everyone else does.” He wasn’t asking. He was stating.

  Before Kalabhiti could retort, Merikh moved. In one fluid motion, he turned and seized the heavy iron ring of the oak door, heaving it wide open.

  The noise obliterated the relative quiet of the liquor storage room.

  A wave of sound crashed in from the cavernous stone veins of the castle, not the clash of steel, but something far more primal. It was a chant, thunderous and rhythmic, echoing from what seemed like a hundred throats, rising from the courtyards and barracks far below, hammering against the very stones.

  “SIMBA! HUNTS! AND! THE! CASTLE! FEEDS!”

  “SIMBA! HUNTS! AND! THE! CASTLE! FEEDS!”

  The mantra of bloodsport. The roar of the castle’s legions when its champion was unleashed.

  Renatus, who had been watching with detached calculation, now stood slowly, the golden chain on his bracer going taut and still. Deimos’s bitter smile returned, a flicker of genuine interest in his pale eyes as he listened to the distant fury.

  Kalabhiti froze, the violent energy around his sword stuttering. The chant was a fact more concrete than any argument.

  Merikh stood in the open doorway, the chaotic chorus washing over him. He looked back at Kalabhiti, his expression unreadable. “Kalabhiti,” he said, the chant pounding like a drum behind his words. “Simba is fighting Mephistopheles right now.”

  The revelation hung in the air, heavier than the chant. The game had changed. Their prey was no longer moving in the shadows toward an archive. He was in the pit, and the castle’s most brutal hound had been set upon him. Intervening now was not to hunt, but to walk into a storm.

  The chant from below was a living thing, pounding through the stone like a monstrous heartbeat.

  “SIMBA! HUNTS! AND! THE! CASTLE! FEEDS!”

  Merikh remained framed in the doorway, the cacophony flooding the room. He didn’t raise his voice. He simply let the silence that followed his question hang, sharp and deliberate, until the next wave of the chant subsided slightly.

  “And you know what that means, right?” he asked, his voice a low counterpoint to the distant roar. It wasn’t a question seeking information, but a blade poised to pin each of them to the undeniable truth.

  From the couch, Renatus gave a soft, dark chuckle. He examined the golden stinger sheathed over his finger, tracing its lethal point with a thoughtful thumb. A predator’s smile touched his lips, cold and devoid of humour. “I think we all do,” he said, his amber eyes lifting to meet Merikh’s. The meaning in his gaze was clinical and clear: an execution, not a battle. A foregone conclusion playing out to a brutal, cheering soundtrack. The calculus of death was simple, and Simba was its most violent integer.

  Deimos let out a short, harsh bark of laughter that cracked through the room like a whip. He flexed the hand with the hole through the palm, a gesture of cruel recall. “Tch. He is getting bashed harder than I bashed him just now,” he sneered, the words laced with a vicious, almost proprietary satisfaction. There was no concern in his voice, only a dark appreciation for the escalation of violence, a confirmation that the intruder’s suffering would now far exceed the price of a pierced hand.

  Kalabhiti stood rigid, his knuckles bone-white on the pitted hilt of his sword. The heat haze around the blade intensified, warping the light and making the terrible scars on his face seem to deepen and writhe. He stared past Merikh into the echoing hallway, his good eye narrowed, as if by sheer will he could see through stone to the carnage below. His jaw worked, the muscles in his neck standing out like cables. The corrosive anger that defined him seemed to curdle into something colder, more bitter. When he spoke, it was not a shout, but a low, grating admission forced out between clenched teeth, each word tasting of ash and defeat.

  “He…” A muscle twitched beneath the scar on his cheek. The chant boomed again, underlining his statement with savage punctuation. “…is going to die.”

  The words fell into the room, a grim and final verdict. The intruder was no longer a problem to be solved or a foe to be confronted. He was a body to be counted, a name to be added to the toll. The only question that remained in the thick, chant-charged air was what manner of ruin Simba would leave for them to find.

  Inside the kitchen, the air was thick with the scent of scorched metal and primal threat. Simba’s massive form seemed to absorb the low light, his bestial right hand a terrifying construct of fur, muscle, and curved black claws flexing slowly. The heat shimmer around him warped the view of the destroyed stoves and splintered cabinetry behind him.

  “I was such a jerk,” Simba said, his voice a low, rumbling purr that vibrated in the chests of the few remaining, terrified kitchen staff cowering in the corners. He gave a slight, almost theatrical bow of his horned head. “I forgot to introduce myself. May you forgive me, Mephistopheles.” The smile that had been playing on his lips vanished, replaced by an expression of cold, predatory focus. “My name is Simba, and I am ranked Principal Four.”

  He raised his clawed hand, talons glinting. The shimmering air around him began radiating a palpable dry heat that made the blood on the floor sizzle.

  “However,” he declared, the word landing with the finality of a tombstone sealing a crypt. “I wonder how you’re related to the ultimate bloodshed user.” His head tilted, a lion considering its prey. “But regardless… this battle is far from over.”

  In the courtyard, inside Pandora’s Box, the atmosphere was one of claustrophobic, curated horror. The air within the crystalline structure hummed with restrained power and smelled of ozone and old blood. Here, the scene was one of fastidious revulsion.

  The man in the immaculate navy coat stared down at the lifeless form of Jolvuthiz, his expression not of triumph, but of profound disgust. A single glistening trail of spit marred his cheek.

  “That is repulsive,” he hissed, his voice laced with a contempt so pure it seemed to outweigh the violence of the last few minutes. “It has a foul, slimy stench.”

  With furious, precise motions, he wiped the offending fluid from his face with the sleeve of his coat, staining the pristine navy fabric with a damp, ugly smear. He examined the stain as if it were a mortal insult, the aftermath of the kill clearly offending him more than the act itself.

  At the far end of the same courtyard, away from the crystalline Box, the conflict was intimate and philosophical, a battle of stories written in blood. The mud churned, and the chilly afternoon air chilled.

  Kaelus stood over Chris, a spectre of relentless will. His voice was a rasp, the sound of a grave being steadily filled with earth.

  “I converse with mass,” Kaelus stated. “I will persevere. I suggest it becomes lighter… or heavier. When you stabbed me in the throat, I held a conversation with my blood. I asked it to become so heavy, so impossibly dense, it could not leave my body.” A ghastly, wet sound might have been a laugh. “It obeyed.”

  The point of his Katana drifted closer until it was the only thing in Chris’s world, a silver star promising oblivion.

  “And now, Chris, I am speaking to the blood in your veins. I am telling it a story about gravity. I am convincing it to forget its nature.” His voice dropped to a whisper that carried worse than a scream. “I am making it so heavy it will collapse your heart, burst your vessels, and crush you from the inside out. That is the power difference between us. Your story, your safe, entitled, clean minor story ends here. Now. In the mud. With no one to hear your final righteous thought.”

  However, from the far ends of the courtyard, a new sound arrived. It did not build; it crashed.

  It was the sound of an asteroid striking the earth, a deep, shattering BOOM that rolled across the castle grounds, momentarily drowning out the distant chant of “Simba! Hunts!” The very stones of the courtyard trembled. A shockwave of displaced air, dust, and debris billowed outward from the impact site near the outer wall.

  When the dust began settling, an unfamiliar figure stood in the crater his entrance had carved. The night itself seemed to pull back from his presence.

  Jabari had entered the war.