The Red Valley was a graveyard that refused to stay quiet. To any other living soul, the air here was a chaotic mess of stagnant mana and the copper-scent of old death. But as I stood at the jagged mouth of the ravine, I didn't see chaos. I saw patterns. I closed my eyes, letting the Marble of Darkness in my chest pulse with a slow, hungry rhythm that matched the heartbeat of the valley itself.

  I filtered the world. I ignored the low hum of the wind and the rustle of the needle-sharp grass. Then, I felt it: six distinct, pulsing heat signatures. They were sharp, rhythmic, and entirely unnatural. They were the signatures of men who circulated mana through their veins to stave off the biting cold of the mountain air. To me, they were beacons in a pitch-black room.

  “They shouldn’t have chosen this place,” I whispered, my voice barely a ripple in the freezing air. “They made it easier for me. Now, I don't even have to hide the bodies.”

  In this valley, the crimson soil swallowed everything.

  I began to move. I didn't run; I glided. I activated the Void Step, wrapping my presence in the valley’s own dead frequency. I wasn't just hiding my footsteps; I was convincing the world that I wasn't there at all.

  I targeted the first guard—a man positioned high on a jagged rock shelf, his eyes scanning the path below. He was the sentinel, the one meant to sound the alarm. He was far from the others, isolated by his own arrogance. I appeared behind him like a ghost coalescing from the mist. My hand gripped the hilt of the steel I had forged in Silas’s shop.

  Snikt.

  The sound of the blade leaving the leather scabbard was the only warning he received, and even then, his brain was too slow to process the vibration. I swung in one fluid, horizontal arc. The edge met no resistance; it passed through his neck as if his flesh were made of smoke.

  For a single, horrific heartbeat, his head remained balanced on his shoulders. Then, it slid off, hitting the stone with a wet, heavy thud. The transition was violent. Blood erupted from his severed neck in a hot, rhythmic spray, rising like a crimson rain that painted the grey rocks in steaming red. I didn't stay to watch him fall. I stepped over the twitching torso before the first drop of blood could touch my boots and moved toward the second signature.

  The second guard was leaning against a withered, blackened tree, his breath misting in the air. He died exactly like the first—a silver flash in the dark, a silent prayer that went unheard, and another headless trunk slumping into the mud.

  Only four remained.

  I moved toward the western edge of the camp. There was a problem: the next two were patrolling together. They walked side-by-side, the glowing embers of their hand-rolled cigarettes piercing the thick fog like the eyes of small animals. They were laughing, their voices low and gravelly as they joked about the gold they would squeeze out of the blacksmith. They had let down their guards, convinced that the silence of the valley was their protector.

  I didn't use the sword for a slash. I gripped the hilt with both hands and threw it.

  The blade hissed through the air, propelled by a concentrated burst of Void-pressure. It didn't just hit the guard on the left; it erased the logic of his leather armor. The steel pierced through his back, shredded his heart, and burst out of his chest, pinning him to the gnarled tree behind him. He died with the cigarette still clutched between his teeth, his eyes wide with a shock he would never recover from.

  The second guard froze. He saw his partner pinned like an insect to a board and his hand flew to his sword hilt. He never finished the draw.

  I was already in his space. I didn't need a weapon for a man whose fear had already paralyzed him. I channeled the weight of the Void into my fist and lunged. I threw a punch directly at his open mouth, my small knuckles connecting with his teeth. The impact was catastrophic. His jaw didn't just break; it shattered, the bone splinters piercing his own tongue and throat. The sheer internal pressure of the strike forced his left eyeball to pop from its socket, dangling by a thin, red nerve against his cheek. He hit the dirt like a sack of stones, dead before his body knew it was hurting.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  Only two left. The gatekeepers.

  I didn't hide anymore. I walked out of the shadows and toward the camp entrance. I held my sword out to the side, the blood of their comrades dripping steadily from the tip, carving a trail of black-red droplets into the crimson gravel.

  The two guards in front of the camp spun around. Their eyes moved from my small, silver-haired form to the blood-stained blade in my hand.

  "Who are you? Where did you come from?" one shouted, his voice cracking with a sudden, sharp fear that he tried to mask with anger.

  They drew their swords, the steel ringing out in the quiet air. "Marcus! Leo! Get over here! We have an intruder!" they roared into the dark.

  No one answered. The silence I had woven was absolute.

  "They aren't coming," I said, my voice toneless and flat.

  I ran.

  I wasn't a child running; I was a blur of silver hair and violet veins. The first guard tried to bring his sword down in a defensive overhead strike. I didn't parry. I ducked under the arc, feeling the wind of his blade pass over my head, and sliced through his wrist. His hand, still white-knuckled around the hilt of his sword, flew into the air, spinning like a tossed coin.

  The second guard lunged at me, his face twisted in a mask of desperate, primal rage. I blocked his strike with a jarring clang, the vibration traveling up his arm and shattering his composure. I spun on my heel, the momentum of my body and the artificial weight I carried fueling a wide, horizontal sweep.

  The first guard, the one clutching his stump in shock, didn't even have time to scream before my blade passed through his throat. His head joined the others in the red mud.

  The final guard dropped his sword. The 'mercenary pride' he had carried for years was gone, replaced by a shaking, pathetic terror. He looked past me, seeing the trail of headless corpses I had left in the fog. He wasn't a soldier anymore; he was a broken animal.

  "Save me... gods, save me!" he shrieked, turning and bolting into the darkness of the ravine.

  He didn't make it five steps. He tripped over the headless body of the second guard and scrambled back up, his face covered in the man's cooling blood. I reached down, grabbed the sword of the guard I had just killed, and threw it with an effortless flick of my wrist.

  The blade spun through the air, a silver wheel of death, and buried itself deep in the center of the running man's spine. His scream was cut short, ending in a wet, hollow gurgle as he collapsed into the dirt, his legs twitching once before going still.

  Silence returned to the Red Valley.

  I wiped a fleck of blood from my cheek and stepped into the orange firelight of the main camp. Silas was tied to the post, a broken, sobbing mess. Jacob and Vane—the man who called himself 'Baron'—were standing there, their shock finally turning into a cold, combat-ready focus.

  I looked at the one in the fine silks, my eyes glowing with an ocean-red hunger that seemed to suck the light out of the campfire.

  "You said your name is Baron Vane," I said, my voice cutting through the thin mountain air like a guillotine. "But you look like a peasant playing dress-up. Tell me... is that title a reality, or just a facade to hide the fact that you are a common thief with a better tailor? You wear silk to convince the world you are important, but in this valley, you are nothing more than dust waiting to be scattered."

  Vane didn’t flinch. A slow, dangerous smile crept across his face, his hand tightening around the hilt of a silver-threaded rapier.

  "You little freak," Vane said, his voice dropping into a low, predatory growl. "You've got a big mouth for a ghost. You think because you killed a few lazy guards in the dark that you've won? I've survived wars while you were still a thought in a dead man's mind."

  He signaled to Jacob, who stepped into a flanking position, his broadsword gleaming in the firelight.

  "If you think a cold stare and a few tricks are enough to break me, then you are mistaken, boy," Vane hissed.

  The mana around him began to swell, a dense, golden pressure that fought back against my Void. He wasn't a victim; he was an enforcer. He leveled the point of his rapier at my throat, the steel humming with a lethal frequency.

  "Now," I whispered, the ground beneath my feet beginning to crack, "you must pay the price of your insolence."

  Vane lunged