The Anomaly's Path

I stared at the head.

It lay at my feet, resting in a pool of blood that was still spreading across the floorboards, slow and patient, like it was searching for something else to claim. The neck was a ragged mess of torn flesh and snapped bone. The blood that leaked from it was already starting to darken and thicken.

The one remaining eye was still open.

That eye was looking at nothing in this world. But it felt like it was looking at me. It felt like Roran was watching me from somewhere far away, waiting for me to do something, say something.

The weight of that gaze pressed down on my chest like a second corpse, crushing me with expectations I had never asked for and could never hope to meet.

Roran...

The name stuck in my throat. I could not say it. I could not whisper it. I could not even think it without feeling like something was tearing inside my chest.

How did this happen...?

One moment, we were laughing. The festival was still going. The lanterns were still floating in the sky. The kids were running through the streets, their faces sticky with honey cakes, their laughter echoing off the walls.

I was planning to leave the village. I was going to tell everyone goodbye. I was going to step out into the world and find my own path.

...And then the monsters came.

The ground shook beneath my feet. The sky turned red with fire. The screams started somewhere in the distance, small at first, then growing, swelling, becoming a chorus of terror that swallowed every other sound.

And they did not... stop.

People I had known for months—people who had smiled at me when I walked through the market, who had shared bread with me when I had nothing, who had helped me carry firewood and mend my clothes and patch up my wounds, were torn apart in front of my eyes.

Their blood soaked into the cobblestones and their bodies lay in the streets like broken dolls discarded by a careless child.

Marta. Torben. The children.

Roran.

Everyone...

Why did they have to die..?

The question echoed in my skull, soft and hollow, like a stone dropped into a dry well. I could not find an answer that satisfied the screaming void inside my head. There was no reason and no justice, only blood and ash and the thick, choking smell of burning flesh that clung to the back of my throat.

These were not warriors. They were not soldiers.

They were just simple people living simple lives in a small village at the edge of nowhere.

Bakers who woke before dawn to knead dough. Blacksmiths who shaped iron with hands calloused from years of work. Farmers who rose with the sun and slept when it set. Old women who sat on their porches and drank tea and watched the children play.

What crime did they commit?

What sin did they carry?

What did they do wrong to deserve this?

...Nothing.

They did nothing wrong.

They were just living peacefully.

...And then they died.

The children. Poor little children. They had not even seen the world with their own eyes. They had not fallen in love or chosen a path or discovered who they wanted to become. Their lives had been nothing but a series of small moments—chasing fireflies, stealing honey cakes, crying when they scraped their knees—and now... those moments were over.

They were just kids.

Why...?

Marta.

Elder Marta, who had taken me in when I had nothing, who had fed me and clothed me and treated me like family when she had no reason to. She had sat on her porch every evening with a cup of tea, watching the sun set over the village, and she had never once asked for anything in return.

She died on her knees, with a demon’s hand buried in her chest up to the wrist. Her lips were still moving when she fell—a prayer, a goodbye, a word I would never hear.

Why?

Torben.

The old blacksmith who had forged Tempest for me with hands that had shaped iron for forty years. He had smiled when I named the blade, his weathered face crinkling with something that looked like pride, and he had told me to be the storm.

He died lying in the street, his chest torn open, his forge burning behind him, the flames reflecting off his pale face like he was still... alive.

Why?

Roran.

Roran, who had trained me. Roran, who had pushed me to my limits and beyond, who had beaten me bloody and thrown me into the dirt and refused to let me stay down. Roran, who had believed in me when no one else did, who had called me his disciple, who had smiled at me with blood on his lips and told me I would be stronger than him.

He died standing between me and Kael’s blade.

He died with a sword through his chest and a hole where his eye used to be and his left arm hanging by a thread. He died telling me that it was okay, that I would be okay, that I would become a good swordsman.

Why did he have to protect me?

He could have run. He could have saved himself. He did not have to die for my pathetic, worthless, useless life. He could have walked away and found another village and started over and lived.

However... he did not.

He stayed.

He stayed for me.

Why?

A whisper crawled into my mind, soft at first, then louder, growing into a scream I could not silence no matter how hard I tried.

They all died because you are weak.

They all died because you could not protect them.

You killed them.

You are their killer.

You.

You.

You.

...Ah.

Yes.

They all died because of me.

I am too weak. I am worthless. I am a failure who could not save a single person, not one, not even a child who called my name and begged me to help her.

I should have died. Not them.

Me.

Why am I still alive?

The question would not leave. It stayed in my head, scratching at the inside of my skull like a trapped animal, asking over and over, demanding an answer I did not have and could never find.

Why am I still breathing when they are not?

Why am I still here when they are gone?

Why did I survive when Marta fell and Maya stopped moving and Roran’s head rolled across the floor?

Why?

Why?

Why?

A sound cut through the fog.

Laughter.

It was soft at first, barely audible over the ringing in my ears. But it grew louder. It swelled and swelled until it was all I could hear, all I could feel, all I could taste.

I lifted my gaze.

Kael was standing over Roran’s body. His hollow eyes were wide and his mouth was open and his shoulders were shaking with the force of his laughter. He was laughing like a man who had just won everything he ever wanted, who had finally achieved the thing he had been chasing for years.

...or maybe not.

Silla was laughing. Her sharp teeth glinted in the firelight and her wild eyes were bright with a joy that made my stomach turn and my throat tighten.

She licked the blood off her fingers with slow, deliberate strokes, her tongue tracing each digit like she was savoring a meal, and then she giggled—a high, thin sound that echoed off the broken walls.

Grog was laughing too. His massive body shook with every deep, rumbling chuckle, and his stone-crushing hands hung at his sides, still wet with blood that was already starting to dry and flake. His face was blank, emotionless, but the sound coming from his throat was unmistakably amused.

The shadow figures that remained were laughing, their voices thin and reedy, like wind through cracked glass, like the dying breaths of men who had forgotten what it felt like to be alive.

Why...?

Why are they laughing?

Why are they happy?

What did they gain?

What did they win?

How can they be happy after killing everyone?

How can they laugh at the death of children?

How can they smile at the blood of the innocent?

How can they stand here, in this room full of bodies, and feel nothing but satisfaction?

I do not understand.

I cannot understand.

No matter how hard I try, no matter how many times I turn the question over in my mind, I cannot understand how someone can kill and laugh. How someone can destroy and smile. How someone can look at the face of a dying child and feel anything but horror.

Why?

Why?

Why?

The word lost its meaning. It became a sound. A noise. A hollow echo in my hollow skull.

Why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why—

It went on and on and on, a never-ending stream of syllables that tumbled over each other like water over a waterfall.

Why...

Why...

Wh...

W...

.

.

.

My vision starting to blur.

The edges of the world turned dark, curling inward like paper caught in a flame. The laughter faded, becoming distant and muffled, like sounds heard from the bottom of a well. The flames outside dimmed, their light retreating to the corners of my eyes.

The children’s cries became soft and far away, swallowed by the ringing in my ears.

I was falling or floating. I could not tell which.

The darkness crept in from the edges of my vision, slow and patient, like a tide rising to swallow me whole. It was warm. It was soft. It was inviting.

Maybe if I close my eyes, I thought, it will all go away.

Maybe if I stop breathing, the pain will stop.

Maybe if I just... let go...

Maybe...

.

.

.

Click!

Something flickered in the darkness behind my eyes.

It was small at first, barely there—a tiny pinprick in the darkness, a single point of something that was not light and not dark but somewhere in between. Something else. Something deeper. It was not a sound. It was a sensation. It was an instinct.

A presence and a whisper that had been sleeping in the deepest, darkest part of my soul, and now it was waking up.

Click!

The darkness did not retreat. It changed. It became something else. Something thicker and heavier. Something that should not exist.

Click!

A voice that was not a voice, a hand that was not a hand, reaching out to me from the depths of my own soul.

Reach for it.

I did not know what it was. I did not know why I should reach for it. But my hand—my left hand, the only one I had left—reached out into the darkness.

Take it.

My fingers closed around nothing. Emptiness. A void with no weight, no shape, no form—a hole in the shape of something that should have been there but was not.

But I felt it.

Dread and cold.

This was hunger—something that ate at you from the inside, chewed through your bones, sucked the marrow dry. It grabbed you by the throat, pulled you under, deeper and deeper into a dark that had no bottom.

It swallowed you whole, absorbed you and when it was done, there was nothing left. Not even ash. Not even a name.

Hold it.

I held on.

The darkness didn’t retreat. It changed—thicker, heavier, something that should not exist.

...And then the flames came.

_

I was standing again.

I did not remember standing up. I did not remember deciding to stand.

But my body had moved anyway. My legs had pushed me up. My left hand had reached for Tempest. My broken, bleeding, dying body had refused to stay down.

Because that was what I did. I got back up.

Every time.

Tempest was in my left hand. The blade was dark with blood. The edge was chipped and dull. The leather of the grip was slick with sweat and gore.

But I was holding it.

Black mist was rising from my skin.

It curled off my shoulders like smoke from dying embers, thin and wispy at first, then thicker, darker. It drifted from my mouth with every breath I took, clouding the air in front of my face. It pooled at my feet, spreading across the floor like a stain that would not wash out.

The mist was cold. It was heavy. It smelled of old grief and older rage, of things that had been burned and never buried, of wounds that had never healed.

...And then the flames came.

They did not burn. They did not consume. They did not crackle or hiss or pop like normal fire. They just appeared, blooming from my skin like flowers made of shadow, unfurling their petals in the darkness.

Black flames.

Dark as the void between stars.

They crawled up my left arm like vines climbing a wall, slow and deliberate, wrapping around my wrist, my elbow, my shoulder. They licked at the edges of Tempest’s blade, curling around the chipped steel, sinking into the scratches and scars like water into cracks in stone.

The flames made no sound. They gave no heat. They just existed—a second presence in a body that was already too crowded with grief and rage and the hollow echo of a man who had died believing I would become something more.

I did not know why they were there. I did not know what they were.

But they were mine. I could feel them. They came from somewhere deep inside me.

Kael’s laughter stopped.

His hollow eyes widened. His head turned slowly toward me, like a predator sensing a shift in the wind. The smile on his face froze.

Silla and Grog stopped. The shadow figures stopped. Everyone stop laughing at look in one direction.

The room went silent.

I looked at them.

My eyes were hollow and empty. The questions were still there, swirling in the back of my mind like leaves in a storm, but they were quiet now. Buried under something else.

Why are they afraid?

Why are they staring at me like that?

What do they see that I cannot?

I looked down at my left arm. The black flames crawling up my skin, leaving no marks, no burns, no evidence of their existence except the way they drank the light around them. The mist rising from my body, coiling and uncoiling like serpents made of shadow.

What is this?

I did not know. I did not care.

I moved.

The flames carried me. The mist pushed me forward. My feet left the ground—no, they did not leave the ground. They moved faster than they ever had before. The world blurred around me. The distance between me and Kael vanished.

I swung Tempest.

The blade stopped an inch from his throat.

Not because I wanted it to stop or because I pulled back or changed my mind or felt a sudden surge of mercy.

Because... my body gave out.

The power that had surged through me, whatever it was, wherever it came from was already gone, already fading, already leaving me empty and hollow and... alone.

Kael stood frozen.

His hollow eyes were wide, wider than I had ever seen them. His lips were parted, his breath caught in his chest. A thin line of blood appeared on his neck—a scratch, nothing more, a paper cut where my blade had kissed his skin.

The black flames had touched him. Just barely.

But I could not finish it.

My arm dropped to my side. My legs buckled beneath me. I fell to my knees, the impact jarring through my broken body, sending fresh waves of pain through every nerve.

The black mist faded, dissolving into nothing like smoke on the wind.

The flames died, winking out one by one until there was nothing left but the ordinary darkness of a burning room.

...And the pain came rushing back.

Kael touched his neck. His fingers came away red—his own blood. He stared at the crimson on his fingertips, expression unreadable, hollow eyes fixed on the evidence of his mortality.

Then he looked at me.

His face twisted—not with fear, not with surprise, not with the confusion from when the black flames first appeared.

With anger.

Raw, burning and... uncontrollable.

”You—”

He did not finish the sentence.

The word was enough, dripping with contempt and rage and something that might have been humiliation.

He lunged forward and drove his sword into my chest.

The pain was white-hot, blinding, unlike anything I had ever felt before. I felt the blade slide between my ribs, it pierce something soft and wet inside me—a lung, maybe, or something worse.

I tried to scream, but no sound came out. My throat was too tight, my lungs too empty, my voice too broken.

He pulled the sword out and stabbed me again.

And again.

And again.

Each stab exploded with pain, driving the air from my lungs and leaving me weaker than before.

He grabbed my hair and punched my face. My head snapped back. Blood sprayed from my mouth. Again. And again. My vision blurred—I couldn’t see, couldn’t think, only feel the relentless blows raining down.

He threw me to the ground and stomped on my chest. Ribs cracked. Blood rose in my throat.

He picked up my severed right arm—the one he had cut off earlier—and threw it at me. It landed in my lap, cold and pale, the fingers still curled.

”Look at yourself,” he said. ”Look at what you are!”

I could not look. I could not move. I could only lie there, broken and bleeding, as he stood over me.

Mia screamed.

”Leo!”

Her voice cut through the fog, sharp and desperate, pulling me back from the edge of the darkness that was waiting to swallow me.

She tried to run toward me. Kael slapped her across the face. She stumbled and fell, her cheek red, blood dripping from her lip.

”Stay back,” he said. ”Or you are next.”

She did not stay back. She crawled toward me, her eyes wet, her hands reaching out. Kael grabbed her by the hair and threw her aside. She hit the wall and slid down, crying.

He turned back to me.

”Your master is dead,” he said. ”Your friends are dead. Your village is burning. And you cannot do anything to stop it.”

He raised his sword. ”Die knowing that you failed everyone.”

He brought the blade down. But, something stopped him.

Morana’s voice cut through the air, sharp and cold.

”Enough.”

Kael paused. His sword hovered above my chest, the tip trembling, the edge catching the firelight.

”He is already dead,” Morana said. ”He just has not realized it yet.”

Kael did not lower his sword. His hollow eyes were fixed on me, burning with a rage that had not faded.

”We have what we came for,” Morana continued, a dark smile spreading across her face. ”The children. The girl. Leave him. He will not survive the night. He has lost too much blood. His body is broken. He will be dead before dawn.”

Kael stared at me for a long moment. His jaw tightened. His grip on his sword trembled.

Then he lowered it.

”...This is mercy,” he said. ”More than you deserve.”

He turned away.

Morana gestured to the shadow figures. ”Take the children. All of them. Move quickly. We leave now.”

The shadow figures moved. They grabbed the children—Lily, Tobin, Sera, the others—and pulled them to their feet. The kids cried and screamed, but no one came to help them. There was no one left to help.

Silla wiped the blood from her lips and grinned. ”Finally. I was getting bored.”

Grog cracked his neck and followed the others.

Morana turned to Kael. ”Let us go. The girl is the priority.”

Kael nodded. He did not look back at me.

Mia was still on the ground where Kael had thrown her. Her face was swollen. Her lip was split. Blood dripped from her chin. But she was not looking at the demons. She was looking at me.

The male demon walked toward her. ”Time to go.”

She crawled toward me instead.

The demon grabbed her arm, but she pulled free. She crawled over broken glass and through pools of blood until she reached my body. She gathered my broken, bleeding form in her arms and pulled me close.

Her lips were at my ear. Her voice was a whisper, so soft that no one else could hear.

”...Leo,” she said. ”I know you are strong. You are the strongest person I have ever met. You will survive this. You have to....”

She paused. Her breath was warm on my neck. Her hands were pressed against my chest, against my wounds, the places where the blood would not stop flowing.

”But if you die,” she whispered, ”....I will find you anywhere. In any world and I will kill you myself. So do not you dare die on me, you bastard.”

Her hands did not glow. There was no light. No magic or flash.

But I felt something.

It was not warmth. Not cold. It was something else. Something deeper. Something that seeped into my chest, into my bones, into the cracks in my soul that I did not even know were there.

She was not just healing my body. She was healing something else. Something that the black flames had burned.

She was putting me back together.

The male demon grabbed her by the arm again. ”Enough. He is dead. Let him go.”

Mia did not let go. She held me tighter.

”Please,” she whispered, her voice breaking. ”Please... survive. Come find me. Save me. Save the children...”

The demon pulled her away. She just looked at me, her eyes wet, her lips moving silently.

Save me, Leo...

They dragged her away. They dragged the children away.

...And I lay there, in the pool of blood, surrounded by the bodies of the dead, and watched them go.

The flames crackled outside. The children cried in the distance. The demons laughed as they left.

My vision blurred. The edges of my sight darkened, curling inward like paper caught in a flame. The sounds of the fire faded, becoming distant and muffled, like echoes from another world.

My heartbeat slowed.

Each pulse was weaker than the last, more distant, more fragile.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

I am sorry, Mia.

I am sorry, Roran.

I am sorry, everyone.

I could not save anyone.

I am weak.

I am worthless.

I am a failure.

The darkness crept in, slow and patient, like a tide rising to swallow me whole. It was warm and soft and inviting, and for the first time since the screaming started, I wanted to let it take me.

I closed my eyes.

...And everything went black.