“Gods above and under...” the man wheezed. The blue in the depths of his eyes went out like a snuffed candle. What remained was a murky, bloodshot white and pure, cold irritation. “So much energy down the drain...” he muttered, wiping his face with the back of his hand.

  He staggered, barely staying on his feet. His muscles trembled. He looked as if that sudden discharge had burned him out from the inside, leaving only a pale, cracked shell. A dead silence fell around them, broken only by the crackle of burning beams. Seeing the Great Zmey turn tail, the lesser ones hissed and slunk back into the forest shadows.

  The man took two unsteady steps toward Nayden. He grabbed the boy by the dirty collar of his tunic. “Who the hell are you, boy? And what am I doing here?”

  Nayden stiffened. He looked into those bloodshot, alien eyes. At the pale, ruined face. At the blue hands of a servant of Darkness that dared to touch him. The fear was great, but the hatred was stronger. It was a reflex. As unconditional as a blink.

  He leaned forward violently. Wet, thick phlegm landed on the man’s cheek, right next to the large, purple hematoma. “Whisperer,” Nayden ground out straight into his face. “Veles’s filth.”

  The man froze. He didn’t strike. He didn’t pull back. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep, wheezing breath. He let go of the boy’s collar. Slowly, with almost ostentatious disgust, he raised a bare hand and wiped the spit from his cheek. He wiped his fingers on his coat, grimacing as if the boy’s saliva were toxic.

  “The village is burning,” he rasped, nodding toward the fire, not even deigning to look at Nayden. “Lizards are flying around. Your buddies are lying in pieces, and I just busted a gut so you wouldn’t become a stain on the wall.” He finally looked at him. The whites of his eyes were so bloodshot they looked like raw meat. “And you have time for spitting?”

  He rolled his eyes so hard it hurt just to watch. “Gods, give me someone with a survival instinct, or this one will give me stomach ulcers.”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Nayden growled. “The sun will burn you out, heretic.”

  The man froze mid-motion. He lowered the hand with which he was wiping his face. He narrowed his eyes, sizing the boy up from head to toe. He looked at the dirty, scorched tunic with no crest, and then back at Nayden’s face. This wasn’t a peasant’s fear of a monster. This was a fanatic’s rage.

  “‘Heretic’?” he repeated slowly, as if trying to spell the word in an unknown language. The corner of his mouth twitched. The skin on his temple split, releasing a new, thin trickle of blood. “The sun?”

  He laughed. Shortly, dryly. The sound resembled gravel crunching under a boot. “Wait...” He shook his head with bitter amusement. “I saved your ass from being dissolved in acid, and you’re quoting holy books at me? An ordinary farmhand would be kissing my hands right now or running to...”

  He cut off. The laughter stuck in his throat. His body was racked by a violent, wet spasm, as if he’d been kicked in the ribs from the inside. He doubled over. He yanked the mask down to his neck a split second before his stomach rose to his throat.

  A thick, almost black wave of ichor and bile spilled onto the snow.

  Nayden recoiled, covering his nose with his sleeve. That wasn’t vomit. It was boiling water. The puddle under the man’s feet literally boiled, melting the ice and eating into the ground. The man hung on his own knees for a moment, choking and spitting as if the heat were blowing him apart from the inside. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and with a quick, almost panicked movement pulled the mask back over his nose.

  “Why...” Nayden started, but his voice caught in his throat at the sight of the smoking mud. “Why are you here? You shouldn’t...”

  “Oh, really?” The man straightened up unsteadily. “And where should I be?” He took a step toward the boy. Heat radiated from him. Not warmth—heat. Like from an open blast furnace. “Listen, kid. You have one chance to justify why I wasted so much power on you. And please, let it be something creative. Otherwise, I’ll rip your legs off and...”

  “We were unprepared!” Nayden blurted out shrilly, backing up against the wall. “No one expected an attack... It was supposed to be a holiday...”

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  The man’s eyes narrowed. The gaze, sharp as a butcher’s knife, drilled right through him. “‘Unprepared’?” he repeated quietly, venomously. “What, did you expect a herald with a trumpet? Did you think monsters would send a messenger with a letter saying they’d drop by on Tuesday afternoon?” He leaned over the boy. “That’s not bad luck. That’s your gross stupidity. I’m asking one last time before I lose my patience. What stable did you crawl out of? Who gave you a sword?”

  Nayden, despite the tremors running through his entire body, peeled his back off the wall. He puffed out his chest, though his ribs burned with liquid fire. “I am Nayden,” he announced. His voice trembled, but he finished: “I was sent here by the Solar Order.”

  The man froze. For a moment, he looked as if someone had told him water was dry. Then he snorted with laughter. Painful, wet laughter. “The Solar Order...” he drawled, looking him up and down. “Right. A bunch of peacocks in gilded scrap metal. Lots of shine, zero substance. Where’s your shiny can, knight? Lost it in the tavern?”

  Nayden felt a hot wave of embarrassment. He lowered his gaze, nervously picking at the gray fabric of his tunic. “The armor... melted in the fight.”

  The man raised an eyebrow.

  “Acid,” Nayden added quietly.

  “Of course.” The man sighed heavily. “You pathetic, pseudo-warriors couldn’t defend a pissing mutt...” the Whisperer began with disdain.

  “You’re the pathetic ones!” Nayden shouted. Rage drowned out the fear for a moment. “You hide in the shadows like rats! You attack when no one is looking! You don’t have an ounce of honor!”

  He didn’t finish. The world spun. He felt the cold touch of steel on his throat. The man was fast. Unnaturally fast for someone who had just been puking up his own insides. He pinned him to the remains of the wall in one motion.

  “Honor is a fairy tale for corpses,” he whispered in his ear with the tone of a weary butcher finishing a shift. “And you, kid, are too loud. And unnecessary. Time to clean up.”

  The blade pressed against the skin. The first thin trickle of blood flowed.

  “What are you doing?! Let go!” Nayden struggled, but the man’s arm was like steel.

  Heat radiated from him. Nayden felt it through his tunic. This wasn’t a fever. It was radiation. His body burned like a lit tiled stove whose door someone had forced shut. Nayden looked closely at the mask. He saw the seams on the black linen. They were stretched to the limit. The fabric on the man’s neck didn’t hang loose—it vibrated. Only now did he understand. This coat wasn’t for hiding identity. It was a seal.

  “You have no outlet...” Nayden whispered, feeling sweat run down his back from the sheer proximity of this man. “You’re boiling inside.”

  He stopped fighting the knife. He focused on his hands. He summoned what they had hammered into his head at the Order. The Spark. He turned violently, digging his fingers into his tormentor’s cheeks.

  His fingertips flashed gold. Blackened nails heated to white-hot.

  “What the...” the man hissed, trying to jerk his head away.

  Solar magic ate into the black, impregnated linen of the mask like a hot poker into canvas. The stench of burning fabric was suffocating. Nayden screamed and yanked his glowing fingers apart. The seams gave way. The fabric couldn’t hold. It tore down the middle. The man let go of him immediately, dropping the knife. He staggered back, clutching his head.

  Nayden froze, expecting the sight of a bloody pulp. But what he saw chilled him more than the sight of a corpse.

  For a split second—before the air hit it—the man’s face was perfect. Smooth. Pale as wax. Devoid of the slightest wrinkle, pore, or scar. This wasn’t the face of a thirty-year-old. It was the unnatural, dead perfection of a porcelain doll someone had just taken out of a box.

  And then the cost hit him. The pressure the mask had held in check broke free.

  “Aaaargh!”

  The perfect whiteness of the skin vanished in the blink of an eye, as if someone had spilled ink on it. Purple and black blotches surfaced, spreading under the skin like poison in water. The thin, waxy complexion cracked where veins ran, unable to withstand the sudden decompression. Thick, dark blood leaked from his nose, mouth, and the corners of his eyes, flooding that “perfect” face with filth and ruin. It didn’t look like a wound. It looked like rotting in fast-forward. Like fruit spoiling in a second.

  The man collapsed to his knees, clawing at the cobblestones. He tried to cover his face with his hands, but blood leaked through his fingers. Hot. Sticky. Steaming.

  “It’s a lie...” the boy choked out, pointing a trembling hand at the blackening skin. “That smooth mug... it was a lie.”

  The man wheezed, holding his face, from which thick ichor dripped. He tried to get up, but his feet slipped in his own blood.

  “You’re rotting,” Nayden hissed, feeling a surge of courage born of disgust. “You’re just dying slower. And since you’re dying... I can finish you off.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He tensed his muscles and kicked. Aiming for the exposed, heaving ribs.

  The sound of breaking bone was loud and satisfying. The man hissed in pain but didn’t manage to block. Nayden grabbed the knife lying in the mud—the same one that had been at his throat a moment ago. He threw himself on the prone man. He drove the blade into his chest.

  He felt the resistance of flesh, then the crunch of the sternum and a violent squelch as the steel went deep.

  The man jerked once. Violently. Like a fish thrown onto the shore. And went still. His body went limp instantly. Empty, blue eyes, now flooded with blood, stared dead at the smoking sky. Thick, dark blood spilled from the wound straight onto Nayden’s hand.

  “Fuck!” Nayden screamed, letting go of the hilt. The blood was hot. It burned like boiling water straight from a kettle.