Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
My heart was beating unfathomably fast and violently.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
My fingers refused to move.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
The world blurred as darkness crept into the edges of my vision.
Thump-thump.
My lungs searched desperately for air.
Th...ump.
...
Silence.
A violent jolt ripped through my tiny chest.
For a moment—
Nothing.
Then—
THUMP!
A single heartbeat slammed against my ribs.
Silence.
THUMP.
Another.
Weak.
Fragile.
But there.
GASP!
Air rushed into my lungs like a drowning man breaking the surface.
I coughed violently.
Again.
And again.
Alive. Still alive.
I genuinely thought that was it—again.
Thanks, Pandora.
Before I could process the miracle of my own heartbeat, the world outside announced itself.
Flash.
A cataclysmic flash swallowed everything, so intense it felt like the sun had crashed through the sky and died in an instant.
I tried to force my eyes open.
When the light finally faded and the dust settled, half the carriage had simply vanished—erased as if it had never existed.
The only untouched section was where Marianne, Ruby's lifeless body, and I remained.
Not a scratch between us.
As for them—they were sent flying.
Hurled backward like ragdolls cast off a cliff.
The knights rolled across the ground.
But the mage was already moving before he'd even finished falling.
His lips shaped syllables mid-flip, and the instant his back touched the ground he was rolling, rising, wand already tracing a mana circle in the air before he'd found his footing.
"Χεῖρες Καταφυγῆς."
(Sheltering Hands.)
A pale violet barrier bloomed around them—ethereal arms overlapping like a mother shielding her child.
It sealed shut just in time to swallow the tail end of the shockwave, absorbing what remained of the blast's fury without so much as a tremor.
They turned, eyes wide, and surveyed the devastation.
The forest had been reshaped.
Ancient trees violently bent outward.
Leaves exploded from branches.
The earth trembled beneath the aftermath.
The air tasted of ozone and scorched wood.
Only then did they finally look at themselves.
Cracked armor. Burnt cloaks. Severe burns along exposed skin. Shrapnel wounds—fragments of the carriage itself embedded in flesh.
Painful.
But not fatal.
Had the mage reacted even a second later, they would have died.
What I had done was impossible. A newborn awakening a Mana Core—not even the greatest recorded geniuses of this world had managed such a feat. The texts didn't even entertain the idea.
Marianne never saw any of it.
Blood loss had pushed her to the edge of unconsciousness.
Yet even now she held me tightly against her chest.
Like a child refusing to let go of a treasured doll.
It took a long moment before the assassins returned to themselves.
"We almost didn't survive that, Pandora. But we did it. We created a mana explosion," I thought. Even through the fear and pain, I felt something warm beneath it—pride, perhaps, or a sense of relief too overwhelming to put into words.
The mage's laughter shattered the silence—high, manic.
The sound reminded me of a starving hyena.
"This has to be a joke—" He spun toward the knights, clapping his hands with frantic energy. "Are you seeing this? Are you seeing this? He was born yesterday and he just awakened his Core and immediately blew up half a forest!"
He pressed his fingers to his lips, eyes alight with something feverish.
"I want him. No...he's mine. I'll raise him. Teach him. Every forbidden art, every banned technique, every spell the empire burned its own libraries to erase—" His voice dropped into a rapid, breathless mutter, like a man counting coins he hadn't stolen yet. "No—better. I'll gift him to the cult leader. The perfect successor. The next in line once our Supreme Leader finally grows tired of living, yes, yes—"
The knight stepped forward, his voice stripped of whatever patience he'd had left.
"I don't know what sins you committed in your previous life, kid."
His voice was almost sympathetic.
"But you've made enemies before you could even hold your own head up."
"Among the great families of the empire, I doubt another like you will ever be born."
"If you'd been given time to grow—you might have taken the Wolfhard throne itself."
A brief pause.
"What a shame."
"Now, now—" The hooded mage stepped forward, waving a hand between them. "Let's not be hasty about killing him, shall we?" He pointed at Marianne. "We kill the mother. I'll disappear with the child. Clean. Simple. Everyone gets what they want."
"Stop talking nonsense," the knight said, cutting him off with the cold efficiency of someone long past irritation. "Do what you're paid to do. Make her let go of the child."
The mage placed a hand over his heart and offered a mocking bow, his tone dipping into theatrical sarcasm.
"Life is short, my knightly friend. Smile while you still have teeth." He straightened. "I'll see it done, Your Highness."
He stepped forward, and the laughter didn't leave him—only shifted, settling into something slower and more deliberate, the particular pleasure of someone who enjoyed their work.
"Θραῦε καὶ ἄλε· τὰ ὀστέα συντρίβεται, τὰ ὀστέα γίγνεται κονιορτός."
(Break and grind—bone shatters, bone becomes dust.)
Dark energy erupted from his wand.
The spell slammed into Marianne's back.
The sound she made wasn't a scream. Not at first. It was something rawer than that—an animal sound torn from somewhere beneath language, a sound that had nothing to do with dignity or composure. It was pure, unfiltered agony, punctuated by the crack of bone giving way beneath the spell's force.
Her arms didn't release me.
The knight closed the distance and tore me free himself, seizing my tiny leg and hauling me upward—dangling me upside down with all the regard one might give a caught fish.
"No—!"
Marianne's voice broke on the word. Her arms reached, fingers straining toward nothing.
I hung there, wailing, the blood rushing to my infant head, the knight's grip iron and merciless around my ankle.
I wrote this, some part of me thought, distant and horrified. I designed this cruelty. I put these people here, in this place, with these roles. And now I'm living it—and I didn't understand it at all.
"Kid." The knight exhaled, and when he looked at me something behind his eyes shifted—not soft, exactly, but weighted. "I'm sorry. But as long as you carry a claim to that throne—even a bastard's claim, even a commoner's blood—you're a threat. That's all you are to them. All I can do is make it quick."
Finally.
The screaming started behind them before anyone could react.
One voice. Then silence. Then another voice—ragged, terrified. "H-he's here! Kill the child, QUICK—!"
Then nothing.
Just the sound of blood hitting the ground.
Wet. Final. Unhurried.
The knight went rigid. His body reacted before his mind caught up—every muscle locking, the instinct of prey registering something it couldn't name but already feared. It was the pressure of an apex predator. It wasn't just fear—it was the soul-deep certainty of standing at the absolute bottom of the food chain, staring into the maw of something that could erase him without effort or mercy. Against such an existence, resistance wasn't impossible—it was meaningless. Even breathing felt like borrowed time.
His existence alone was overwhelming.
The mage's grin didn't fade, but sweat began running freely down his face. Not the sweat of exertion. The specific sweat of someone who was excited and afraid at the same time—someone who had just realized the most dangerous thing they'd ever encountered was about to look directly at them, and somehow found that thrilling.
They turned toward the ruined end of the carriage.
Bodies collapsed outside the shattered carriage.
One after another.
Their companions were dead.
Every single one.
Heavy footsteps came from the dark.
Slow. Unhurried. Inevitable.
He stepped into the light.
Strikingly handsome—the kind of face that felt almost unfair; aristocratic, sharp, and somehow younger than it had any right to look. Messy, shoulder-length hair as dark as midnight framed his features, partially obscuring his face. One eye was sharp and narrow, a piercing gold utterly devoid of warmth—the gaze of a predator that calculated and never flinched. The other was hidden beneath a matte-black eyepatch wrapped around his head. Tall and lean, with a defined jawline and a calm, stoic expression, he carried himself with quiet composure, moving with the effortless grace of someone for whom violence had long since become second nature.
Death wearing noble clothing.
Something in my chest unknotted all at once.
Him. It's actually him.
The man.
The myth.
The legend.
The Northern Blade of Calamity himself.
Grael motherfucking Wolfhard.
Youngest patriarch in the history of House Wolfhard—ascended at sixteen. Current head of the house. And, incidentally, the biological father of the infant body I currently occupied.
"Why are you here?" His voice was calm. Perfectly, dangerously calm—the kind of calm that had nothing to do with peace and everything to do with a man who no longer needed to raise his voice to be obeyed. "You're supposed to be at war. You do know what happens to men who desert their post."
The knight's throat moved. His sword hand trembled. Very slowly, he pressed the blade to my throat.
"If you take another step," he rasped, "I'll—"
"Then do it."
The words landed like stones dropped into still water.
Both the knight and the mage recoiled, visibly shaken—as though the answer had broken some unspoken rule they hadn't known they were depending on.
Damn it, Grael. I wrote you cold, but this is next level.
"Why should I take orders from you?" Grael continued, stepping forward at the same unhurried pace. "I have four more. What difference would losing one make? I could produce more, if I wished."
I remember writing him imagining leather jackets and motorcycles. I suppose Grael van Wolfhard is just what that energy looks like when you translate it into dark fantasy.
The knight's composure broke entirely.
"Do it!" he screamed at the mage, thrusting me into his arms. "NOW!"
The mage was already grinning as he caught me, wand rising, darkness gathering at the tip in a slow, luxurious spiral. The air thickened. The temperature dropped. The stench of something cold and wrong seeped into everything.
"Θραῦσις Καρδί—"
(Fracture of cardi—)
He never finished.
Nobody saw Grael move.
One moment he stood several meters away.
The next—
The wand had split perfectly down its center, two clean halves separating in the air.
A heartbeat of silence.
Then a thin line appeared across the mage's fingers.
It continued through his palm.
Through his wrist.
Through his forearm.
The cut traveled through flesh—impossibly precise, like a surgeon's scalpel.
For a moment, the mage didn't register it at all. He stood perfectly still, fingers still loosely curled around the broken wand, expression unchanged.
Then the pieces fell.
Both halves of the wand slid free first.
A moment later, four fingers followed.
The blood came all at once—a sudden crimson sheet that painted the air before his mind had fully arrived at what had happened. He stared at his own arm. Turned it slowly. His brow furrowed like a man trying to work out a puzzle he hadn't been warned was coming.
The grin finally disappeared.
Something else took its place.
I slipped free—and before the ground could meet me, Grael's steady hand caught me without effort or ceremony.
The mage's scream arrived in the next instant.
"AAARRRGHHH—! IT HURTS—IT HURTS—I-I WAS WRONG—I'M SORRY—I'M—"
"Shh," Grael said, pressing the edge of his sword against the mage's lips. "The child is trying to sleep."
I was absolutely not trying to sleep. Who could sleep through this? What kind of psychopath—
A crimson line spread from one corner of his mouth to the other.
Against his will, the mage's ruined grin was stretched wider—unnaturally so.
Wider.
Wider.
A Glasgow smile carved into his face.
By the blade, not by joy. Before the next scream could form—
His head slid free.
Blood painted the interior walls of the ruined carriage.
The body convulsed once before crumpling like a marionette with cut strings.
Grael didn't even use Aura.
He didn't need to.
To him, these people weren't enemies.
They were insects.
The pain hit me like a fist to the chest.
My heart felt like it was on fire.
I didn't understand it. The timeline had changed. Grael had arrived. The mage hadn't even finished his incantation—
So even an incomplete spell could leave consequences behind.
The timeline had changed.
But fate still found ways to collect its debt.
The pain remained.
Burning.
Constant.
Like molten metal buried inside my chest.
Grael kicked the mage's severed head like a soccer ball, sending it hurtling toward the knight—nearly striking him.
The knight flinched as the severed head came within inches of his face, close enough for him to feel its presence.
When his eyes opened—
Grael was already standing beside him.
"I lied."
His voice remained calm.
"I don't think I'm ready for the boy to die yet."
He glanced at me briefly.
"He resembles our founder."
Then his attention returned to the knight.
First time meeting his son, and he barely spared me a glance—that golden eye locked onto the knight with predatory focus.
A pause. "You're the only one left. Talk. Or don't—your death will be painful regardless. But the choice of what you tell me first is still yours, so I'd consider it carefully."
The knight tried to step back.
His body refused. Every muscle locked under the weight of that golden eye—not magic, not Aura. Just the simple, absolute pressure of a man who had never once needed either to make other men afraid.
"Lift your sword," Grael said, quieter now. Almost gentle. "Die like one. No knight bearing my house's name should quiver in front of death—and you were bold enough to put a blade to a newborn's throat. The least you can do is hold it steady at the end."
The knight didn't try.
"Which was it?" Grael asked.
Not what. Not why. Just which.
The knight understood exactly what was being asked. The color left his face in one retreating wave.
"M-My lord, I—I don't—she told me, she said if I was caught, if I said her name, she would kill my family—"
Grael drew his sword without haste.
"According to the Wolfhard Autonomous Constitution—
Clause on Striking One's Better:
'The Constitution is unequivocal: should one of lower station raise a hand against one of higher rank, the offending hand shall be severed, that they may never again commit such an act.'
His golden eyes settled upon the knight.
"You raised your hands against my son. Therefore, by the authority vested in me as Patriarch of House Wolfhard and in accordance with the Constitution... the offending hands shall be severed."
Silver flashed.
Twice.
Both arms struck the ground.
The knight's scream was the raw, brainless sound of a body discovering agony beyond comprehension. He collapsed to his knees as blood poured from the stumps, pooling black beneath him in the dim light.
Grael lowered his blade.
"The sentence has been carried out."
Grael stepped closer. The patience of a hunting cat. All the time in the world.
"Was it the first? The second? The third?"
"My lord—" The knight was weeping now, mouth working around the words in broken fragments. "I cannot—she said she would kill them—my family—"
Two more flashes.
The knight lurched forward, suddenly far closer to the ground than he should have been. For a heartbeat, he felt nothing.
Then the pain came.
He looked down.
Both feet lay several paces away, neatly severed at the ankles. Blood surged from the ruined stumps as his body finally understood what had been taken from it. A scream ripped from his throat as he collapsed, unable to stand.
He looked up at his executioner from the dirt.
From this angle, Grael seemed impossibly tall.
"Clause on Knight Desertion: Desertion is an act of high treason against House Wolfhard. Any knight who abandons their sworn duty shall have both feet severed, ensuring they shall never again flee from justice nor disgrace their oath. Thereafter, the deserter shall be executed, with all titles, lands, wealth, and hereditary privileges permanently stripped and confiscated by the House."
"As decreed by the Constitution."
Grael's voice never wavered.
"I respect loyalty to family," Grael said. His voice was still calm—not cold, not cruel, just even, the way the ocean is even before it swallows a ship. "But you couldn't keep them safe regardless. You have simply made an enemy of me." A pause. "Everyone tied to you. Every sibling. Every branch relative. Twenty-fifth cousins who've never heard your name. Anyone foolish enough to have married into your bloodline. None of them will see tomorrow's dawn." Another pause. "I hope whatever she paid you was sufficient. Spend it well in Hades."
The knight's eyes went wide with the particular horror of a man who has just realized he has not simply lost—he has destroyed everything he was trying to protect.
"Wait—wait—m-my lord, it was—"
Slash.
The knight's head rolled free, horror still locked into the lines of his face, mouth open around words that would never arrive.
"Too late," Grael said. "I'll find her myself."
Grael did all of it one-handed.
He never put me down.
This is equivalent to an infant watching a horror film. My tiny body had reached its absolute limit. My cries were the helpless, full-throated wail of something that has run out of ways to process what it has seen—pure overwhelm, no language for it, just noise and terror and the desperate need for any of this to stop.
"Shhh," Grael said.
It wasn't warm, exactly. But he looked down at me—that single golden eye finally settling on my face—and something in the sound of it was enough.
I went quiet. Fear, it turned out, was a more effective silencer than comfort.
With a single practiced flick, the blood arced from his blade. The sword disappeared into its sheath with a quiet click. A golden ring rested on his scarred index finger, the calluses and faint cuts etched there by years of relentless sword training since childhood. It caught the dim light as he lowered himself. Without ceremony, he knelt beside Marianne.
"Marianne."
Her eyelids fluttered weakly.
Blood stained her lips.
Yet her first instinct wasn't to check herself.
It wasn't to ask about her wounds.
It wasn't to ask whether she would live.
Her trembling hand searched for me.
"Arthur..."
Grael carefully lifted me into view.
"He's here."
Relief washed across her face.
A small smile appeared.
Weak.
Fragile.
Beautiful.
"You're holding him wrong."
For a moment, silence hung in the ruined carriage.
Even after everything.
Even after broken bones.
Even after blood loss.
Even after standing at death's door.
She was still worrying about how her son was being held.
Grael stared at her.
Then glanced down at me.
Awkwardly.
Almost reluctantly.
He adjusted his grip.
Marianne laughed.
A tiny sound.
Barely audible.
"There..."
Her eyes slowly softened.
"Much better."
The Northern Blade of Calamity.
The man feared across battlefields.
The monster who had just butchered trained killers without effort.
Obeyed.
Without argument.
Without complaint.
For reasons I could not understand.
Marianne's gaze never left me.
As though trying to memorize every feature.
Every breath.
Every tiny movement.
As though she feared forgetting.
"Grael..."
"Yes."
"If I..."
Her voice cracked.
"If I don't make it..."
The words caught in her throat.
She swallowed.
Tried again.
"Take care of him."
The world became quiet.
Grael was silent for a long moment.
Then he answered.
"I will."
Three simple words.
A promise.
Marianne smiled.
A real smile.
The kind that only appears when someone finally finds peace.
Then her hand slipped.
And fell.
Her eyes closed.