Soren swallowed hard, throat tight, then forced his voice down into something he could control, not because he was calm, but because if he let it shake he didn't trust it to come out at all.
"「Inventory」."
The translucent screen slid into view, hovering in the air as if it belonged anywhere, as if his world wasn't currently shrinking into blood, ice, and panic.
For a heartbeat, the sight of it steadied him anyway, not comfort, not relief, just the brutal reassurance that he still had something, that he wasn't reduced to fists and weak spells and a half-frozen wound.
His fingers moved before doubt could catch up.
He remembered the purchase with sharp clarity, the day he had left the academy and walked the nearby streets on purpose, mapping routes, forcing himself to be the kind of person who prepared, because he already knew what happened when you didn't.
He had stepped into a weapons shop with that same ugly practicality in his chest, thinking about close quarters, about how often magic failed to end things quickly, about how a blade could make up for weakness if you were willing to use it.
He hadn't been able to afford anything impressive, nothing worth boasting about, just an iron handaxe, cheap and crude, the sort of thing a mediocre blacksmith churned out without care.
And he had left it in his inventory because carrying it openly drew the wrong attention, because Martial Studies students had already looked at him like he was mocking them, and because he had told himself he didn't need to be the type of person who reached for a weapon first.
Now, with his blood cooling against his skin, he didn't have the luxury of that lie.
He needed it now.
.
[Iron Handaxe]
[A handaxe made by a mediocre blacksmith.]
.
[Withdraw [Iron Handaxe]?]
[Yes] [No]
.
[Yes]
.
Soren selected yes.
The weight of the weapon appeared in his hand, solid and real, the handle rough against his palm.
Across from him, the assassin's gaze flicked to it, then to Soren's wrist, then to his face, and the man's mouth curled.
"Spatial ring, what a catch," the assassin muttered, voice low and pleased.
Soren's stomach twisted again, not just from pain, but from the casual entitlement in the words, as if Soren was already reduced to an object to strip.
Felix's chant rose behind him, and Soren felt the mana spike, sudden and dense.
"「Nature's Strength」."
The ground surged.
Vines erupted from cracks in the stone, thick and fast, coiling up like living restraints.
They snapped around the assassin's legs and waist, thorns digging into cloth, threatening flesh with every movement.
More vines shot outward, forming a barrier of tangled green between the assassin and the enemy mage, cutting lines of sight and narrowing space so escape routes vanished.
Felix moved at the same time, slipping past Soren, angling toward the mage with intent, the entire posture of his body different, not playful, not showy, but efficient, almost ruthless.
"I'll handle the mage, you end the other one," Felix said, and it sounded nothing like the boy who had been embarrassed outside a brothel.
Soren tightened his grip on the handaxe.
The assassin was trapped in a dead end of thorns and earth, but a trapped animal was still dangerous, and Soren's abdomen throbbed with cold pain that made it hard to breathe properly.
He stepped forward anyway.
Not because he wanted to.
Because he didn't have a choice.
He could feel the ice he had forced into his own flesh, the numb burn spreading wider than he wanted, biting deep enough that his stomach muscles kept trying to cramp, but his hands were steady on the circle he formed even while walking, even while adjusting his stance, even while his boots slipped slightly on the frost-slick ground.
The assassin's eyes tracked him, calculating, searching for an opening, but the vines made every angle tight, every path narrow, and that was Felix's style in its purest form: restrict, control, suffocate movement until the opponent had nothing left but panic.
Soren's style wasn't that.
His was uglier.
He drew a circle in his left palm while his right kept the axe up, and he didn't stop walking as he spoke.
"「Ignition」."
Flame burst forward, not as a focused lance, but as a wide flare designed to steal vision and force instinctive defence.
The assassin jerked his arm up to shield his face, and in that same moment Soren surged in, closing distance with a stumbling sprint that ignored how his abdomen protested.
Pain flashed hot, then vanished under the cold numbness, then returned in a deeper wave, but he didn't slow.
He lifted the handaxe overhead and brought it down with all the strength he had.
The assassin tried to block with his dagger, twisting his wrist awkwardly because the vines pinned his legs and forced his body into a bad angle.
Metal met metal.
The impact jarred Soren's arm up to the elbow, a shock of vibration that made his grip slip for half a heartbeat, and then the axe head skidded off the dagger's edge, dragged by momentum and desperation.
It didn't stop.
It continued down onto the assassin's hand.
The blade bit into flesh with a resistance that made Soren's stomach turn, not clean, not cinematic, more like chopping through wet rope.
Bone caught for an instant, then gave way with a sickening crack, and half a hand dropped to the ground, fingers still curled as if they hadn't received the message yet.
Blood sprayed, warm against Soren's cheek, speckling his eyelashes, and for a split second his mind tried to recoil, tried to name it as wrong, tried to pull him back.
He didn't let it.
The assassin screamed, raw and furious, voice cracking on the sound as he jerked backwards, thorns scraping his skin where he flailed.
"You little bastard," he snarled, breath ragged, face twisted with pain that made his eyes water. "I'll kill you, I'll—"
Soren didn't answer.
He felt the wet warmth seeping under his shirt again, and terror punched through his chest because the freeze he had used wasn't holding properly anymore, the ice splintering from movement, from heat, from the wound pulsing as his body fought the unnatural cold.
Blood was starting to run again.
His legs went lighter, weaker, like the world had decided to tilt.
'If I stop now, I die.'
That thought flattened everything else, emotion stripped down to survival.
Soren cast again while stepping forward, while raising the axe back into guard, while forcing his vision to stay sharp.
"「Shock」."
Electricity snapped out and caught the assassin in the chest.
It wasn't strong enough to drop him like it had the first thug, not cleanly, not with this man braced and expecting pain, but it seized his muscles for a heartbeat, forced his body to lock and twitch, and that heartbeat was all Soren needed.
He moved in.
He didn't swing from above this time.
He swung sideways, aiming for the throat, because he remembered the forest, remembered what happened when you hesitated, remembered how hard it was to kill something that didn't want to die.
The blade struck the side of the assassin's neck.
Flesh gave, then resisted, then gave again, and Soren felt the axe catch on something denser, bone, cartilage, the brutal truth that his strength wasn't enough to sever cleanly.
He pushed anyway.
The assassin's scream broke into a wet, bubbling sound, blood spilling over the blade, over Soren's hands, hot and slick, and the man's body sagged forward as the vines held him upright for a fraction too long, forcing him to die on display.
Soren twisted the axe free with a jerking motion that tore more than it cut.
The assassin collapsed, hitting the ground hard, kicking once, twice, then going still.
Soren stood there, breathing through his mouth because the air felt too thick to pull through his nose, staring down at the body in a blank, stunned way that didn't match the violence he had just done.
His abdomen throbbed.
His fingers were numb from gripping too hard.
His hands were slick with blood that wasn't all his.
Behind him, Felix was moving.
Soren turned his head and saw Felix drive a dagger into the unconscious thug that Soren had shocked earlier, not with flourish, not with hesitation, just a precise downward motion to end it before they could wake.
Felix's face was tight, eyes flat, posture entirely different, shoulders squared like a professional.
Felix looked up, and for the first time since they left the gambling den, genuine concern cracked through that cold exterior.
"You okay, Soren?"
The question landed like a trigger.
Soren blinked.
He looked down at his hands.
His pale skin was smeared red, the blood drying tacky in the creases of his knuckles and under his nails.
The axe handle was slick.
His cloak, his uniform, everything was stained, and the smell hit him properly all at once, thick and metallic, mixed with burnt cloth and the sharp green scent of crushed vines.
His stomach lurched.
His heart started to race, faster than it had during the fight, because adrenaline was fading and what was left was reality.
'Am I alright?'
The thought didn't come as words; it came as a sensation, a sudden falling feeling in his chest, like the ground had dropped out from under him even though he was standing still.
His hands began to shake.
Not the controlled tremor of exhaustion, but something violent and involuntary, as if his body had decided it was done cooperating.
The handaxe slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground with a dull, heavy thud.
Felix took a step toward him.
"Soren?"
Soren tried to answer, but his breath broke.
He sucked in air and it didn't feel like enough, and then he took another breath and it was worse, too fast, too shallow, as if his lungs had forgotten how to do anything except panic.
His vision narrowed.
Sound warped, Felix's voice turning distant, muffled, like it was coming through water.
The alley seemed to stretch, the lanternlight smearing at the edges, and Soren realised with a flash of horror that he couldn't feel his fingers properly, that they were going cold, not from magic this time, but from his body pulling blood inward.
His abdomen pulsed with a deep, nauseating ache, and the frozen numbness around it made it feel unreal, as if his stomach wasn't his, as if the wound belonged to someone else.
That thought, that disconnect, terrified him more than the pain.
He pressed a hand to his stomach again and felt wetness, felt warmth seeping, and his mind snapped back into a single frantic loop.
'Too much blood'.
'Too much blood.'
'Too much blood.'
His chest tightened.
The world tilted.
A wave of nausea slammed into him so hard he doubled over, gagging, and then he retched, violently, bile and half-digested food spilling onto the dirty stone.
His throat burned.
His eyes watered.
His stomach convulsed again even though there was nothing left to give, his body insisting on purging something it couldn't name.
Soren tasted copper.
He lifted his head slightly and realised it wasn't only from vomiting, there was blood in his mouth too, maybe from biting his tongue, maybe from coughing too hard, maybe from something worse.
His hands rose to his face without permission, and when he touched his cheek he felt sticky warmth, then saw it on his fingers, red, too much red.
He couldn't stop shaking.
He couldn't stop breathing too fast.
He couldn't make his thoughts line up properly, because they came in fragments that stabbed instead of helped.
'I killed him.'
'I did that.'
'I cut off his hand.'
'I did that.'
'Why did I do that?'
'Couldn't I have knocked him out?'
'But he stabbed me.'
'He stabbed me.'
'He stabbed me.'
The memory of the blade sliding into him replayed with nauseating clarity, the pressure first, then the tearing, then the realisation that something inside him had been opened.
He had been hurt before, battered, bruised, cut, but this was different, this was inside, this was the kind of wound that made people die quietly on the ground while others stepped over them.
His throat closed.
Tears blurred his vision, not soft tears, not pretty, but the ugly kind that came with a loss of control, hot and stinging.
He tried to wipe them away and only smeared blood across his cheek, making it worse, making him feel filthy.
Felix's hands hovered near him, unsure where to touch without hurting him further.
"Soren, look at me. Breathe slower. Just look at me," Felix said again, voice tight now, urgent.
Soren tried.
He couldn't.
His eyes wouldn't focus properly.
His limbs felt wrong, heavy and light at the same time, and the coldness that had held him together during the fight had shattered, leaving behind something raw and helpless.
He took another breath and it came out as a broken hitch.
He felt his hands claw at his own shirt, fingers fumbling at the frozen patch on his abdomen like he could peel it off and fix what was underneath.
It didn't work.
The panic peaked, a sudden, crushing certainty that he was going to fall and not get back up, that the wound would open wider, that he would bleed out here in an alley for coins that now felt absurdly meaningless.
His knees buckled.
Soren tried to catch himself and his arms failed.
He hit the ground hard enough that the impact jarred his teeth, and for a second he saw nothing but lanternlight and blurred shapes.
His breath kept coming, fast and broken, but it didn't feel like breathing, it felt like drowning.
Felix's voice became distant again, his face a smear of colour.
Soren's body shook once, violently, then went slack.
The last thing he registered was the stink of blood and vomit and cold stone under his cheek, and then everything cut out.
————「❤︎」————