Viktor woke to a hand on his shoulder.
The grey-haired handler crouched beside him, face carved from stone in the pre-dawn murk. A single gesture: up. Then he moved on to wake Leopold.
The forest was still. Oppressively so. No birdsong. No wind. Just the soft drip of water from yesterday's rain sliding off leaves somewhere in the canopy above. Everything smelled like wet earth and rotting wood.
Viktor's body protested as he sat up. Every muscle ached. His clothes were still damp, clinging cold to his skin. The fire from last night was dead ash. He couldn't remember falling asleep. Just sitting there shaking until exhaustion had pulled him under.
The handlers moved through camp with silent efficiency. Packs secured. Weapons checked. The scarred one tested the edge of his short-sword with a thumb, nodded once, sheathed it.
Leopold stood near the picket line, perfectly still. His knife hung from his belt. His face was blank in the grey light. Empty. Like something vital had been scooped out and only the shell remained.
Viktor recognized that look. He'd seen it in mirrors for three days.
The grey-haired handler beckoned them close with two fingers.
They gathered near a fallen log at the camp's edge—Viktor, Leopold, the three handlers. Through the trees ahead, maybe thirty yards, Viktor could see the shape of the logging camp. Three crude cabins, dark and silent. Mist clung to the ground between them.
The handler's voice was barely a whisper. "Two front, one rear. We take them in their sleep. Silent." His eyes moved to Leopold. "Prince Leopold. You and the boy are reserve. You do not move until I signal. Understood?"
Leopold said nothing. Just stared at the cabins.
"Understood?" The handler's voice dropped lower. Harder.
Leopold's jaw tightened. "Yes."
"Good. We—"
Movement.
The door of the nearest cabin swung open.
A man stumbled out into the grey dawn—middle-aged, bare-chested, scratching his stomach. He took three shambling steps toward the tree line, fumbling with the ties of his trousers. The others must've been on watch. He'd gotten comfortable.
Going to piss.
Viktor's breathing stopped.
He looked at Leopold.
His brother's face had transformed. The emptiness was gone. Replaced by something raw and terrible. His hand moved to the knife at his belt. His whole body went rigid—every muscle coiled, trembling.
The handler saw it. His hand shot toward Leopold's shoulder—
But Leopold was already moving.
"You fucking murderer!" The words tore from his throat, ragged and breaking. Leopold exploded from behind the log, knife already in his hand, his boots hammering wet earth. Rage incarnate. No plan. No stealth. Just fury and grief made physical.
The man at the cabin froze for half a heartbeat.
Then the door behind him exploded outward.
Four men burst through—not sleepy, not confused. Fully dressed. Fully armed. Short-swords drawn. They moved like they'd been waiting.
Like they'd expected this.
One of them didn't hesitate. His arm snapped back and forward—something silver flashing in the grey light.
The thrown blade caught Leopold in the shoulder.
Leopold's body jerked sideways. His left arm went limp. But he didn't stop. Didn't even slow. Just roared and kept charging, his right hand still gripping the knife, blood already spreading dark across his tunic.
The grey-haired handler cursed—sharp, vicious—and launched himself forward. The scarred one followed. The youngest was already sprinting past Viktor, blade drawn.
The clearing between cabins became chaos.
Steel rang against steel. Men shouted—wordless, animal sounds. Leopold crashed into the first assassin with his shoulder, grappling, his knife seeking flesh.
Viktor stayed frozen behind the log.
His hands pressed flat against wet bark. His Source stirred—that familiar cold coiling in his chest, muscle memory from training. His hands started to lift.
Then stopped.
This was real. Not ice sculptures. Not property. Men trying to kill each other. Men dying because he'd dropped a locket in the mud.
His hands fell.
The sounds reached him through the grey dawn. Not the clean ring of steel on steel from the training yard. These were softer, heavier. Meat sounds. The wet thunk of blade meeting bone. Screaming that wasn't words—just pain and rage stripped to animal noise.
He couldn't move.
Couldn't make his body obey.
Could only watch as the killing started—handlers and assassins and Leopold all crashing together in the muddy space between cabins, blood already on the ground, more coming.
The forest's oppressive quiet was gone.
Now there was only violence.
The grey-haired handler moved first.
Viktor saw him cross the distance—fast, professional—but then lost him in the chaos. Bodies everywhere. Movement everywhere. He tried to track what was happening but it was too much, too fast.
Steel rang out. Someone grunted.
Leopold crashed into the nearest assassin like a battering ram. No technique. No defense. His knife hand drove forward. The assassin twisted, brought his short-sword around. Metal screeched against metal as the blade caught Leopold's knife and turned it aside.
Leopold didn't stop. Drove his forehead into the man's face.
The crunch made Viktor flinch.
To his left—handlers working. The grey-haired one and the scarred one moving together, circling an assassin who kept his guard tight. Viktor caught flashes: blade high, blade low, can't track which is which. Blood on the ground already. Whose?
The assassin stumbled. His leg—something wrong with his leg. He went down to one knee.
The scarred handler's blade punched through his thigh. Went in clean. Came out red.
The assassin's face twisted. Didn't scream. Just dropped lower, sword still up.
Viktor's stomach clenched. The smell hit him—copper and shit and something sour that made bile rise in his throat. He wanted to look away. His eyes wouldn't close. Wouldn't obey.
Movement to his right—the youngest handler and the pisser. The man had grabbed something, a wood axe, swinging wild. The handler ducked under the first swing, inside the second. His blade found ribs. Pushed.
The sound the man made wasn't human. Just air. Just—
He dropped.
Viktor's hands dug into wet bark. This was real. Not training. Not ice sculptures. Men dying. Men killing each other.
Leopold took a sword cut across his ribs.
The blade split his tunic, split skin beneath. Blood spread dark and immediate. Leopold didn't even flinch. Didn't step back. His knife came up from below—fast, vicious—caught his opponent under the jaw.
Not deep enough to kill. Deep enough to make the man stagger, choking, hand going to his throat.
Leopold followed. Always pressing. His face was blood and spit and tears. Not fighting anymore. Not thinking. Something else entirely. Something that didn't stop. Couldn't stop.
The grey-haired handler's opponent—the one with the ruined leg—made a desperate lunge from his knees. His blade came up fast, found an opening. Caught the handler's forearm.
Deep.
The handler's grip faltered. Blood ran down to his wrist, dripping off his fingers into the mud.
He switched hands.
Brought his blade down on the assassin's shoulder.
The man went down hard. Face-first into the mud. Didn't move.
Viktor's Source flared.
Cold exploded through his chest—sudden, involuntary. Not him calling it. Just his body reacting to the overwhelming need to make this stop, to do something, anything—
His hands lifted off the log.
The gala flashed through his mind.
The sculpture shattering. Ice turning to slush. His mother's locket in the mud. The pyres. Nadia's face disappearing into ash and smoke.
His stomach heaved.
Viktor doubled over, retching. Nothing came up but bile and spit. The cold in his chest died instantly—snuffed out by horror and nausea and the understanding of what he was seeing. What his "success" had caused.
He wasn't meant for this.
Couldn't do this.
His hands slammed back against the log, shaking so hard he couldn't feel them anymore.
In the clearing, something shifted.
There were three assassins still standing. Viktor tried to count handlers but kept losing track. Leopold was there, knife still in his good hand, swaying but upright.
One of the assassins—older, grey in his beard—his eyes swept across the mud. Saw his man down. The one with the ruined leg, face-down, not moving.
His voice cut through the chaos: "Disperse! Rendezvous point! Move!"
The assassins broke contact.
The one fighting the scarred handler grabbed something from the ground near the cabin wall—a ceramic pot, cracked and ancient. Threw it hard between them. It shattered. Grey-black powder exploded outward in a choking cloud.
Spores. Mold. Rot concentrated into something that made Viktor's eyes water from thirty yards away.
The scarred handler staggered back, coughing, blade up but blind.
"Fuck—ash pots—" His voice cracked, choked off.
Another pot shattered near the youngest handler. More clouds. The assassins used the cover, breaking away, moving fast toward the tree line in three different directions.
"They're running—" the grey-haired handler started forward, then pulled up short. His arm was bleeding too badly. The spore cloud too thick. "Let them go."
Leopold tried to follow.
Made it three steps before his legs gave out.
He didn't fall. Not quite. Sank to one knee, then the other, knife still gripped in his right hand. His left arm hung useless, the thrown blade still buried in his shoulder. Blood covered him—his own, his opponents', impossible to tell which. His chest heaved.
His face had gone pale beneath the blood.
Then he screamed.
Not pain. Not exhaustion. Pure rage at having them escape. At not finishing it. The sound tore from somewhere deep in his chest, wordless and animal, and it echoed off the cabins and into the trees where the assassins had vanished.
No one answered.
The forest swallowed the sound and gave back only silence.
The spore clouds began to settle. The handlers stood in the muddy clearing, weapons still drawn, breathing hard. The grey-haired one's forearm dripped steady blood. The scarred one had taken something to his ribs—his tunic soaked red along his side. The youngest had blood running from a split above his eye, mixing with rain and mud.
All alive.
All still standing.
Leopold swayed on his knees. The scream had died in his throat. Now there was just silence and the ragged sound of breathing and blood mixing with yesterday's rain in the mud between the cabins.
Viktor's hands finally loosened on the log.
He lifted his head, blinking against the grey dawn light. His whole body shook. His stomach still churned. The smell of blood and spores and shit made everything feel distant and immediate at once—like he was watching from very far away and also drowning in it.
He looked at the clearing.
Two bodies in the mud. The pisser. The one with the ruined leg.
No—
Movement.
The one with the leg wound. His chest rose. Fell. Rose again.
Still alive.
He stirred. Tried to push himself up. His arms shook. His destroyed leg wouldn't work. He began to crawl, dragging himself forward with his forearms, his ruined leg trailing behind him, leaving a dark smear across the ground.
His sword lay five feet away in the mud. Out of reach.
His face was grey. Shock setting in. But still moving—animal survival instinct stronger than pain.
The grey-haired handler saw him.
So did the others.
They started forward.
Leopold's head turned. His eyes found the crawling man.
Something rekindled in his face. Not the wild rage from before. Something colder. Emptier. Purpose without thought.
He pushed himself upright. His legs trembled. Nearly gave out. Held through sheer Internalist-trained willpower—the same training that let him shrug off cuts that should have dropped him. He stumbled. Caught himself. Started walking.
The handlers converged from three sides.
Leopold from the fourth.
Viktor watched from behind his log as they closed in on the wounded man. The man who'd been part of the group that killed his mother.
The man who would answer for it.