Chapter 3: Blue Stamp
The leader of the bandits, a man who had survived a hundred skirmishes in the Valley of Blood, stared at the carnage surrounding him. He looked at the bodies of his twelve men men who had butchered soldiers and civilians alike now scattered like broken dolls across the forest floor. Rage, hot and suffocating, boiled up in his chest. He flung the piece of roasted boar he had been holding into the dirt, the meat sizzling as it hit the damp earth. He never expected this scrawny, pale-faced ghost to dismantle his entire crew without so much as drawing a blade.
With a guttural roar, the leader kicked the campfire, sending a spray of burning embers toward Seven. Seven simply raised his hands, batting away the glowing coals with a casual flick of his wrists. Before the smoke could clear, the leader lunged, his heavy boots thundering against the ground. He threw a massive, sweeping kick aimed at Seven's ribs, but the youth vanished from his line of sight, stepping into the blur of the shadows and reappearing a foot to the left.
The leader tightened his grip on his heavy cleaver, his knuckles turning white as his eyes narrowed into slits of pure malice. Seven didn't flinch. Around them, the forest seemed to hold its breath. A ghostly wind began to howl through the canopy, rattling the dead leaves like a warning.
Then, the leader moved with a speed that defied his massive frame.
The heavy steel of the cleaver cut through the air, aimed directly for Seven's throat. Seven shifted his weight almost lazily, letting the blade slice past his shoulder with less than an inch to spare. The force of the swing was so great that when the blade grazed a nearby oak tree, sparks flew, and a massive chunk of bark was shorn off. Without slowing down, Seven grabbed a low-hanging branch, used it as a pivot to vault over the leader's head, and landed silently behind him. A swift, concentrated kick to the small of the man's back sent the leader sprawling forward into a mound of rotting leaves.
The leader didn't stay down. He rolled, springing back to his feet with the agility of a cornered beast, his blade spinning in a deadly, shimmering arc. Seven did something the leader didn't expect he stepped into the strike. He met the leader's wrist mid-swing with his bare forearm. A sharp, white-hot pain shot up Seven's arm as the impact rattled his bones, but he didn't recoil. He twisted his torso, using the leader's own momentum to throw the larger man off balance.
The leader slammed into a tree, the solid wood denting under the force of his armored shoulder. He staggered, blood beginning to leak from a cut on his forehead, but he recovered instantly and lunged again.
Seven's movements were no longer just fast; they were preternatural. He was reading the leader's muscles before they even moved. He blocked a punch, parried a slash with the heel of his palm, and countered with strikes that were barely telegraphed. One of Seven's hands clamped onto the leader's wrist like a vice, while the other smashed into the man's ribs with the force of a piston. An elbow drove upward into the leader's jaw, a sound like cracking porcelain echoing through the clearing. Dirt, leaves, and splintered bark flew in every direction as the leader was sent skidding across the forest floor.
Still, the man's sheer willpower kept him upright. He sprang to his feet, swinging low in a desperate attempt to take Seven's legs. Seven twisted in mid-air, a spinning kick connecting squarely with the leader's temple, knocking him into a shallow, muddy ditch. But the leader rolled out of the muck, his blade angled up, eyes wild with the realization that he was fighting something that wasn't entirely human.
Seven's chest rose and fell in a slow, rhythmic pattern. His heartbeat hadn't even accelerated. "You're good," he muttered, his voice a cold rasp. "But in this world, 'good' is just another word for 'dead.' You're not good enough."
They clashed again steel against fist, shadow against iron. The forest itself became Seven's weapon. He slammed the leader into ancient trunks, kicked him off moss-covered rocks, and used fallen logs as leverage for bone-breaking grapples. The leader's blade managed to find purchase twice, drawing dark lines of blood across Seven's arm and shoulder, but the youth didn't even blink. The pain seemed to only sharpen his focus.
Finally, driven by the desperation of a dying animal, the leader brought the full force of his weight into a series of wild, whirlwind swings. He forced Seven to backpedal through a narrow grove where the ground was uneven and choked with roots. Branches snapped like gunfire. Seven ducked under a high, decapitating slash, slipped to the blind side of a tree, and vanished.
With a sudden burst of speed, Seven reappeared and lashed out with a sweeping kick that caught the leader's ankles. The man went airborne, his massive body flying backward until he collided with a gargantuan tree.
The impact was deafening. The air left the leader's lungs in a sickening wheeze. Seven approached him, his footsteps deliberate and heavy with the weight of an executioner. The leader staggered to one knee, his blade trembling in a hand that no longer had the strength to hold it.
Seven crouched down, his dark-circled eyes level with the dying man's. "End of the line," he whispered.
The leader lunged one last time a pathetic, desperate slash but Seven simply sidestepped. He grabbed the man's wrist and twisted violently. A sharp, wet snap echoed through the trees. The cleaver clattered into the mud. Seven delivered a final, open-palm strike to the center of the leader's chest. The man's heart skipped a beat from the shock, and he flew backward into the thick underbrush, motionless.
Silence fell over Paradise Valley.
The forest was quiet again, the only sound being the distant hoot of an owl and the soft rustle of leaves in the wind. Seven stood alone in the center of the camp, bloodied, bruised, but unbowed. The last of the bandits lay defeated, staring up at the canopy with vacant, terrified eyes.
Seven wiped a smear of blood from his knuckles and looked at the fallen leader.
"Told you… I don't need a weapon to kill men like you."
Seven turned away from the bodies and walked toward the largest tent in the clearing. It was made of heavy, stolen canvas and smelled of old grease and fear. On a small, makeshift table near the entrance, he spotted a crumpled piece of parchment. He picked it up, smoothing it out. At the bottom was a wax seal a deep, royal blue stamp featuring a crown pierced by a sword.
Seven's hand shook slightly as he looked at it. He shook his head, a bitter smile touching his lips. Even out here, in the dirt and the blood, the Kings' reach was absolute. They were playing both sides of the war.
He stepped deeper into the tent's shadows. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of copper and decay. Two figures lay on the ground. One was a man, or what was left of one, beaten so badly his features were unrecognizable dead for hours. The other was a young boy, perhaps fourteen, huddled in the corner. He was still alive, his eyes wide and glazed with trauma.
Seven stood over him, the moonlight casting a long, terrifying shadow over the child. "So," Seven said, his voice carrying a dark smirk.
"You gonna tell me what happened here, or do I have to get creative?"
"Please… please don't kill me!" the boy sobbed, his voice cracking. He was sweating buckets, his chest heaving as he strained against the rough hemp ropes binding his wrists and ankles.
Seven looked at the boy, then at the dead man beside him. A flicker of something—perhaps pity, though it looked more like annoyance crossed his face. "If you tell me everything who sent the order, what was in those crates, and why your 'Boss' had a royal seal I might let you live."
Seven pulled a small, sharp shiv from his belt and sliced through the boy's restraints in a single motion. "Follow me," Seven commanded, turning his back as if the boy wasn't a threat.
The boy scrambled to his feet, his legs shaking so violently he nearly fell. He followed Seven out of the tent, his eyes darting frantically toward the dark tree line. I have to escape, the boy thought, his heart hammering against his ribs. If I can just reach the ravine...
Seven stopped walking, though he didn't turn around. "If you even think about running, you'll be dead before your foot hits the moss," Seven warned. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried a finality that froze the boy in his tracks. This wasn't a bluff. Seven was a man who fulfilled his threats with the same mechanical efficiency he used to break bones.
"Oh, I forgot," Seven said, gesturing back toward the tent. "Go back and carry that dead body out here. The one who was beaten."
The boy recoiled. "What? Why?"
"Because he doesn't deserve to rot in a bandit's tent," Seven replied, his gaze turning toward the horizon where the first hint of a blood-red dawn was breaking. "And because you need to remember the weight of the people you served."
The boy ran back, gagging as he hoisted the cold, limp weight of the corpse over his shoulder. The smell of the dead man was putrid, the stench of bowels and rot making the boy vomit onto the grass. But under Seven's watchful, predatory eyes, he didn't stop. He began the long, slow march out of the forest, following the monster who had just saved his life.