He walked with a slow, rhythmic pace. It felt heavier than the mountain itself.
His eyes weren't fixed on the raiders. He looked at the space just behind them, as if already observing the world that would remain after they were gone. Every footfall was a declaration of intent. He didn't look like a boy who was dying. He looked like an inevitability.
The three raiders at the front stopped laughing. The air grew cold. The smell of ozone filled the gaps between their heartbeats. Kota didn't reach for his sword. He didn't have to. The pressure radiating from his frame made the dirt crack and spiderweb outward.
"What are you looking at?" the first raider spat.
He stepped forward, swinging a jagged piece of iron.
Kota didn't flinch. He simply kept walking. When the raider swung, Kota moved his head just an inch to the left. The metal whistled past his ear. Before the man could pull back, Kota drove his palm into the center of the raider's chest.
There was no sound of a strike. There was only the muffled pop of ribs snapping under a pressure they were never meant to contain. The man was launched backward like he'd been hit by a battering ram.
The second and third raiders charged together. They screamed. One held a rusted spear. The other, a heavy meat cleaver.
Kota moved between them like smoke. He grabbed the shaft of the spear and twisted. The wood shattered into splinters. With the same motion, he stepped into the personal space of the man with the cleaver. He caught the man's wrist and squeezed. The sound of bone grinding against bone was sharp in the silence.
Kota didn't stop there. He spun the man around and shoved him into the spearman. Both went down in a heap of tangled limbs and broken armor. Kota stood over them. His shadow stretched long and jagged across the road.
There was no mercy left in his eyes. He stepped forward for the kill.
A sudden, sharp fire ignited in Kota's veins. It started in his chest and raced toward his throat like liquid lead. He buckled. A violent cough racked his frame. Dark violet blood splattered into the palm of his hand.
The world tilted. Faces blurred into static. He felt a hum vibrating against his teeth but Kota didn't fall. He gripped his own arm. His fingers dug into the muscle until the pain cleared the fog. He forced the sensation down. He forced the darkness back into the cage of his ribs. He wasn't done yet.
A fourth raider stepped out. He was larger than the others, arms the size of tree trunks. He wasn't screaming. He was smiling. In his hand, he swung a massive iron ball attached to a thick chain.
The metal groaned as it cut through the air.
"You think you are special?" the big man asked. His voice was like grinding stones. "You are just a broken toy."
Kota walked toward him. He could feel a strange power in his blood trying to guide his movements, but the fatigue made him slow.
The big man stepped forward and unleashed the weapon. The iron ball flew like a meteor. Kota tried to pivot, but the sickness got the best of him. The ground felt like it was pulling him down. The air felt too thick to breathe.
The iron ball caught Kota flush on the side of the head.
The impact was a dull, heavy thud. Kota felt the bone of his skull vibrate against his brain. His vision went white, then black, then a deep, bruised purple. He didn't feel his body hit the ground. One moment he was a warrior. The next, he was just a heap of meat in the dirt.
Silence returned to the road.
Kota lay on the cold earth. He could feel the dirt against his cheek and the warmth of his own blood pooling beneath his ear. He couldn't move his arms. He couldn't feel his legs.
Inside the dark theater of his mind, a voice began to speak. It carried the weight of a thousand collapsing stars.
This is a dream, he thought. I am dreaming of the end. I must be asleep... or maybe I have finally died.
"It is a fascinating sight." The woman's voice was like silk sliding over a blade. "To see the one who carries the debt face down in the mud because of a man who does not even know the name of the stars he stands under. Does your pride not ache, boy?"
I am not dead, Kota thought. This is just a nightmare. I am dreaming of a world that is too heavy to carry.
"A nightmare is simply a reality you are too weak to accept," the goddess replied. "You are so very fragile. You keep trying to walk with the legs of a mortal as if that were some noble sacrifice. Do you truly think your small spark of light is enough to keep the dark at bay? They are coming for the potential you refuse to use. They have always beencoming."
"Go away", Kota thought. He tried to swim toward the surface, but the water was too deep. "I just want to rest."
"Rest is a luxury you have not yet earned," she whispered.
"This sickness isn't foreign to you, boy. You should have learned how to live with it by now instead of letting it break you. You treat your own power like an enemy because you are afraid of the view from the top. Every time you bleed, you become more beautiful. Every time you fail, you merely prove why you need it."
The truth is that I am failing them, Kota thought. I am just a ghost in a dream.
"You could have made this whole settlement a wasteland in a heartbeat if you stopped pretending to be a weak human like that girl calling out your name right now," she said with chilling sweetness.
"If you let me take the weight, you would be standing on a mountain of their souls right now. But you are paralyzed by the fear of losing a self that is already disappearing. You are clinging to a ghost."
Kota felt a heavy boot thud into his ribs. His body rolled like a log. He looked up with one eye and saw the blurred shape of the big man raising the iron ball for a final blow.
Is this where the dream ends? Kota asked himself.
The woman laughed.
"This is where you decide if you wish to remain a tragic story... or become something the world cannot forget. The choice is yours, but the iron is moving quite fast, boy."
He watched the ball reach the apex of its arc. He could feel the eyes of those closing in on him.
"Im so tired", Kota thought.
"Then sleep, boy," the woman whispered. "Give me your burden, and I will show you what a real predator looks like."
The iron ball began its descent. Kota didn't feel it. He drifted into a void darker than any night.
On the road, the silence was shattered. Leiya screamed.
"Kota!" she yelled. Her voice echoed through the ruins. "Get up!"
The boy on the ground did not struggle to find his feet.
In the blink of an eye, Kota was no longer lying in the dirt. He snapped into a standing position with a speed so violent and unnatural that it seemed as if he had never fallen at all.
No one saw him get up. One moment he was a corpse. The next, he was the center of a storm.
A massive explosion of violent Yen erupted from his chest like a sun going supernova. The force was absolute. The big man was sent flying like a piece of paper. The remaining raiders were flung backward by the spillover. The earth cracked. The air began to scream.
The person standing in the road looked like Kota, but the eyes were wrong. They were hollow. Filled with a cold, ancient hunger.
The dream was over. The darkness had finally arrived.