"My son... Kaelith, don't swim too far out. The waves are rough today."
This voice echoing from the depths of his mind was familiar. It was a piece of a warm and peaceful memory torn from the past. He remembered that sunny day they spent splashing water at each other. But when he looked at his mother's face, that warmth was suddenly replaced by an icy seriousness.
"Mother? What happened, why did you suddenly get so serious?" asked Kaelith, trying to wade through the water.
"I told you to run, Kaelith," the woman said, her voice turning into a hiss rather than a whisper.
"What are you talking about, mother? Run from what?"
"Run! Save your life, I said, KAELITH!" The woman suddenly reached out and squeezed Kaelith's arms like a vise. Her fingers dug into his flesh, pressing as if to crush his bones. Kaelith's breath caught in his throat. Staring into her eyes, he realized in that instant that those foreign, vacant eyes definitely did not belong to his mother. An icy terror washed over his body. He flinched.
And the darkness was torn apart.
Kaelith woke up in the dead of night, coughing up the saltwater that had filled his lungs. When he opened his eyes, all he saw was a pitch-black sky, and all he felt was the wet, cold sand stretching beneath him. It took him a few seconds to figure out where he was. The impact made it feel as though a blacksmith was hammering an anvil inside his skull. He slowly brought his hand to his throbbing temple.
"Where the hell is this... Fuck," he muttered with a raspy voice. He felt the ache in his muscles as he tried to sit up. "I'm sick and tired of doing this damn guild's grunt work. As if there's no one else left in the whole organization, they dump all the espionage jobs on me."
He stood up with difficulty. Squinting to make out his surroundings, he saw the shipwreck washed ashore and piles of splintered wood. A few fresh bloodstains dripping onto the wet sand caught his eye. Good, he thought to himself, so there are other survivors besides me. Just as he was about to breathe a sigh of relief, voices carried by the wind instantly put him on high alert. Two patrol guards were sweeping the beach under the feeble light of their swinging oil lanterns. Ahead of them was a massive tracking dog, sniffing the ground as it moved forward. They had lowered their voices, but the wind carried their conversation to Kaelith.
"The Rusty Wave capsized," one of the guards said. "Helmsman Hoyke managed to get ashore in a small rowboat with a few oarsmen. We found out from him. Even though Lord Vorren was furious at first, he later agreed with Hoyke and spared his life. We learned that the whole thing was Captain Vargo's fault."
Look at Vorren, Kaelith smirked in the shadows. You've done something you wouldn't normally do. Or have you already obtained that thing you wanted so badly, Vorren?
At that moment, the dog suddenly stopped. Pressing its nose to the ground, it began to growl and moved directly toward the bloodstains, straight into the darkness where Kaelith was hiding.
Time was running out. Not wanting to lose the element of surprise, Kaelith drew the dagger from beneath his cloak. He took a deep breath, pressed the sharp edge of the blade into his left palm, and swiftly pulled it across. The pain was fleeting, but the warmth of the spilled blood gave him the power he needed. He waited for the right moment as he took control of the blood trickling from his palm, using that familiar dark focus within his mind.
"What's the rush, you mutt!" the guard grumbled, yanking on the leash. The lantern's light hit forward for a brief second, illuminating the silhouette in the shadows.
Standing before them was a long-haired man in a purple cloak. A strange necklace around his neck emitted an eerie crimson light, while the drops of blood flowing from his slashed palm were floating in mid-air instead of falling to the ground.
The guards had less than a second to comprehend what they were facing.
Kaelith swung his hand rapidly. The levitating blood suddenly morphed into a paper-thin, razor-sharp crimson blade. A high-pitched whistle tore through the air. The blood magic struck dead between the dog's eyes, cleaving the animal right down the middle as if a hot knife were slicing through butter. The dog collapsed onto the sand in two pieces without making a single sound.
The guards recoiled in absolute terror, drawing their swords from their scabbards with trembling hands.
"Calm down," Kaelith said, stepping slowly out of the shadows. A mocking, dangerous smile rested on his face. "I took the dog out of the equation because it doesn't listen to reason. But if you talk... I'll spare your lives. We're going to play a game of Q&A now. Where are we right now?"
The tall guard swallowed hard and stayed silent. Gripping his sword tightly, he watched for Kaelith's slightest movement. The short, stocky guard beside him answered with a voice trembling with fear: "Right now... We are a patrol squad assigned to the Port of Kararıy."
Hmm, so we are quite far from the Chain Gulf, Kaelith thought. Softening his expression, he decided to pull them into his game.
"If you have any questions, I can answer them too," he said, not lowering his guard but adding a tone of fake camaraderie to his voice. "I'm from that ship as well."
The tall guard's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "From the ship, you say? How did you survive? So far, we haven't found a single thing except the mangled bodies of enslaved Ironlanders. How did you make it out of that wreckage so intact?" His voice held both grim suspicion and curiosity.
Kaelith quickly fabricated a scenario in his mind. Hoyke said he escaped... I can blame it on a storm and get away with it.
"Believe me, I don't know how I survived either," Kaelith said with a deep sigh. "But I can tell you what happened inside. I don't know what your names are, but I'm one of the Captain's bodyguards. Captain Vargo and his first mate got into a fight. The first mate went below decks and riled up the soldiers; there was a literal mutiny inside. While I was fighting the mercenaries to protect the captain, the magic Vargo unleashed severely damaged the ship's hull. You know the rest... We became fish food, the ship sank. I don't remember anything after that."
The stocky guard breathed a deep sigh of relief. "Is that so..." he said, lowering his sword. "Come, let's take you to the head of our patrol squad, Captain Great Mace Ulg. He'll..."
He couldn't finish his sentence. Kaelith did not forgive that single momentary lapse of weakness when the man lowered his sword. In the blink of an eye, he lunged forward, grabbed the wrist of the stocky guard holding the sword, and plunged his own dagger deep into the man's stomach. Swiftly pulling the dagger back out, he leaped three steps back with an agile movement, ignoring the spurting blood.
"Son of a bitch! You're dead now!" roared the tall guard, charging forward in a blind rage.
Kaelith smiled as he parried the man's sword with his own dagger with a loud clash. "You trusted the wrong person, gentlemen. I am the absolute last person in this life anyone should trust."
Using the momentum of the parry, he lunged forward and delivered a hard punch to the guard's stomach. As the soldier doubled over in pain, gasping for air, he screamed, "Why did you kill him?! Why?!" and began swinging his sword uncontrollably in a fury.
Kaelith dodged the man's clumsy attacks with the grace of a dancer. "Ah, I apologize for killing your friend. But these are the laws of nature; the strong always crush the weak. Without you guys, my job would have been very difficult. Now my work around here just got easier, thanks."
Skillfully deflecting the man's final, missed sword strike, Kaelith flipped his dagger and severed the guard's sword-bearing wrist in a single motion. As the soldier's sword dropped onto the sand, he let out a horrific scream that tore through the darkness of the night.
Realizing he was going to die, the guard tried to throw himself at Kaelith with his last remaining strength and the agonizing pain of his severed wrist. However, his end was already written. Kaelith slipped behind the man like a shadow gliding from beneath a cloak, and with a clean, fluid motion, severed the man's head from his shoulders. As the body slumped to the ground with a heavy thud, blood dyed the sands crimson.
Wiping the blood from his dagger onto the dead guard's uniform, Kaelith looked down at the headless corpse. "That was nice. Now I'll be able to roam around here much more comfortably with your access token."
He bent down, searched the guard's pockets, and smiled as he twirled the Kararıy token between his fingers. Leaving three corpses behind him, he began walking with heavy steps toward the port in the dead of night...