Chapter Fourteen
The road to Brookshire was paved, a luxury Siurad hadn't seen since arriving in this world. It implied civilization. It implied order.
It implied laws.
They were less than five miles from the city gates when the patrol spotted them.
"Halt!"
Three men on horseback trotted out from a copse of trees. They wore the blue and silver tabards of Vildris;clean, polished, and official. These weren't bandits. They were road wardens. Men with families, pensions, and a job to do.
Siurad signaled for the flock to stop. Yona drifted to the back of the line, her hand hovering near her daggers, but keeping her head down.
The Captain of the patrol, a man with a thick mustache and tired eyes, reined his horse in front of Siurad. He didn't draw his sword. He pulled out a leather bound ledger and a quill.
"Refugees?" the Captain asked, eyeing the ragged children.
"Orphans," Siurad corrected, keeping his voice steady. "We're taking them to the Temple of Ceuci in Brookshire."
"Noble," the Captain grunted, dipping his quill into the ink pot on his saddle. "But procedure is procedure. I need to log this group. Names, ages, and point of origin."
"We're in a hurry, Captain," Siurad said, his voice tight. He reached for his belt pouch, deftly sliding two gold coins into his palm, more than a road warden made in a month. He stepped closer, offering a handshake with the gold concealed.
"Surely we can handle the paperwork at the Temple?" Siurad lowered his voice. "Consider it a donation to the Widows and Orphans Fund. For the trouble."
The Captain looked down at the gold glinting in Siurad’s hand. He didn't take it. He looked up at Siurad, his expression hardening; not with greed, but with a weary disappointment.
"Put that away, son," the Captain said softly. "I'm not a bandit. I'm a warden. If I let you pass without a log, and these children turn out to be missing persons... that's on my soul. Now, line them up."
He turned his gaze to the front of the line. "You there, girl. Step forward. Name?"
Mara froze. She looked at Siurad, absolute terror flooding her eyes.
'...THE VARIABLE CANNOT BE RECORDED, Obi whispered. The voice wasn't angry. It was terrifyingly calm. '...HE IS A LEAK. CLOSE IT.'
Siurad stood paralyzed.
He’s a good man, Siurad’s mind screamed. He’s doing his job. He’s the first honest cop we’ve met.
And that was exactly why he had to die.
Bouncer Logic: You don't hit a patron unless they swing first.
Warlord Logic: You remove the threat to the VIP.
The two codes clashed in his skull, causing a physical spike of nausea. He looked at the Captain's neck. He saw the pulse thumping rhythmically against the skin.
'...DO IT,' Obi commanded.
Siurad shut his humanity off. He didn't want to be Siurad anymore. He retreated into the void. He forced himself to see the Captain not as a man with a soul, but as a blocking mechanic. A variable in the way.
"Her name," Siurad said, stepping past the horse's flank, "is none of your business."
The Captain blinked, opening his mouth to reprimand him. "Now look here—"
Siurad didn't draw his sword. That would give the man a chance.
He grabbed the Captain’s belt and the collar of his tabard. With a roar that was half effort, half despair, he ripped the man from the saddle.
The Captain hit the pavement with a heavy clatter of armor, the breath leaving him in a wheeze. He looked up, eyes wide, hands raising in a gesture of confusion, not violence.
"Wait—"
Siurad dropped his knee onto the man's chest, pinning him. He drew the black steel blade.
He didn't look away. He forced himself to look.
The Captain’s eyes locked onto his. There was no hate there. Just pure, innocent confusion. Why?
I'm sorry, Siurad thought.
He drove the blade down.
It wasn't a clean shing like in a game. It was a wet, resisting crunch. The steel punched through the gap in the gorget and severed the spine.
The Captain’s body convulsed once; a violent, human spasm against Siurad’s leg, and then went heavy.
The quill fell from his dead hand. The ledger lay in the dirt, blank.
"Hostile!" the second guard screamed, fumbling for a signal horn at his belt.
"Yona!" Siurad roared, his voice cracking.
The green flash of hellfire struck the second guard in the chest before he could raise the horn, melting through his breastplate and silencing his scream in a roar of flame.
The third guard didn't fight. He kicked his spurs, his horse rearing as he turned to run back toward the city. To warn them.
"No," Siurad breathed. His stomach rolled, threatening to empty itself, but his mind was ice cold.
Distance: Forty feet.
Speed: Increasing.
Solution: Void Step.
Siurad tethered to the nearest shadow, then he simply stepped forward, and the world inverted.
The nausea hit him instantly; a familiar, violent lurch as gravity dissolved. For a split second, he was nowhere, squeezed through the freezing vacuum of the Void.
He erupted from the tear in reality directly behind the fleeing rider, materializing on the back of the galloping horse.
The momentum slammed into him like a physical blow. He barely gripped the rider's waist to stabilize himself, his head spinning, bile burning the back of his throat.
The guard felt the shift in weight. He turned his head, his eyes widening as he saw the demon that had just appeared out of thin air inches from his face.
Siurad didn't say a word. He forced the sickness down and raised his hand.
He drove a shadow spike directly through the back of the guard's armor.
It wasn't just visual. He felt the resistance through his connection: the snap of the steel plate, the wet give of flesh, the vibration of bone shattering, right before the obsidian lance erupted from the guard's chest in a spray of red mist.
Siurad shoved the body. The guard tumbled from the saddle, dead before he hit the road.
Siurad grabbed the reins, slowing the panicked horse to a halt. He sat there for a moment, the black smoke of the void step still curling off his shoulders, the taste of vomit in his mouth.
He had moved like a ghost. He had killed like a machine. And it hurt.
'...EFFICIENT,' Obi pulsed, a warm wave of approval washing over Siurad’s nausea. ... '...LOOSE ENDS TIED. THE FLOCK IS SECURE.'
Yona walked over to the Captain's body. She didn't look at the carnage. She picked up the ledger from the dirt. She flipped through it, verified it was empty of their names, and then incinerated it with a small pulse of fire.
"They would have flagged us," she said, her voice devoid of judgment. "They would have sent a raven to the capital by noon. Valerius would have had a hit squad waiting at the temple."
She looked up at Siurad, who was sliding off the captured horse, his face pale.
"You didn't kill a man, Shepherd," she said softly. "You killed a leak. It had to be done."
Siurad wiped his blade on the Captain's tabard, trying to ignore the guilt clawing at his throat. He turned to the children, expecting to see horror. Expecting them to run from the monster who could teleport and kill innocent men without blinking.
Most of them were cowering, faces buried in their hands.
But not Mara.
She stood at the front of the line. She looked at the dead Captain, the honest man who had refused a bribe. She didn't look sad. She looked at the corpse with a chilling indifference, as if he were nothing more than a broken piece of furniture.
Then she looked at Siurad. Her eyes weren't wide with fear. They were wide with awe.
She walked over to him, stepping directly over the blood pooling on the road without flinching. She reached out and took his trembling hand.
"You stopped them," she whispered, squeezing his fingers. "They were going to take us. And you stopped them."
She looked up at him, and for the first time, she smiled; a fierce, terrifying expression of absolute devotion.
"You really are our Shepherd."
Siurad looked down at her, then at the dead men who had done nothing wrong but ask a question. He realized Yona was right about the danger of teaching her. He realized Obi was right about the efficiency of violence.
And that terrified him more than anything else.
"Let's go," Siurad rasped, his voice sounding hollow. "Brookshire is waiting."
'...WAIT,' Obi commanded. '...THE EVIDENCE REMAINS.'
Siurad froze. He looked at the bodies. The Captain with his severed spine. The guard melted by Yona’s fire. The rider he had spiked.
Blood pooled on the pavement. A ledger lay in the dirt.
If a patrol found this, they wouldn't just send a raven; they would send a battalion. They would hunt them to the ends of the earth.
No loose ends.
Siurad looked at the horse he had just dismounted. The beast was trembling, smelling the blood of its master, its eyes wide and rolling. It wore the barding of Vildris. If he let it go, it would run straight back to the garrison stables. A riderless horse was a screaming alarm bell.
He couldn't let it run. He couldn't take it with them.
Siurad closed his eyes. He felt the sickness in his gut, the ache in his veins; a telltale sign he was using too much mana.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to the beast.
He didn't use magic this time. He couldn't afford it. He used the sword. One clean, brutal thrust into the heart. The horse buckled and fell without a sound.
Mara watched, her eyes unblinking. She didn't look away.
"Yona," Siurad said, his voice dead. "Get the kids back. I need a minute."
Yona didn't argue. She saw the look in his eyes, the look of a man about to do the janitorial work of the soul. She herded the children a few yards down the road, turning their backs to the carnage.
Siurad walked to the Captain first. He knelt in the blood.
He placed his hand on the man's breastplate. He prepared to open the void, but a thought struck him. An old habit from a time that seemed so long ago,a lingering gamer instinct.
Loot.
Kel.
He had absorbed the bandit leader into the earth back at the camp. In his mind, he had treated it like an inventory slot, toring the body to strip it of gear later when things calmed down. Kel had magical items. He had value.
Siurad reached into the Void, not to deposit, but to withdraw. He cast his will into the darkness, searching for the specific "echo" of the bandit leader.
Return, Siurad commanded.
Nothing happened.
There was no body. No armor. No resistance. Just an infinite, silent cold.
Siurad probed deeper, panic fluttering in his chest. I put him right here. Where is he?
'...GONE,' Obi whispered, his voice holding a trace of dark amusement. '...THE VOID IS NOT A VAULT, HEIR. IT IS A HUNGER.'
Siurad pulled his hand back, a chill running up his spine that had nothing to do with the wind. He had waited too long. The Void hadn't stored Kel; it had digested him. Armor, flesh, bone, and soul; broken down into nothingness.
He looked down at the Captain. There would be no retrieving him. This wasn't hiding a body; it was unmaking a man.
God forgive me, Siurad thought.
Consume.
The shadows beneath the body seemed to transform. The pavement seemed to dissolve into an infinite, black depth. The Captain’s body sank into the asphalt like a stone thrown into a tar pit.
In seconds, he was gone. No trace. No smell. Just clean, grey road.
Siurad moved to the next. Then the next. Then the horse he had felled.
Two more waited at the treeline.
He walked to them through the wet grass. They shied from the smell on him, and he took the first by the bridle and put the sword through its heart the way he had the other. Except this time he did not close his eyes. This time he did not say he was sorry.
There was nothing left in him to say it with. He did the second the same way, and opened the ground beneath them both.
It was exhausting. It felt like dragging heavy weights through deep water. With every body he erased, he felt a piece of himself slipping into that cold dark with them.
When he was done, the road was empty. The blood was gone, absorbed into the hungry dark. The only proof that the Vildris patrol had ever existed was the blank ledger Yona had burned.
Siurad stood up, swaying slightly. He wiped his hands on his trousers, though there was nothing on them.
'...THE RECORD IS CLEANSED,' Obi pulsed, a note of grim satisfaction in his tone. '...PROCEED.'
Siurad walked back to the group. Mara was waiting. She looked at the empty road where the bodies had been moments ago. She looked at Siurad.
She didn't ask where they went. She knew.
"They're gone," she whispered, half to herself. "You made them... gone."
"We move," Siurad said, walking past her, refusing to meet her gaze. "Don't stop until we see the walls."