Chương 91: The Red Weeks

At first, the villages tried to flee. It was logical. When the rumor of a man in a half-mask, a black scythe, and broken wings reached the highlands, the clans still thought like clans. Protect the little ones. Hide the elders. Send the hunters forward. Move the fires. Erase the tracks. Close the bridges. They believed they were facing a beast. They were wrong. A beast hunts to eat. Zayn no longer hunted. He was following an absence. During the first week, he still asked questions. Not always with words.

In a fox-beastman hamlet clinging to a slope of black moss, he planted the scythe into the ground at the center of the village and asked only one thing: — The white woods. The local chief, an old fox with silver fur, told him he knew nothing. Zayn cut off two of his fingers. Not to make him talk. To see whether he would repeat the same answer in pain. The old fox repeated it. Zayn cut off his hand. Then a woman screamed that she had seen pale figures near an old stone bridge. Zayn turned toward her.

— Before or after hearing that I was looking for them? She froze. Wrong answer. The scythe whispered: — They invent things when they want to live. Zayn smiled. — I know. He killed the chief. The woman too. Then he let the rest of the hamlet go. Not out of mercy. Because fear ran faster when it had to carry an incomplete story. The next day, three villages knew that the demonic human cut off liars' hands. The day after that, people were saying he could smell truth in bones.

By the fourth day, beastmen were starting to cut off their own fingers before he arrived, just to prove they had nothing to hide. The scythe found it hilarious. Zayn did too. A little. Not enough to laugh for long. By the second week, the villages stopped fleeing together. They scattered instead. That was worse. Families left in small groups, in the middle of the night, carrying sleeping children, sacks of seeds, spears too old for war, and the names of dead they had not had time to sing.

They thought splitting up would reduce the losses. They were only offering more tracks. Zayn found a group of twenty-seven survivors in a narrow gorge. Wolf-beastmen. Cat-beastmen. Two bear children. An old bird-woman no longer capable of flight. They had blocked the passage with trunks. A young wolf warrior, soul strength 41, tried to negotiate. — We know nothing about the elves. Zayn looked at him through his half-mask. — Then you are useless. The warrior paled. — There are children.

Zayn turned his eyes toward them. They were hidden behind hides, but he could see them. He could hear them breathing. He could have thought of Kima and Rull, the two little ones he had saved with the Mist-Fangs. He did think of them. Then he thought of the three children dead behind Korr. The comparison did not make him gentler. It made him colder. — Children become adults, he said. The scythe appeared in his hand. — Adults speak of taint. The wolf warrior raised his aura. Brave. Useless. Zayn let him strike first.

The spear entered his side. He did not dodge. He moved forward along the shaft, until he felt the wood grind against his ribs, then he placed his mouth against the warrior's wrist. The wolf understood. Too late. Zayn bit. Gluttony tore the flesh open. Envy drew in the scraps of strength. Wrath made the scythe vibrate. Around the black blade, the dark aura thickened. Not a noble breath. A parody. A thing born from the will of others, chewed, swallowed, and spat back out as hatred. Zayn cut.

[Soul Strength Absorbed: +1] [Envy Yield Reduced.] Current Soul Strength: 76 One point. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. For a man who had raised his spear against him without trembling. Zayn watched the body fall. — Even your courage has become light. The scythe sighed with pleasure. Then the barricade gave way. Not under the blade. Under the flames. While Zayn was fighting, three masked silhouettes had gone around the gorge.

Agents from the east, voiceless, bannerless, carrying small green vials and broken elven bracelets. They did not reveal themselves for long. Just long enough to throw fire onto the trunks, onto the seed sacks, onto the hides. Just long enough to leave an intact white arrow beside a stone. The survivors screamed: — The elves! Zayn heard it. He saw the masks disappear among the trees. He understood. Maybe. But an old bird-woman, covered in smoke, grabbed his coat and screamed: — You brought them here!

So he cut her in two. The rest of the gorge burned. Some died by his scythe. Others by the smoke. Others fell into the ravine trying to flee. Zayn did not count. The world did. Recorded population of the low gorge clans: 413 → 209 Zayn did not see that number. He saw only the north. By the third week, the beastmen began hunting Zayn in groups. Not villagers. Warriors. Real ones. They had understood that a village alone was not enough.

So clans that had hated each other for three generations sent fighters to walk together. Six bear-men. Four cat-women. Three bird-men. Two old wolves. One bearer of blue aura, almost elemental, whose axe made dew freeze when it passed near leaves. They waited for him in a field of standing stones. A sacred place. A place where young warriors had once come to receive their first hunting names. Zayn arrived at dawn. Alone. Covered in dried blood.

The black wings folded under his skin, ready to emerge, ready to rip open his back once more. The bearer of blue aura stepped forward. Value 66. The strongest Zayn had faced since the fall of the clan. — You have tainted enough land. Zayn looked at the stones. Some bore names. Generations. Oaths. Honored dead. The scythe murmured: — They brought their ancestors. Zayn laid a hand on the shaft. — Let them watch. The fight lasted a long time. Too long. Zayn fell three times.

The first time, a bear-man's axe almost shattered his right shoulder. The second, a cat-woman opened his belly so deep he could see the red heat beneath the skin. The third, the old wolf warrior's blue aura froze the blade of the scythe for half a second and tore two fingers from Zayn's left hand. The scythe shrieked with laughter as they drove him back. — Finally! Finally something that resists! Zayn was no longer laughing. He was biting. He was crawling.

He was calling the wings so he could leap onto the stones, even though every beat ripped another line of flesh from his back. He fell more than he flew. He used stolen feathers to turn a fall into an attack. He turned his body into a broken tool and kept going because there was nothing left in it worth respecting. In the middle of the fight, a bird-man drove his talons through Zayn's thigh. Zayn grabbed him by the throat. — Thank you. Then he bit into the wing. The flesh went in. The structure followed.

Zayn's wings burst forth larger. Black, torn, hideous. This time, they carried him for three full beats. Three. Enough to pass over an axe. Enough to crash down behind the bearer of blue aura. Enough to drive the scythe into his back. The blue aura resisted. Truly. For one second, the black smoke around the blade receded. The true aura was purer, older, more stable than anything Zayn could steal. The old warrior turned his head. — You will never understand our breath.

Zayn brought his mouth close to the old man's ear. — I don't need all of it anymore. Then he bit. The scythe cut. The blue aura shattered like a bell of ice. [Soul Strength Absorbed: +3] [Envy Yield Greatly Reduced.] Current Soul Strength: 79 Three points. For a warrior who might have become a local legend. Zayn remained kneeling among the sacred stones. Around him, the warriors were dead. Not all by his hand. Some had been killed by the scythe. Some by the green flames thrown by unseen agents during the chaos.

Two had been struck by white arrows coming from a direction where no elves yet stood when Zayn had lifted his head. The survivors, if there were any, would see the signs. They would say: The elves were here. Zayn would not correct them. He no longer wanted to correct the world. Only to force it to scream loudly enough for a culprit to answer. Before leaving, he looked at the carved stones. Then he knocked one down. Not out of necessity. Not out of strategy. Just because it was still standing.

The scythe murmured: — Yes. Zayn knocked down a second. Then a third. When he left the sacred field, the names of the ancestors lay in the mud. Behind him, the clans had lost more than warriors. They had lost a place where their dead still stood. And even Zayn understood that. That was why he did it. By the fourth week, he stopped asking before he killed. The question of the elves was still there. But it no longer needed to be put to every throat.

The whole continent had become a mouth, and Zayn no longer liked what it said. So he cut. In a fishing village, he drowned the boats before the men. When a fish-chief asked him why, Zayn answered: — Because I want to see who you pray to when the shore becomes useless. In a wooden fortress, he left the gates open after killing the guards. The beasts came in the following night. He was already gone. In a refugee camp, he heard a woman whisper to her child: — Don't look at him. This is the Mist-Fangs' fault.

They fed the monster. Zayn walked on. Then stopped. He came back. The woman recoiled. He did not kill her. He took the child. The woman screamed. Zayn set the child down twenty paces from the camp, beside a tree. Then he said: — Watch. After that, he returned to the tents. The scythe did the rest. The fire caught badly. The screams lasted a long time. The child survived. Zayn had wanted it that way. Not out of clemency. Because some memories had to grow up in living bodies. That night, the scythe barely spoke.

It did not need to. Zayn had become quieter than it. On the thirty-second day, the rumor reached the high racial fortresses. On the thirty-sixth, the sacred hunting roads were closed. By the fortieth, the clans of the west stopped counting the villages that burned and began counting the ones still breathing. The numbers were not exact. They could not be. Many died without witness. Many fled and vanished in the woods. Many were killed by creatures drawn to corpses.

Many were finished off by demonic agents who afterward left white traces. Many perished in conflicts between clans, because each blamed the other for guiding the elves or hiding the demonic human. Zayn was not the sole cause. But he was the wound through which all the others entered. Recorded beastman population on the western continent: 9, 987 → 7, 412 The narrator alone bore that number. Zayn did not know it. And even if he had, he might not have asked how many were children.

He would have asked how many villages knew the road north. On the forty-seventh day, he came to the cliffs of High Varg. The wind there was violent. The highlands opened onto a plateau of black stone, cut through by rope bridges and deep ravines. Bird-men had once lived there in small perched cities. Once. Now the nests were burning. Not all because of him. Green flames ran over the wooden structures. Manipulated elven corpses hung from the ropes.

Possessed bird-men circled through the sky crying messages planted into their throats. Zayn looked up. The sky was full of lies. A free bird-man landed in front of him. Old. Right wing burned. Value 49. He did not attack. He dropped to his knees. — Stop. Zayn looked at him. — Where is the passage to the elves? The old one trembled. — The island-continent lies beyond the Northern Sea. Even if you reach the coast, you will not cross. The currents kill ships. The winds break wings. The elves control the approaches.

At last. A useful answer. Zayn crouched. — There are boats. — Few. Guarded. And the river clans will never help you. — They will learn. The old bird-man pressed his forehead against the stone. — You have killed enough. Zayn remained still. The wind snapped the tattered ends of his coat. Behind him, the scythe appeared slowly. Not because he was attacked. Because anger had become his natural state. — Enough? asked Zayn. The old one did not answer. Zayn forced him to raise his head. — Look at me. The bird-man obeyed.

His eyes were full of tears. — Tell me Narek is dead enough. The old one did not understand. Zayn clenched his jaw. — Tell me Brakka is dead enough. That Korr is dead enough. That the children beneath him are dead enough. That the fire of the Mist-Fangs is extinguished enough. The old bird-man whispered: — I did not kill them. — No. Zayn smiled. Empty. — You were just there. The scythe fell. [Soul Strength Absorbed: +1] Current Soul Strength: 80 The gain was almost insulting. Zayn looked at the old bird-man's body.

Then at the rope bridges. Then at the sky. He took another bite of flesh. Not much. Enough. The wings came out. Slowly this time. Still painful. Still black. Still wrong. But less misshapen. Dark feathers pierced the membrane. The bones cracked as they searched for a position that did not belong to a human body. Blood ran down his back. Zayn gritted his teeth. The scythe observed. — You will not cross a sea with that. — No. — Then why?

Zayn looked up toward the suspended bridges, the nests, the last free bird-men trying to escape the manipulated corpses. — To learn. He beat his wings. Once. The shock drove him to one knee. Twice. He slid toward the edge of the ravine. Three times. He took off. Not well. Not for long. But enough to reach the first bridge. He landed on a group of possessed bird-men with the violence of a fall that had decided to become an attack. The scythe covered itself in dark aura. The night of High Varg turned black.

Not because of the sky. Because of the feathers that fell. By the end of the seventh week, Zayn knew three things. The northern coast existed. The river clans controlled the few sea passages. The elven continent was not a land at the end of a road. It was a giant island. A natural fortress ringed by currents, winds, reefs, and ancient magic. It was not enough to walk toward the elves. He had to cross the sea.

Zayn contemplated that fact from the ruins of High Varg, the wings folded into his back like two badly sewn promises. The scythe murmured: — A sea. He did not answer. — Do you know how to swim? — No. — Fly? Zayn looked at his trembling wings. — Not enough. — Then you need a boat. Far below the cliffs, an immense river wound northward. The river clans. The water routes. The last passages. Zayn smiled. — No. The scythe vibrated. — No? — I need someone who thinks they can refuse me a boat.

The weapon burst into laughter. This time, Zayn laughed with it. Across the beastman continent, the fires kept spreading. Behind him, villages were still burning. Ahead of him, the sea waited. And somewhere beyond, the elven island-continent breathed without knowing that the lie built with its dead had just made a man mad enough to seek a way across the ocean with a scythe, broken wings, and an entire continent in flames at his back.