The silence that followed Kael's challenge was heavy, suffocating, and brief. Then, spurred by the desperate realization that there was no escape, the wave of five hundred fanatics broke.
"Kill him! He's just a boy without his fire!" a zealot screamed, brandishing a heavy mace.
He was the first to reach Kael. He was also the first to die.
Kael didn't flinch. As the mace swung in a clumsy arc, he stepped into the man's guard, his movement a blur of Emperor-state efficiency. His fist, driven by legs that could shatter stone, buried itself in the man's solar plexus. There was a sickening crunch—the sound of a ribcage collapsing inward like a dry birdcage. The man's breath left him in a spray of crimson, his eyes bulging as his heart was forced against his spine. Before the body could hit the floor, Kael grabbed the man's throat, using the corpse as a physical shield against a volley of arrows launched from the back.
The arrows thudded into the dead man's back. Kael tossed the carcass aside and dove into the thick of the crowd.
The slaughterhouse had begun.
The Sound of Shattered Steel
Kael was a whirlwind of meat and bone. A mage tried to draw a dagger, but Kael caught his wrist. With a sharp, methodical twist, the radius and ulna snapped, the white bone tearing through the skin with a wet, ripping sound. The mage's scream was cut short as Kael's elbow connected with his temple, caving in the side of his skull.
Crack. Thud. Squish.
The sounds of the fight were visceral. This wasn't the "clean" death of elemental fire; this was the labor-intensive work of a butcher. Kael's knuckles were soon split open, not from weakness, but from the sheer frequency of impact against teeth and brow-ridges.
A group of four armored brawlers tackled him at once. Kael dropped his center of gravity, caught one by the ankle, and swung him like a club into the others. The sound of helmets colliding was like a tolling bell. He leapt onto the chest of a fallen soldier, the armor plate buckling under his weight and puncturing the man's lungs.
Blood was everywhere. It painted the floor in slick, dangerous patches. It sprayed across Kael's face in hot, metallic bursts. He didn't wipe it away. His brown eyes remained fixed, tracking the next target with the predatory focus of an apex hunter.
The Animal in the Center
Noelle watched from his throne, his remaining hand trembling so violently it rattled the obsidian armrest. He had seen wars. He had seen executions. But he had never seen a human being turn into an animal of this caliber.
Kael wasn't just fighting; he was dismantling them.
He saw Kael catch a spear mid-thrust, snap the shaft, and drive the splintered wood through the throat of a Dark Saint. The gurgling sound of the man trying to breathe through a hole in his windpipe echoed off the stone. Kael moved to the next, his hands now so slick with gore he had to grip his enemies tighter just to keep his hold.
One minion tried to plead, dropping his sword and falling to his knees. Kael's response was a standing kick that caught the man under the chin. The jaw disconnected entirely, hanging by a thread of sinew as the man was flipped backward, his neck snapping with a sound like a dry branch.
"He's a monster..." Noelle whispered, his voice a ghost of itself. "He's not a Saint... he's a beast."
For the first time, Noelle realized his mistake. He had wanted a weapon he could control, a "gem" to replace Ammit.
Instead, he had cracked open a seal to something ancient and hungry. The fear in Noelle's chest was a cold, oily thing, sliding down his spine. He looked at Kael—covered in the blood of fifty men, then a hundred—and saw his own death reflected in those sparkling brown eyes.
The Grinding Halt
By the time the three-hundredth man fell, the "fight" had turned into a culling. The minions were no longer attacking; they were trying to climb over each other to get to the exits. Kael was a shadow amongst them. He caught a runner by the back of the head and slammed his face into a stone pillar. The sound of the nose shattering was followed by the wet thud of the skull meeting granite.
Kael stood in the center of a literal mountain of the dead and dying. His breath was steady, rhythmic, while the survivors wailed and crawled through the entrails of their comrades.
He looked down at his hands. They were no longer skin-colored; they were encased in a thick, drying glove of dark red. He flexed them, the blood cracking in the creases of his knuckles. He looked toward the throne, toward the man who had started this all.
"One hundred left," Kael muttered, his voice raspy from the metallic air. "Who's next?"
The remaining Dark Saints backed away, some of them vomiting at the sight of the carnage, others simply falling into a catatonic state of shock. They were looking at a boy who had discarded his divinity to show them the full, terrifying extent of his humanity.