Soren grimaced the moment he realised the men were looking at him with lustful eyes.
The feeling was immediate, crawling up his spine and twisting his stomach into knots.
Every glance, every smirk, made his skin crawl.
And just as he processed that, one of them spoke, voice rough but coated in fake cheerfulness.
"Heya, sweetheart. You alright?"
It was meant to seem casual, friendly even, but the attempt only set Soren further on edge.
His instincts screamed that nothing about this group was friendly.
One after another, the men asked questions, each seemingly harmless but laced with a hunger that made Soren's stomach turn.
Their eyes wandered over his body like hunters assessing prey.
Soren forced himself to raise the corners of his mouth in a polite smile, though it barely masked the rising disgust.
'Keep it together. Stay calm.'
He asked them carefully, his voice intentionally soft.
"May I ask why you're here? What's going on?"
One of the men stepped forward, his eyes gleaming with something Soren didn't want to name.
"We're lookin' for you, doll. Witch Hunt put out a missing persons request. They thought you died, but lucky for them, you're still kickin', eh?"
Soren froze mid-breath, his mind spinning.
'Witch Hunt… they did that? Why?'
He felt a cold tension coil in his chest.
He hadn't expected this much care, not like this.
He appreciated the gesture, but it was care that had overstepped, care that had crossed his boundaries before he could even process it.
After just three weeks of acquaintance, they put up a missing persons alert for him in a matter of days.
'This isn't protection, it's meddling.'
His gaze flicked back to the men.
He straightened his back slightly and smoothed his expression into what he hoped looked neutral and polite, and bowed his head lightly in gratitude.
"I… I appreciate your concern, truly, but I'm fine. I'll return to the Guild tomorrow."
The response was laughter.
Low, cruel and mocking.
They didn't care.
They weren't here to respect his words.
Soren's jaw tightened, his polite smile faltering.
'I knew it…'
He let his hand tighten around his handaxe, ready to swing at any moment.
At the same time, his left hand, hidden in his cloak pocket, tingled as the magic circle he had drawn was waiting to be activated.
A few of the men moved forward, closing the distance.
"No need for that," one said with a leering grin, "we can look after you. Better than letting anyone else handle it. C'mon, we'll take you back to the Guild ourselves."
Soren shifted his weight subtly, keeping Labrys steady, keeping the magic circle concealed but alive.
He could feel them closing in, inching ever closer.
Their gazes slid over him like hands; the way they looked was not that of curiosity but of ownership, as if he were a thing they were rightfully owed.
Eventually, a hand brushed his sleeve.
A casual touch, but Soren's body reacted immediately.
He flinched and stepped back, a breath catching in his throat.
"No," Soren said sharply. "I'll go back tomorrow."
The biggest of them grinned, the kind of grin that said it wasn't a request.
"Tomorrow's boring. C'mon, we'll take care of you. It'll be fun."
His words dripped with filth.
They stepped closer, deliberately herding him back toward the dungeon entrance's wall.
One leaned his weight into Soren's shoulder, a deliberate, unspoken threat.
The others surrounded him, tightening the circle.
Soren's fingers closed around Labrys.
Then, finally, he made a move.
A quick [Shock] burst from his hand, lightning crackled, a spark meant to create distance, and two of them went down with startled yells.
He followed it up with [Breeze], shoving the nearest pair back. It wasn't strong, but it gave him space.
Then he swung.
Blunt, heavy strikes.
Not to kill, just to knock them out.
When one tried to stand, Soren slammed Labrys into his shoulders and forced him down.
The man slumped unconscious with a dull thud.
The men hadn't expected resistance.
There was a murmur of annoyance among the attackers, a few curses echoing throughout the empty plain.
Soren let out a deep breath as he watched the men around him.
For a while, his methods worked.
He kept his magic limited to non-lethal spells and his axe strikes to areas that wouldn't maim.
The plains became a pattern of startled curses, flailing limbs, and the heavy breaths of men he had knocked out.
Panic did not come.
His mind was already sharp from a week of nonstop combat; there was no world where the men before him were going to overwhelm him in a head-on fight.
He planned to knock them all out, report to Ingrid, and leave this place behind.
The thought of killing them never even crossed Soren's mind.
Then one of the men, the one he had shocked earlier, moved; his hand darted for something at his belt.
The movement was tiny and desperate, a last resort if you will.
Soren saw the movement too late.
The moment he raised his palm to fire off another spell, the man jumped up and charged at Soren in a wild, desperate arc.
Everything after that was a blur.
A flash of pain tore through Soren's side, white-hot and overwhelming.
The world tilted.
He hit the ground hard, vision blackening as the men's laughter echoed somewhere above him.
For a moment, he couldn't move. Couldn't think.
Only agony, ringing and endless, and then, darkness.
••✦ ♡ ✦•••
When Soren woke, the world was muted and cruel.
Light stabbed through his eyelids, forcing him to squint.
The ground felt uneven beneath him, cold and damp.
It took only a second for him to realise what was happening.
Cloth was being yanked.
Hands were on him; greedy, impatient, rough.
Fingers fumbled at his cloak, his buttons, the buckle of his belt.
The smell of sweat and stale breath pressed down on him like a suffocating fog.
Dread flooded his chest, rising so fast it turned to panic.
He blinked and tried to orient himself.
He blinked rapidly, trying to focus, but the faces above him were half-blurred in the dark.
He didn't need to see them clearly to know what they intended.
One hand reached toward his neck; casual, claiming.
'No.'
'No.'
'No.'
His brain refused to process what was unfolding.
Every nerve in his body screamed 'move', but terror held him in place.
Hands were everywhere.
Pulling, groping, violating.
Rough palms dragged over his skin, and his mind blanked out.
The violation of that touch, the pronounced, filthy assumption that he would be passive, that his protest was a joke, exploded.
It was too much.
The panic, the helplessness, the humiliation; something inside him broke.
Magic surged from his left palm before he even realised what he was doing.
A gust of wind howled through the air, sharp and violent.
It struck the nearest man like a blade.
For a moment, there was silence, then the man dropped, lifeless, without a sound.
The clearing froze.
Where leers and laughter had filled the air moments ago, now there was only horror.
The scent of iron thickened, metallic and suffocating.
No one cheered now.
No one moved.
Soren's ears rang.
The ground seemed to tilt, and his chest heaved with the effort to breathe.
He stared at his hand, slick with blood and sweat, unable to tell which was which.
His mind tried to assemble the pieces: the moment the men appeared, how he tried to subdue them non-lethally, the blackout, then the loud, screaming sound of magic tearing through the air.
He hadn't even thought of killing them; he didn't want to go that far.
He had only meant to subdue, to buy time, to leave.
'I didn't mean…'
The thought wouldn't settle.
It just hung there, jagged and heavy.
The men around him stumbled back, pale and shaking.
One of them crawled a little, a thin, animalistic cry cutting the quiet.
The others scrambled back on their hands and knees, eyes wide and suddenly human in a way that revolted him.
Soren lay very still until the world stopped spinning enough for him to think.
Soren's breathing came in short, harsh bursts.
His body felt foreign; his mind, hollow.
He looked at the blood on his hand again.
Pressed it against his face until the world blurred behind it.
He wanted to cry.
He wanted to scream.
He wanted to puke.
But instead, he whispered the only lie that let him stay upright.
'I did what I had to.'
The words came out flat.
Relief and nausea twisted together in his gut.
Then came the revulsion.
He could still feel it, those hands.
The weight of them.
The press of calloused fingers on his skin.
It clung to him like oil.
Even after killing one of them, his body remembered the touch more vividly than the fight.
His breath shuddered as if he could still feel the phantom traces of their grip, as if he could still hear the mocking laughter that had filled the air before everything went silent.
He stumbled backwards a step, his throat dry and raw.
He scrubbed at his sleeve, then his arm, but it only made the feeling worse.
It wouldn't go away.
He wrapped his cloak tightly around himself, pulling it close until the fabric nearly tore at the seams.
He needed to cover it; to cover himself.
Maybe if he couldn't see the skin, if he couldn't feel the air against the places they had touched, the feeling would stop.
But it didn't.
When one of the men screamed, it didn't even sound human to him.
The man stumbled to his feet, eyes darting between the corpse of his friend and Soren like a cornered animal.
That sound shattered what little restraint Soren had left.
The next thing he knew, his hand was already moving.
A flash of light from his palm, a shockwave in the wind, and the man's headless corpse slumped down to the ground.
Another one down.
Another weight on his conscience.
He didn't remember aiming.
He didn't remember deciding.
His body simply moved before thought could intervene.
Each spell fired came not from intent but from instinct, the same instinct that had screamed 'No' when their hands had touched him.
A blast of sound ruptured from his palm and sent another man hurtling backwards into the hill where the dungeon's entrance lay.
The sickening crack that followed made Soren flinch, but his body didn't stop moving.
A burst of lightning leapt from his fingertips next and struck the man reaching for his knife; his body convulsed, the smell of burnt hair stinging Soren's nose.
A sword made of blood came next, burying itself in the next man's neck.
He went down, twitching, clawing at his throat as he tried to breathe.
By then, the rest had begun to scatter, but Soren couldn't bring himself to let them go.
Something in his chest had shifted.
Something that once cared about morality or restraint had broken loose and fallen away.
He wasn't fighting anymore.
He was cleaning up a mess.
The one who had first spoken, the ringleader, tried to plead, his voice trembling.
"Wait—! We—"
The words ended as a gust of wind sliced cleanly across his neck.
It was followed by the wet sound of blood splattering, then nothing.
He stared at the warm liquid that dotted his cloak and the remnants of his clothes.
His heartbeat was deafening, filling the silence that followed.
Eight bodies lay scattered across the clearing.
The grass was bent and torn, and the filthy smell of blood was unbearable.
Soren stood there, trembling, his cloak clutched around him so tightly his knuckles turned white.
Every inch of him itched.
He wanted to peel his skin off, to scrape away whatever remained of their touch.
It was unbearable, as if their filth had left a mark on him that water could never wash away.
"I did what I had to."
He said it again.
And again.
As if repetition could make it true.
But it wasn't enough.
Not this time.
They had touched him.
They were going to hurt him.
They would have done worse.
It wasn't murder.
It was survival.
That's what he told himself, because the alternative was unbearable.
He couldn't afford to think that way.
Not if he wanted to keep standing.
He glanced at his hands again.
Blood and dirt were smeared across his palms; the stickiness of it made his stomach churn.
He rubbed them against the grass, again and again, until the skin stung raw.
The stains didn't fade, and neither did the feeling.
His voice trembled when he spoke again, quieter this time.
"Was it… my fault?"
Tears rolled down his cheeks as he clutched his cloak tighter.
"Did I make them think they could…?"
He shook his head violently, but the shame didn't leave.
It stayed; deep, raw, and ugly.
His cloak slipped from his shoulders, and panic flared.
He felt exposed.
He snatched it back up, clutching it close, his eyes trembling with anxiety.
Then, in the pool of blood at his feet, he saw his reflection.
The face staring back didn't look like his.
His expression trembled with fear, but his eyes, cold, hollow, and distant, belonged to someone else.
He didn't know if he wanted to cry or scream.
Instead, he whispered, his voice trembling like a prayer no god would answer.
"...I'm not in the wrong."
The night didn't respond.
Only the wind answered back, brushing softly over the bloodstained grass.
————「❤︎」————