Chapter 4: The Blade of Retaliation
The Patternmaster—a severe, pale man named Lord Cygnus—did not rush. He orchestrated the hunt with cold, deliberate patience. His legion of fifty Enforcers fanned out, their dust-runner steeds kicking up wide plumes of ash, forming a crescent that would drive Kael directly into a pre-selected trap point: a narrow, deep fissure known locally as the 'Serpent's Scar.'
Lord Cygnus walked at the head of the formation, his deep purple cloak rippling with continuous, complex weaves. The ground beneath his feet was momentarily stabilized by a micro-Law of Terra Firma, keeping him aloft and ensuring his concentration was absolute.
"He is fragmented, but powerful," Cygnus's voice carried to his troops, smooth and chilling. "The Shard is stabilizing his aberrant soul. We must harvest the Shard before the impurity spreads. Close the ring. No one engages him alone. His power is reactive—a counter-punch. Deny him the opportunity."
Kael lay flat against the rough obsidian lip of the crater, his vision blurry from the temporal shock. His chest heaved, and the cold, empty space where his empathy used to be was a painful, constant reminder of the cost of the Law of Resistance. He was cornered, outmatched, and utterly alone.
He assessed the numbers. Fifty-two enemies, including the Patternmaster. The odds were impossible. But Kael didn't calculate odds; he calculated Aetheric expenditure.
He couldn't beat the Patternmaster, a true master of the Loom, in a contest of continuous weaving. But the Patternmaster was focused on maintaining the entire legion's advance, dedicating massive Aetheric energy to the Law of Conduction that made the dust-runners so fast. He was currently stretched thin.
Kael's advantage was the Eclipsed Shard: a battery of divine, destabilizing energy that could impose a destructive Law at zero net cost to the environment, powered only by the consumption of his soul.
He who commands the Eclipsed Shards commands the Truth.
Kael clutched the short-sword, focused the Law of Resistance to a faint, silver sheen over his skin, and pushed himself up.
The Enforcers were within fifty paces—a tight, professional formation of steel and crimson cloth. They halted, surrounding the crater, waiting for Cygnus's command.
Kael did not wait. If they moved, his retreat was cut off.
He drew upon the most reckless, chaotic Law he had stolen in the mine: the Law of Destabilization—the ability to violently sever a woven thread.
He focused the power, using the Shard to amplify the destructive principle. He did not aim for the legion. He aimed for the most vital, continuously active Law maintaining their formation: the Patternmaster's Law of Conduction.
Kael shot his hand forward, not in a complex weave, but a single, forceful, chaotic burst.
The amplified Destabilization Law struck the Patternmaster's carefully spread Aetheric pattern like a metaphysical sledgehammer.
KRAK-SHHHHHH!
The Law of Conduction, which was spanning hundreds of feet, violently snapped.
The effect was instant and brutal. The complex pattern that had been smoothing and accelerating the dust-runner steeds violently collapsed. The steeds, suddenly encountering their true, resisting terrain at high speed, stumbled, crashed, and buckled.
The fifty Enforcers—Weavers, Initiates, and basic troops—were thrown from their mounts in a cascade of steel and chaos. The formation was shattered into small, individual pockets of stunned, injured men.
Lord Cygnus staggered. The forced break in his continuous weave was painful, forcing blood to trickle from his nose. He glared at Kael with pure, unadulterated contempt.
"Filth! That is the work of a Chaos-Loom weaver! You contaminate the very Aether!" Cygnus roared, dropping his pretense of calm. He immediately began weaving a powerful, visible Thread of Imprisonment, aimed directly at Kael.
Kael didn't wait for the Imprisonment Thread to complete. He knew he could use the stolen Law of Unraveling, but that would cost him another piece of his soul. He had to be surgical.
He used the Eclipsed Shard of Time.
Kael performed the same technique he used on Zek's lock, but applied the Law of Regression to the Patternmaster's Aetheric Flow.
He did not regress the Imprisonment Law itself; he regressed Cygnus's ability to supply the Aether to the Law.
For a quarter of a second, the flow of Aether from Cygnus's reservoir was forced backward along the Loom.
Cygnus's power supply vanished. The immense, powerful Thread of Imprisonment he was weaving sputtered and froze, hanging inertly in the air like a silver wire suddenly drained of current.
Kael used that split second to move. He charged directly toward the nearest pocket of five fallen Enforcers.
The Patternmaster recovered instantly, but Kael was already past the point of no return.
"He's running at the lines!" an Enforcer screamed, scrambling to his feet.
Kael plunged into the knot of stunned, scrambling Enforcers.
They were trained soldiers, but they were Weavers who relied on the distance and elegance of their Aetheric powers. Kael, the Ashborn Slave, was a creature of close-quarters violence and desperation.
The first two Enforcers managed to weave low-level Impact Threads onto their fists and shields.
Clang! Thump!
Kael met the blows with his body, the Law of Resistance shimmering brightly under his skin. The blows that would have shattered his ribs were merely jarring, absorbed and shunted away by the invisible defensive lattice.
As their initial attacks failed, Kael's Echo of the Void seized its opportunity.
He saw the pattern of the Law of Impact. It was simple, aggressive, and highly useful for physical confrontation.
The payment was immediate and profound.
The Shard devoured the Aether Thread linked to Kael's Law of Habit. The comfort of routine, the reliance on ingrained physical memory, the small, subconscious safety mechanisms built by repetitive action—all were erased. Kael's movements became less instinctive, more deliberate and cold, yet terrifyingly precise. He was forced to think through every action, losing the easy, flowing grace of muscle memory.
In return, he gained the Law of Impact.
Kael spun, using the short-sword to parry a thrust, then slammed his elbow into the chest of the nearest Enforcer, amplifying the strike with his new Law of Impact.
The man's chest caved in with a sickening crunch.
Kael transitioned instantly to the next Enforcer, who was fumbling to activate a Law of Flash-Fire. Kael didn't attack the man; he attacked the Aether Thread itself with the chaotic Law of Destabilization.
Snip! The Thread snapped, and the flash-fire exploded harmlessly away from Kael.
Kael killed three more Enforcers in a brutal, efficient flurry. He didn't waste energy on prolonged struggle. He aimed for the weak points, relying on the Law of Resistance to keep him safe from errant strikes.
The fighting was brief, agonizing, and absolute. Kael carved a bloody hole through the first section of the legion.
Lord Cygnus watched the slaughter, not with rage, but with renewed tactical clarity. He saw Kael's method: use the Shard to break the formation, then use his Void-Echo to harvest the enemies' power in the resulting chaos, fortifying himself with every kill.
"He is evolving too fast!" Cygnus's voice echoed across the field. "He is consuming our essence!"
Cygnus abandoned the complex, wide-area control. He drew immense Aether, weaving a Law designed to punish Kael's reliance on physical resistance.
He wove the Law of Internal Compression.
The Law was invisible, silent, and deadly. It was not aimed at Kael's shield, but at the moisture in Kael's body—a Law that forced sudden, massive internal pressure.
Kael, charging towards the next pocket of resistance, suddenly dropped to his knees, clutching his head in blinding agony. Blood instantly burst from his nose and eyes. The Law of Internal Compression was attempting to crush him from the inside out. The Law of Resistance only protected his exterior; it did nothing against an internal attack.
He had no Law to steal, no Law to Echo, that would counter this specialized attack.
He had one last, desperate Law: the Law of Time.
Kael forced the Shard to impose a Temporal Freeze on the specific Aether Threads governing the Internal Compression attack.
Freeze!
The crushing pressure instantly vanished. Kael was still bleeding, still reeling, but the attack was suspended, hanging motionless in the Aetheric field around him.
But the cost was catastrophic. The Shard consumed the Thread responsible for Kael's Law of Self-Recognition.
Kael looked down at his blood-soaked, armored hands. For one terrifying, absolute moment, he had no memory of who he was. He was a weapon, a vessel, an engine of power, but the sense of 'I'—Kael Draven, the slave, the boy—was gone. He was pure, cold, unyielding function.
He had purchased his life with his own identity.
Kael rose, a machine powered by instinct and terrifying calculation. The Patternmaster was staggered by the sheer consumption of energy required for the Temporal Freeze.
"He cannot maintain that! Attack the field!" Cygnus commanded, directing his remaining thirty troops.
The Enforcers, seeing Kael bleeding but still standing, poured their combined Aetheric attacks into the Temporal Freeze field—low-level impact blasts, fire spells, and simple bindings.
Kael didn't wait for the Freeze to collapse. He had what he needed: a clear path.
The Serpent's Scar—the narrow, deep fissure—was directly behind the Patternmaster.
Kael activated the stolen Law of Chaotic Velocity, amplified by the Shard, and launched himself forward with devastating, uncontrolled speed. He blurred past the frozen attacks and the surrounding troops.
Cygnus, sensing the velocity, tried to interpose a Law of Static Barrier, but Kael was too fast.
Kael struck the Patternmaster with an amplified Law of Impact—a brutal shoulder charge amplified by his newest stolen power.
Lord Cygnus, despite his own innate protection weaves, was hit with the force of a battering ram. He was sent sprawling backward, tumbling into the deep, ash-filled maw of the Serpent's Scar.
Kael didn't stop. He used the Patternmaster's body as a temporary launchpad, leaping over the edge of the fissure and plunging into the choking, narrow dark below.
The remaining Enforcers reached the edge of the Scar, looking down into the darkness where their Patternmaster and the Shard-bearer had fallen.
Below, the sound of scrambling stone and sharp, jagged obsidian echoed. Then, only the silence of the Wastes.
Kael Draven was gone. He had breached the legion, survived the Patternmaster, and gained four Laws at the cost of his humanity. He was now running on stolen power and instinct, a new, cold thing unleashed upon the Loom.
His soul was fractured, but his purpose—survival—was absolute.