The pry bar was still wedged under the lid of the toolbox, a monument to his interrupted rage.
He hadn't done it.
He had stood in the cold, dark barn for an hour after Comfort went to bed, the iron bar heavy in his hands, his knuckles screaming. But as the adrenaline faded, a different, colder feeling had taken its place. It was the deep, primal fear of the unknown. The fear that opening this box would not solve his problems, but simply confirm his grandfather's failure—or worse, his own.
He was afraid that inside, he would find nothing but more dust. More emptiness.
So, he'd left the pry bar, a promise he was too cowardly to keep, and stumbled into a few hours of black, dreamless sleep.
Now, it was morning. A gray, unforgiving dawn that did nothing to burn off the chill. He was mending a broken fence line at the far edge of their property, the part that ran parallel to the main road to the village. The air was dead. He hadn't spoken a word to Comfort, who had watched him leave the house with haunted, knowing eyes.
He was so lost in the rhythmic, brutal work of ramming a new post into the unyielding earth that he didn't hear the motorcycles at first.
"Mordecai!"
He looked up, his heart lurching. It was Silas's voice, high and thin with a note of pure, unadulterated panic.
"Mordecai! Help!"
A low, guttural engine-snarl cut through the air. Mordecai dropped the heavy wooden mallet and vaulted the fence. He tore through the thin line of withered trees, branches whipping his face, and burst onto the dirt road.
It was a nightmare, worse than the market.
Kael was there, straddling his sleek black machine. He wasn't alone. This time, he had four of his Dragon's Claw thugs, all on bikes, all in their immaculate black and silver-gray uniforms. They had formed a loose, menacing circle in the middle of the road.
And in the center of that circle was Silas.
He was on his knees, his face pale, his new canvas shirt—the one his mother had saved for weeks to buy him—torn at the shoulder. His spectacles were gone, and he was blinking, blind and terrified.
"Well, look who it is," Kael purred, his voice a smooth, amplified mockery. He revved his engine, and the other bikes answered, a chorus of mechanical growls. The sound was designed to intimidate, to act as a cage of pure noise.
"Kael, just... just let me go," Silas was saying, his voice a desperate, reedy thing. "I was just going to the village for my mother..."
"For your mother," Kael repeated, as if tasting the words. "How sweet. And did you tell her you were walking by the 'Rising Slum'? Did you tell her you were paying respects to the dead?"
One of the thugs, the same one with the block-like jaw from the market, laughed. "He was crying, Kael. I swear. Looked like he was sayin' a prayer."
"He should be saying his prayers," Kael said, and the levity was gone from his voice. He swung his leg off the bike and walked toward Silas, peeling a pair of black leather gloves from his hands, finger by finger. "This is Dragon's Claw territory now. And we don't like... rats... sniffing around our property."
"It's not your property!" Silas squeaked, a flare of his old, loyal courage. "It belongs to the—"
Kael's backhand was so fast, so precise, that Mordecai almost didn't see it. It was not a sloppy punch. It was a trained, perfect strike. The crack of leather on skin echoed in the dead morning air.
Silas crumpled, hitting the dirt with a wet, heavy sound. He didn't cry out. He just lay there, a small, dark smear of blood on his lip.
"SILAS!"
Mordecai's roar was an animal sound. He was moving before his brain had caught up, his feet pounding on the packed earth.
The circle of bikes and men was impenetrable. Before he was within ten feet, two of the thugs were off their bikes, blocking his path. They were big. Not just tall, but thick with the kind of muscle that wasn't built by farming. They moved with the same fluid, trained grace as Kael.
"Not your turn, farm boy," the first one, a man with a shaved head and a crescent-shaped scar on his cheek, grunted. He put a hand on Mordecai's chest and shoved.
It was like being hit by a small tree. Mordecai staggered back, his rage blinding him. He swung, a wild, farmer's haymaker aimed at the man's head.
He wasn't even close.
The thug didn't block; he simply moved. He swayed back, letting the punch sail harmlessly past his ear, and as Mordecai's weight carried him forward, the thug's boot came up in a short, brutal, "stop-kick" to his stomach.
Mordecai's world collapsed. All the air in his body, all his rage, all his strength, vanished in a single, agonizing whoosh. He fell to his knees, his arms wrapped around his gut, his lungs burning, unable to do anything but gasp, a pathetic, fish-out-of-water sound.
He looked up, his eyes watering, just in time to see Kael haul Silas to his feet by the front of his torn shirt.
"You see, Silas," Kael said, his voice a cold, academic lecture. He held the smaller, terrified man six inches off the ground. "This is the problem with your... 'school.' It produces... this."
He gestured with his chin toward Mordecai, who was still on his knees, choking for air.
"No power," Kael said. "No technique. No dignity. Your grandfather was a joke, and his legacy is a coward."
He turned his full attention back to Mordecai, a look of almost scientific curiosity on his face. "Tell me, farm boy. Are you going to defend your 'dojo'? Are you going to... what's that quaint little term? 'Field a team' for the competition?"
The words hung in the air. The foreclosure. The letter. The impossible, mocking hope. They knew. Of course they knew. This wasn't a random bullying. This was a message. This was Kael's father, Tani, twisting the knife.
Mordecai, still fighting for breath, could only glare, his hatred a physical thing.
"No?" Kael said, his smile returning. "A pity."
He shoved Silas, hard, sending him stumbling forward. Silas, his glasses gone, his balance off, his face a mask of terror, tripped... and fell, sprawling, his hands landing directly on the still-hot exhaust pipe of Kael's motorcycle.
Silas screamed.
It was not a cry of fear. It was a raw, high-pitched shriek of pure, unadulterated agony. He ripped his hands back, but the damage was done. The skin of his palms was seared, a blistering, immediate red.
That was the sound that broke Mordecai.
"NO!"
A new, different kind of strength, born not of muscle but of pure, white-hot madness, surged through him. He launched himself from his knees, not at the man who had kicked him, but at Silas.
He crashed into the two thugs, a low, desperate shoulder tackle. He wasn't trying to fight them. He was trying to get through them. The impact was jarring, a collision of bone and meat. He heard a rib crack—his own, he thought—but he didn't care.
He grabbed the front of Silas's shirt, pulling his friend—who was now sobbing, clutching his burned hands to his chest—and dragged him. He dragged him out of the circle, away from the bikes, away from Kael.
"Get... get back!" Mordecai roared, shoving Silas behind him. He stood between his friend and the five of them, his arms spread, his chest heaving, a raw, burning pain shooting up his side with every breath. He was a scarecrow trying to frighten a pack of wolves.
The four thugs started to advance.
"Hold," Kael said, his voice sharp.
They stopped.
Kael hadn't moved. He was calmly, almost lazily, pulling his gloves back on. He looked at Mordecai, who was standing in a pathetic, defiant-to-the-death stance. He looked at Silas, who was a weeping, injured mess on the ground.
And he laughed.
It was not a triumphant laugh. It was a laugh of pure, dismissive, boredom. He had proven his point. He had broken the man. He had crippled the friend. There was nothing left to do.
"The 'Rising Sun,'" Kael said, his voice dripping with contempt. "A farm boy with a broken rib, and... that."
He got on his bike. "The competition, Mordecai," he said, and his voice was a low, final threat. "Don't even think about it. It's not a competition. It's a slaughterhouse. And we... we are the butchers."
He revved his engine, the sound a final, cracking gunshot. "Clean up this... trash."
One by one, the Dragon's Claw riders started their bikes. They didn't just leave. They sprayed gravel and dirt as they peeled out, one of them deliberately veering so close that the dust and exhaust from his back wheel washed over Mordecai and Silas, a final, choking insult.
They were gone.
Mordecai stood for a full thirty seconds, his entire body shaking, his broken rib a white-hot poker in his side. Then, his legs gave out.
He collapsed onto the road next to his friend.
Silas was rocking back and forth, cradling his hands, his sobs the only sound in the sudden, terrible silence.
"Cai..." Silas wept, his voice broken. "Cai... my hands..."
Mordecai, fighting back the black spots that were threatening to take his vision, crawled to him. He didn't have any rage left. He didn't have any pride. He had nothing.
"It's okay, Si," he whispered, his own voice sounding strange and distant. "It's... it's okay. We're... we're going home."
He put his one good arm under his friend's shoulders and tried to stand. The pain in his side was so blinding, so absolute, that he almost passed out.
But he didn't.
He got Silas to his feet. He half-dragged, half-carried his friend the half-mile back to the farm, every step a fresh wave of agony, every breath a stab of glass.
This... this was it. This was the bottom. This wasn't just humiliation. This was annihilation.
He got Silas into the kitchen, where Comfort, seeing the state of them, her face turning to an iron mask of fury and grief, said nothing. She just moved to the pump, her hands already reaching for the burn salve and the bandages.
Mordecai left her to it. He walked out of the kitchen, past the living room, out the front door. He didn't stop. He walked, his side screaming, to the barn.
He walked to the high, dusty shelf.
He looked at the pry bar, still wedged in the lid of the toolbox.
He was done.
He grabbed the iron bar with both hands, ignoring the pain in his ribs, and pulled.
The old, rusted hinges didn't stand a chance. With a sound like a scream of tormented metal and a final, sharp crack of splintering wood, the lid of his grandfather's toolbox flew open.