Kael lay in the dust, breath trapped in his chest. His left arm was heavy, bleeding from the scatter, and his ribs burned with the sharp, grinding heat of fractured bone.
He tried to push himself up.
Click-clack.
The sound of a pump action racking a fresh shell froze him.
Boots crunched closer. Through the haze, Kael saw the barrel dip. Not at his head. Lower.
"Stay," a voice growled.
BOOM.
Kael lunged to get clear.
The second blast went off anyway, chewing into the dirt and tearing through his calf.
His leg buckled and he collapsed again, biting back a scream.
Heat flared sharp and bright in his leg. Pellets burned under the skin, deep enough to cripple speed.
A laugh carried through the smoke—low, wet, and amused.
Kael dragged in a ragged breath. He pulled himself across the dirt, dragging his wounded leg, his good hand fumbling for the revolver.
One round slid into the cylinder. It clicked home.
"How'd you know it was me?" Kael rasped, his voice tight with pain.
A beat of silence. Then the laugh came back, thinner this time.
"You serious?" The voice scoffed. "What, you gonna play dumb now?"
The shadow stepped closer, looming over him through the smoke.
"Act like you don't know me?"
A low chuckle slipped out of him.
"Or should I use your real name…"
"…Kael?"
The shock of the name drowned out the pain for a moment.
Not now.
The pump action clacked again. Kael fired.
Crack.
Kael rolled and fired. All six rounds hit—each one ringing back hard, metal on metal.
The shotgun answered at once.
BOOM.
The blast missed his body but ripped past his neck, chewing the ground open where his face had just been. Gravel slammed into his cheek.
Kael kept rolling. He scrambled behind the cover of a supply wagon and stayed there, chest heaving.
He checked the damage. It was bad.
His calf was shredded. His left arm was bleeding freely from the first hit. And his ribs... every breath felt like stabbing a knife into his lungs.
Blood kept coming. He knew the math. Not long.
The threats lingered behind him. The blast earlier had scattered the others—six shapes breaking and running. Their deaths were the only way he'd stay on his feet.
"Find him!" Krell's voice roared—deep, gravelly, and used to screaming. "He's hurt! Put him down!"
The smoke from the fire and the blast thinned as a sudden night wind swept through.
Through the gap in the wagon wheels, he saw them.
Six men. They were regrouping as they fanned out, rifles raised, squinting into the thick black smoke rolling off the burning oil.
And behind them, the madman.
Krell—The Jackal.
He was a giant of a man, wide as a doorframe. A crude iron plate hung from straps across his chest, covering most of his upper body, dented and dark with old stains.
He wore no shirt beneath it—only a cloak stitched together from cured human skin, slung over his massive shoulders like a butcher's apron. In his hands, he held a sawed-off shotgun.
"Spread out!" Krell bellowed. "Flush the rat out!"
The six bandits moved forward.
Kael stayed where he was. He topped off the revolver, seating six rounds in the cylinder.
He waited.
A bandit stepped near the wagon, coughing in the smoke.
Kael stayed down.
He let a sound crawl out of his throat—wet, broken, the kind a man makes when he's not done dying yet. His body shook with it, pain sold hard.
"Help…"
He dragged himself through the dirt, slow and uneven, one arm useless, breath stuttering.
The bandit heard it and came closer.
"You alive?"
He crouched. A hand grabbed Kael by the shoulder and rolled him.
The knife came up with the turn—under the chin, through the brain. A wet snap, then Kael ripped it free, blood bursting into his face, hot and blinding.
He caught the body as it went slack, turning with it, pulling it tight as the first shots came in.
Two men saw him. They fired.
Thwack. Thwack.
The dead man jerked in Kael's grip as bullets tore into the corpse.
Kael fired back over the dead shoulder.
The revolver spoke twice.
Two rounds. Two lives. Both heads snapped back. Bone burst. They dropped where they stood.
[Aether: 2.3]
Kael plunged into a tent the fire hadn't reached yet and went flat to the ground.
Gunfire ripped through the canvas. Bullets tore holes overhead, shredded poles, kicked dust and cloth down around him. The tent jumped and sagged, but nothing touched him. He stayed pressed to the dirt, breath locked tight in his chest.
Aether surged through him, pushing the pain back.
Kael stayed flat and worked fast.
He tore the canvas down in long, dirty strips. One went around his left forearm, wound tight and knotted with his teeth. Another wrapped his calf, cinched hard until his leg shook.
Then his ribs—cloth dragged across broken flesh, pulled tight around his chest, breath crushed out of him as he bound it in place.
Outside, the shooting faded.
Silence crept back in, broken only by the crackle of tents and wreckage burning down.
Footsteps sounded all around him—slow, measured, coming in from every side.
They were closing in.
Kael held still. The revolver was loaded, his aim fixed on the canvas, waiting for the first hand to break the line.