Koro's world had shrunk to the size of an empty pocket.
The iron ring was gone.
He had checked the grimy pouch at his belt a hundred times. He had retraced his steps from the dungeons to the tavern, and from the tavern to the whorehouse, and from the whorehouse back to the castle barracks. Nothing. It had vanished. The small, dull band of metal that promised a few nights of cheap wine and fleeting warmth was simply not there.
A cold sweat slicked his skin, a feeling that had nothing to do with the morning chill. That ring… it came from a cursed place. From a corpse that turned to dust. The thought sent a tremor through him.
He needed someone to blame.
His rage, a familiar, hot companion, began to simmer. It needed a target, something soft to break itself on. His eyes scanned the lower courtyard where the castle's dregs—the stablehands, the scullery maids, the dung-sweepers—were lining up for their morning ration.
His gaze found him. Arthur. The boy was at the end of the line, head bowed, as insignificant as a piece of straw on the muddy ground.
Perfect.
"YOU!" Koro's voice was a whip crack.
The line of servants flinched. Heads snapped around. Arthur didn't move, but the sudden focus of every eye on him was a physical weight.
Koro stomped through the mud, shoving a young maid aside. He stormed up to Arthur, his face a blotchy purple. His breath, sour with stale ale, washed over the boy.
"Where is it?" Koro snarled, his voice low and dangerous.
Arthur finally looked up. His eyes were as dull and empty as they had always been. "Sir?"
"Don't play dumb with me, you little thief!" Koro jabbed a thick finger into Arthur's chest. The boy stumbled back a step. "The ring. The one from the dungeon. You did something to it. It's cursed, isn't it? You put a curse on me!"
The paranoia that had been gnawing at him was now in full bloom. It wasn't just lost. It was stolen. It was magic. And this rat was the source.
A whisper of a thought, cool and detached, moved through Arthur's mind. He blames the tool for the artisan's work. How predictable.
"I… I don't know what you're talking about, sir," Arthur whispered, his voice trembling convincingly. He let his shoulders hunch, making himself smaller.
The cook, a fat man named Borin, arrived with a large basket of black bread. He began tossing the hard, dense loaves to the servants. It was barely food, but it was all they would get until nightfall.
When Borin reached the end of the line, he hesitated, looking from Koro's furious face to Arthur's frightened one. He held out a loaf.
Koro snatched it from the air. He looked at the bread, then at Arthur. A cruel smile stretched his lips.
He threw the loaf to the ground. It landed with a wet smack in a puddle of muddy rainwater and filth.
Koro planted his heavy, worn leather boot directly on top of it, grinding it deep into the muck. The crowd of servants went dead silent. This was more than just a beating. This was a different kind of cruelty.
"You want your breakfast, rat?" Koro's voice dripped with venom. "You want to eat?"
He leaned in close, his face inches from Arthur's.
"Then get on your knees. Lick my boot clean. Lick the mud from my sole. Maybe then, I'll let you have the scraps."
A wave of sickened gasps and fearful murmurs rippled through the assembled servants. They had seen Koro be brutal, but this was a new low.
Arthur stared at the boot. He stared at the crushed, filthy bread beneath it. He said nothing. His face was a blank mask. No fear. No anger. Just… nothing.
This utter lack of reaction was more infuriating to Koro than any defiance. He wanted to see tears. He wanted to see begging. He wanted to see the boy break.
"ARE YOU DEAF?" Koro roared, spittle flying from his lips. "I SAID, ON YOUR KNEES!"
Still, Arthur did not move. He just stood there, a thin, pathetic figure in rags, his silence a screaming accusation.
The vessel's nourishment, Su Ling observed from her throne of consciousness. He seeks to defile it. An inefficient and petty display. Still, a line has been crossed.
Koro's patience snapped. With a final curse, he drew back his leg, aiming a powerful kick straight at Arthur's chest. The motion was meant to send the boy flying, to break ribs, to finally get a reaction.
The crowd gasped. The kick was fast and vicious.
Arthur moved.
It wasn't a dodge. It wasn't a trained block. It was a slow, almost clumsy reaction, as if he were just now realizing what was happening. He brought his arms up in a weak, defensive posture.
His right hand, the hand that still held the faint, ashen gray color of a dead fire, rose to meet the incoming boot.
The tips of his gray fingers brushed against the leather covering Koro's shin.
It was a touch, nothing more. So light it was almost imperceptible.
A thought, colder than a dungeon stone, flickered in the boy's mind.
Deconstruct: Calcium. Phosphate.
Koro's kick never landed.
His forward momentum ceased instantly, as if he'd run into an invisible wall. His face, contorted with rage, froze. His eyes widened in disbelief.
Then, his mouth opened. A high, thin shriek tore from his throat. It was not a human sound of pain. It was the scream of a soul being ripped apart, a sound of pure, uncomprehending agony.
He collapsed.
He didn't fall like a man who had tripped. He folded. His right leg, the one that had been about to shatter Arthur's bones, bent in a place where there was no joint. It folded in the middle of the shin, the lower half of his leg flopping backwards at a grotesque, impossible angle.
There was no crack of breaking bone.
There was only a wet, sickening, tearing sound, like a slab of meat being ripped from a hook. His leg, from the knee down, had the consistency of a sack filled with jelly. The boot and foot slapped against the muddy ground, boneless and limp.
Koro hit the dirt, howling, clutching the formless ruin of his lower leg.
The courtyard fell into an absolute, ringing silence. The only sound was Koro's unceasing, animalistic screaming.
Every servant stared, their faces masks of pale horror. They had seen the kick. They had seen Arthur raise his hands. And then they had seen… this. It made no sense. It was impossible.
Arthur, for his part, played his role to perfection. He scrambled backwards, his eyes wide with a manufactured terror, and fell on his rear in the mud. He stared at Koro, his mouth agape, looking like a frightened child who had just witnessed a demon appear.
The effect is… dramatic, Su Ling noted with clinical detachment. She watched the chaos unfold through Arthur's eyes, an artist reviewing her first, crude brushstroke on a new canvas. But the execution lacks subtlety. The power of unmaking is a scalpel, not a club. This vessel requires more refinement. And this man… his screams are grating.
From Arthur's right hand, a minuscule puff of gray dust, no bigger than a grain of sand, drifted from his fingertips and was lost in the morning air. It was all that remained of the structural integrity of Koro's tibia and fibula.
The screaming finally attracted attention.
The heavy, rhythmic tramp of armored boots grew louder. Two castle guards, their chainmail jingling, pushed through the terrified crowd of servants. Following them was their captain, a man named Marcus.
Marcus was not like the other guards. He was a veteran of the border wars, his face a map of old scars, his eyes holding a sharp, weary intelligence. He took in the scene at a glance.
Koro, on the ground, shrieking and clawing at a leg that looked like a sausage casing emptied of its meat.
The crowd of servants, their faces white with shock and a fear that was deeper than their usual dread of authority.
The crushed black bread in the mud.
Then his eyes found the boy.
He was huddled against the stable wall, mud-streaked and trembling, looking more pathetic than anyone else in the yard. The stable rat. Koro's favorite punching bag. Marcus had seen the overseer bully the boy a dozen times.
He looked at Koro's mangled leg again. It wasn't broken. A break was clean, brutal. This was… wrong. Unnatural.
He looked back at the boy, who flinched under his gaze, trying to make himself invisible.
A man kicks a boy. The man's leg dissolves. The boy is terrified.
The pieces did not fit. Marcus's hand rested on the pommel of his sword. His gaze narrowed, boring into the stable boy cowering in the mud. This wasn't a simple barracks brawl. Something else had happened here. Something he did not understand.