The Imperial Highway stretched eastward from Aurelius like a spine of white stone cutting through green countryside. Kami Van Hellsin rode in silence, his dark robes marked with the silver caduceus of an Imperial Physician, his horse keeping pace with the military escort that surrounded him.
Thorwald rode beside him, resplendent in his Centurion's armor—bronze plates over hardened leather, a crimson cloak denoting his rank, his golden Pneuma causing the metal to gleam even in overcast light. Behind them came twenty legionaries, the core of Thorwald's century, handpicked soldiers who had proven themselves reliable and discreet.
They had been traveling for three days since leaving Aurelius, heading toward the mining town of Ferrum where reports spoke of a mysterious illness spreading through the workers. Standard fare for Kami's new role—investigate, diagnose, cure if possible, quarantine if not.
But something felt wrong.
"The road is too quiet," Thorwald observed, his hand resting casually on his sword hilt—a gesture Kami recognized as anything but casual. "We should have passed merchant caravans by now. Travelers. Patrol units from the local garrison."
Kami extended his Devourer senses, feeling for the Pneuma signatures of living things beyond their immediate group. The forest on either side of the road was full of life—birds, deer, smaller creatures going about their business. But no humans. For miles in every direction, their group was alone.
"Something has cleared the road," Kami said quietly. "Or someone."
Thorwald raised his hand, bringing the column to a halt. "Century, combat formation! Shields up, Pneuma ready!"
The legionaries moved with practiced efficiency, forming a defensive square with Kami and Thorwald at the center. Shields locked together, spears bristling outward, each soldier channeling Pneuma to enhance their strength and resilience. The air began to shimmer with concentrated life-force as twenty warriors prepared for battle.
"Brother," Thorwald said softly, "if this is an ambush, stay in the center. Let my men handle it."
"And if they cannot?"
"Then you do what you must. But remember—we are representing the Empire now. How you use your power reflects not just on you, but on everyone who vouched for you."
The attack came from three directions simultaneously.
From the forest on the left, arrows—dozens of them, Pneuma-enhanced to pierce armor and shields. From the forest on the right, a wave of bandits screaming as they charged, their weapons crude but their numbers overwhelming. And from ahead, blocking the road, a figure in dark robes whose Pneuma signature burned with such intensity that even Kami felt momentarily surprised.
"Ambush!" Thorwald roared. "Spears to the right, shields up left! Pneuma barriers, now!"
The legionaries responded instantly. The right flank thrust with spears, each thrust enhanced with Pneuma that made the points blur with speed and force. The left flank raised shields and projected Pneuma barriers—translucent shields of compressed life-force that caught most of the arrows, though several punched through to clang off armor.
But it was the figure on the road that concerned Kami most. The robed attacker raised both hands, and Kami felt a surge of Pneuma unlike anything he had encountered outside the Academy. This was no common bandit. This was a trained wielder, possibly even Academy-trained.
"Thorwald!" Kami shouted. "The one on the road—he's channeling something big!"
The robed figure's Pneuma coalesced into a sphere of crackling energy between his palms, growing larger with each heartbeat. A Pneuma Bomb—a technique that converted life-force into explosive force, devastating but costly. The wielder would exhaust himself using it, but if it detonated in the middle of the formation, it would kill half the century.
Thorwald saw it too. "Century! Resonance formation, channel through me!"
The legionaries' training took over. Each soldier opened their Pneuma, syncing with their brothers, allowing their individual life-forces to flow together. And all of it channeled through Thorwald, their Centurion, their focal point.
Kami felt his brother's Pneuma explode with power as twenty soldiers' life-force combined and amplified through his body. Thorwald's golden aura blazed like the sun itself, so bright that the attacking bandits shielded their eyes. His muscles swelled with enhanced strength, his reflexes accelerated to superhuman speed.
The robed attacker released the Pneuma Bomb.
It flew toward the formation like a miniature sun, trailing energy, promising death.
Thorwald stepped forward and punched it.
His Pneuma-enhanced fist met the bomb mid-flight. For a heartbeat, nothing happened—just Thorwald's blazing golden aura pressing against the crackling sphere of death. Then Thorwald roared, channeling everything his century had given him, and shattered the bomb.
The explosion was catastrophic but controlled—Thorwald had punched through the bomb's outer shell and disrupted its internal structure, causing it to detonate prematurely and vent most of its force upward rather than outward. The shockwave still threw several legionaries off their feet, and Thorwald himself was hurled backward, crashing into his own formation.
But they were alive. All of them.
"Centurion down!" one of the legionaries shouted. "Reform around—"
"I am fine," Thorwald growled, already climbing to his feet, though his right arm hung limp and smoke rose from his scorched armor. "Maintain formation! The bandits are still—"
But the bandits on the right flank were routing. Seeing their mage's attack fail, seeing Thorwald punch through a Pneuma Bomb and survive, had broken their courage. They fled back into the forest, abandoning the attack.
The arrows from the left had also stopped. Whoever commanded this ambush had decided the price was too high.
Only the robed figure remained, standing alone on the road, his Pneuma signature flickering and weak from the massive technique he had used.
"Surrender!" Thorwald commanded, his voice carrying despite his injuries. "You are facing Imperial forces! Lay down your arms and you will be granted a trial!"
The figure's response was laughter—harsh and bitter. "Imperial forces? You are the Empire's attack dog, Centurion. And you..." The hood turned toward Kami. "You are the leashed Devourer, the monster they parade as a physician. I know what you both are."
"Who are you?" Kami asked, stepping forward despite Thorwald's warning gesture.
"I am what you will become, Devourer. I am someone who served the Empire faithfully until the Empire decided I was more useful as a corpse." The figure's hands began to glow again, gathering what little Pneuma remained. "My name was Marcus Severan. I was once an Academy instructor. But I taught forbidden techniques, questioned Imperial doctrine, suggested that perhaps the Empire's control of Pneuma was tyranny rather than order."
"So they sent you here?" Kami asked. "Banished you to lead bandits?"
"They sent me to die. Erased my name from the records, stripped my rank, declared me a traitor. I survived out of spite, and I have spent five years gathering others like me—those the Empire discarded, those who learned that loyalty means nothing when power decides you are inconvenient."
Severan's Pneuma flared one final time. "I cannot defeat you both. But I can send a message. Tell your masters, Devourer, that the Empire's discarded weapons are learning to bite the hand that used them. Tell them that every person they throw away is another enemy in the shadows. Tell them—"
He released his remaining Pneuma in a desperate strike—not aimed at the soldiers, but at himself.
Kami felt what was happening and reacted on instinct. Severan was converting his own life-force into an explosion, planning to detonate himself as a final act of defiance, to take as many soldiers as possible with him.
Kami's Devourer nature surged forward.
He crossed the distance between them in three heartbeats, moving faster than he had ever moved, driven by an urgency he did not fully understand. His hand shot out and clamped onto Severan's wrist at the exact moment the self-detonation began.
And Kami drained it.
Not gently. Not with the surgical precision he had learned for healing. This was pure Devourer instinct—a massive, violent pull that ripped the gathering Pneuma out of Severan's body before it could explode.
Severan screamed as his life-force was torn away. His Pneuma—years of cultivation, decades of training, everything that made him a powerful wielder—flowed into Kami in a torrent. The rush was incredible, intoxicating, overwhelming. Kami felt Severan's strength becoming his own, felt the hunger singing with satisfaction as it fed on the most substantial Pneuma it had ever consumed.
And beneath the power, he felt Severan's memories.
Flashes of the man's life bleeding through the Pneuma connection—the Academy, teaching students, questioning orders, being arrested in the night, trial before the Silent Legion, exile into the wilderness, years of bitterness and survival and growing hatred for the Empire that had thrown him away like refuse.
Kami saw it all in the seconds it took to drain Severan completely.
When he finally released the man's wrist, Severan collapsed like a puppet with cut strings. He was alive—Kami had not killed him—but he had been drained so thoroughly that he was barely conscious, his Pneuma reduced to the faintest flicker necessary to sustain life.
Kami stood over the fallen man, breathing hard, his entire body trembling with absorbed power and with horror at what he had just done.
"Kami?" Thorwald's voice was careful, worried. "Brother? Are you... in control?"
Kami looked down at his hands. They were shaking. The hunger was roaring with satisfaction, demanding more, whispering that the twenty legionaries behind him were full of delicious Pneuma just waiting to be consumed, that he had never felt this strong and should never stop feeling this way.
"I am... I am in control," Kami said, though it took everything he had to mean it. "But Thorwald, we need to secure the prisoner quickly, before I... before I make a mistake."
The legionaries moved with wary efficiency, binding Severan with Pneuma-suppressing chains and loading him into the supply wagon. They gave Kami a wide berth, their fear palpable—they had just watched him drain an Academy-trained mage in seconds, had seen him consume power that should have killed everyone present.
That night, they made camp in a defensive position off the road. Severan was kept under guard in the center, still barely conscious. Thorwald's injured arm had been splinted and was healing slowly with Pneuma-enhanced techniques.
Kami sat apart from the camp, trying to process what he had absorbed.
When you drained someone completely, you got more than just their Pneuma. You got fragments of them—memories, knowledge, even personality traits if the draining was violent enough. It was a side effect of Devourer feeding that the Academy texts mentioned but could not fully explain.
Now Kami carried pieces of Marcus Severan inside him. Knew what the man had known. Understood why he had turned against the Empire.
And the worst part was: Severan had not been wrong.
The Empire did discard people when they became inconvenient. Did silence dissent with exile or execution. Did value obedience over truth, control over justice.
Kami had always known this intellectually, but now he felt it—felt Severan's betrayal, his bitterness, his slow corruption from loyal servant to desperate enemy.
"You are troubled," Thorwald said, approaching with two cups of wine. "Not just by what happened, but by what you learned from him."
"How did you—"
"You are my brother. I know when something has changed in you." Thorwald sat beside him. "What did you see? What did his Pneuma tell you?"
Kami was silent for a long moment, then: "He was right, Thorwald. About the Empire. About how it treats those who question it. He was a good man once, a loyal servant, and they destroyed him for asking the wrong questions."
"And you think that will happen to you? That the Empire will eventually decide you are too dangerous and discard you as they did him?"
"I think it is inevitable. I am a Devourer. A walking weapon. And weapons do not get to retire peacefully." Kami took a long drink. "But what disturbs me most is how easy it was. Draining him. I did not even think about it—I just reached out and took everything. And it felt good, Thorwald. It felt right. The hunger is stronger now, louder, harder to ignore."
"Then we manage it. Same as we always have. You focus on healing, on helping people. You remind yourself why you chose service over feeding." Thorwald gripped his shoulder. "And I stay close. Keep you anchored. Keep you human."
"What if that is not enough someday?"
"Then we face that day when it comes. But not before." Thorwald stood. "Get some sleep, brother. Tomorrow we reach Ferrum, and you have sick miners to heal. The Empire's shadow can wait one more day."
But Kami did not sleep well that night. He dreamed of Marcus Severan's memories, of loyal service rewarded with betrayal, of slow corruption from idealist to criminal.
And he dreamed of his own future—of the day when the Empire would decide that Kami Van Hellsin had become too dangerous, too powerful, too much of a threat to keep on his leash.
What would he become when that day came?
A loyal servant who accepted his execution with dignity?
Or would he become exactly what Severan had become—another of the Empire's discarded weapons, biting the hand that had used him?
He did not know.
And that uncertainty terrified him more than any enemy could.