[Gore warning]
Artorian felt it start in his fingertips.
A coldness. A buzzing. Like pins and needles crawling up through his skin, threading into the nerves beneath. The world tilted just slightly but it was enough. His breath hitched, his pupils dilated, and everything slowed.
The slaver turned to laugh with another nearby, completely unaware of the shape rising from the ferns.
Art didn't speak.
He didn't growl. Didn't warn.
He moved.
The first man didn't even see him coming just felt something wet and hot as Art's dagger carved cleanly through the side of his throat. Blood sprayed in an arc, warm as bathwater, splashing against the iron cage bars. The man gurgled, clutched at the wound, then dropped to his knees, twitching.
The others turned too late.
Artorian was already among them.
He wasn't like a knight, or graceful like a dancer. What he did was brutal, instinctual. He stabbed with such force that the blade snapped in a rib, so he took a second weapon one of theirs and shoved it into the eye of the next man, pushing until the hilt cracked bone.
A scream.
A blade swung wildly toward him.
He ducked low, grabbed the attacker's ankle, and twisted. The leg bent the wrong way with a sickening pop. The man shrieked until Art drove a rusted iron stake through his mouth, nailing him into the side of a wagon like a ragged, twitching banner.
Blood coated his hands now. His arms. His neck. It soaked into the collar of his tunic, warm and clinging. He didn't blink. Didn't slow.
A woman another trader ran for the cage keys.
He caught her by the back of the skull and slammed her face first into a wagon wheel. Once. Twice. The third time, her skull caved with a meaty crunch, and her body slid down the spokes, leaving streaks behind.
Silence, broken only by the crackling of the fire.
The last one the man who broke the wolf girl's arm was crawling away, gasping.
Art stepped on his back.
Hard.
The man screamed. "W-wait! Please-!"
Art drove a blade into the man's kidney. Slowly. The sound was wet and terrible. He twisted. The screaming stopped.
He stood there a moment, covered in red, his chest rising and falling with slow, deliberate rhythm. No rage. No tremble.
Just stillness.
Then he dropped the blade and walked over to the cages.
The wolf girl stared up at him, one eye swollen, her lips trembling. She didn't speak.
He reached into the pouch at his belt, pulled free a set of tools, and began unlocking the doors, one by one, as the blood on his hands dripped to the ground, dark and thick.
The last cage creaked open.
Artorian stood there, unmoving, his fingers still curled around the key. Blood some of it his, most of it not dripped from his wrists, down onto the packed earth. The forest was dead quiet now. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
Then something shifted behind his eyes.
A flicker. A return. Like a curtain being drawn back.
His pupils shrank.
His gaze sharpened.
He blinked once… and saw the carnage.
Bodies torn open like meat sacks. A hand still twitching in the grass. Blood pooled under the wagon wheels, soaking into the dirt. The scent hit him now iron, bile, the cloying stench of death.
He turned his head slowly and looked at the wolf girl, curled in the corner of the cage, cradling her broken arm, eyes wide and frightened.
Not of her captors.
Of him.
Art took a shaky step back.
"What…" he breathed. "What have I done?"
His knees buckled.
He dropped to the ground with a thud, his hands shaking uncontrollably, smearing crimson into the earth. A pressure built in his chest tight, suffocating. His breath came in ragged gasps.
Then he choked.
And vomited a thick, dark surge of blood that splattered across the grass in front of him. His body lurched with the force of it, and more blood followed, stringy and blackened, as if something inside him had been burning.
He fell forward on his hands, coughing, retching, eyes wide with horror and confusion.
The world tilted again.
But this time, it didn't feel like rage.
It felt like consequence.
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