Nerion, Silvestre, Lucca, and Ailan froze in the narrow corridor that led to the cells.
“Earthquake?” Ailan whispered, voice cracking.
The shaking ceased as abruptly as it began, leaving a ringing silence that felt heavier than the tremor. Then came the second wave: the cacophony of fear and fury. Distant shouts, the of dropped metal, and the unmistakable sound of hurried, heavy footsteps racing towards them. They exchanged one look, the wide-eyed realisation hitting them all at once: they had been found.
They spun to retreat and walked straight into five figures rounding the corner.
Four TAO Masters in Tiger colours, blades already half-drawn.
One step behind them: Roxy, face pale, eyes flicking apologies she couldn’t voice.
The mercenaries spread out, grinning like wolves who’d cornered rabbits.
Silvestre dropped into a low stance, fists glowing faintly. Lucca balanced on the balls of his feet. Nerion stepped in front of Ailan without thinking.
Ailan hesitated, his gaze locked on Nerion's back, a flush of shame rising. Nerion was barely six, yet he stood ready to defend a boy years his senior, all for the sake of Ailan’s own sister. Swallowing his fear, Ailan straightened, taking his place on the line. The three siblings glanced at him, surprise quickly melting into a quick, approving grin. They hadn't expected a direct confrontation so soon, but in that moment, fear was eclipsed by the sheer audacity of their mission.
One mercenary laughed. “Four little rats. This’ll be quick.”
Nerion raised both hands, palms open, the picture of innocence.
“Are you really going to attack three small children and one teenager?”
The mercenaries merely sneered, a shared expression of predatory contempt.
Nerion sighed theatrically and utterly unbothered, then looked over the shoulders of the mercenaries and glanced at Roxy.
“I guess it’s your turn.”
The mercenaries blinked frozen, confused. Then, in horror, they turned towards Roxy.
Steel flashed. THUNK! THUNK!
Roxy’s twin daggers slid from her thigh sheaths and buried themselves in two spines before the men could turn. Both men collapsed in a wet thud.
The third mercenary, already reeling in shock, spun and began to retreat toward the corridor wall. Silvestre launched like a cannonball, shoulder-checking the man into the wall with a Qi-charged slam that cracked stone and consciousness alike.
The fourth man never saw his attacker. Lucca vanished from his spot and reappeared airborne, delivering a brutal, dual-legged wrestling kick to the last guard’s head.
Four bodies hit the ground in under three seconds.
Roxy wiped her blades on a corpse and gave the boys a grim nod—confirmation and apology in one.
"What in the hell happened? Why was the alarm triggered?" Roxy demanded, quickly retrieving her daggers, her face pale and slick with sweat. Her professional composure was shattered, replaced by raw anxiety. If Ocelot, or worse, Sagat, found them now, their fate would be sealed with extreme prejudice.
"Was that the alarm?" Silvestre asked, bewildered. "We don't know. We only felt an earthquake throughout the cave, which seemed to come from the direction we came from." He glanced at Nerion.
Nerion, rubbing his jaw, nodded, his usual mischief dimmed by worry. "It looks like Big Brother Elisha encountered some trouble."
"My sister! Where is my sister? Is she alright?" Ailan burst out, his voice sharp with agitation.
“It must be Ocelot,” Roxy spat. “Only he or Sagat could force a tremor like that. We’re out of time. Move. Our escape just got infinitely harder.”
She led them into the makeshift prison: cages, crates, barrels, the stink of despair.
Ailan’s breath caught.
In the nearest cage sat a girl with curly hair and freckles—Eliana.
“SISTER!”
He crashed against the bars. Eliana’s eyes went wide with shock, then overflowed with tears. She reached through, clutching his sleeves.
“You came… you actually came…”
Eliana, surprised and overjoyed to see her brother, managed a weak smile. But her eyes flared with fear when she saw Roxy, one of her captors, standing over Ailan. She immediately feared the worst: that her brother had been captured as well.
Behind them, in the central cage, chains rattled.
A woman lifted her head.
Long black hair parted like a dark waterfall, revealing a face so impossibly beautiful it seemed to drink the light from the luminous pearls themselves. Even exhausted, even chained, she radiated something ancient and terrible.
Silvestre’s jaw dropped. “She’s… prettier than Sister Myra,” he whispered, half in awe, half afraid.
Nerion’s every instinct screamed. He had never seen this woman before. And yet every hair on his body stood on end, as if his blood remembered her when his mind could not.
The chained woman’s gaze found Nerion’s, and for a single heartbeat, the cave went utterly silent.
The tremor hit like a war-drum struck inside the mountain.
Ron and Malla froze mid-step, copper fur and leathery hide prickling in unison.
Then the shouting started. First one voice, then a dozen, then a hundred, echoing down every tunnel like a spreading fire.
“RHODAR BEASTMEN!”
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The words ricocheted off stone, twisting into a single, panicked roar: betrayal.
Torches guttered as two dozen Tigers poured into the corridor, blades gleaming, eyes wide with fury.
Ron’s tail lashed once. Malla’s horns scraped the ceiling as she rolled her shoulders.
Damn it.
Steel met flesh.
Ron moved like wind given claws—arms longer than a man’s legs whipping out, necks snapping with wet pops. Bodies dropped before they finished drawing swords.
Malla was no longer restrained.
She charged.
Hooves cracked stone. Horns punched through breastplates like paper. A mercenary’s scream cut off as her fist caved his skull; arterial spray painted her leathery hide crimson. A fanatic smile split her face, tusks gleaming, eyes rolling back in savage ecstasy.
Ron fought beside her for ten heartbeats, then grabbed her wrist.
“Malla, control yourself! You lose it every time. We’re discovered. We grab the Fruit, and we leave, now.”
She nodded, but her pupils were blown wide, black eclipsing gold.
Ron cursed under his breath and released her.
He blurred away, a copper phantom racing deeper, killing anything that moved, dodging larger groups. Praetorian or not, enough ants could still kill a lion.
Malla lasted thirty seconds.
Then the blood-song took her completely.
She roared, a sound that shook dust from the ceiling, and charged blindly, horns lowered, hooves thundering. Mercenaries scattered like leaves before a hurricane. Servants screamed and died beneath her feet. She no longer cared about direction, about the mission, about anything except the next heartbeat of violence.
Somewhere ahead, the scent of the Fruit waited.
Somewhere behind, Ron raced alone.
And somewhere else entirely, Sagat was already breaking the sound barrier, a living comet aimed straight at the heart of his crumbling lair.
The real battle had only just begun.The air in the subterranean chamber was thick and sharp with the metallic tang of ozone and spilled blood. Afterimages of rapid, violent movement bled across the chamber walls like torn silk, momentary ghosts of the desperate duel that had been raging.
Elisha, a figure of white-hot discipline, fought with wild yet disciplined abandon, his
Ocelot danced backward, his rat-like face split in a thin, appreciative smile.
“Exuberant Qi for a child,” he rasped, voice oily with curiosity. “Praetorian already, and no greenhouse noble either. Full Acupoints for your rank as well, such a young genius. Real scars. Real kills. Ansara? Rhodar?”
He licked blood from his lip where Elisha had finally nicked him.
“Don’t answer, it matters not. Actually… thank you. Without your little invasion, I could never have triggered the alarm so cleanly. Sagat will come running, the Rhodarian deal dies, and the woman stays mine.”
His pupils dilated with something between lust and prayer.
Elisha’s only response to the vile monologue was a tightening of his jaw, a low snarl, and another blinding flurry of his Qi claws, a silent promise of death.
Ocelot laughed softly. “Afraid you have to die now.”
He vanished.
Not
The tonfa came for Elisha’s temple fast enough to pulp bone into red mist. Elisha pivoted at the last heartbeat, drew his sword in a silver arc.
CLANG!
The impact was catastrophic, ringing in the small chamber like a cracked cathedral bell being struck by a sledgehammer. The force was immense. Ocelot was knocked back three quick, scraping steps, his stance momentarily fractured. Elisha, the lighter of the two, flew ten feet, his boots carving twin, deep furrows into the solid stone floor before he regained purchase.
Ocelot spun the right tonfa until it blurred into a black disc.
“Pretty sword,” he crooned. “High-grade, a true noble heirloom. It’ll look good on my hip.”
Before Elisha could re-engage, before Ocelot could press his advantage, a seismic roar shook the corridor outside, a sound bestial, ecstatic, and utterly unhinged, like a primal scream ripping the ceiling apart.
Malla exploded into the chamber. A two-meter wall of muscle and blood-drenched fury. Her horns were lowered like a charging bull’s, and her massive fists dripped with the fresh gore of unseen victims.
“HAHAHAHAHAHA! MORE!”
She charged the nearest living thing.
Ocelot.
The rat-man’s eyes narrowed to slits. He planted his feet, spun the tonfa faster, and a one-metre Qi seal blossomed at its tip—ancient runes glowing venom-green.
“
BOOOM!
The seal detonated point-blank. Malla was hurled backward like a cannonball, smashing into the far wall hard enough to embed her silhouette in solid rock. Dust and blood rained.
She peeled herself free, arms shredded, hide split, but the madness in her eyes only sharpened.
Ocelot staggered, off-balance for the first time.
Elisha was already moving.
Sword blazing white, he closed the gap in a single leap and brought the blade down in a diagonal arc that could have split a boulder.
Ocelot crossed tonfas at the last instant—barely.
CRACK!
The rat-man was launched sideways, crashing through a stack of crates. Splinters exploded. When he rose, blood painted his whiskers and his left arm trembled violently.
For the first time, the calm mania in his eyes flickered into something very close to fear.
Three predators. One room. No exits.
The dawn in Radom was not the gentle gray the children knew, but a blinding, ugly canvas of fire and smoke that choked the air above the Orphanage. The years of uneasy peace in the frontier town were violently broken.
Varro, their leader, moved with calculated contempt toward the corralled children. His eyes promised violence, a simple lesson should their pathetic attempt at fending them off continue. Brandon and Landa were deeply injured but still alive: a deliberate, initial leniency on Varro’s part, but a mercy that had reached its limit. Whether the wounded children survived the forced march into the Woods was no longer his concern.
Nearby, the Master with the freshly injured knee limped toward a weeping Miriam, who huddled desperately against Leo. The Silverback Wolf, their strange, loyal protector, was the most injured of them all, barely clinging to life.
“This Magical Beast could also be of use,” the Master mused, his voice tight with pain and curiosity. “Interesting. There’s no Taming Seal on him. He’s helping these children out of his own volition.” Varro stepped closer, his interest piqued. A Magical Beast loyal to humans without the binding mark of a Taming Seal—a form of slavery for their kind—was indeed an anomaly.
The Master ripped Miriam’s small body from Leo's side, grabbing her by the hair. Tears streaked the grime on her tiny, cute face. “You are the most useless of them all. Perhaps we should get rid of you first,” he spat with cruel satisfaction, his face a mask of rage from his injury. “A beautiful bloody message. Let them know not to mess with people you can only look up to.”
Before the Master could make good on his vicious promise, a red blur tore across the orphanage backyard.
CRUNCH!
The man who had held Miriam’s hair screamed, his arm bent the wrong way, the bone and joint utterly destroyed.
Myra swept Miriam into her arms, the child sobbing and shaking with raw terror. Myra’s own body trembled, but it was not the fear of dying, or being killed, or used. Those small, human fears had been scoured from her long ago, burned out in the hell of her childhood.
Myra remembered the hunger, the violence, the absolute lack of humanity required for survival.
She became a demon in Murmur. She stopped being human in Murmur.
Until Lirian, another Murmur orphan, came back with the Royal Army and cut her chains.
Until Mikael dragged her south and refused to let the darkness win.
Until the Orphanage gave her a reason to breathe again.
The very Orphanage the Brotherhood and Apollos' pettiness now threatened to destroy.
“WHO ARE YOU?” cried the second young Master, a knife flashing as he lunged toward Myra’s back.
Varro, momentarily stunned by Myra’s arrival and the speed of her attack, tried to warn his man: “STOP!” But the attacker, blinded by the sight of his injured companion, saw only red.
Myra didn’t look back. With Miriam clutched tightly in her arms, she executed a single, beautiful spinning kick, a halo of red-glimmering Qi surrounding her leg.
CRUNCH!
The man's neck snapped, almost wrenched completely off by the kick’s devastating force.
The corralled children watched, flabbergasted; they had never seen Myra unleash such raw, savage power.
Her look was not one of hatred or anger, but of complete, chilling apathy, as if life itself had ceased to have meaning. Her Qi became unstable, howling like a morning storm, red smoke seeming to plume from her body, her hair floating wildly.
Varro finally prepared himself. What had been a mere afterthought of an assault on a frontier orphanage had just become a beast that threatened to consume them all. They had kicked open the gates of hell, and the Demon had come home.