The brief sightings of light that filtered through the dark-red curtains were accompanied by the thunderous noise of the heavens' ire.

Trails of descending water drops painted the windows with a transparent blur after hitting the glass, becoming a current that dripped from the sill to the walls, drenching the carpeted floor of the castle's master bedroom.

Lightning painted the skies white, illuminating the room to show a sleeping man wrapped in fine sheets. His hand hung from the side of the bed, reflecting the shimmer from the windows with a diamond-embedded ring on his fourth finger.

A single snuffed lantern decorated the top of the man's nightstand, while the rest of the room was lavishly decorated with pelts, golden-framed paintings, and a full-body mirror with silver stands where the walls met. The feeling of extreme comfort and an ostentatious life irradiated from every corner of the room, but nobody was there to appreciate it right now.

Except, of course, for the burly man standing beside the baron's bed.

The shadows shifted in his dripping face with the rumbling of the skies, showing in his bloodshot eyes the deep hatred that eroded from his blackened heart. He took a good look at the complacent face of the sleeping noble, perhaps for a longer time than what he should have from the start.

Compared to that face his own seemed invisible, since the cloak he'd been handed blended his face with the shadows, making him a background object that nobody turned their eyes around to see.

If the plan was successful, he should be able to exit the same way he entered, undiscovered. However, if the baron woke up and looked directly at him, it was over. The idea was to make it look like an expert assassin had done it, escape fast, and leave no evidence, after all.

Since there was a knight acting as a guard stationed outside of the room, executing this plan took more than just the ability to hide one's presence. The lonely father had used all of his focus in hiding his aura so not even one of his peers could find him. This was a priority especially that day, since the one guarding the door was a friend he had spent many battles with.

And, just in the same line of priorities, he could not be heard while committing the assassination.

He only needed to surround the baron's neck with his hands, which were covered in thick gauntlets that would not leave his aura behind. With the strength of a man such as him, breaking the spine of an old man like the baron with a choke wasn't an issue. It was most probable that the rat's bones would crack under the pressure of Predsman's fingers before a noise could even escape his throat.

That was, to begin with, the desirable outcome. The knight was prepared to take into action an assassination, and as such, he could not allow himself to be negligent with the amount of care he put into the situation. Every bit of delay in his actions was important, every little mistake could mean his death.

But, for some reason, he could not stop looking at that man's face, like etching the man's last breath on his retinas with slow and searing fire.

He had already left a note on the baron's desk, written in elven. It was made not by him, but by the lady that went by the name of Suu. She had written an incrimination note that blamed the dark elves, stating that the assassination had taken place because their slave trade had come to a halt. It was so perfectly written that nobody could tell it from an original dark elf's hands, but Predsman could not know that.

The letter had been placed, the baron was asleep. He had already done enough mental training to keep his aura from leaking, even under the pressure of snapping someone's neck with his own hands.

The man was vulnerable, it wouldn't take him long, and he would be able to quickly escape after completing the murder. Even if he was caught and had to flee, the cloak of indifference would keep the other knights from recognizing his face, and if push came to shove, he could throw away his garments and act as if he had been sleeping in his bunk all along.

It was not something that could go wrong. And after he was done with the baron, he could return to a peaceful life, amend the time he had lost with his children, and help his wife in their house every now and then. It was the life he dreamed of, so why?

Why did he keep hesitating?

The rage that festered in his veins had started to throw his breath into disarray. The image of his little daughter crying entered his head, together with his son hating him for not being beside him when he needed him. He remembered all the times he wanted to train with Kei but the baron kept his hands tied, and the times when he had to walk away from Rii's voice reciting a poem because duty was more important.

His lonely wife sitting at the porch every night with the hope that he would come home like a miracle, which never happened even once. The pain of departing from the church crept up his throat. Not because of how devout he was, of course, but because it was his family's shrinking image which always marked the end of the midweek.

Then, he thought of his beautiful wife, a woman who had always fought beside him in every situation and had kept his heart warm. Someone who had loved him as dearly as he had loved her, and that would only put their children first before him, as he would do too.

The smell of her hair and the taste of her lips, something that was only his, he imagined it being shared with someone who had torn apart all the things he held close to his heart. He imagined his family breaking away from the center like a rock-shattered window, a metaphor apt for the state of his tolerance, as his mind was clouded with only one thought.

I want to hear this bastard scream as I see my hands drenched in his dirty fucking blood!

He pulled from his belt an old rusty dagger and swung it above his head, a second before it entered the baron's warm chest.

The man's eyes abruptly opened up, but Predsman didn't stop. He held the baron's arms with enough strength to break them, and started to stab from his chest to his groin over and over again, the room filling up with the gut-wrenching shrieks that sent hundreds of alarms in a single second.

The blood started to seep through the sheets and splattered on the floor as the door was banged from the other side. The baron's ray of hope that was his guard suddenly vanished as soon as he saw the door had been locked beforehand. Soon, the only thing he could do was scream as his guts were spilled over the mattress.

Fifty-four stabs in total, from the chest to the groin, in eight short seconds. His lower organ cut away from his body, his entrails wrapped around the knight's hand, and his heart pierced by an old rusty dagger, the baron could no longer gather enough strength to scream.

His eyes last saw the image of the door breaking open after being pierced by a halberd, before the dagger was cleaved into his forehead all the way to the hilt inside his skull.

"Fuuuuck! Die, you trash, you traaaash!" Predsman yelled at the top of his lungs as he twisted the dagger, spilling the brains of the already-dead baron on the pillows.

"Halt, you criminal scum!"

After the door had been broken down, a zap-like halberd was thrown from the entrance, and shot straight for Predsman's sides after cutting the air like an arrow.

"Uck!"

He was thrown against the wall after the spike of the weapon drilled itself past his ribs, piercing his lungs in the same instant.

His body dragged down from the wall and fell on the floor, his hand letting go of the dagger. Blood started to fill up his lungs and his vision began to get blurry. He slowly tilted his head up to encounter the image of that other knight,

"Kirk..." Predsman muttered.

"Silence, criminal! Do you have an idea of what you have done?!" The knight by the name of kirk grabbed the pole of the halberd and pushed it even deeper into Predsman's side.

"Puagh!" His lungs filled up with thick red blood, making him cough it up like water.

"Wait..."

The knight opened his eyes like plates, identifying the voice of the man on the floor. He hurriedly removed the cloak from the dying man, and the face underneath it distorted to be the one of a person he had known for almost half of his life. Kirk took a step back in horror, seeing how Predsman gargled blood in his mouth while gasping for air.

"Kirk... You weren't supposed to recognize me..." Predsman said, removing the deep-steel halberd from his flesh. "Cough... I can't leave it like this..."

Predsman leaned his arm on the wall as his friend observed him with a horrified look. His trembling body was on its last breath. His knees impulsed his heavy frame upwards, and he stood against the wall with heaves in his breath.

"Predsman, have you gone mad?!"

"Move to a side, Kirk...! I'm going back to see my family! I fucking swear I am!" He spat out those words through clenched teeth.

"Do you know what you've done?! I'm not moving from here, turn yourself in so I can call a healer!"

"I said move!"

The burly man threw his body at the plated knight while thrusting with the halberd, a futile and desperate action. Kirk traped the weapon between his arm and the deep-steel plate, and advanced forward with his fist thrown up high. He slammed the metal gauntlet on Predsman's face, crushing his teeth and his nose. However, the father who's intentions still raged true did not concede, but pushed forward and tried to pierce the armor with the halberd's fluke.

A raging warcry accompanied by a sibilant lung came from that bloodied mouth, which threw Kirk into a complete fight response.

He pulled the dagger from his thigh, and stabbed Predsman's throat from side to side.

A string of blood erupted from the poor knight-turned-assassin's throat as he let go of the polearm. He held his throat and tripped with the baron's bed, falling on top of the corpse. His lips moved up and down and the color was drained from his face, but he managed to form up a few last words as the tears fell down his cheeks.

"I love..." He choked slightly. "Them..."

His eyes slowly turned in their sockets and his hands lost all grip. They slowly fell down on the bed beside the spilled guts of the baron, a horrible scene that Kirk was not prepared to meet that night.

The honored knight, the man surnamed Predsman, who he had worked with for already twenty years, was now dead. Kirk's breath accelerated, not because of the man who had turned into a corpse in front of him, but because of the countless thoughts that entered his head.

He had seen Predsman's children grow from kids to teenagers, after all.

He thought about the face of those two kids lonely at their father's funeral, the wife bawling her eyes out in front of a casket.

His heart was filled with disgust and discomfort, but he couldn't just swallow it and pull himself back. He grabbed Predsman's office dagger, the one that killed the baron, and ran out of the room.

"The baron has been killed! The baron has been killed! The culprit is in the room, all knights, attend! Search for more criminals inside the castle before it's too late, search the whole fucking place!"

The knights came rushing out of their posts and the conscript guards as well. Even the butler was worriedly running in his nightgown to the last floor of the castle. Enough people rushed past Kirk that he felt like he was running against a current, as his feet guided him out the castle.

He panted with the dagger in hand, running down the city as the rain muffled the sound of his voice. He grabbed a horse from the stables without asking for permission, but before the caretaker could say anything, he pulled from the bridle and galloped out of the city.

It was a long trip in rough terrain that didn't seem to get any better with the passage of time, almost like the roads had blended with the dirt and became a thick marsh. The swash, however, did not seem to bother the horse, as it's mud-covered legs moved as fast as they could, towards the village of Seashore.

Even from a mile away, the incessant ringing of the watchtower's bell kept ringing in the falling air.

"It's a storm! The heavens are falling! Everybody to the manor before the river breaks out!"

People picking up important things and running— water up to their hills— could be seen everywhere as Kirk arrived at the village, the horse already slowed down by the water that splashed past its hooves. He stationed the horse up the hill and tied it to a tree.

He jumped into the water, rushing towards the house of the Predsman family with a twisted pain in his heart.

He opened the door with a slam and found Kei packing a bag full of trinkets. The young man looked up with his face drenched in water and smiled. His mother and sister were getting the clothes from the wardrobes as well.

"Uncle Kirk!" Kei smiled. "I don't know why you're here, but come, help me!"

"No, Kei!" Kirk moved forward, water almost to the height of his knees. "There is something important I must tell you!" He yelled over the sound of the pouring rain.

"What?" Kei raised his voice as well. "Come here! We can talk up the hill!"

"No, you don't get it!" Kirk unsheathed the rusty and bloodied dagger and threw it over to Kei, who immediately recognized the weapon and let go of the trinkets in his hand.

"Uncle Kirk!" Rii called for the man with a worried face as she walked beside her brother. "What is it?! Is daddy okay?"

"Kirk..." Kei dragged his body forward between the pooling water, gripping tightly the dagger that he had just been handed. "Why the fuck do you have my father's dagger?! Is my father okay, Kirk?!"

The man looked around while his chest went up and down, feeling heavy from the water accumulating in his armor.

The mother's heartbroken look, the girl's concerned expression, and the young man's bloodshot eyes. Under the pressure of the family's overbearing emotions, the knight opened his arms and yelled from the bottom of his stomach.

"Your father's fucking dead, Kei!" His throat felt like tearing apart as he said those words. "He killed the baron, so I killed him!"

"What the fuck did you just said, Kirk?!"

Kei threw the dagger in the bag, and planted himself in front of the knight. Although Kei's height was not little for his age, the knight that exceeded the six feet mark still looked down on him with a contemptuous look.

"I killed him! He was a coward that couldn't bear the responsibility of being a knight, so he went and did the most stupid thing he could have done! He killed the fucking baron, so what did he expect that was going to happen! He was a moron and deserved to die!"

"Take that back, Kirk!"

Kie threw himself at the knight, who had not noticed how heavy his armor had become from the rain. His body tumbled backward, falling into the knee-high water. His head was immediately fully submerged underwater. With his suit fully swelling up with fluid it already seemed almost impossible to stand up, before Kei jumped on top of his chest and unsheathed his sword.

"I told you to take it back, you motherfucker!!"

He stabbed down with his broadsword on the man's face, but Kirk was able to dodge it. He struggled and tossed his arms around, but the air had already left his body and the constant stabs coming from the youth's hands didn't halt. Although desperation welled up in his head and he tried to stand up, it just wasn't possible. A deep-steel plate was at least two times heavier than normal plate to begin with, so it seemed impossible to stand up with a water-filled armor in such conditions.

Was this his payment? Was this what he got for killing that man, who was the best-hearted knight in the force? If this was it, the gods surely had a macabre way of doing things.

"Kei, stop! We have to go now, Kei!" His mother pulled him by the arm, but he did not pay any heed. He pushed back the woman who had raised him, and then screamed as his broadsword pierced the surface of the water, following with Kirk's head.

Blood erupted from the wound and the body below him stopped its movements. Kei let out a throat-tearing cry as he buried the sword even deeper, and the water dripping from the holes in the ceiling mixed up with the tears streaming down his eyes.

His mother covered her mouth. Nobody would criticize her astonishment, having seen her son murder a man. Then, the image of her dead husband flashed by, as if she had remembered Kirk's words, and her breath became ragged and forced. She was about to run out, before she noticed her daughter's expression.

"No... Not fair..."

Her eyes were lifeless and glassy as they could be. Her hands twitched as she moved forward to Kei's side, and her body seemed to falter with every step.

"I could not tell daddy any of my poems, and he never tried my cooking. Why didn't I do it yesterday? If only I had brought something, if only I had told him something... And now not only daddy, but uncle Kirk..."

At that same moment, a small figure ran in front of their door's open house, and yelled:

"Kei, Rii! Are you guys not going to the manor?! Thom's been waiting for you up there, what the hell do you think that you're doing?!"

It was Suu's voice that overlapped with the pouring rain. Her image, which seemed comforting and gentle before, became to Rii like the most disgusting sight she could see. The girl bit down on her lip until blood poured out plenty, and cleaning her tears, she dashed outside of the house while pushing the lady away.

"You lied to me! You're a liar, a stupid liar and I hate you, I hate you!"

"W-Wait, Rii, what happened?!"

Suu was about to chase for her, but Kei's arm stopped her. She turned to look at the young man that stared at her with utmost hatred, and she feared that the worst had happened. Before she could do anything, Rii's mother ran behind her daughter, leaving Kei and Suu alone.

"You are a fucking lying whore."

"Kei, what—"

She received a straight hook to her jaw, which made her stumble backward slightly. She touched her face in confusion, there were no injuries. What had pushed her back had been the sudden hostility she received from the young blond man.

"I know I can't beat you. So go away. Go away from my village!"

"But—"

"Go the fuck away!"

Suu was pushed back as Kei yelled and punched her hard in the chest. Her eyebrows contorted as she saw the man's pain surfacing in his mien. She tried to gather up the words to blurt out a stupid apology, but before she could speak, a distant scream interrupted her.

"That's my mother." Kei said, about to turn around to run, but Suu was faster and bolted down the village and towards the riverside.

She did her best to run in the pooling rainwater, but she still took several minutes to get to the riverside. She ran up the hill where she had met with Rii the first time, and saw the violent caudal of the river breaking up to the sides. She searched for the origin of the voice, running along the hill each time more downriver, until she finally saw a woman being carried away by the current.

Without time to think, she cast [Earth Binding] on herself and used all of her magic energy to propel her body forward without falling into the river. With short breaths, she managed to near the woman, and got a hold of her hand.

Clasp

"I've got you!" She said, straining her own limits to maintain herself in the air with the bindings and pull from the woman's hand at the same time.

"Ha... Ha..."

Suu looked at the woman's other hand as she was pulling, and to her disgrace, saw the pieces of cloth from a fine-tailored dress gripped by the mother's pale fingers.

"Rii..." Suu whimpered. "I'm sorry."

"Don't you dare say that you're sorry." The woman said those words, which threw her back to what a certain knight said in that stall. "Don't you dare say those words, let me go! How much more will the nobles take away from me?! You were the one who tricked my daughter, so let me go! Let me go with her, now!"

"I, I can't! I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

crack—slip!

She couldn't finish her apology.

In that same instant, the woman broke her own wrist and fell in the river again.

Suu could only watch as the woman's body disappeared in the distance, her hand extended forward as if waiting for something to grab it, and her magic energy being quickly drained by the bindings. Tears started to fall from her eyes as if she had lost something precious to herself.