Chapter 4: Home invaders
Night fell like a blade.
The forest beneath the cottage had been quiet for centuries. Tonight it screamed.
Plasma bombs carved white scars across the darkness. Tanks crushed thousand‑year‑old pines beneath glowing treads. Three drones circled overhead, dropping payloads that turned treetops into torches. Twenty‑three assassins in matte‑black cotton moved through the inferno with the calm certainty of men who had been promised an easy kill.
Inside the cottage, a ten‑year‑old boy sat cross‑legged on a cushion, controller in hand, headphones thumping lo‑fi beats.
Tor didn't even glance at the windows rattling from the shockwaves.
Uncle Mike's voice drifted from the kitchen, calm as ever.
"Young lord, they brought tanks this time."
Tor paused the game, cracked his neck, and stood.
"Finally," he muttered, slipping on his flip‑flops. "Was getting boring."
Outside, the lead assassin raised a fist.
"Confirm visual. Target still inside. Breach on my mark—"
A childish voice drifted through the fire, almost conversational.
"Yo. You guys mind keeping it down? Some of us are trying to game."
The assassins spun.
Tor strolled out the front door as if stepping onto a beach. Hoodie up, bracelets glinting, silver runes flickering each time the flames caught them.
The leader recovered first.
"Open fire!"
Tanks roared. Plasma bolts lit the night white.
Every shot stopped three metres from Tor and simply vanished.
Tor yawned.
The leader's bravado cracked.
"Mandates are sealed in this zone! How—"
Tor tilted his head, amused. "Sealed? Only if I say so." His bracelets pulsed, silver arcs rippling outward. "I permit you. Show me everything. Then watch it fail."
The assassins hesitated, stunned. Then, one by one, they activated their mandates.
A flame‑wielder roared, his arms igniting into twin pillars of fire. He hurled a blazing arc that split the night sky. Tor flicked his wrist; the fire folded back, collapsing into the man's chest. He screamed as his own flames consumed him.
A lightning‑mandate user leapt forward, body crackling with blue sparks. He moved faster than sight, blade aimed for Tor's throat. Tor stepped aside lazily, space bending around him. The assassin's strike curved unnaturally, redirected into the ground. The lightning exploded, frying three of his comrades.
Two shadow‑walkers split into clones, circling Tor from opposite sides. Their blades shimmered, designed to pierce even mandate shields. Tor smiled. "Cute trick." He snapped his fingers. The shadows froze mid‑stride, their bodies unraveling into smoke. The originals collapsed, choking on their own illusions.
From the ridge, a sniper whispered, "Target locked." His bullet glowed with mandate energy, designed to pierce dimensions. Tor raised his sword, holding it parallel to his body. The bullet froze at its tip, suspended in time. "Puny bullets," he said with a smirk, eyes locking on the sniper. The man's courage broke. He turned to flee, but Tor was already there, blocking his path. "You forget," Tor whispered, gripping his neck and dragging him down to eye level, "space bends when I breathe." He snapped the man's neck.
The battlefield erupted.
Jets screamed overhead, their pilots empowered by speed mandates. Tor flicked one finger. Both planes split neatly in half and crashed in twin fireballs that shook the mountain.
Tanks fired again, this time enhanced by kinetic mandates. Their shells glowed, tearing through the air with unnatural force. Tor raised his hand. The shells froze mid‑flight, then reversed, slamming back into the tanks. Turrets crumpled like paper, crews teleported out — only to be bisected before they hit the ground.
An assassin with a wind mandate spun forward, blades slicing in a cyclone. Tor stepped into the storm, unharmed, and whispered, "Your reach is mine." The cyclone collapsed inward, shredding the wielder into ribbons.
Another assassin screamed, "He's just a child!"
Tor's smile was razor‑thin. "Children don't end wars. Monsters do."
The forest burned, plasma fire lighting the night. Trees toppled, roots snapping, ash raining down like snow. The ground itself trembled under the clash of mandates — fire, lightning, shadow, wind — all permitted, all dismantled.
When the smoke finally cleared, the forest looked like the aftermath of a small war.
Tor stood in the centre of it all, wiping blood from his cheek with the sleeve of his hoodie.
"Boring," he declared to the handful of trembling survivors. "Next time bring someone who can at least make me sweat."
He turned to the guards who had appeared from the treeline, bowing so low their foreheads touched ash.
"Regrow the trees," Tor said, voice flat. "Don't miss a single one."
Uncle Mike lit a cigarette off the burning wreck of a tank and muttered,
"Tor is angry."
Tor smiled, small and sharp.
"No. Just disappointed."
He walked back inside.
Behind him, thirteen‑year‑old guard Jin was openly crying. Joe, captain of the cottage guard, stared at the carnage and whispered the question everyone already knew the answer to.
"Who the hell sent them?"
Jin's voice cracked. "They shouldn't even be here. No one enters without a portal."
Joe's jaw tightened. "Different clans… someone inside opened the gates for them."
From the shadows of a distant ridge, a hidden recording crystal captured every second.
By morning, every elder in the fortress would watch the footage.
By noon, they would all pretend they had never seen it.
But the night was not finished.
Somewhere in the distance, a second, smaller wave of assassins — late arrivals who had hung back to secure the perimeter — watched the vortex close from the ridgeline. They saw the battlefield stilled, bodies cooling in the ash, tanks burning, jets split in half. The cottage stood untouched, the boy already walking back inside as if nothing had happened.
And they still raised their rifles.
Tor sighed, loud enough for the wind to echo it through the flames and smoke.
"Persistent."
He stood up.
"Round two, then?"