The storm battered the windows, each crash of thunder rattling the old beams of the office. Rain drummed against the roof in a relentless cadence, as though the heavens themselves declared war upon the night.
Inside, the black knight Okhist sat alone, hunched over his desk. The dim lantern beside him sputtered and hissed in the damp air, casting thin, crooked shadows that danced along the walls. A letter lay half-written before him, ink smeared in uneven strokes, words stumbling into one another without rhythm or grace.
His gauntleted fingers clutched the pen tighter, but the tip scratched shallow and aimless lines. It was no letter—just nonsense, a scrawl born of restless hands. With a frustrated grunt, Okhist dropped the pen. His hand quivered as it hovered above the parchment. He stared at it, dumbfounded, as though his own body had turned traitor.
Tremors traveled up his wrist, into his arm, and then his chest. His breath came shallow, unsteady, as if a shadow had perched upon his lungs. The knight clenched his fist to still the shaking, but it only made the sensation worse.
"Is this… anxiety?" he muttered, almost in disbelief. His voice was low, nearly drowned out by the storm outside. The words lingered like a curse in the suffocating air.
For the first time in decades, Okhist felt something more chilling than the battlefield. Something unseen. Something drawing closer.
The office seemed to tilt for a heartbeat—paper, pen, and the guttering lamp all swallowed by a sudden silence. Then the front door exploded inward with a thunderous crash, and a shape tumbled across the threshold like a puppet cut from its strings.
A man rolled in, helmet gone, eyes bugged wide in a frozen horror. Blood sprayed the floor in long, bright arcs where both his arms had been cleanly sheared away. He choked a ragged sound, hands clutching at stumps that were no longer there; his mouth formed a silent plea that nobody answered. The receptionist screamed—a high, animal note that knifed through the steady drum of rain outside. Someone vomited. The room smelled of iron and wet wool and panic.
"By—" one gray knight started, voice breaking on a word that tried to be a prayer.
Then steel sang. A jagged blade punched straight through the fallen man's helm, pinning him to the floor with a final, obscene punctuation. For a second, the blade stood proud and motionless—then the chain attached to its hilt rattled alive. The steel tore back with a metallic howl, dragging an armored corpse toward the door as if some invisible hand were reeling in bait.
A face stepped through the smoke and rain and bone-slick light.
Okhist moved as if pulled by a cord of astonishment—he had risen from the balcony, his boots clattering on wood—then froze with a sound between a sob and a curse. "You… you're alive." The words were small, broken; they died against the thunder.
The man in the doorway did not hurry. He advanced into the room with the casual, unhurried gait of someone who wanted everything to understand its place. Rain stitched his hair to his forehead. His cloak clung about him like a second skin. The jagged sword in his hand was slick, the chain coiled like a living thing at his wrist. He looked at the ruined messenger, at the spreading blood, then lifted his head and let his gaze sweep the office—every ledger, every face, every knuckled fist.
When he spoke his voice carried the chill of winter and the certainty of a blade. "Did you wash your neck as promised?" he said, and the words dropped into the room like an indictment. "'Cause you are running out of chance—NOW."
The effect was instantaneous.
Whereaxes and insults had once filled the hall, now only a strangled silence pressed in. The gray knights fumbled for steel, but their motions were clumsy, their courage evaporating beneath that gaze. The receptionist sank into her chair as if her spine had been cut; her hands trembled on the ledger's edge.
Okhist's face changed in that breath—years of command and unreadable calm shredded by the raw, personal knife of recognition. Something older than fear ran through him: a promise recalled in the marrow. He had made a pact; he had told the world to wash his neck. Now the bargain had a heartbeat, a man, a verdict.
Around them other soldiers shuffled, then jabbered uselessly; one tried to shout a command but his voice cracked.
Kazel's eyes found Okhist, and in that look there was no haste—only an absolute, fatal patience. Rainwater streamed down his cheeks; a smear of blood ran from his jaw to the collar of his coat like an ugly medal. He let the chain clink on the floor; the sound was a metronome in a dead man's cadence.
"Now," Kazel said again, softer this time, as if someone might hear and it would be better, "you can still drink water. You can still wash. You can still do what men do before they die."
Okhist—black armor, scarred face, the great captain who had ordered lashes and led men to slaughter—had no words left that fitted this moment. His hands, which had signed orders and bound men's fates, went to his throat unconsciously. He could feel his own pulse in fingers that had never trembled before.
Around the office the other knights found motion: one bolted for the door, but Caladbolg's shadow intersected him as the bone king's finger flashed through the doorway and pinned the man's shoulder to the lintel. Rami's low growl rolled under the thunder and made a few throats close with terror. The chessboard had been overturned; every piece was suddenly fragile.
"Where are Durandal and Arhatam?" he asked again, the question sharpened into demand. It had no more patience for lies.
Okhist's jaw worked. The tremor in his fingers came now from something other than anxiety—guilt, perhaps, or the cold recognition that a promise is a binding thing when it is kept by the man who gave it. He straightened slowly, the black mail creaking, and the office felt suddenly too small to hold the weight of what had been said.
Outside, the storm conspired with the moment. Thunder cracked like a judge's gavel. The rain beat the panes in staccato drums. In the ruined gate's mouth, Caladbolg and Rami stood unyielding—two absolutes, one alive, one made of bone—ensuring no one left and no one entered. Inside, in the dim light, all the bravado of mercenaries and knights shriveled under a tyrant's stare.
Okhist opened his mouth to answer; his voice came out like a dry leaf. "They—" he began. Then he stopped. He remembered; his memory was a blade sliding under his ribs. The promise had been simple—trivial even when offered in hardest jest. Now it belonged to a man who had bled and laughed through ruins and kings.
Kazel's smile did not change. It never did. It was a cliff that men fell from.
"Tell me." He did not raise his sword. He did not need to. The blade at his hip was already a verdict—the chain's little clink was the tally of time running out.
Outside, the rain paled the world into a wash of gray. Inside, the office held a single bright point of heat: a man whose arrival had re-inked every promise, every debt, and every fear into the bones of men still foolish enough to call themselves free.
"Let's end this," Okhist growled, summoning his massive two-handed axe from his spatial ring. Behind him, the spirit beast of a Great Mammoth bellowed into existence, its aura shaking the office walls. "Die, KAZEL!"
Kazel's expression didn't change. He unhooked the jagged blade from its chain, his blue eyes glinting coldly under the storm's rumble outside.
( You think swinging a bigger weapon makes you stronger? Idiot. )
He stepped forward, his tone mocking yet filled with weight. "So this is your last stand, Okhist? The Shield and Spear ends tonight!"