Content Warning: Graphic violence, gore, trauma, child endangerment, and intense emotional scenes.
The carriage lurched violently as steel clashed against steel outside, the night air torn by the harrowing screams of dying men. The metallic scent of blood grew thick and cloying.
A desperate voice, yet trying to remain firm, pierced the chaos. "Madam! Stay in the carriage! We're under attac—"
Silence swallowed the words, replaced by a sickening thud against the carriage door.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
"Open up, or we'll break it down!" The voice beyond was sharp, laced with menace.
Inside, Ruby moved with swift purpose. She pushed Sushila—who clutched me tightly against her chest—behind her, her hand finding the dagger strapped to her thigh, fingers curling around its hilt with practiced ease.
"Stay behind me, Madam," she said, her voice steady despite the storm outside. "I'll protect you and the young master."
Bang.
The wood groaned, splintering under the assault.
Bang.
A final, brutal slam shattered the door into fragments.
A knight lunged through the breach, blade drawn. Ruby struck first.
Her dagger gleamed, sparking her aura into a storm of energy. Every time she moved, it flashed silver in the dim light. A sharp inhale, then a wet gurgle. The man staggered backward, eyes wide with shock as crimson spurted from his opened throat. He collapsed.
Another followed immediately. Ruby ducked low, spun with lethal grace, and drove her blade upward, piercing through his ribs. His body convulsed once before she tore the weapon free, blood dripping from its edge.
Three more men swarmed through the ruined doorway. She parried the first strike, her dagger ringing against his sword, while twisting her body to avoid the second attacker's thrust. Her dagger whipped across one man's wrist in a precise arc, severing tendons in a spray of red, before she pivoted and buried it deep in his chest.
Her movements were a dance of death, each step a calculated note in a symphony of violence. The dagger gleamed, its edge catching the faint light with an almost ethereal glow, as if imbued with some ancient, otherworldly power. It was a spectacle of skill and ferocity, a scene so vivid, like the most extravagant choreography from a master filmmaker's vision.
But there were too many.
A sword slashed across her arm, tearing flesh. Ruby gasped, staggering as warm blood ran freely. A brutal kick to her stomach sent her crashing against the carriage wall, wood splintering under the impact.
She struggled to her feet, dagger trembling in her bloodied grip, when a hooded figure loomed in the doorway.
A mage, his lips curling around dark incantations, his wand aglow with malevolent energy that crackled like a storm about to break.
"στιγμιαίο θάνατο."
The words rolled off his tongue like poison, and a wave of dark power surged from his wand, enveloping her.
Ruby's eyes widened in horror as the spell struck her. A deathly chill raced through her veins, freezing her from within.
Her breath hitched. Her vision blurred. A death spell—she recognized it too late.
Her body refused to obey her commands.
She coughed, blood spattering the carriage floor.
With tremendous effort, she turned her head just enough to see Sushila trembling, clutching me protectively to her chest.
Her grip on the dagger loosened, the weapon clattering to the floor.
"I-I'm sorry, Madam," she whispered, each word a struggle. "I couldn't keep my promi—"
Her words died on her lips. Her body crumpled, lifeless.
Sushila's scream shattered the night like breaking glass.
"Ruby!"
Cruel laughter drowned her cries, the mage's voice a venomous echo.
"Hand over the child," one of the knights sneered, advancing alongside the mage with predatory confidence. "And I promise you a painless death."
Sushila shook her head as she clutched me tighter, her entire body trembling like a leaf in winter wind.
She tried to back away, but the carriage wall trapped her, offering no escape.
"You… you're knights of the Wolfhards!" she pleaded, voice cracking. "Why are you doing this?"
The knight sighed, a mockery of pity in his eyes. "You're the lord's concubine. I don't want to hurt you." He took a slow, measured step forward. "But if you don't comply…"
His fingers tightened on his sword hilt with obvious threat.
"You can kill me," Sushila begged, her voice a trembling thread, "but please, don't hurt my child."
A flicker of hesitation crossed the knight's face. Then, without warning, he struck.
The blade sang through the air as he lunged, his sword aimed directly at me.
But Sushila twisted, shielding me with her body.
The sword bit into her back, and warm blood gushed from her lips, dripping across my infant form in crimson droplets.
Her vision darkened at the edges. Her limbs trembled violently, but still—still—her arms remained a fortress around me.
"Do your job and make her let go," the knight commanded, turning to the hooded mage with cold efficiency.
The mage stepped forward, laughing with genuine sadistic pleasure.
"σπάσιμο των οστών."
Dark energy erupted from his wand, striking Sushila's back.
Her scream was a raw, animal sound, pain ripping through her as we could hear the sound of bones cracking under the spell's cruel force.
The knight closed in, wrenching me from her arms, gripping my tiny leg with brutal force.
"No!" Sushila's anguished cry filled the confined space as cruel fingers wrenched me from her desperate embrace, gripping my tiny leg and hoisting me upside down.
I wrote this. I created this cruelty. But witnessing it… it's beyond comprehension, I thought as my infant cries filled the air, dangling helplessly from the knight's harsh grip.
"Kid, I'm sorry," the knight muttered with a heavy exhale, staring down at me with something resembling pity and regret before handing me over to the waiting mage.
Screams erupted outside, followed by a voice filled with terror. "H-he's here! Kill the child, quick!"
Silence fell, broken only by the wet splatter of blood reaching the inside of the carriage walls from outside.
The knight and mage tensed like prey animals sensing a predator. They turned toward the shattered doorway just in time to see the lifeless bodies of their companions slump to the ground outside. Only they remained.
Heavy footsteps approached. Slow. Unhurried. Inevitable.
Then he entered.
A handsome man, tall and composed, with deadly piercing golden eyes that held no warmth. Long black hair framed aristocratic features that appeared younger than his years suggested. He possessed a vision of deadly grace, his very presence commanding absolute attention. A predator in the form of a man.
Relief flooded through me at the sight of this man's face. The man. The myth. The legend. Grael motherfucking Wolfhard.
The current Patriarch of House Wolfhard—and this body's father.
"Why are you here?" His voice was perfectly calm—dangerously calm. "You're supposed to be at war."
The knight froze as though fear had seized control of every muscle in his body.
"If you take another step," he rasped, pressing his blade closer to my throat, "I'll—"
"Then do it," Grael said with casual dismissal.
Both knight and mage recoiled in shock at his unexpected response.
I know I wrote your character this way, word for word, but you can't actually be saying such things, Grael, I thought desperately.
"Why should I take orders from you? I have four more. What difference would losing one make? I could even make more, if I wished." He stepped forward with complete indifference to the threat.
I remember writing his character using the word "nonchalance"—thinking of leather jackets and motorcycles. I suppose this is the fantasy equivalent in live action, I mused despite my terror.
The knight trembled visibly. "Do it!" he shouted at the mage. "Now!"
The mage began another incantation, darkness erupting from his wand and thickening the very air with the stench of death as he aimed at my chest.
"καρδιακό νόση—"
Slash.
The spell died as silver flashed through the air. The mage's wand was severed in two perfect halves, the cut extending from his hand all the way through his upper arm with surgical precision, as if a master surgeon had performed the amputation. Both pieces clattered to the floor. Before his scream could escape, his head followed. Blood painted the carriage walls. The mage's body convulsed once before crumpling like a marionette with cut strings.
I slipped from the mage's dead grasp, but before I could strike the floor, Grael moved like lightning, catching me with a steady hand.
Pain still burned in my chest, a lingering fire from the mage's incomplete spell.
He kicked the mage's severed head toward the knight with casual contempt. The knight flinched at the grisly projectile, and when he opened his eyes, Grael was already standing beside him, a specter of death.
"I suppose I'm not ready for him to die yet. He resembles our founder, you see." His voice remained perfectly calm.
First time meeting with his son, and he barely spared me a glance—those golden eyes locked onto the knight with predatory focus.
"You're alone now. Talk or don't talk—your death will be painful either way. So choose wisely." He stood toe to toe with the trembling man.
The knight tried to step back but couldn't—his body refused to move, frozen under Grael's gaze.
"Which one was it?" Grael asked, his voice completely unreadable.
The knight paled to ash-white. "M-My lord, I—I don't—"
Silver flashed.
Both the knight's arms were severed in a single, impossibly quick motion.
He screamed in pure agony as blood pooled beneath his mutilated form.
Grael stepped closer with the patience of a hunting cat.
"Was it the first? The second? The third?"
The knight, writhing in his own blood, finally confessed: "My lord... I cannot... She said if I was caught, if I exposed her, she'd kill my family!"
Slash.
The knight felt suddenly smaller. In his eyes, Grael seemed to tower like a giant. Only then did he discover the searing pain in his legs—they had been severed at the thigh, though he hadn't noticed immediately. The agony took time to register because he hadn't even seen Grael attack. The knight found himself on his knees, looking up at his executioner.
Grael had done it all with one hand, cradling me in the other, using only his sword arm for the butchery.
The knight wept in agony. In all his years as a warrior, he had never experienced such exquisite torture.
Grael exhaled slowly. "I respect loyalty to family. But you couldn't keep them safe regardless—you've simply made an enemy of me. The wrath they'll face now is far worse than anything she could have done. Every single member of your bloodline must die... No, that's far too simple. I'll kill even those related to you through marriage—your in-laws, your siblings' in-laws, your fourth cousins who've never laid eyes on you. Every single one won't live to see tomorrow's dawn."
The knight's eyes widened in absolute horror as he trembled. "M-my lord, it wa—"
Slash.
Some pinkish-red lump fell from his mouth—his tongue, severed at the root, silencing his confession. He drowned in his own blood, gurgling helplessly.
"Too late," Grael said. "I'll find her myself."
He watched him suffer, letting the blood and wounds do their work until the man teetered on the brink of death.
One final slash, and the knight's head rolled free, horror still frozen in his dead eyes.
This was like making an infant watch a horror film.
My infant body couldn't contain the terror. My cries echoed, a helpless wail in the face of such carnage.
"Shhhh," Grael murmured, finally looking down at me.
I fell silent, fear outweighing grief.
He flicked the blood from his blade with practiced ease before sheathing it and turning to kneel beside Sushila's prone form.
"Sushila."
She coughed weakly, her fingers reaching toward him with tremendous effort. "Arthur... is he...?"
Grael lifted me slightly so she could see. "He's right here."
Relief softened her anguished expression. "You're holding him wrong."
Grael didn't respond to the gentle criticism.
She exhaled shakily. "Grael..."
"Yes."
"If I don't make it..." Her voice faltered like a candle flame in wind. "Take care of him."
Her body went limp.
Grael's jaw clenched with barely contained emotion.
A woman in maid's attire and a man in butler's livery rushed through the destroyed doorway. The maid took me from Grael's hands without a word, as if she instinctively understood what needed to be done. She drew her wand and whispered an incantation.
"θεραπεύω."
Green light flickered to life, resembling a traffic signal glimpsed through rain. In that moment, without warning, the searing pain that had lingered in my chest from the dark mage's spell simply vanished, as though it had never existed. The fire in my chest was extinguished completely.
She hesitated, then shook her head. "I'm sorry, sir."
Grael's gaze darkened with dangerous promise.
"I see. Now try Sushila."
The maid handed me back to Grael before turning to the injured Sushila.
"θεραπεύω."
The wound on Sushila's back sealed itself, leaving only the bloody remnants of torn cloth as evidence of the injury.
Sushila gasped back to consciousness.
She looked up with a weak smile. "Thank you, Zora. Is my baby all right?" Her eyes found me, cradled safely in Grael's arms.
Grael remained ominously silent.
A terrible feeling settled in my chest. Somehow, with the intuition that transcends age, I already knew that something was very, very wrong.
"Please, Zora... try to heal Ruby," Sushila said, her voice trembling with desperate hope.
Without a word, the maid moved toward Ruby's still form, her expression steely with professional determination.
"θεραπεύω."
"θεραπεύω."
"θεραπεύω."
Each whispered invocation carried quiet desperation, a rhythm that echoed in the blood-soaked stillness. But no matter how many times she repeated the healing spell, the words hung impotent in the air. The silence between attempts grew oppressive, as if the universe itself refused to respond.
The maid shook her head slowly—a mournful gesture that spoke volumes.
Tears streamed down Sushila's face as she released a scream of pure anguish, her voice cracking under the weight of grief. She paused, then folded her hands in quiet prayer—soft, brief, a final farewell to Ruby.
With effort that seemed too great for her weakened body, she tried to rise, but her legs betrayed her. She faltered, collapsing back to the carriage floor, her face pale with sudden realization.
"Grael... I can't feel my legs," she whispered, the words barely audible in the tomb-like stillness.