Ironspire's night was never truly dark. Even when the sun sank behind the factories and churning smokestacks, the city glowed with the sickly orange of forge fires and the flicker of malfunctioning magi-lamps. The air shimmered with heat and dust, and the scent of burnt oil clung to everything like an accusation.
Kael stood alone beneath a half-collapsed bridge on the edge of the junkfields, the wind whistling through the broken pipes above. The corpse of Garron lay slumped nearby, twisted at the base of a dented boiler. Blood painted the rusted metal, already darkening in the cold.
Kael's breath came in shallow bursts, but he wasn't panting from exertion. No—he was laughing.
Softly at first. Then louder.
It echoed.
His thin frame shook with amusement, not fear. His pale white hair was matted with grime and sweat, but it gave him a strange, almost ethereal look under the light of the lamps. His eyes—once dull and tired—now glowed faintly blue, catching the light like glass touched by moonlight.
He wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his sleeve. Not Garron's blood—his own. The system had punished him for something. He didn't care. The pain felt distant, dull, almost unimportant compared to the rush in his chest.
"You thought you were the big one," Kael whispered to the corpse. "All muscle, no mind. That was your first mistake."
He stepped over the body, careful not to look too long at the warped angle of Garron's neck. It wasn't guilt that made him avert his eyes—it was boredom. The show was over. The man had stopped screaming.
Kael didn't feel bad. Not even a little.
That scared him more than anything else.
A broken pipe, still sticky with blood, clattered to the ground behind him. He'd found it earlier, half-buried in the sludge. It had just felt right to pick it up. He didn't question why.
The System hadn't told him to kill.
But it hadn't stopped him, either.
[Penalty Triggered: Unauthorized Lethal Force]
[Pain Synchronization Rate Increased to 34%]
[Warning: Repeated violations may result in neural degradation.]
The notifications still flickered faintly in his vision, lingering like afterimages burned into his eyes.
"I get it," Kael muttered, staggering a few steps forward before collapsing onto a heap of shredded upholstery and melted gears. "You've got rules. I've got issues. We'll work something out."
He spat, and red streaked the junk below. His stomach lurched, and for a moment, he bent over and retched. Just a trickle of blood. Nothing serious.
He wiped his mouth again, then sat still, staring up at the web of pipes above him. One hissed with steam, and a few drips sizzled on the metal floor beside his boot.
Something in him was changing. Not just his body, though the faint lines of energy trailing under his skin were new and strange. His mind was different.
He'd killed someone. And not just anyone—Garron, the bully, the one who made every day at the factory a slow bleed. And Kael had done it without hesitation.
It had been...easy.
Too easy.
"Will you grant them mercy?"
The System had asked him that once. It hadn't again.
Maybe it knew the answer now.
Kael leaned back and let out a sigh. He was tired—but not in the way sleep could fix. His limbs ached from tension, and his throat was raw from laughter.
For the first time in years, he felt awake.