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Chapter 2 - A Different Kind Of Debt

The words hung in the air, identical in every way to the ones spoken just moments ago in a reality that no longer existed. "We'll break them today."

For a sliver of a second, Kael's mind threatened to fracture. The memory of his chest collapsing under the horse's hoof was so vivid, so surgically precise, it felt more real than the solid ground beneath his feet. His hyperthymesia was not a gift of recollection; it was a curse of non-forgetting. The ghost of the pain was a physical presence, a cold weight in his lungs. He instinctively took a deep, shuddering breath, a reflex to prove he still could.

Finn frowned, his youthful optimism dimming with concern. "Kael? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Seventeen of them, Kael thought, his gaze sweeping their surroundings. All mine.

The choice was a venomous snake coiling in his gut. He had eleven minutes. He could try to save Finn. He'd tried that before. In loop six, he'd tackled the boy, pulling him away from the collapsing wall. Kael had lived an extra thirty seconds, long enough to watch a different knight spear a surprised Finn through the throat. In loop eight, his shouted warning had been misheard as a cry of panic, and the grizzled sergeant to their right had clubbed him with a shield pommel for "sowing dissent" moments before the charge hit. Every attempt to be a hero had resulted in a different, often more ironic, death.

His untalented body was a frustratingly blunt instrument. He couldn't conjure a magical shield or reinforce his flesh with the Aura of his own mounting trauma—that ocean of pain was still a chaotic, untamable thing. All he had was the knowledge of the next eleven minutes. His power was not creation; it was foresight. A foresight born of failure.

This time, the target wasn't the knight or the wall. It was the horse.

A new thought, cold and sharp as a shard of ice, cut through the fog of his recurring panic. He wasn't trying to save Finn. He wasn't trying to win the battle. He was only trying to not die this specific way. The goal had shrunk until it was small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. It was a pathetic ambition, but it was the only one he had left.

"Give me your waterskin," Kael said, his voice a low rasp.

Finn blinked. "What? Why? We might be here for—"

"Now." Kael's gaze was flat and heavy, and the boy flinched, unclipping the small leather pouch from his belt and handing it over. Kael didn't take a drink. He turned and, with a deliberate motion, poured the entire contents onto a specific patch of ground a few feet to his left. The water turned the already damp mud into a slick, soupy mire.

"Hey!" Finn protested, his voice a shocked whisper. "That was all I had!"

"You owe me a waterskin," Kael stated, ignoring the boy's indignation. He then took his own short sword, not by the hilt, but by the blade, wrapping his leather-gloved hand around the steel. Using the heavy pommel, he began to methodically, brutally, hammer at one of the wooden stakes that reinforced their section of the trench wall.

THWACK. THWACK. THWACK.

The sound was jarringly loud in the relative quiet before the storm. Men turned to stare. The sergeant shot him a venomous look.

"What in the hells are you doing, you mad bastard?" the sergeant snarled, starting toward him.

Kael didn't stop. He needed the stake weakened, not broken. He needed it to give way under a specific kind of pressure. He was changing the equation, introducing a new variable.

The mournful, ugly blare of the enemy horn cut through the air.

Every head snapped towards the horizon. The sergeant forgot about Kael, his face paling as the familiar, earth-shaking tremor began. The thunder of hooves rolled across the field.

"Get to the wall!" the sergeant screamed, his voice cracking.

Kael stood his ground. He dropped his sword, flexing his aching hand. He had done what he could. It was a piss-poor plan, an act of faith in physics and bad luck. He glanced at the slick patch of mud. He glanced at the weakened stake.

Finn was frozen beside him, his shield held up in a useless ward against the apocalypse. "Kael..." he whimpered.

The cavalry crested the hill. A black tide of inevitable death. They flanked, just as before. They charged the weak point. Kael took two deliberate steps back, positioning himself right beside the slick, watery mud he'd created.

The wall of earth exploded inwards.

The same horse, a massive black destrier with terror in its eyes, stumbled through the breach. But this time, Kael was watching it, not the knight. He saw its foreleg buckle as it hit the uneven ground. It began to fall, its immense weight shifting.

This was the moment. The thrashing that had killed him was about to begin.

But as its rear legs scrambled for purchase, one hoof landed directly on the slick, muddy patch Kael had prepared. There was no traction. The leg slid out from under it instantly, grotesquely. The horse's entire trajectory changed. Instead of falling into a thrashing heap in the middle of the trench, its momentum carried it forward, crashing head-first into the weakened wooden stake.

The stake snapped with a sharp crack, but it did its job. It altered the horse's fall one last, crucial time. The massive body twisted, its head and neck plowing into the rear wall of the trench with a sickening, final crunch of bone. It died instantly. No thrashing. No flailing hooves. Just a two-thousand-pound mountain of dead meat, its legs tangled in a silent, unnatural angle.

Kael stood untouched, the wind from the beast's fall whipping his hair. A spray of mud and blood spattered his face.

He had lived.

His victory lasted for a single, triumphant heartbeat before reality reasserted itself.

The wolf-helmed knight, his horse having cleared the breach, was now inside the trench line. His original target—Kael—was still alive. But someone else was now in his path.

Finn.

The boy was staring, dumbfounded, at the dead horse. He didn't even see the knight turn. The lance, meant for Kael, dipped down.

Kael opened his mouth to shout, but the word died in his throat. He saw the flicker of polished steel, heard the wet, percussive thump as the lance point punched through Finn's leather tunic and the soft flesh beneath.

Finn made a small, surprised sound, a gasp of air. He looked down at the spear shaft protruding from his own stomach, a confused, almost curious expression on his face. Then his eyes rolled back, and his legs gave out. He slid off the lance and collapsed into the mud, his sister's protective charm doing nothing at all.

The knight tore his gaze from the dead boy and locked eyes with Kael. There was a flicker of something new there—not malice, but professional annoyance. His clean, efficient kill had been complicated.

Kael had survived. He had traded Finn's life for his own. He hadn't just watched the boy die; he had actively engineered the circumstances of his death. He had incurred a different kind of debt.

And the battle had only just begun.

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