Blake lay motionless on the cold floor, every muscle locked in manufactured unconsciousness. His breathing remained steady and deep—the rhythm of someone genuinely out cold rather than faking.
Inside, his mind screamed. How long do I have to keep this up?! My face is going numb from pressing against these stones!
Footsteps approached from the corridor. Heavy boots striking stone with purposeful rhythm.
The door burst open without ceremony. A knight's voice rang through the hall, breathless with efficiency. "Chief Inquisitor! The carriage for travel has been arranged. Horses are ready. We can depart immediately."
Blake's internal screaming stopped. Wait—seriously? Right now? Perfect timing, universe. I love you.
Aldric's boots crossed the floor toward Blake's prone form. "Good. Let's move. The boy's only unconscious—no point waiting for him to wake. Place him in the carriage and we start immediately."
"But Chief Inquisitor," Pabel's voice carried deep concern, "shouldn't we wait? Let him rest properly? If his head injury is serious—"
"Which is exactly why we need to reach the capital quickly," Aldric interrupted, voice brooking no argument. "The royal healers can examine him thoroughly. Far better than anything we can do here in this decrepit estate. Time is critical with head wounds."
Blake felt hands grab him—rough, impersonal—lifting him like a sack of grain. His head lolled convincingly, arms dangling limp. Keep it together. Dead weight. Don't tense up. Let gravity do the work.
"I'll accompany my young master," Pabel said firmly. "With your permission, Chief Inquisitor. I failed him once already. I won't leave his side again."
"As you wish," Aldric replied. "Your loyalty is noted."
Through barely-cracked eyelids, Blake caught a glimpse of Ferolina standing near the table. Her red eyes tracked him with unreadable intensity as the knights hauled him toward the door. They gleamed in the lamplight like embers waiting to ignite.
"Aldric," she called out. "A word before you go?"
The Chief Inquisitor paused. Blake's carriers kept moving, lugging him through the doorway and down the corridor. Behind them, Ferolina's voice dropped low—too quiet to hear clearly, but the tone sent ice down Blake's spine even in his faked state.
She still suspects something. I know she does.
The knights carried him across the courtyard. Morning sun warmed his face, a pleasant contrast to the cold stones he'd been pressed against. Horses stamped and snorted. Leather creaked. Metal jangled. The sounds of a caravan preparing for hard travel filled the air with organized chaos.
Then he was hoisted upward—not gently—and deposited onto padded seating. His body hit cushions with a soft thump that would have knocked the wind out of him if he hadn't been prepared. The carriage. Finally.
"Careful with him!" Pabel's voice, sharp with protective anger.
"Apologies," one knight muttered without sounding sorry at all. "Heavy bastard. All that noble food, probably."
Footsteps retreated. The carriage door remained open. Voices outside continued coordinating departure—final checks, supply counts, route confirmations. Blake remained perfectly still, face pressed into cushions that smelled of old leather and dust and something vaguely medicinal. His breathing stayed deep and even. But inside, relief flooded through him like warm honey spreading through cold limbs.
I did it. I actually survived that. The klum-berry disaster, Pabel's suspicion, Ferolina's predatory stare—and I'm still alive. Still heading to the capital. Still on track to meet the queen and escape this nightmare into luxury.
The system window flickered into view.
[URGENT QUEST COMPLETE: Get Out Of Danger Somehow]
[Reward: 10 Stat Points, +5 Gold]
[Achievement Unlocked: Professional Faker]
[Note: Your unconsciousness act is becoming disturbingly convincing]
Blake would have smiled if his face wasn't committed to slackness.
Outside, Aldric's voice rose in farewell. "Ferolina. May your hunt be successful."
"And may your prophet survive the journey," she replied. Blake couldn't see her face, but he heard the edge in her tone—sharp as a blade's whisper against leather. "I'll be watching for news from the capital. Very carefully."
A threat? A warning? Both?
The carriage rocked as someone climbed aboard. Heavy weight settling into the opposite seat with the creak of leather and armor. Blake cracked one eyelid microscopically—Aldric, removing his gauntlets, expression thoughtful and grim.
Then Pabel's scarred face appeared in the doorway. "May I ride inside? Keep watch over the young master?"
"If you prefer discomfort over fresh air, that's your choice," Aldric said. "But it's a long journey. Cramped quarters."
"I've ridden longer in worse conditions." Pabel climbed in, settling beside Blake's "unconscious" form with protective positioning. His hand rested briefly on Blake's shoulder—gentle, reassuring, the touch of someone who genuinely cared.
Blake's chest tightened with unexpected guilt. This man thinks he's protecting someone he's served for years. And I'm just... some truck accident victim wearing a stolen face.
The door slammed shut. Outside, a whip cracked. The carriage lurched forward with bone-jarring suddenness.
They were moving.
The estate gates groaned open one final time. Hoofbeats drummed against cobblestones, then transitioned to packed dirt as they left the grounds behind. The carriage swayed and bounced with the road's imperfections, wheels clattering over stones, suspension protesting every bump.
Blake maintained his unconscious act for another twenty minutes. Then thirty. The swaying motion, the cushioned seat, the accumulated exhaustion from days of terror—all conspired against him.
His breathing deepened genuinely. His muscles relaxed authentically. The fake unconsciousness transitioned seamlessly into real sleep.
And Blake, despite everything, despite the danger and suspicion and the journey into unknown fate, surrendered to desperately needed rest.
The journey stretched on for hours.
The carriage rolled through countryside Blake couldn't see—past farms and villages, through valleys and over hills. The sun arced across the sky, painting the interior with shifting shadows that crept across Blake's sleeping form.
Pabel dozed occasionally, jerking awake at every rough bump with hand flying to his sword. Aldric sat in contemplative silence, occasionally consulting maps or scribbling notes in a leather journal, his face carved from stone.
The convoy moved with military efficiency. Twenty knights rode in formation—ten ahead, ten behind, with scouts ranging further out to check for ambushes. They stopped once briefly to water the horses, but Blake slept through it, body claiming its due after being pushed beyond mortal limits.
As afternoon faded toward evening, the landscape grew wilder. Cultivated fields gave way to rough grassland. Villages became scarce. Trees clustered together more thickly, hinting at forest edges encroaching from the north.
The road itself grew more isolated—less traveled, less maintained. Ruts deepened. Stones became more frequent. The carriage's swaying intensified.
Night fell like a curtain dropping. The convoy didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Aldric's orders had been explicit—reach the capital by dawn for the Harvest Festival, no matter what.
Lanterns were lit and hung from the carriage corners, casting wavering golden light that pushed back darkness but couldn't banish it entirely. Beyond the lantern-glow, the night pressed close—thick and absolute, the kind of darkness that rural areas knew well.
Blake slept on, truly unconscious now, dreaming confused dreams where goddesses judged him and queens smiled and demon fragments coiled in his chest like sleeping serpents.
The forest loomed closer on both sides now. Trees like reaching hands. Shadows within shadows.
Pabel shifted uneasily, scarred face turned toward the window. "Chief Inquisitor... this area. Something feels wrong."
Aldric's eyes, which had been half-closed in meditation, snapped fully open. "Your instincts?"
"Thirty years soldiering teaches you when you're being watched." Pabel's hand closed around his sword hilt. "We're not alone out here."
Aldric leaned forward, calling to the driver. "Increase pace. I want—"
THOOM.
The sound hit like thunder compressed into physical force. The entire carriage JUMPED—all four wheels leaving the ground simultaneously. Blake's sleeping body launched upward, hit the ceiling, crashed back down onto the seat.
His eyes flew open, consciousness returning in a disoriented rush. What—where—?!
The carriage slammed back to earth violently. Wood splintered. An axle screamed. The entire vehicle tilted dangerously to one side before crashing back level with bone-rattling impact.
Horses shrieked in terror. Men shouted. Steel rang against steel.
Aldric was already moving—door flung open, body pouring out into chaos with weapon drawn. "DEFENSIVE FORMATION! PROTECT THE—"
His voice cut off mid-command.
Blake sat up, head spinning, ears ringing from the explosion. Pabel grabbed his shoulder, pushing him down. "Stay inside! Keep your head—"
Another explosion—closer this time. The left side of the carriage erupted in splinters. Pabel threw himself over Blake as wooden shrapnel sprayed through the interior like horizontal rain.
Then screaming began. Real screaming. The sound of men dying badly.
"No no no—" Blake's half-asleep mind struggled to catch up with reality. "What's happening?!"
Pabel's face was grim death. "We're under attack. Stay down!"
But Blake's hand was already reaching for the door handle. Some morbid instinct—the same impulse that makes people look at car crashes—compelled him to see.
He shoved the door open.
Hell greeted him.
The convoy had become a slaughterhouse. Bodies littered the road—knights in Aldric's colors, cut down where they'd ridden. The nearest corpse lay three feet from the carriage door, head separated completely from shoulders. Blood pooled black in the lantern light, still spreading, still warm.
Another body slumped against a wagon wheel—torso split from shoulder to hip, organs glistening wetly. The man's face was frozen in an expression of shock, like he'd died before pain could register.
A knight stumbled past Blake's limited view, clutching an arm that ended at the elbow. Blood fountained from the stump. The man's mouth opened in a scream Blake couldn't hear over the ringing in his ears. Then something struck him from behind—blade or spell—and he collapsed, twitching.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Steel on steel, impossibly fast. Blake's eyes tracked toward the sound and saw Aldric—a whirlwind of violence, his sword moving in arcs too quick to follow clearly. Bodies fell around him like wheat before a scythe. But even the Chief Inquisitor was being pushed back, step by step, by attackers Blake could barely see. Shadows that moved wrong. Figures in black that flowed like smoke.
More explosions—smaller ones now—erupted along the convoy's line. Fire bloomed in the darkness. A wagon went up in flames, silhouetting struggling figures against orange hellfire.
"Young master, close the door! CLOSE THE—"
Pabel's command died as a blade punched through the carriage roof directly above Blake's head. The steel was black, dripping something that hissed where it struck wood. Demonic corruption or poison or both.
Pabel yanked Blake backward as the blade withdrew. "We have to run! The carriage is a death trap!"
Blake's mind finally clicked into gear. His stats flashed across his vision—Strength 98, Agility 45. Better than before. Maybe enough to run. Maybe.
The system window appeared, pulsing urgent red.
[WARNING: High-Level Assassins Detected]
[WARNING: Black Mage Support Confirmed]
[EMERGENCY QUEST: SURVIVE]
[Reward: Continued Existence]
[Fail Condition: Do We Really Need To Spell This Out?]
Another scream cut short. Another body hit the ground with wet finality.
Blake looked at Pabel—scarred, loyal, already bleeding from a cut across his cheek—and made a decision.
"Which way do we run?"
Pabel's eyes held grim approval. "Forest. It's suicide, but it's better than staying here."
Through the open door, Blake watched another knight—young, barely older than him—take a throwing knife through the throat. The boy clutched at it uselessly, blood spraying between his fingers, before collapsing.
The Harvest Festival. The queen. The palace. The comfortable future Blake had imagined—all of it evaporated like morning mist.
This wasn't a story where the protagonist got rescued at the last second.
This was a massacre.
And he was in the middle of it.
"GO!" Pabel roared, shoving Blake toward the forest edge. "RUN!"
Blake stumbled out of the carriage. His feet hit the blood-slicked road. He nearly fell, caught himself, started moving—
Then he heard it.
A wet THUNK.
The sound of metal punching through meat and bone.
Blake turned.
Pabel stood three paces behind him, body rigid. A spear—massive, black iron, etched with symbols that hurt to look at—had pierced straight through his skull from behind. The point emerged from his open mouth, dripping.
Time slowed.
Pabel's single visible eye—the one not destroyed by the spear's passage—focused on Blake. In that eye: regret. Apology. A silent command to run.
Then blood. So much blood.
It erupted from Pabel's mouth around the spear, from his nose, from his ears. Arterial spray painting the night in black and red. The spear yanked backward with savage force, tearing free in a fountain of gore.
Pabel's body—headless for all practical purposes, the skull caved where the spear had exited—toppled forward.
Directly toward Blake.
The corpse hit the ground at Blake's feet. Blood splashed upward in a wave, drenching his legs, his chest, his face. Hot. Copper-tasting where it hit his lips. Thick.
Blake stood frozen.
His legs wouldn't move. Wouldn't obey the screaming commands from his brain to RUN, to FLEE, to DO SOMETHING.
He simply stood there, blood dripping from his hair, his face, pooling in his clothes.
His expression went blank. Empty. All emotion draining away like water through cracked earth.
Around him, the battle continued. Men died screaming. Steel clashed. Fire crackled.
But Blake saw none of it. Not really. He stared down at Pabel's ruined body, at the man who'd sworn to protect him, who'd actually cared, who'd died because Blake existed.
His knees hit the ground. No conscious decision. His body just... stopped supporting itself.
He knelt there in spreading blood, hands limp at his sides, face utterly blank.
In the distance—maybe twenty paces away, maybe a thousand, distance had lost meaning—Aldric fought desperately. His sword blazed with holy light, cutting through attackers with brutal efficiency. But three figures opposed him now, and even the Chief Inquisitor was flagging.
One figure towered above the others—bulky, massive, wearing black armor that seemed to devour light. A great axe in his hands, each swing powerful enough to crack stone.
To his left stood another—smaller in stature but no less deadly, moving with serpent-quick grace. A curved sword in each hand, blades singing their death-song as they wove patterns faster than thought.
The third wore identical armor to the first two, fighting Aldric directly, pushing him back step by grinding step. A mace swung in brutal arcs, each impact driving the Chief Inquisitor closer to defeat.
Professional. Coordinated. Executioners doing their work with practiced ease.
Blake watched it all from his knees.
Watched as another knight fell.
Watched as the fires consumed the wagons.
Watched as the blood pooling around him spread wider, darker, reflecting flames like a lake of liquid fire.
And felt absolutely nothing.
The system window appeared, flickering weakly.
[User Status: Severe Psychological Shock]
[Warning: Mental Break Detected]
[Emergency Protocol...]
[...]
[No Emergency Protocol Found For This]
Blake knelt in blood and watched.