The forest did not care who I was or what I carried. It only knew that night was coming.
I walked until the light thinned between the trees, searching for a place where the ground was dry enough to forgive sleep. Tomorrow would not. Tomorrow demanded a duke—Newcastle's, to be precise—and men like him did not die quietly. Contracts never did.
I found the campsite by accident. A clearing, barely disturbed, fire long dead. Someone had been careful here. That should have been my warning.
I would have taken my armor off if I could. People relax when they see skin, when they can map a face to a threat. But the armor did not come off anymore. It hadn't for a long time. It pressed against me like a second spine, iron hugging bone, joints grinding softly when I moved. Not restraining—claiming.
Impenetrable plates sealed my body. My fingers ended in metal claws, articulated and precise. A red cloth fell from the back of my head, brushing my neck like a reminder. Across my eyes, a single horizontal slit glowed red, unblinking. People liked to say it made me look like a demon.
They never asked what it felt like.
The armor was heavy. Not in weight alone, but in intention. Carrying it felt like agreeing to something without remembering when I'd said yes. Still, I lay down in the tent. Sleep came reluctantly, as it always did—thin, shallow, useful.
Voices woke me.
Footsteps. Steel shifting. A presence that knew how to stand like a threat.
The tent flap opened, and the man saw me.
He didn't speak.
That told me enough.
Mercenaries are not soldiers. Soldiers wait for orders. Mercenaries wait for problems. We exist where law thins and necessity thickens. Protectors, they call themselves now. It sounds cleaner that way.
The man attacked immediately.
Steel sang. His blade came down hard, practiced, meant to kill or be killed. I raised my hands, palms open near my head, stepping back, letting the sword pass where my neck had been.
"Stop," I said.
He didn't.
I dodged again. Then again. Each strike was clean, desperate. He wasn't afraid yet—just convinced. That belief made him dangerous.
"I don't want this," I said.
The words felt dishonest the moment they left me.
He pressed harder. I felt the forest recoil around us, branches trembling, birds scattering. The armor absorbed what little he managed to land, iron answering iron without complaint.
Eventually, exhaustion arrived. Not his. Mine.
There's a particular kind of tiredness that comes from restraint. From choosing not to end something that would be easier finished.
"Fuck it," I muttered.
I moved.
One sweep took his leg out from under him. He fell, surprised, and I caught him midair by the collar. The motion was precise, almost gentle. His weight meant nothing.
Up close, I could see his eyes now. Not rage. Not faith.
Fear.
"Just…" I said, holding him there, "…leave."
For a moment, I thought he might argue. Mercenaries sometimes do. Pride, or doctrine, or the lie that dying for something gives it meaning.
Then he nodded.
I let go.
He ran without looking back.
I stood there for a long time after, listening to the forest settle again. The campsite was ruined now. Even untouched places remember violence.
Tomorrow, I would kill a duke because the world had decided he was a problem too large to ignore. Tonight, I had spared a man because I was tired of being useful.
I didn't know which choice would cost more.
Sleep did not return.
---
By morning, my body felt like a bear that had forgotten how to sleep. Heavy. Irritable. Still dangerous.
It didn't matter. Today was fixed.
If the Duke of Newcastle lived past sunset, the war between Newcastle and Neria would not end—it would stretch. Prolong. Mature. Thousands more would die slowly instead of quickly. Killing a duke of his caliber at a moment like this would shorten the conflict. Neria would be blamed. They always were. The math had already been done.
Azathoth had told me this.
Not with words.
The armor never spoke. It didn't need to. It pressed truths into me the way gravity presses weight—inevitable, distorted, and always tilted toward necessity. It never lied. It simply omitted anything comforting.
By the time I reached Newcastle, the city was already awake, pretending it wasn't holding its breath. Markets opened. Guards changed shifts. The duke went about his morning unaware that history had decided to correct itself through his absence.
I wasn't eager.
That worried me.
I had worked for Azathoth for decades. Long enough that the distinction between servitude and habit had dissolved. I was never chained. Never threatened. I was given choices—always framed as outcomes. Act, and fewer die. Refuse, and more will. Freedom, they called it.
I wondered, briefly, if this was free will at all—or merely obedience dressed up as inevitability.
The armor answered.
If I didn't kill the duke, Azathoth would.
That was the truth it offered me. Twisted, but accurate.
I sighed.
The kill was clean. It always was. A man like the duke does not die screaming. He dies confused, reaching for relevance one last time. I left before the echo could settle.
By dusk, I returned to the Chambers of the Lost.
Hell did not look like fire. It looked like space given up on pretending to care.
I knelt.
"Master," I said.
Azathoth laughed.
It wasn't cruel. It wasn't kind. It was the laughter of someone enjoying a joke too large to explain. He congratulated me—said the duke's death would spare lives that were not meant to be destroyed just yet.
I thanked him. Reflexively.
Then he looked at me the way one does when something familiar starts to misalign.
"You're troubled," he said.
"I need time," I replied. "A few days. To reflect."
I hesitated.
"I want to retire."
Azathoth laughed again, louder this time.
"You can't retire," he said. "Your hands are soaked in innocent blood. Your eyes are dead—colder than icicles in subzero dark."
He wasn't mocking me. He was stating an inventory.
I agreed. There was nothing to dispute.
Still, I insisted. Loyalty counted for something. Decades of obedience should at least buy silence.
Azathoth considered this.
Time behaved strangely around him. Not slower—less interested.
Then he nodded, as if indulging a thought that had amused him long before I spoke.
"Very well," he said. "Wait."
That was all.
No terms. No instructions. No illusion of negotiation.
I frowned. "Wait for what?"
He leaned back, folding something like arms, eyes alight with private calculation.
"For necessity," he said. "It will find you. It always does."
The armor tightened. Not painfully. Purposefully.
A pressure settled behind my eyes, the familiar sensation of truth aligning itself without explanation. Something had begun. I could feel it the way one feels a storm before the sky agrees.
Azathoth watched my reaction with interest.
"Oh," he added, almost as an afterthought, "one indulgence."
He raised a finger.
"You may kill seven times."
I looked up.
"Seven," he repeated. "Across whatever comes next. No more."
I searched for clarification. None came.
"And if I don't?" I asked.
He smiled.
"If you kill past that fate will collect sooner than you thought."
I understood then—not fully, but enough—that the armor would decide when killing was permitted. Not commanded. Permitted. As if violence itself had become a limited currency.
Azathoth stood, already losing interest.
"You wanted freedom," he said. "This is what it feels like before you name it."
Something shifted inside me.
Then—without ceremony, without warning—he reached out and returned something I had forgotten how to miss.
Emotion.
It did not arrive gently.
It flooded.
Regret came first. Then fear. Then a sharp, unfamiliar ache behind my ribs that I realized—too late—was relief. My breath stuttered. My hands trembled, metal fingers twitching as sensation bled into places long abandoned.
I staggered.
Five decades of silence collapsed at once.
Azathoth observed like a scholar watching an experiment destabilize.
"So you'll feel it," he said. "That's important."
"For what?" I asked, voice unsteady.
"For when you decide," he replied.
Decide what, he did not say.
I turned to leave.
Behind me, his voice followed—casual, almost kind.
"The past always comes back," Azathoth said. "Not to punish you."
I paused.
"To collect."
The armor did not contradict him.
As I left the Chambers of the Lost, I understood one thing with uncomfortable clarity:
I had not been released.
I had been set in motion.
Whatever awaited me would not ask who I was, or what I wanted.
Only what I was willing to spend.