The horses pulled up hard.
The sound of hooves grinding against stone filled the road, and then silence swallowed everything else. Not the comfortable kind. The kind that pressed down on your chest and made you want to move but your legs forgot how.
Every bystander that had still been lingering took that silence as their signal. They backed away fast, pressing into walls, ducking behind corners. Shop doors clicked shut one by one down the street. Locks turned. Faces appeared at gaps in wooden shutters, eyes wide, peering out at the road.
Because everyone recognized the man at the front.
A captain. Royal Guard, one of the branch units, People in this city knew the crest on his chest the sa way they knew the color of fire. And just like fire, nothing good followed when a captain showed up personally.
The captain sat on his horse and looked down at Ken.
Ken looked back up at him.
One of the riders nudged his horse forward and leaned toward the captain, lowering his voice. "Boss. The description we were given, red hair, red eyes. This kid fits it exactly."
The captain’s brow went up. Just slightly. He looked at Ken again, really looked this ti, studying him the way soone studies a thing that surprised them. A kid. That was what had put his n on the ground. A kid standing in the middle of the road like he owned it, one hand on a sword, the other arm sleeved in a gauntlet that caught the light wrong, like it was made of sothing that didn’t belong in this world.
He ca down from the horse.
His n followed. Boots hit the ground in sequence. More than ten of them fanning out behind their captain, hands moving to weapons, postures shifting into sothing ready.
The captain walked forward and stopped a comfortable distance from Ken. He looked him over one more ti. Then he asked, "Are you the one that got into a fight with my n?"
Ken looked at him.
"To call it a fight would be generous," Ken said. His voice was flat. Unhurried. The kind of tone that didn’t reach for effect because it didn’t need to. "It was more of a beating. For wild kids who didn’t know how to act themselves."
The captain’s face twitched.
A small thing. Just at the corner of his mouth. But the n behind him caught it, and the air between everyone got a degree colder.
"I’ll take that as a yes," the captain said. He stepped back. His eyes didn’t leave Ken. "Grab him." His voice lifted, carrying across the empty road to every watching eye and listening ear pressed against shutters and walls. "We’ll make sure everyone here sees what happens when you put your hands on soone from my branch. This kid becos an example today."
The n moved.
Ken’s grip tightened on his sword.
They ca in fast, not sloppy, these were trained n, and they moved like it. The first two closed the distance with swords already drawn and the third ca wide to cut off any attempt to retreat.
Ken didn’t retreat.
He stepped forward to et the first one, slipped inside the swing, and drove his elbow hard into the man’s jaw. The guard’s head snapped sideways. Ken took his sword hand on the way down and redirected it into the path of the second attacker, forcing them to break their montum and adjust.
That half-second was enough.
His blade ca up and he cracked the flat of it across the second guard’s temple. The man went sideways.
The third ca from the right. Ken raised his left arm on instinct and the gauntlet humd alive. The golden geotric patterns blazed into existence across his forearm and the magical circle snapped open in front of him like a wall made of light. The guard’s sword hit it and the impact rang out like a bell, the force pushed back against the attacker and sent him stumbling.
Ken stared at his own arm for half a second.
Then he felt the grin pulling at the corner of his mouth and let it.
More of them ca. The captain had stopped giving orders and was watching, arms folded, jaw tight, because what was happening in front of him was not what was supposed to happen. His n were trained. His n had numbers. This was supposed to take thirty seconds.
It wasn’t taking thirty seconds.
Ken moved through them with a rhythm that built on itself. Sword in the right hand, gauntlet on the left, the shield flickering in and out as he raised it to catch blows he didn’t want to take, dropping it just as fast to free his arm for strikes. He was reading them. Watching the telegraphing in their shoulders before the swing ca. Cutting angles before they could close.
But there were many of them, and they weren’t stopping.
A blade caught him across the side. Not deep, but real. He felt the sting of it and the warmth of blood against his shirt.
Another got through when he overcommitted on a strike and left his shoulder open. The guard’s poml cracked him there and his arm went numb for a mont.
He rolled away, reset his footing, and felt the irritation rise in his chest sharp and fast.
He looked at the blood on his side. Looked at the guards pressing in again.
His pride felt like a bruise.
These were not strong n. He had felt stronger things. He had fought worse. And yet they had touched him, they had actually drawn blood, and that sat wrong in a way that went beyond pain. It stung sowhere deeper, sowhere that his pride lived, and his pride was not a forgiving tenant.
Fine.
He raised the gauntlet and poured mana into it hard, more than he had before. The geotric patterns flared bright. The shield circle expanded, bigger than it had gone so far, and then sothing new happened that he hadn’t done yet.
He felt it. The way the mana moved inside it. The tension in it. Like a coil wound too tight.
He swung his arm.
The shield launched off his forearm like sothing thrown, a disc of blazing golden light that scread across the road and detonated against the cluster of guards in front of him. The blast ripped through the formation. n flew. Stone cracked where the impact hit the ground. Two guards smashed into the wall of a closed shop and slid down it. Three more were thrown flat onto their backs.
The road went quiet again.
Ken lowered his arm. The gauntlet was still humming, dim now, the patterns cycling slowly like embers after a fire. He could feel his mana sitting lower than it had been. He drew a breath.
Around him, the guards were down. Not all dead, he had not killed them, but none of them were getting up quickly. Groans carried across the stone. A sword lay abandoned at odd angles. The ones still conscious were not trying to stand.
Ken looked at the blood soaking his shirt at the side. Touched it once. Looked at the bruise forming at his shoulder.
His tongue clicked against his teeth.
He looked at all of them on the ground and the irritation sat heavy in his chest. These people had touched him. Weak n with numbers and nerve and nothing else, and they had still managed to leave marks on him. His pride couldn’t sit with that quietly. It just couldn’t.
He exhaled through his nose.
Then he raised his head.
The captain was still standing exactly where he had been. Arms no longer folded. His expression was sothing Ken hadn’t seen on him yet, sothing that lived between stunned and calculating, the look of a man revising his understanding of a situation in real ti.
Every face still peeking through shop shutters on the road was absolutely still.
Ken turned to face the captain fully.
He leveled his sword, pointing it straight at him.
"Now," Ken said. "Your turn."
The captain frowned deeply and pulled his sword, lightning erupted from the blade and began striking the floor.
"Seems you have so level of skill, but I have sadly have enough and I am enrage, you will not disrespect ."
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