The blood on Atlas’s hand had begun to dry.
But it hadn’t cooled.
It clung to his skin with a heat that didn’t belong to the jungle. Not physical. Not natural. mory heat. Soul heat. The kind of warmth that left burns on the inside of your ribs, even when your body didn’t scar.
Atlas flexed his fingers slowly.
Each joint cracked with the precision of a knife being unsheathed. His palm ached—not from pain, but from use. From the motion of ripping hearts free of their cage. From the silence that ca after.
He closed his eyes.
Just for a mont.
A breath.
Not to grieve. Not to pray.
To forget.
To forget the scream. The look in their eyes as the light went out. The reflexive flinch just before steel pierced skin. The way the said captain had gasped—not in pain, but in disbelief.
As if dying at the hands of a boy like him... was unthinkable.
His breath left through his nose, sharp and controlled.
The air stank of copper and burning roots. The jungle floor was scorched where his feet had stood. Charred patches of moss stead softly. Even the insects had gone still.
When he opened his eyes again, the knights were on their knees.
Weapons abandoned. Spines bent. Heads bowed low to the blood-soaked soil.
They were trembling.
One of them—barely a man, still soft around the jaw—stamred through a pale face. "W-We’re sorry, Your Highness! We didn’t an—didn’t know! That piece of shit captain and Hogs—only them! The rest of us... we never—!"
Another knelt beside him, voice sharp with terror. "We surrender! We surrender! Hostage, prisoner, your loyal servant, anything! Please—!"
The pleas blended together. A symphony of cowardice. The music of n who had believed themselves hunters until they t the wolf. Until they saw what the jungle had given birth to.
Atlas said nothing.
His Truth Eyes were still active. The glow had dimd to a soft simr, but he didn’t need brightness to see what mattered.
The red had bled into yellow and yellow to green.
Fear.
Desperation.
Their auras shook with guilt—not from sin, but from proximity to punishnt. So of them hadn’t even fought. That didn’t matter. They were part of the sword Elizabeth had raised. Part of the hand she extended to seize him.
He moved forward.
A single, slow step.
The sound of his boot pressing into the jungle floor was deafening in its silence. Moss gave way beneath him. A root snapped like a bone.
"...Disappointing," he said softly.
A whisper. A judgnt.
They froze.
"These are the knights of the Empire?" he asked, each word dipped in venom. "These are Elizabeth’s blades? You serve her like this?"
He walked down their line as if inspecting livestock. No rcy in his stride. No pity in his breath.
"I know your type," he muttered. "Raised in courts and castles. Swordplay before breakfast. Loyalty drilled into you like prayer."
He stopped before the youngest, who dared to look up.
"...Then why didn’t any of you stop them?"
The boy’s lip quivered.
"I—I..."
"You watched," Atlas said. "While they tried to put chains around my throat."
He crouched down.
"Did you laugh, too?"
The knight opened his mouth.
Closed it.
No words ca.
Atlas’s voice dropped lower.
"You all deserve death a thousand tis...."
They began to weep.
Grown n. Trained killers. Crying like boys caught stealing bread.
One of them fell flat, pressing his face to the dirt in a half-prayer. "We didn’t an it—we didn’t think—Your Highness, please, I swear on my na, I have a family—!"
Atlas stood tall again.
He looked at his hand.
Still wet. Still trembling.
He rembered the captain’s sneer. The threat to feed his face to "Hogs." He rembered Eli’s silence. The one thing louder than any blade.
’She would’ve let them take ,’ he thought bitterly.
’She might still.’
The anger returned then. Not a blaze. Not a scream.
Sothing colder.
Quieter.
Like frost forming inside the lungs.
He exhaled.
And then he struck.
The jungle was still. Not the stillness of peace, but the breathless pause of sothing wounded—sothing waiting for the blood to dry before naming the corpse.
Atlas stood among the ruins of n.
Their bodies twitched in the final spasms of nerve and fear, but their minds were already gone. What remained was red and broken—limbs sprawled like discarded armor, faces locked in surprise or horror.
He should’ve looked away.
But he didn’t.
He watched.
He watched as the blood soaked into the earth, and the earth drank it.
The soil around his boots turned black. Not just from saturation, but from mory. From aning.
This was where it changed.
This was where rcy died.
The wind, slow and uncertain, brushed through the canopy like a hand running through funeral cloth.
Behind him, Veil said nothing.
Loki had long stopped smirking.
They watched from a distance now—watching him the way one might watch a storm realize it could move.
Atlas crouched, picking up a helt from one of the fallen. His fingers ran along the edge where the tal had cracked from impact.
The knight it belonged to had tried to bow.
Had begged.
Had said he had a family waiting beyond the northern gate.
And still...
Still, Atlas had ended him like the others.
’This is what power looks like,’ he thought. ’Not the screaming. Not the fire. But the silence afterward. The acceptance.’
His fingers tightened around the helt.
Then he stood and hurled it into the trees with a growl. It spun through the air like a decapitated promise, clanging once against bark before disappearing into the brush.
"Atlas," Veil said gently.
He didn’t turn.
"I let one live," Atlas muttered. "The girl. She’ll speak. She’ll scream. They’ll know."
Veil nodded. "Good. Let them know."
Atlas’s breath ca ragged. He rubbed a streak of blood across his brow without noticing.
"I didn’t hesitate," he said. "Not even once."
"That’s what frightened them."
"I thought I would feel sothing. Like I crossed a line."
"You did."
Atlas turned then, slowly.
Veil t his gaze.
"But," the void-born added, "so lines were drawn to be crossed."
Loki chid in, arms crossed, his tone weirdly analytical. "You didn’t kill out of panic. Or vengeance. You did it with precision. Purpose."
He tilted his head, as if inspecting a painting. "I’ve seen kings slaughter cities with more ss than that."
"Are you complinting ?" Atlas asked, voice hoarse.
Loki shrugged. "I’m observing you. Admiring the pattern. The fracture. You’re dangerous, Atlas. And that ans you’re... interesting."
He smiled again, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
"More than that, though," he added, "you’re... beginning."
Atlas blinked.
"What?"
Loki walked forward, stepping over the corpses without looking down.
"You’re not at your peak. You’re at your awakening. You’re not done breaking. Not yet. The kind of monster the world shapes in secret. And soon..."
He paused beside him, shoulder to shoulder.
"...soon you’ll decide if that monster serves, or rules."
Atlas didn’t answer.
But his silence was heavy. Sharp. Like the mont before a verdict.
She was the only one left.
The girl.
A courier by the look of her, no older than Atlas had been when this entire cursed chain began. No sword at her hip. No blood on her gloves. Her armor was ceremonial—painted gold edges, soft leather beneath the chestplate, a sash of white folded carefully over her shoulder.
She hadn’t begged.
Not yet.
She hadn’t scread.
Not even now.
Just knelt, shaking, eyes wide—watching her comrades die one by one, her mouth sealed by fear and a silence she didn’t dare break.
Atlas stood before her, the blood still dripping from his fingers. A red trail marked his passage—sars on bark, drops soaking into roots, handprints on the throats of the fallen.
The silence stretched.
Thicker now. Denser.
The jungle itself seed to lean in, unwilling to interrupt the final page of this massacre.
Her shoulders trembled.
He saw it. Saw the breath she held—too long, too tight—her lips trembling from the effort to remain still.
Atlas crouched slowly, blood-wet boots creaking softly.
The motion made her flinch, but she didn’t run. Couldn’t.
He reached out.
Not violently. Not quickly.
His hand—trembling for the first ti—pressed gently to her face. Just two fingers. One sared crimson along her cheek. The other brushed a single tear from her eye.
The red and the clear ran together.
"...You didn’t fight," Atlas said quietly.
She nodded, quickly, too fast.
"You were only supposed to deliver sothing, weren’t you?"
Another nod. More frantic.
A whisper left her lips. "S-scout report... I wasn’t— I didn’t—"
Atlas closed his eyes.
He saw Eli again.
Not in armor. Not holding a spear.
Just Eli.
Bleeding. Afraid. Still reaching for him.
And then... turning away.
His voice was lower now. Rougher.
"If you reach the Empire... tell them."
The girl froze. Her breathing paused.
"Tell them they didn’t just awaken Berkimhum."
He opened his eyes, the golden shine within them muted now. Burned lower, like a fire starving on ash.
"Tell them they awakened a monster."
He stepped back.
She didn’t move.
Not until he turned.
Then she ran.
Ran so hard and so fast it looked like her body might tear itself apart.
But Atlas let her go.
He didn’t chase.
He just... stood there.
Veil approached him silently, his long shadow flickering like fla in reverse. Even he kept a distance—sensing sothing sacred in the air, or maybe sothing profane.
"She’ll reach them," Veil said softly.
"She’s ant to," Atlas replied.
Veil studied him.
"The others...?"
"Gone," Atlas answered.
A pause.
"Were they necessary?"
Atlas’s jaw clenched.
"I don’t know."
Truth.
He didn’t.
Because part of him still scread that he’d gone too far. That so of them would’ve surrendered. That so of them didn’t deserve to die the way they did—begging, clawing, choking on the blood of their friends.
But another part—the part that had stood before the Guide and survived—knew that rcy was a luxury of safety. That if he’d hesitated, they might have bound him. Dragged him back in chains. Torn him from this soil before he could even warn the people he swore to protect.
He couldn’t take that chance.
Not anymore.
Not with Eli choosing war.
Not with sleep dead and sothing worse replacing it.
So, instead of answering, he asked:
"Would you have shown them rcy?"
Veil was silent for a mont.
Then:
"No."
"Then we understand each other."
Another silence passed. One deeper. Heavier.
The kind that settles in blood-drenched roots.
Loki returned then—shirtless still, twigs in his hair, so jungle fruit in hand.
"Did I miss sothing important?" he asked, mouth full. "Or was this more of a ’kill first, angst later’ kind of mont?"
Veil groaned.
Atlas just turned to face him.
"There’s a ssage heading for the Empire," he said. "They’ll know I’m alive. They’ll know... War."
Loki whistled. "Oh. So we’re skipping diplomacy and going straight to murder-declarations. I like that."
He took a bite of fruit. Spat out the seed. "So. Where to now, Captain Slaughter?"
Atlas turned away.
He looked toward the east—toward where the sky curved in gentle blueness and where the land rose into high ridges and the first old roads of Berkimhum shimred faintly beyond the treeline.
"There’s still a kingdom to warn," he said. "Still a throne to shatter. Still a people waiting to learn that the Dreaming is dead, and reality has fangs."
He looked over his shoulder.
At Loki. At Veil.
At the blood.
"I didn’t start this war," he said.
"But I will end it."
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