Chapter 1: Chapter 1

The alley swallowed Kristos in shadow, the jagged stone walls pressing close, conspiring to trap him in their cold, unyielding embrace. What little light remained caught the harsh angles of his face, pale and almost bloodless, stretched taut over high cheekbones. The cold gnawed at him, biting through his heavy leather coat, seeping into the scarred skin beneath. Damp air clung to his skin, thick with mildew and sewer runoff, a nauseating blend sharpened by the faint, acrid tang of magical discharge. The cobblestones beneath him glistened black, slick under his boots. Each step was a risk.

He crouched low, weight forward, one hand steady against the wall. His weathered leather cloak dragged in the grime, sodden and heavy. Beneath it, the reinforced plates of his chest piece dug against his ribs. It was too much weight in a fight like this and too little cover in an alley like this. He adjusted, shifting his balance for a faster escape. Above, enchanted street lanterns flickered weakly, light stuttering in the darkness like a dying breath. Shadows twisted against the crumbling shanties, shifting unnaturally. Watching.

The Hollows devoured men like him. Spat them back out if they were lucky.

Kristos wasn’t lucky.

His fingers tightened around the blunderbuss, the rough grip worn smooth from years of use, the crude engravings along the barrel barely visible in the dim light. It was an ugly thing, heavy and brutal, stripped of any pretense of elegance. One shot. No second chances. The greatsword on his back, a trusted companion in open battle, was dead weight here. This was a job for precision: one pull of the trigger, one body on the ground.

Ahead, a hovel sagged under its own decay, its warped beams drowning in shadow. A dim orange glow pulsed weakly through the soot-streaked window, the last embers of a dying fire. Kristos adjusted the telescope in his hand, brass cold as he raised it to his eye. Inside, movement. A hunched figure by the hearth. And smaller shapes at the edges of the firelight.

Children.

His jaw tightened. His stance stiffened.

Wrong job. Bad odds. No choice.

He swallowed the knot in his gut, forced himself to focus. The stink of mildew and rot thickened here, but fennel and potato wove through it, a cruel contrast. A cruel memory. Warmth, a home, something lost.

He pushed it down. Irrelevant.

Kristos edged forward, back against the stone. The damp scraped cold against his cloak as he positioned himself at the hovel’s door. His grip adjusted. His stance shifted. He wasn’t leaving empty-handed.

The warped beams groaned above him. Old, rotting wood. Poor insulation. If he fired, the whole place would shake. Hesitate, and he'd be dead.

His fingers flexed against the weapon’s stock. The night was closing in behind him.

He stepped forward.

One shot. No mistakes.

The man inside looked up sharply, his gaunt face twisting with panic. The ladle in his hand clattered to the floor, its metallic ring swallowed by the crackling hearth. His breath stuttered. His trembling, uncertain hands lifted in a feeble barrier.

“Please,” he choked. His voice was raw. “I have children.”

Kristos stepped inside, slow and deliberate, the blunderbuss steady in his grip. His boots barely made a sound against the dirt floor, yet the weight of his presence filled the room. The fire cast flickering shadows across his face, sharp lines cutting through the dim light.

“You know why I’m here.”

The words were flat. Absolute.

The man’s knees buckled before he hit the floor. He didn’t even try to run. His hands lifted, fingers twitching in the firelight. A breath stuttered in his throat, broken, uneven.

“They need me. Please. You don’t have to do this.”

Kristos barely heard him.

There was movement in his periphery. Small. Quick.

A blur of red, a child’s tunic. A little girl, no more than five, rushed forward, slipping on the ash-streaked floor. She hit her father’s side with a soft thump, her small hands gripping at the loose fabric of his coat.

“Papa.”

The single word was barely more than a breath. A whimper that cut through the smoke, so fragile it seemed as though it would break.

Kristos didn’t move.

His gaze flicked to the boy, older but not by much. Maybe seven. Small, but unshaking.

The boy stepped forward, arms outstretched, a fragile shield against something he couldn’t stop. His legs locked, but his feet curled against the dirt, as if his body wanted to flee even as his heart refused. His lip trembled, but his feet held their ground.

“You leave him alone!”

His voice cracked, the weight of his own words almost too much.

The little girl’s knuckles went white where she gripped her father’s tunic, her tiny fingers twisted in the fabric. Tears welled in her round eyes, but she didn’t look away from Kristos. She hiccupped between sobs, her breath breaking into tiny, jagged gasps.

Kristos’ grip on the blunderbuss slackened.

The room was suffocating, drenched in the scent of smoke and desperation. The scent of charred wood lingered, acrid and thick, curling in his throat. But something else wove into it.

Sweet. Fragile. Impossible.

Wildflowers.

Not again. Not now.

Kristos exhaled sharply, his pulse pounding in his ears.

A soft breeze stirred the stagnant air, cool against his sweat-damp skin.

A soft one. Cool. Wrong.

It stirred the damp hair at his temple, sweeping against the sweat on his skin like a whisper of something that shouldn’t be there.

The little girl was still clinging to her father’s leg, her sobs breaking, but something had shifted.

Kristos stiffened. His breath shallowed, his grip tightening before it loosened. The sounds of the hovel: the fire’s brittle crackle, the ragged breathing of the man before him, the child’s stifled sobs; faded, distant, muffled beneath the golden warmth spilling across his vision.

Sunlight.

It bled in through the cracks of the hovel’s walls, turning the suffocating dark into something soft, radiant, warm. The rough floor beneath his boots became grass, damp with morning dew. The musty scent of sweat and unwashed cloth unraveled, replaced by earth, blossoms, the unmistakable fragrance of home.

Somewhere beyond the golden light, someone laughed; a sound so warm, so whole that something inside him splintered.

Light and fleeting, just beyond him, just out of reach.

Kristos blinked. His vision swam, the edges of the room flickering.

Kristos’ fingers twitched on the blunderbuss. A muscle jumped in his jaw. Sunlight streamed through where there should have been rafters. Where there should have been smoke.

The hovel was gone.

Instead, grass. Crushed beneath running feet. A field stretching wide under an open sky.

Kristos staggered back, the thick soles of his boots grinding against dirt and splintered wood. For a single second, it was not the ruined house beneath him.

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It was earth. Flowers.

No.

Kristos locked his jaw. He was on a job. He was in a hovel. The floor beneath his boots was dirt and rotting wood.

Not grass. Not damp with morning dew.

His heart kicked against his ribs, rattling against the reinforced leather cinched tight across his chest, too fast and too sharp.

He was losing.

The golden warmth bled through the cracks in the walls. Through the seams of his mind.

His grip on the blunderbuss slackened further.

He had no name for this feeling. Dread. Longing. Something older than either.

Kristos clenched his teeth, forcing himself to breathe.

This isn’t real.

His fingers trembled on the weapon. His breath shuddered.

But the musty scent of sweat and unwashed cloth unraveled into something softer.

Home.

Golden light spilled across an open field, warm and radiant. The air was thick with earth and blossoms, clinging to his skin, filling his lungs with something achingly familiar. A woman’s laughter rang clear, bright and unburdened. She turned, her smile soft and luminous, and held a child against her chest.

Kristos took a breath, deep and shaking. His hands, always so steady, faltered. The blunderbuss lowered, forgotten, as warmth bled into his chest, too much and too soft. His lips parted, forming words he didn’t remember choosing, a question shaped by something deep and aching.

“Who…?”

Kristos took a step forward. His fingers flexed, reaching not out of instinct, but need.

She turned to him. And smiled.

A smile so tender, so luminous, the sunlight catching in the strands of her hair, the child pressed against her chest giggling, small fingers curling in her tunic.

The ache in Kristos’ chest ripped open. The blunderbuss fell from his grip. His breath hitched as the illusion shivered. The warmth twisted, the light curdling as shadows bled into the edges of the field. The scent of wildflowers soured, overripe, wrong. The woman’s smile flickered, confusion knitting across her brow, the child’s laughter fading into an uncertain whimper.

The shadows thickened.

Kristos blinked, the golden light flickering, sputtering like a dying flame. His stomach lurched, a sickening pull in his gut as the field warped, not dissolving but folding in on itself. The sunlight dimmed, dark veins of decay creeping through the grass beneath his boots.

The woman’s arms tightened around the child.

The laughter fractured into a scream.

He didn’t remember stepping forward.

His fingers twitched. He expected the weight of the blunderbuss, but a blade was in his palm instead.

He didn't remember reaching for it.

It gleamed, slick and wet, sinking into something warm and alive. No. Someone. The woman. Her scream tore through the air, raw and guttural. Her hands clawed at him, scrambling, desperate, her nails raking his arms, his chest. Her body arched as the blade cut deeper, the flesh parting like wet parchment. The smell of blood thickened, suffocating, cloying.

He wanted to stop.

He couldn’t.

His fingers twisted, driving the steel upward. He felt the resistance: muscle tearing, sinew snapping, bones shifting apart like splintered wood. A hot, wet eruption painted his chest, the copper tang filling his mouth as if he had breathed it in. She convulsed, her entrails unraveling in slick, glistening coils, the mass of them spilling in a thick, pulsing heap at their feet.

Somewhere distant, something was screaming.

The sound of her pain folded into something else. A gurgling, wheezing, bubbling wetness. Her hands spasmed, scrabbling at her own insides, fingers slipping over raw, exposed tissue as though trying to gather them back.

Kristos staggered. Or had he?

The field rippled, the golden light leeching from the sky, twisting into a sickly, gray rot. The scent of blood grew heavier, richer, until it filled his lungs with every breath. His hands were red, dripping, still gripping the dagger, but when had he drawn his greatsword?

The weapon was in his grip. He hadn’t reached for it. But it was there, solid and real, its jagged edge glinting in the dim, distorted light.

The woman turned, trying to flee, but her movements were broken, stumbling, useless. She was already dead. She just didn’t know it yet.

Kristos swung.

The greatsword cleaved through her from shoulder to hip in a single, brutal stroke. Bone crunched, flesh peeled apart, her severed arm twisting through the air before landing with a wet slap. Her torso twisted unnaturally as her body separated, her upper half peeling from the lower as though she had been unstitched. Her insides collapsed out of her in a grotesque waterfall of meat and viscera, splattering the already-drenched earth.

Her remains crumpled into themselves. The ruin of her body folded inward, sinking into the blood-soaked ground.

And then.

The child screamed.

A sound so sharp it split through him, dragging jagged claws through his mind.

Kristos flinched. His breath stuttered, chest seizing like something inside him had caved in. The golden field was gone entirely. The sky, the horizon, the light were devoured by something vast, shadowed, endless. There was no warmth now.

Only the screaming.

The boy stumbled backward, his small hands clawing at the blood-slick earth, but there was nowhere to go. His feet slipped in the gore, his fragile frame trembling as he tried to push himself away.

Kristos saw him. Saw him.

Wide eyes. Tear-streaked cheeks.

The trembling, breathless sobs, the pleading, cracked and broken.

"Please… I’ll be good… please…"

Kristos’ chest clenched. The sound of those words; they shouldn’t have felt familiar. But they did.

A second passed. Maybe less.

The sword was already swinging.

A lazy arc. Casual. Effortless.

The steel met fragile bone with catastrophic force.

The child’s skull shattered like brittle glass, a wet, sickening crunch that vibrated through Kristos’ teeth. Blood and brain matter burst outward, fragments of bone embedding themselves in the crimson-streaked earth. The boy’s torso caved in, ribs splintering, jutting outward like grotesque claws.

What remained of him was a pulped ruin, sprawled across the ground in a mangled, unrecognizable mosaic of flesh.

The field flickered.

No. Dissolved.

The blood remained.

Kristos’ breath rasped, hollow and shaking.

His hands were trembling. They had been steady before.

Hadn’t.

The golden field had vanished entirely, consumed by the blood-soaked aftermath. Every trace of beauty was obliterated, replaced by the overwhelming stench of iron and decay.

Blood spilled across the vision, dark and vivid, soaking the earth as shadows consumed everything. The woman’s broken form lay at the center of it all, her wide, unseeing eyes fixed on the boy. The scent of iron was thick enough to choke on.

The screaming wouldn’t stop.

It echoed, overlapping, a cacophony of voices blending into a singular, endless wail. The woman. The child. The man in the hovel. The ones from before. All of them.

Kristos staggered, breath coming in ragged bursts. The warmth of the sun was gone, the grass beneath him slick with something that wasn’t there before.

The light dissolved around him.

And then.

The present crashed back into focus. The rancid stench of the hovel surged in, cloying, putrid. The oppressive heat pressed against his reinforced coat, the edges curling as the fire swallowed its seams. The walls, damp and peeling, were wrong, were here.

The screams weren’t just in his head.

Children’s cries split the air, piercing and frantic. Kristos’ hands trembled on the weapon.

The target moved.

A panicked, desperate scrabble, tearing through the silence like the crack of splintering bone.

Kristos exhaled, his hands trembled on his blunderbuss. But it wasn’t relief. He watched as the man lunged for the cauldron, the boiling stew sloshing over its edges as he swung it wide. The scalding liquid struck Kristos.

Pain.

The boiling liquid struck him, hissing as it splattered against the thick leather of his coat, seeping through in scalding streaks. Delayed awareness settled in. The heat hit first, spreading across his chest in a sensation that should have sent him reeling, but his body only registered it in pieces. A hiss of flesh, the sharp burn of sweat cutting through raw skin, the metallic jolt of his pulse stuttering in his ears. He inhaled through clenched teeth, but the pain did not belong to him yet. Not fully.

His fingers twitched, reacted, squeezed.

The blunderbuss fired.