Chapter 78 — What Fear Taught
Consciousness returned in fragments.
First came the sound — wind between broken planks, the creaking of wood, distant voices arriving muffled as if the world had placed cotton between itself and Kuto.
Then smell — ashes. Damp earth. And dried blood that no longer belonged to anyone in particular but to everyone at once, soaked into everything.
Then the pain.
Nape of the neck. Shoulders. The specific weight of a body that had been placed on the ground by external force rather than its own decision. His head throbbed in a rhythm that asked for no permission.
Kuto opened his eyes.
The world spun for a second — rooftops broken at wrong angles, the light of early dawn that was neither day nor night, the center of the village of Zef where, hours earlier, colored lanterns had created a ceiling of light and people holding hands had sung for the dead.
He tried to move.
Nothing.
Mana chains covered his entire body — not metal, but energy solidified into restraints, each bundle intertwined with the next with a precision that was not craftsmanship but engineering. The runes pulsed with a soft heat that was worse than pain because it was comfort, the magic simulating a sensation of normalcy while making any movement impossible.
Military. Specialized. Not the work of an adventurer or field mage — the work of a system developed specifically to restrain people who know how to escape.
Kuto remained motionless.
He assessed.
*Mana chains. Total restraint but no active pain — they want me functional. Inhibition runes on the right and left shoulders — the source is there. Magic of this quality needs an active mage to maintain it or a nearby physical anchor. Find the anchor.*
A shadow moved.
Kuto raised his eyes.
---
The man standing before him had the kind of appearance that made an impression before the person even realized it had been crafted.
Twenty-eight years old. Maybe less — or the specific coldness of someone who had grown up in an environment that didn't tolerate expression made his age difficult to read. Blond hair with that grooming that wasn't natural but had been practiced so thoroughly it had become indistinguishable from natural. Fair skin. Dark eyes with that specific gleam of satisfaction that needed no external cause because it came from within — from someone who saw the world as an extension of himself and found pleasure in confirming he was right.
His clothing was of high royalty but worn with the casualness of someone who didn't need clothes to communicate authority because the authority was already present without them. The emblem on his chest — an inverted sun — was a symbol Kuto didn't recognize, but the system registered it with the note *origin: Kingdom of Killvis.*
The man opened a smile.
The kind of smile only dangerous men can produce — completely calm, completely calculated, completely devoid of the nervousness normal smiles carry.
"Hello, Kuto," the voice came out smooth, almost friendly. "Or should I say… King of Zordis."
Kuto didn't answer.
His eyes moved to the left.
And his stomach sank with that specific feeling of a suspicion being confirmed — not surprise, but something that still hurt.
Garrett stood six meters away. Cassandra beside him, staff held close to her body, eyes fixed somewhere between the ground and nothing in particular. Marcus remained motionless with the rigidity of someone containing something that wasn't allowed any expression.
The three avoided looking directly at Kuto.
"I knew it," Kuto said, his voice completely flat. Without accusation — only acknowledgment, the recording of a fact that had been under construction since the gate of Zordis. "I knew there was no way to trust you."
The man laughed.
Low. Brief. The laugh of someone who had found the answer exactly where he expected it.
"Do you know who I am?" he asked, tilting his head.
"I don't know you." Kuto kept his eyes cold. "And I don't care to know."
Something changed in the man's face.
The smoothness remained, but beneath it an edge appeared — not exactly anger, but the reaction of a person unaccustomed to indifference and processing it as an offense.
"I am Pendris," the name came out with the weight it carried for the one saying it, but not for the one hearing it for the first time. "Or you can call me King Killvis V."
Pause.
"And you're ruining my plans."
Kuto remained silent for a moment. Processing.
"What did I do to you if I don't even know you?"
Pendris took a step forward. The perfume arrived — cold, artificial, with that quality of something that existed to cover the absence of anything natural beneath.
"That's where you're wrong. I had everything prepared." The voice gained that specific thread of complaint from a man whose perfect plan had been interrupted by an element that shouldn't have existed. "Raimi. The kingdom. Complete control of Zordis. And then you appear. The unlucky one carrying Yutuko blood."
"So you're the man Zenk mentioned."
"Exactly." The smile returned, wider now. "I see Zenk still hasn't learned to forget about me. Inevitable, I suppose. We are… each other's memories."
Kuto stayed silent.
*Remember Zenk's mention. Not the details — just that there's rivalry. Process. File away.*
"What do you want from me?"
Pendris tilted his head like someone appreciating directness.
"Your power as king of Zordis." He said it with the casualness of someone asking for something of little value. "Just that."
"No."
The word came out before any calculation. Not impulsiveness — certainty.
Pendris observed him for a moment.
Then he took another step forward, crouched down to Kuto's level where he was bound by the chains, and said:
"You know… you don't like to analyze things superficially, do you?" The voice had lost its smoothness. It became cold in a different way — not calculated coldness but the coldness of memory. "Let me tell you about the annoying guy who is supposedly just annoying."
---
**[FLASHBACK — 20 YEARS AGO]**
Pendris was eight years old when he first saw Zenk.
The kingdom of Zordis was different back then — not worse or better, just different, with that quality of a place that hadn't yet become what it would be. Automatic carriages didn't exist. The runes on the walls were sparser. Magic was present but not integrated the way Kuto knew it.
And Zenk was an ordinary child.
Shy. Physically weak in a way that generated comments in the courtyards — not the acceptable kind of weakness in a youth still growing, but the weakness of someone who seemed fundamentally not made for the physical space he inhabited. More comfortable with books than with swords. He accompanied Raimi in games of make-believe houses that made the other children of the kingdom laugh.
Pendris despised him with that specific efficiency of a child who had learned that contempt was a form of power.
Until the king of Zordis IV scheduled a trip to Killvis.
Peace treaties. Years of war between the two kingdoms reaching a diplomatic conclusion that both sides needed. The king traveled with his right hand — Zenk's father. The queen of Zordis. An honor escort.
The ambush was carried out by Pendris's father.
Planned with the specific patience of a man who knew that open war could not be won but that strategic weakening produced an equivalent result without the cost. The king of Zordis died there. His right hand. The queen. The escort.
And Zenk, who had been traveling with his father's family.
The kingdom of Zordis lost its entire leadership in one afternoon.
---
The army of Killvis marched.
Pendris was in the carriage with his parents — an eight-year-old son attending a military operation as an apprentice, as he had always been invited to attend, because his father believed power was taught by observation before it was taught by instruction.
The carriage stopped.
Something was blocking the path.
Pendris looked out the window.
A child.
Seven years old. Hair that should have been dark but emitted gold — not reflection, not incident light, but production, as if the yellow came from within. Body covered in blood and earth — not the kind that accumulates in battle but the kind that comes from below, from a person who had been buried and crawled out. Sword wounds in places that shouldn't have been compatible with conscious movement.
But he was standing.
The eyes had that expression Pendris took years to describe correctly. Not anger. Not pain. Not the grief of a child who had lost his parents hours earlier.
Superiority.
Not arrogance — factual. The expression of something that looks at what is in front of it and evaluates with the clarity of something that knows exactly what it is and what what is in front of it represents.
Pendris's father sent soldiers.
They died before reaching ten meters from the boy.
Not combat — elimination. Like obstacles being removed by something that didn't have to exert itself to remove them.
The father sent all the soldiers.
Zenk spoke the words.
The dead rose.
Not like the undead Kuto knew — not the slowness and frenzy of the Abject. They rose with that golden light emanating from the boy, moving with complete coordination, fighting like soldiers who had simply resumed what they had been doing when they were interrupted.
The army of Killvis dissolved in minutes.
Pendris's father tried to flee.
An arrow of light struck him and his mother.
Pendris was left alone inside the destroyed carriage, eight years old, on the ground, with that specific mixture of terror and humiliation that are not the same thing but arrive at the same place when intense enough.
The boy approached.
He looked inside the carriage at Pendris with those eyes that had seen everything and were not impressed by anything.
"You do not pay for your father's sins," he said. The voice was that of a seven-year-old child and it wasn't. "But if you value your life and that of your kingdom, never set foot here again."
Then he raised his hands.
Rocks rose from the ground — not slowly, not dramatically, simply emerging with the inevitability of something that had been there the whole time waiting to be called. They rose. They kept rising. Five thousand meters of stone barrier that separated the territory of Killvis from that of Zordis with geometry that was not the product of years or decades but of one afternoon by a seven-year-old boy with the golden aura still active in his hair.
Pendris stared at the stone wall for a time he didn't know how to measure.
---
**[PRESENT]**
"Ever since then," Pendris said, his voice completely flat from having been processed so many times, "I have nightmares about that boy." Pause. "About that man."
He stood up.
"So when you say he is just annoying," he continued, looking at Kuto, "you are analyzing superficially someone you haven't analyzed. And that… irritates me."
He closed his fist.
And punched Kuto in the stomach with a force that wasn't impulsive anger but anger contained long enough to become efficient.
The air left Kuto's lungs in a sound that wasn't a scream. The mana chains tightened with the involuntary muscle tension, the physical feedback of magic responding to a body trying to react and failing.
Pendris crouched down to Kuto's level again.
"Back to the subject," he said, as if the punch hadn't happened. "I want your power as king of Zordis."
"And if I refuse?"
Pendris's smile was different this time.
Empty. Not the previous calculated smoothness nor the coldness of contained anger. Just absence — the smile of someone for whom the answer to the question is genuinely simple and who is genuinely curious why the other thinks there is another option.
"I kill you. And I kill every inhabitant of this village."
---
Garrett took a step forward.
"Pendris." His voice came out tense with the restraint of someone struggling not to raise his tone. "We did our part. We want what was promised."
Pendris turned as if he had forgotten they existed.
"Of course. A deal is a deal."
He snapped his fingers.
The mark of slavery on Garrett's wrist disappeared.
Not gradually. All at once — the black geometry that had been engraved on his arm since he was six simply wasn't there anymore. The skin where it had been was normal skin, without a scar, without any physical memory of twenty years of presence.
Garrett stood motionless for a second.
He looked at his wrist with the expression of someone who had seen something his body had been convinced it would never see. His right hand closed over his left wrist — not checking if it was there but covering the place where it had been, as if he needed to confirm the absence with touch before believing what his eyes showed.
He turned to Cassandra.
She was looking at her own wrist with tears already sliding down — not from sadness, but the other kind, the one that comes when something you waited long enough to stop believing would ever arrive finally arrives. Marcus had his hand over his mouth.
Garrett ran.
His arms closed around the two of them with the force of twenty years accumulated — not a calculated hug or a gesture from someone who had learned to show affection, but the reaction of a body that had finally received permission to do what it had been trying to do since he was six years old in a royal chamber with tapestries too large and an eight-year-old king with eyes that had no interior.
The three of them stayed like that. Trembling. In silence.
Pendris observed with the expression of someone supervising an administrative task.
"And as a token of gratitude," he said, "one more gift."
The soldier disappeared behind a destroyed building.
The sound arrived before the sight — wheels on uneven ground, wooden structure creaking under the weight of what it carried.
Two carriages emerged.
Kuto saw.
And felt something tighten in his chest with a force that wasn't physical but that his body registered as if it were.
Demi-humans. Chained. Inside iron cages with spacing calculated to minimize movement and maximize numbers per structure. Clothes that were rags — not because they had been rags but because they had been something else and time and circumstances had reduced them to that. Faces with that specific expression of hunger and despair that isn't dramatic because dramatics require energy that no longer exists.
People.
Turned into units of transport.
Garrett looked at the carriages with the expression of someone who recognized what he was seeing because he had lived a version of the same — not identical, but close enough for the recognition to be physical rather than merely intellectual.
"Thank you," he said, his voice breaking slightly at the end of the word, the only place where the restraint failed.
"I say the same," Pendris replied, without the slightest weight in his tone.
The three began to move the carriages.
Pendris raised his hand.
"Wait."
Garrett stopped. He turned with the expression of someone who should have already learned not to trust anything more but who still had that fraction of a second of hope before the pattern confirmed itself.
"Just one confirmation," Pendris said.
The three remained motionless.
Pendris ignored them completely — he turned to Kuto with the total concentration of someone who had finished a side matter and returned to the main one.
"So, King of Zordis. The answer?"
Kuto looked at Pendris.
Then at the carriages.
Then at the warehouse behind him — a reinforced wooden structure, the only building in Zef that showed no marks of destruction. Intact in a way that was too specific to be accidental.
"You killed everyone in this village?"
Pendris made the expression of someone mildly offended by the lack of credit.
"Kill? I'm not that wasteful." He gestured toward the warehouse. "They're in there. Alive. Useful."
Pause.
"Those who resisted are not. The others are."
Kuto closed his eyes for a moment.
Kini. The boy with the big eyes who had extended his hand without hesitation. The old man who had explained that longing has no language, only melody. The woman with calloused hands to his left in the circle.
When he opened his eyes, they were cold in a different way from his usual coldness.
"The answer is no." His voice came out completely flat. "I have no interest in allying myself with a psychopath."
Pendris's expression darkened.
Not visible anger — just what happens when a mask that was at zero is taken to minus one. The smoothness didn't disappear but what was beneath it came closer to the surface.
He turned to the soldier beside him.
"Dentri. You already know."
The sound of weapons being drawn filled the destroyed village.
Spells began to gather — mana vibrating in the air with that specific quality of energy being prepared to be used against something specific.
Garrett went pale.
"Pendris." His voice completely lost its restraint. "That wasn't part of the deal. You said—"
"Deals change," Pendris said casually. "If the king of Zordis dies here, the three demi-humans die, the inhabitants of the warehouse die, and the village is left destroyed — it will look like the work of the Fear Mages. Clean. Efficient. No witnesses."
Garrett drew his sword.
"YOU BASTARD!"
Dentri moved before the shout ended.
The punch arrived with the force of someone who had trained for decades specifically for this — not brute force but efficiency, the impact at the exact angle that maximized effect with minimal effort. Garrett spun in the air and fell with the specific sound of a body that lost consciousness before hitting the ground.
"Don't be in such a hurry to die," Dentri said, without any particular emotion. "You'll see your goddess soon."
Cassandra advanced — her staff already glowing — and was intercepted by two soldiers who blocked her before she could complete the spell. Marcus was the third to try and the third to be taken down with that mechanical efficiency of soldiers executing orders.
Pendris watched all of this with the expression of someone supervising an administrative task.
"Portal," he said to one of the mages.
The blue vortex opened with the sound of compressed air being released — not a gentle magic gate but a forced opening, a tear in space that communicated utility rather than elegance.
Pendris walked to the edge.
He turned one last time.
"I'd love to stay and watch," he said, with that tone of lightness that was worse than a threat. "But I promised I'd stay away from blood for a while."
The final smile — small, completely satisfied — was the last thing Kuto saw.
The portal closed.
It left the destroyed silence of Zef.
And Dentri with his sword raised.
---
"Kill the false servants," Dentri said, in the voice of someone giving routine instructions. "Then the king."
He began walking toward Kuto.
Slowly. With the specific certainty of someone who knows what is in front of him is restrained and that the only question is the efficiency of execution.
The sword descended to attack level.
Kuto looked at it.
Then at the mana chains that covered him.
"That's enough," he said.
The chains exploded.
Not broken — dissolved, the physical anchor destroyed by internal pressure that Kuto had been building since he woke up, the system's mana working in silence against the structure that held him while pretending there was nothing working.
*I let myself be captured. I chose to wait. I needed to hear what there was to hear.*
He leaped backward, free, his feet finding the destroyed ground of Zef with the controlled impact of someone who had planned the landing before making the jump.
The soldiers recoiled — not far, just the involuntary reflex of surprise that returned to combat position in two seconds.
Kuto drew the sword from his inventory.
The metal gleamed with a crimson reflection in the dawn light.
The first wave came.
Faster than training could explain — that specific speed of power that doesn't come from muscle but from something beneath the muscle, from a system or ability or something Kuto hadn't fully identified yet.
The sword traveled toward Kuto's head at an angle that had no possible defense — not because the angle was theoretically impossible to block, but because the required reaction time exceeded the time available.
Kuto saw it.
He calculated.
And found no answer.
The dagger arrived from the side.
It intercepted Dentri's strike with an impact that echoed through what remained of Zef like a broken bell — metal against metal with the full force of both attacks colliding at the exact point where the dagger had appeared at the precisely right moment.
A figure stood between Kuto and Dentri.
Dark clothes. The posture of an assassin — not the learned posture of a warrior but the natural posture of someone for whom silence and precision were conditions of existence rather than acquired techniques. The dagger held Dentri at a distance calculated for the next move rather than the current one.
Kuto remained silent for a moment.
"Haru?"
Haru didn't take his eyes off Dentri.
"I told you," the voice came out low, sharp with the quality of something said with absolute conviction, "that I won't lose another brother."