In a city like Lot, survival was already a daily negotiation with hunger and cold. I had given them freedom, but I had also given them a future that looked as cruel as the tables they had been strapped to.
I kept moving.
The third lair was a mansion in the wealthy district, its gardens trimmed and its fountains still running.
The guards here were better trained. They came at me in formation, with shields, spears, and coordinated spells.
I broke the formation with a single step forward, and the rest was arithmetic.
When the mansion had the silence of death, I stood in the grand hallway and listened to the water in the fountains. It sounded obscene.
The fourth lair was a mine. The fifth was a ship anchored in the bay. The sixth was a cellar beneath a bakery. Each one fell the same way. Each one left the same taste in my mouth. Each one added another layer of blood to the blade and another weight to the question I could not answer.
