Cassian Vale walked through the ruined streets of Valdris humming a song. Nobody knew the name of the song because he hummed it off-key, which somehow made it more unsettling than if he'd been singing actual words. A dead elf lay twenty meters behind him, an arrow still lodged in the elf's own chest. Cassian had turned the archer's own weapon against him using a time-accelerated ricochet.
His bracelet ticked upward with each kill. Criminals. Beasts. One Neon Abyss student who had made the mistake of trying to ambush him from behind a collapsed wall. Cassian had frozen time for exactly one second, walked around the wall, and broken the student's jaw with his staff before time resumed. The student had been eliminated before he even knew he'd lost.
Cassian checked his points. Climbing steadily. Not fast enough to catch Kael or Michael, but respectable.
He rounded a corner into a wide avenue lined with shattered storefronts and stopped.
