I pressed one hand harder to the ground and forced myself upright. My whole body felt faint now, weak in a different way than before. The sword suddenly seemed twice as heavy. My arms trembled from exhaustion, not power.
Bodies surrounded me.
Monster corpses. Torn apart. Split open. Bleeding across the street.
My work.
I stared at them for half a second, then looked away.
A roar tore through the city.
Not near.
Not close enough to be immediate death.
But close enough that every hair on my body rose.
The three-headed lion.
I knew that sound now. I would know it if it woke me from sleep ten years from now. It rolled across the rooftops like thunder with hatred buried inside it.
My grip tightened on the sword instantly.
"The lion."
"Yes."
I turned toward the sound.
Even now. Even half-fainting. Even shaking.
I wanted to run toward it.
I took one step.
Pain flashed through my side and my vision swam again.
The voice inside me became very still.
"If you go after that creature now, you will die again."
I stopped.
Again.
The word landed hard.
My breathing came rougher.
"I can't just let it go."
"You are not letting it go. You are surviving it."
Another roar rolled over the city, farther off this time, followed by distant screams and the crack of something large coming down.
My chest felt like it was burning.
"It killed Nate."
"And nearly killed you."
"I know."
"Then act as though you know." the voice replied.
I stood there in the street full of corpses, sword in hand, blood drying across my skin, and hated that the voice was right.
Every part of me wanted the opposite.
Wanted madness.
Wanted revenge now, even if it meant I died with the sword in my hand and its blood on my face.
But the voice, whoever he was, whatever he was, hadn't lied yet.
I didn't trust him. Not remotely.
But he hadn't lied.
And the roar of the lion wasn't the only thing moving now.
Other sounds were rising through the city, deeper growls, heavier impacts, the wingbeats of something large overhead. Stronger monsters. More of them. Approaching. Closing in on the districts that still held life.
I forced myself to turn away from the lion's roar.
My body hated me for it.
My rage hated me for it.
But I turned anyway.
"Then I'll leave the city."
For now.
"I'll come back."
"If you live."
I didn't answer.
I moved.
The first few streets were a blur of smoke, pain, and broken stone. I kept the sword in one hand and stayed close to walls, cutting through alleys when I could, avoiding the louder roads. Twice I saw shapes in the distance too large to challenge and changed direction immediately. Once I heard human voices shouting orders and nearly went toward them before the voice stopped me.
"Do not."
"Why?"
"A panicked city, dead soldiers, a half-healed boy soaked in blood and unnatural power. Explain yourself to them if you wish. It would be educational."
I clenched my jaw and kept moving.
At some point the city sounds shifted slightly behind me. Not safer. Just less immediate. The center was becoming the heart of the chaos now. The closer I got to the outer streets, the more the destruction spread out into pockets instead of constant ruin.
Then I heard claws on stone.
I turned too late.
Another beginner-class monster emerged from a shattered doorway just ahead—smaller than the others, lean and almost hyena-like, with a split jaw and too many eyes crowded up one side of its skull. It sniffed once, saw me, and tensed.
I should have gone around.
I should have conserved what little strength I had left.
Instead, the moment it looked at me, satisfaction rose inside me in anticipation of killing it.
The realization did not come first.
The satisfaction did.
Then I noticed it.
And hated it.
And didn't stop.
The creature sprang.
I stepped into the attack and drove the sword through its open mouth.
The point burst from the back of its skull.
Its body convulsed in the air, impaled on the blade.
I yanked the sword free and, before it hit the ground, hacked down again. Once. Twice. Three times. The third blow buried itself in the creature's shoulder and cracked bone. By then it had already stopped moving.
I stood over it breathing hard.
The street was quiet.
Too quiet.
My heartbeat thudded in my ears.
And there, in the silence after the kill, the truth settled on me.
For a second, just a second, I had liked it.
Not the fight.
Not the danger.
The killing.
The feeling of something monstrous dying beneath my hands had given me a sharp, vicious satisfaction so clean it made my stomach turn now that I was standing still enough to examine it.
I stared down at the corpse.
My grip on the sword loosened slightly.
"What is wrong with me?" I whispered.
The voice was silent for a moment.
Then:
"You hate monsters."
"That isn't an answer."
"It is the beginning of one."
"What is your name?" I asked.
"My name matters not, only my purpose." The voice replied
"That isn't an answer either."
The voice paused for a second. "Back in the life I had before, people called me Finn Silver."
My eyes opened wide in shock, as I recognized the name.
But I looked away from the body fast, suddenly unable to stand there another second.
Up ahead stood the remains of a two-story building with most of its front wall gone and the upper floor half-collapsed. It looked empty. Quiet. Hidden enough for the moment.
I stepped inside.
The interior had once been somebody's living room, I thought. Or maybe a shop with a sitting area near the front. Hard to tell now. The place was torn open, furniture broken, one side blackened by fire but no longer burning. A staircase had collapsed halfway down, creating a heap of splintered wood and stone in the back corner.
It would do.
I lowered myself against the least unstable wall I could find and set the sword across my lap.
For a while I just sat there and breathed.
My hands were still shaking.
Not from power this time.
From everything else.
The sword was stained black-red now, its steel reflecting strips of orange from the distant fires outside. Blood had dried on my forearms. My side ached with every breath. My whole body felt like it had been dragged over broken glass and stitched back together in the dark.
And under all of it, Finn was there.
A cold weight beside my soul.
Watching.
Waiting.
I leaned my head back against the cracked wall and shut my eyes for a moment.
The image of the last monster flashed in my head again, my blade through its mouth, the crack of bone, the sick satisfaction that had pulsed through me before revulsion set in.
I swallowed hard.
That feeling should have horrified me more than it did.
And maybe that was the real horror.
"You said your name mattered less than your purpose," I said quietly into the silence.
Yes.
"But I know the name Finn Silver."
For the first time since the pact, the presence inside me seemed to shift.
Not much. Just enough to feel.
I opened my eyes.
"When you said it before," I went on, "I thought I misheard you."
"You did not."
My fingers tightened around the grip of the sword.
"Finn Silver died fifteen years ago."
A pause.
"Yes."
I stared ahead at the broken room, not really seeing it anymore.
Every child in Kalidar knew that name.
Finn Silver.
The man who had stood against The Great Calamity fifteen years ago when half the world thought humanity would break. The swordsman people still talked about in stories, in classrooms, in hushed voices when they wanted to speak about sacrifice like it was something almost holy. The man who had died saving humanity.
I had grown up hearing that name.
Hearing that story.
And now that name was sitting inside my head.
I laughed once, short and disbelieving.
"You're telling me that the Finn Silver is the one living beside my soul?"
"Yes."
"That's impossible. Human spirits don't exist."
"And yet here I am."
I rubbed a hand over my face. Blood, dust, exhaustion.
"No," I said. "No, that doesn't make sense. You died."
"Obviously."
I lowered my hand and stared at the floor.
"How?"
"That is a longer conversation than this moment deserves."
"That isn't good enough."
"No," he agreed. "But it is what you have."
The sharpness in his answer made something in me settle, strangely enough. Not trust. Definitely not trust. But the sense that he was exactly as unpleasant and direct as he sounded.
"You let me believe you were just some… thing."
"I am some thing. But I am also Finn Silver."
I exhaled slowly through my nose.
The room around me felt even less real than before.
The city was burning.
Nate was dead.
My parents were dead.
A legendary man who had supposedly died fifteen years ago was now inside my soul telling me my spirit power well was shallow.
Of course.
Of course this was my life now.
I looked down at my hands.
"They talked about you like you saved humanity."
"And now?"
"Now you're in my head insulting me."
"I contain a multitude of talents."
Despite everything, a dry sound nearly escaped me.
It died before becoming a laugh.
Silence settled again.
This time it was less empty.
More like a space waiting to be filled.
I looked toward the broken opening of the building, where smoke drifted across the street beyond.
"What comes next?" I asked.
Finn answered immediately.
"You survive."
"I mean after that."
"After that, you become stronger."
I looked down at the sword on my lap. "And after that?"
"You hunt."
The word sat between us.
Simple.
Cold.
Exact.
My gaze drifted to the blood drying on the blade.
Somewhere outside, something large shrieked in the distance. Not the lion this time. Something else. Something winged, maybe. The city answered with fire and screams.
Finn continued.
"This city is finished for now. Perhaps not dead forever, but beyond you. You cannot save it. You cannot avenge everyone in one night. You cannot challenge what rules these streets at present."
Every word was a knife because every word was true.
"You need distance. Training. Time. A deeper well. Better control. A reason to live beyond the next hour."
I turned that over in my mind.
A reason to live.
It should have been revenge.
It still was revenge.
But maybe not revenge alone.
My thoughts drifted, unwillingly, toward everything I knew about the world beyond this city. Countries. Academies. Spirit users. The strong. The places where strength wasn't just admired but forged.
Then one name rose above the others.
Sylarion.
I lifted my head slightly.
Finn noticed.
"Yes!?"
"The Academy of Sylarion."
"One of the best places in this world for a young fool with power and no discipline."
"That sounds like an insult."
"It is also accurate."
I ignored that.
The thought had already taken shape now, too clear to push away.
Sylarion was far. Another country. Powerful. Its academy was one of the top in the world, it trained spirit users into warriors, into fighters, into people who could survive in a world that fed on weakness.
I had no home left here.
No family.
No reason to stay in the city that had become a grave.
And if I wanted power, real power, enough to kill the lion one day, enough to kill all of them, then I needed more than hatred.
I needed training.
I needed a deeper well.
I needed to stop being weak.
"I'll go to Sylarion," I said quietly.
I looked toward the broken street beyond the refuge.
Smoke. Firelight. Corpses. Ruin.
Leaving felt wrong.
Again.
Like I was abandoning the dead a second time.
My parents. Nate. This whole city.
But staying would be worse.
Staying would mean dying here, or rotting here, or becoming trapped in the ashes until grief ate what was left of me.
"I'll leave the city," I said, more firmly now. "I'll head for Sylarion. I'll get stronger."
"And then?"
My hand closed around the sword grip.
"Then I'll kill the monsters."
"That is broad."
"Good."
A faint sense of approval moved through him.
I rose slowly from the wall, ignoring the protest of my wounds, and slid the sword back into my grip.
The room tilted once, then steadied.
My body still felt weak.
My spirit power was nearly empty.
My mind was a wreck.
But I was standing.
And for now, that was enough.
I stepped toward the broken opening.
Behind me, the ruined refuge said nothing. Ahead, the city burned on.
Finn's presence settled colder beside my soul as he spoke one last time.
"Then walk, Mark."
I looked once toward the deeper city, toward the direction where the lion's roar had come from.
My jaw tightened.
"Not today," I muttered.
Then I turned away from the fire and the dead and the wreckage of the life I had known.
And I began walking toward Sylarion.