They hit like water through a broken dam.
The first bandit was a big man with a missing ear and a cleaver that had once been a plow blade. He swung low, aiming for Kaelen’s knees—cheap, efficient, the kind of kill that didn’t waste energy. Kaelen sidestepped, brought his father’s long sword around in a flat arc, and took the man’s hand off at the wrist.
The bandit stared at the stump, confused, then collapsed.
No time to think. The second was already there, then the third. Kaelen fought like a man possessed—not because he was brave, but because his body remembered what his mind was too frightened to process. Block. Step. Cut. Block again. The long sword became an extension of his will, tracing arcs of steel and blood in the fading light.
Behind him, the village guard joined the line. Old Brenner with his boar spear. Young Tam, the baker’s son, swinging a woodcutter’s axe with both hands and screaming louder than the dying.
For a few heartbeats, they held.
Then the bandits showed their teeth.
A woman with shaved head and bone piercings in her cheeks stepped through the chaos. She carried no weapon. Instead, she raised one palm toward the gate, and the air twisted. Kaelen felt it before he saw it—a pressure behind his eyes, a ringing in his ears that wasn’t sound.
Magic. Ember resonance.
A bolt of orange-white fire erupted from her hand and struck the gatehouse. Wood exploded. Splinters the size of daggers shredded three guards. The baker’s son fell without a sound, his axe still clutched in both hands.
Kaelen’s blood turned to ice.
“Mage!” he shouted. “Kill the mage!”
But the guards were breaking. The line crumbled. Bandits poured through the gap like roaches from a kicked log, and suddenly it wasn’t a battle anymore. It was a slaughter.
Kaelen fought his way toward the mage. Three bandits fell to his blade. Four. A fifth caught his elbow with a cudgel, and his left arm went numb. He switched hands, kept cutting. The mage saw him coming. She smiled.
“Brave,” she said. “Stupid, but brave.”
She raised her hand again.
Kaelen threw his dirk.
It wasn’t a good throw—his right arm was weakening, and his aim was off—but it was enough. The blade caught the mage in the shoulder. She stumbled, the fire bolt firing wild into the sky, and Kaelen closed the distance.
He raised his long sword for the killing stroke.
And the world went white.
Not fire. Something worse. A Void resonance erupted from somewhere behind him—not the bandit mage, someone else—and the air inverted. Kaelen felt his left arm twist in ways flesh wasn’t meant to twist. He heard bone crack. He felt his own scream tear out of his throat, but the sound didn’t reach his ears because there was no air left to carry it.
Then the white faded.
Kaelen was on the ground. The gate was gone. The village was burning. And his left arm—
He looked down.
There was nothing below the elbow. Just a wet, shredded ruin of meat and splintered bone, pumping blood into the dirt.
The mage was gone. The bandits were gone. They had taken what they wanted and left the rest to burn.
Kaelen lay in the mud, armless, and watched Ashfen die.