Chapter 9

Fuko—

Before I knew it, I was already sent flying into a wall, breaking through with a deafening crash.

Stone and plaster exploded around me as I hurtled into another room. Pots and pans skidded across the floor. Shelves shook violently, jars and plates tumbling and shattering on impact. The air filled with the smell of oil and herbs, warm bread fresh from the oven, mixing with dust and blood.

For a moment, I saw double.

I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling of the room I had been thrown into, my vision swimming as pain caught up with me. When I hit, my ribs screamed in protest. My left arm burned where it had twisted badly on impact.

My blades were still in my hands. Slick with old blood. Still ready.

I rolled onto my side and felt something inside me shift. Organs pressed painfully against broken bones. I barely managed to brace myself before I coughed hard, a mouthful of blood splattering onto the stone floor.

Lying there would get me killed.

I forced myself up, teeth clenched, ignoring the agony tearing through my chest. When I finally stood, my vision steadied enough for me to understand where I was.

“A kitchen?” I muttered. 

Not the grand one meant for feasts and nobles. This was smaller. A working kitchen. For servants. For maids. For the people who kept the castle running.

A low grunt escaped me as I straightened.

The room had gone silent.

“My gods…” a maid whispered, clutching the edge of a table, her face drained of color.

A few maids and off-duty knights stood frozen in place. They must have been sneaking a break, plates and cups still in their hands.

The cook dropped his pan. It hit the floor with a loud clang.

“What… what was that?” one of the maids stammered.

“I think a man just broke through the wall,” an off-duty knight said, his voice shaking.

I coughed again, wiping blood from my mouth with the back of my hand. Pain flared with every breath, but I tightened my grip on my blades and ignored it.

Then I heard it.

Heavy footsteps.

Slowly.

They echoed from the wall I had been thrown through.

A voice followed.

Distorted. Guttural. Layered in a way no human voice should ever be.

GrimWall.

He was possessed by the fiend.

Laughter rolled through the broken opening in the wall. It sounded wet. Wrong. The maids and knights turned as one, staring toward the rubble.

A hand emerged first. Fingers dug into stone, crushing it as it pulled the rest of the body forward.

“It’s Captain GrimWall,” one of the knights whispered.

The figure dragged itself into the small kitchen, towering even more than before.

“Captain GrimWall!” one of the maids cried. Relief and confusion tangled in her voice. “What’s happening? We heard an explosion in the castle. Is everything alright?”

She stepped closer.

Tried to speak again.

A hand clamped down on her head.

She barely had time to look confused. “Wha—”

Her skull collapsed with a sickening crunch.

Her body hit the floor.

For a heartbeat, no one moved.

Then the room erupted.

The remaining maids and knights screamed and fled, crashing through doors, knocking over tables, abandoning everything as panic took hold.

I stayed where I was.

My blades were still in my hands.

I watched carefully.

Watched as the thing that had once been Captain GrimWall stepped fully into the kitchen.

I knew this fight was far from over.

The kitchen emptied in seconds. Footsteps thundered down the corridors. Doors slammed. Someone screamed until the sound was swallowed by distance.

Only GrimWall and I remained.

Or what had been GrimWall.

Stone cracked beneath his weight. His body no longer fit the armor he wore. Plates had warped outward, split at the seams. Something pushed beneath the metal, shifting, reshaping him from the inside.

Blood dripped from his mouth as he laughed again.

“You see?” he said. His voice crawled over itself, several voices speaking at once.

“They promised me this,” he continued, gurgling as blood bubbled up his throat.

His eyes found me.

All of them.

“You cut me in half,” he said, almost amused. “Do you know how that felt?”

I did not answer.

I adjusted my stance, careful not to favor my left side. Breathing burned. Each breath scraped against broken ribs, but I kept it slow. Controlled.

He stepped closer.

The maid’s body crunched beneath his boot.

“Still standing,” he said.

“I used to serve the kingdom of Britannia,” he went on. “I fell into Egrion believing I was the most skilled of the royal guard.”

He stopped, staring at his own hands. What remained of them.

“Until I was humiliated by that—”

I exhaled sharply and lifted my blade.

“Bla bla bla,” I said. “Can we just kill each other already?”

His smile widened.

Too wide.

The flesh beneath his armor stirred, pleased.

And he lunged.

His shoulders rolled, joints popping loudly. The wings twitched behind him, scraping against the ceiling beams and sending dust raining down. He was too big for the room.

That did not slow him.

It only made him angrier.

I tightened my grip on my blades.

GrimWall snarled.

The kitchen exploded into motion.

He lunged.

The distance between us vanished. One massive arm swept toward me, claws tearing through the air. I threw myself aside as the strike smashed through a prep table, splintering wood and hurling knives and bowls across the room.

Pain flared as I hit the floor hard, ribs screaming.

I rolled, came up on one knee, and slashed.

My blade bit into his leg.

Flesh parted. Blackened blood spilled out.

Then the wound closed.

The muscle pulled itself back together as if offended by the damage.

He laughed.

“Amazing,” he roared. “Absolutely amazing.”

He kicked.

The blow caught me in the side and sent me skidding across the floor. I slammed into a stone counter, coughing blood as something inside me shifted painfully.

I barely raised my blades before his shadow swallowed me.

His fist came down.

I crossed my blades and took the hit.

The impact rattled my bones. Steel screamed. My arms buckled, and I dropped to one knee as the floor cracked beneath me. Pain exploded through my shoulders, white and blinding.

But he stayed there.

Pressing down.

“Here I was,” he said, voice gurgling with laughter, “thinking I would regret joining that cult.”

His weight bore down harder.

“But now I have strength.”

I drove one blade up into his forearm.

Steel punched deep, anchoring him to me for a heartbeat.

He howled, wrenching his arm back. The blade tore free in a spray of blood and meat.

I did not give him time.

I surged forward, slashing across his torso. Then again. This time, the wounds hesitated before closing.

For the first time, his smile faltered.

“You still bleed,” I said.

He snarled. His now elongated arm smashed into the wall. Stone cracked. Shelves collapsed. Fire flared from the oven as grease spilled across the floor.

The kitchen was becoming a ruin.

“Good,” I growled. “Then let’s see which of us runs out first.”

He charged again.

This time, I met him head-on.

I slid under his next swing, the wind of it ripping past my head. I felt the heat of his body, the wrong warmth of something alive that should not exist. I came up inside his guard and cut.

Steel screamed.

My blade carved across his face from jaw to brow.

GrimWall staggered back, one hand flying to his head. Blood sprayed across the ruined kitchen, thick and dark, splattering the walls and floor.

For a heartbeat, I thought I had broken him.

The flesh peeled open instead of closing.

Something pushed forward from inside. The split stretched wider, bulging like a blood-filled bubble ready to burst.

I stared.

Then it looked at me.

GrimWall laughed, clutching his face as another mouth formed within the wound, speaking alongside his own.

“See?” he said. “All of us were given the same flesh.”

He straightened. His armor creaked, metal bending outward as more mass pressed beneath it.

“Knights. Maids. Captains,” he continued, stepping closer. “They were offered this same flesh.”

His face twitched. Eyes rolled in their sockets.

“Some screamed,” he said cheerfully. “Some begged. Some could not hold it.”

He spread his arms wide.

“They broke.”

He slammed his foot down. The stone floor cracked.

“All of them died in pain.”

He charged again.

“But now,” he continued, voice rising, “I have power. I can feel it.”

We collided.

Blade met claw. Sparks burst. The impact numbed my arms. He was stronger now. Every strike forced me back through the wreckage.

“I can feel it,” he said between blows. “Every breath. Every movement. I am more than I was.”

He caught one of my blades.

A bare hand closing around the steel.

“I could face the Sword Master now,” he said, eyes burning. “I could cut them down. I would win.”

I twisted free, slashed across his chest, then spun and drove my other blade into his side.

The wound tore open. Flesh writhed inside.

He barely slowed.

His backhand sent me flying.

I crashed into the far wall, stone biting into my spine. My vision blurred. Blood dripped from my mouth as I forced myself upright.

The flesh-face leaned forward through GrimWall’s ruined cheek.

Lips splitting into a grin far too wide to be human.

I took a breath. Just enough time.

One blade slid back into my waist. I wrapped both hands around the remaining hilt, steadying it as my stance narrowed.

This needed to end.

I aimed for the heart of what had once been human.

Once more, I drew mana up from deep within me and fed it into the blade. Not in a rush. Slowly. Carefully.

The steel responded.

The short blade lengthened, the metal stretching outward as if being forged in real time. Inch by inch, it grew until the weapon in my hands was no longer a short sword but a full-length blade, heavy and balanced, its edge cold and absolute.

Across the ruined kitchen, GrimWall watched.

Blood slipped from the corner of his mouth as he laughed softly.

“I trained countless soldiers,” he said, voice wet and uneven. “Beat discipline into rookies until their arms shook.”

He lifted his head, eyes locking onto me.

“I can tell just by looking,” he continued. “You are a swordsman too. Nothing less than a master.”

He pointed at my feet.

“But that stance,” he said. “It’s a gamble.”

I did not move.

“For I am no longer human,” he said, spreading his arms slightly, flesh shifting beneath warped armor. “Yet I still have standards.”

He lowered himself into a stance of his own. Crude. Brutal. Built for power, not elegance.

For a moment, nothing happened.

We stood there, staring at one another across the wreckage. Fire crackled behind him. Blood pooled beneath our feet. The air felt tight, like the world itself was holding its breath.

Waiting.

Then, in the same instant, we moved.

We launched forward together.

We met in the center of the ruined kitchen.

Steel screamed.

My blade went first.

I drove it forward with everything I had, aiming straight for the center of his chest. GrimWall moved at the same time, faster than I expected. Too fast.

Something tore past my head.

Pain exploded along the side of my skull.

Then my blade hit.

The long sword punched through his armor, through warped metal and swollen flesh, and buried itself deep into his chest. I felt resistance for half a second.

Then the heart gave way.

GrimWall jerked violently. His mouth opened wide, not to laugh this time.

Broken. Layered voices tearing themselves apart as one.

Blood erupted from the wound, thick and black, spraying across my arms and chest. The flesh around the blade convulsed, trying to close, trying to reject it.

It could not.

I twisted the sword.

The thing inside him shrieked.

I staggered back, ripping the blade free.

At the same moment, something warm ran down the side of my face. My vision tilted. Sound dulled on one side.

GrimWall collapsed to his knees.

His hand flew to his chest, fingers clawing uselessly at the gaping hole. The flesh around it writhed, veins bulging, eyes opening and closing in panic. His wings spasmed, then went slack, tearing free from his back in wet, useless heaps.

He looked up at me.

“No,” he choked. Blood poured from his mouth. “ I was promised.”

I stood there, breathing hard, barely upright.

My left side is numb.

I reached up without thinking.

My hand came away warm and wet.

My ear was gone.

Torn clean off, likely by a claw that had missed my throat by inches.