THE FIRST BLOW was like an order to his body: fall. Even knowing it was coming, he didn’t have time to dodge. He hit the pavement.

    The guy with the club stood over Yanick, tapping the weapon against own palm, as if to show who was in control. He grinned, teeth glaringly white against  dark skin.

    A circle quickly formed around them. Not too tight. There was still time. And they wanted to have their fun.

    The crescent Moon climbed the sky, its silver grin seeming to join in their laughter.

    The blow to the nose was an instant break from reality. A crunch, a snap, then a warm flood gushes down Yanick’s face. Vision blurred. Eyes teared up. Breath hitched. Pain drilled into his skull, scattering thoughts, leaving only raw, suffocating agony.

    Yanick had been here before. He knew how to make this pain useful. The academy taught him how to take a beating and turn it into something else.

    Slowly, Yanick pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. He moved cautiously, blood dripping onto the pavement in thick, black droplets. His hands hovered just above the ground, fingers grazing stone like a man too dazed to stand.

    Except he wasn’t dazed.

    He was counting their shoes.

    Seven pairs. Too many.

    The bleeding ceased. The world sharpened. He was ready.

    The Club Guy stepped in first, confident, deliberate. Yanick watched his boots - cracked leather, dried mud, peeling soles. A street rat who had played the executioner before. He knew the role. He liked it.

    Weapon in his right hand. That meant if he stepped left, he’d kick with his right. If he stepped right, the club would come down.

    He stepped right.

    The club swung. Yanick rolled. Wood cracked against stone, and the attacker hissed, shaking out his numbed fingers.

    Perfect.

    Yanick rolled back in, wrenched the club free, and before the others could react, he struck. Target: kneecap. Crack. The guy howled. Yanick lunged, driving the club’s blunt end into another’s groin. A choked-off scream.

    The circle wavered. A gap. A chance.

    He ran.

    “Get him!”

    No looking back. No hesitation. Just run.

    Maybe he should’ve looked back. Maybe then he would’ve seen the kid with the slingshot. Seen the rubber stretch, the stone aimed at his skull.

    He didn’t see it.

    He felt it instead.

    Impact at the base of his skull. A coal-brick to the brain-stem. Legs turned to liquid. The ground lunged up to greet him, slamming into his face.

    Then came the shouts, the laughter, the kicks of worn-out boots.

 
    All he could do was curl up, cover his head, and pray to Ari not to book him a spot in Valhalla just yet.

    The kicks stopped coming one at a time. They melted into a single, endless wave of assault. Pain blurred into more pain, a ceaseless, rhythmic beat on his ribs, his back, his legs.

    But god Ari must have heard him. His voice shouted:

    “Enough.”

    Yanick looked through his fingers.

    Not a god but a man stood there, apron smeared with flour.

    He didn’t look like much. Average height, average build. But his presence was a knife in the gut of the moment. The air changed.

    Then he moved.

    Fast. Precise. A step, a feint, a strike. No wasted effort. A hand deflected a punch, an elbow cracked against a jaw, a boot found the soft give of a rib-cage. He was in control of the rhythm, making them dance to his tune, cutting them down one by one.

    They were a mob a second ago. Now they were bodies on the ground, groaning, clutching their wounds.

    “Ade, stop!” Club Guy spat blood, smearing it across his sleeve. “We’ve had enough!”

    The baker headbutted a boy he was holding by the collar. Unnecessary. That one was already so beaten he could barely stand.

    “I warned you,” the baker said, voice rough, breathing hard. “Didn’t I warn you?”

    A kick to Club Guy’s ribs. A punctuation mark.

    “We’re gone,” Club Guy wheezed.

    “Next time, I send the Nordlings after you.”

***

“THAT’S WHAT HE SAID?” the man asked, his voice flat, unblinking.

“Yeah,” Yanick said, shifting in his chair. The bruises on his ribs flared with the movement. “That’s what he said.”

The interrogator tapped something into a console embedded in the table, his gloved fingers moving with cold efficiency.

“How many Nordlings did you see there?”

Yanick hesitated.

“None.”

“So there aren’t any in Valhafen?”

“Not that I saw,” Yanick replied. Then he paused, brows drawing together. “Except…”

The man’s fingers stilled.

“Except who?” he asked, tone neutral, but Yanick heard it. A crack. A faint fracture in the ice.

“Their father was from the North,” Yanick said slowly, watching the man’s expression. “Ademund’s.”

The man didn’t look up. “And his sister’s.”

Yanick’s breath caught.

Ama.

His pulse thudded in his ears. The name echoed in his head like a stone dropped in a still lake.

He hadn’t said anything about her to the interrogator. Not yet.

Not about the day he met Amaia. Not about the way everything twisted.

His throat went dry again.

The interrogator finally looked up, eyes sharp.

***

HE CLOSED HIS EYES. And when he opened them again, hers was the first face he saw.

    A few timid sunrays slipped through the cracks in the curtains, their golden fingers brushing the floorboards like they were afraid of waking the wounded. They touched his skin without warmth, a hesitant kindness in a world that had given him none.

    Pain, however, was not so gentle.

    It arrived without knocking. Loud, urgent, familiar. A full-body throb, a dull ache behind his eyes, ribs protesting with every shallow breath. His face felt like it had been used as a mop in a butcher’s stall.

    His tongue searched for damage, running along his teeth. No gaps. Relief bloomed, fast and foolish. Thank you, Ari.

    Then the panic hit. The air wouldn’t go in.

    He gasped. Nothing. His throat closed like a fist. He clawed at his chest, at the blanket, at the room.

    Strong hands caught his flailing ones. Steady. Warm. They lifted his head, slid a pillow behind his shoulders, adjusted his angle like they’d done this before.

    Then came the voice. Smooth, low. The kind that made you stop running, even if your feet didn’t know how. A voice that could put monsters to sleep.

    “You’re safe now.”

    Yanick blinked through tears. Tears he hadn’t noticed forming.

    Her face hovered above him. Eyes dark as ink, soft with worry. A faint scar curved over her left brow, almost hidden by the tumble of curls that framed her face.

    Most beautiful face he had ever seen.

TO BE CONTINIUED

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