_____MI'KAEL SERAPHANE_____

The rain hammered down harder, sharp and unrelenting, dragging me back into the present.

Mud clung to my boots. Blood ran in thin rivers along the grooves of the earth. The forest was no longer a blur of memory—it was real again. Too real.

Ahead of me, one of them crawled.

His fingers clawed uselessly at the ground, nails torn and red, breath coming in broken, animal gasps. Every movement smeared more mud across his chest.

“Please,” he croaked, "Have mercy."

The word struck deeper than any blade.

Mercy.

For a heartbeat, the world slowed—not from Boost, not from adrenaline, but from something older. The boy who hesitated. The one who froze. The one who wanted to believe there was still a line you didn’t cross.

My stomach twisted.

I could stop.
I knew I could.

Then the faces came—uninvited.

My father, lying still.
My mother, cold and silent.
Azrael, standing at the cliff’s edge, unmoving as I fell.

My jaw clenched.

I stepped forward. My boot sank into the mud with a wet, final sound. Louder than his pleading. Louder than the storm.

“Please—” he tried again, voice breaking.

Feelings are for the weak.

Valekar’s voice echoed through my skull, sharp and familiar.

And the Seraphane know not of such a thing.

He had said it when I cried as a child. When my hands shook. When I couldn’t stomach the sight of blood like the others could.

My grip tightened around the hilt.

The sickness was still there. Coiled. Waiting.
I forced it down.

Mercy hadn’t saved anyone.

I closed the distance and seized him by the collar, hauling his trembling body upright. He barely had time to gasp before I drove the blade through his shoulder, pinning him to the tree behind him with a solid, brutal finality.

His scream tore through the forest.

I didn’t flinch.

Rain washed over his face, carrying tears, blood, and mud together into something indistinguishable. His eyes locked onto mine—and the terror there was absolute.

“How many?” I asked.

He shook violently.

I twisted the blade.

“How many.”

“Squads,” he sobbed. “Multiple—Captains—Commanders—”

“Sent for me?” My voice didn’t rise.

He nodded frantically.

“They know you’re alive,” he wheezed. “The Young Lord—your grandfather—they know everything.”

Good.

He laughed then. A wet, broken sound. “You think this ends? You think you survive this?”

I didn’t answer.

He sagged against the blade, breath rattling. “Check… my pocket…”

I did.

The datapad was slick with rain when I pulled it free. A map flared to life. Routes. Supply lines. And one location circled in red.

A Commander.

His laughter returned, weak but venomous. “Even if you kill him… more will come. You’ll never outrun this.”

I stepped back.

Then I pulled the blade free and ended it with one clean cut.

Blood sprayed. His body collapsed.

I waited.

Nothing rose in my throat.

No bile.
No heaving.
No collapse.

Just a twitch—once—in my fingers.

A sharp inhale.

Then it passed.

I hated that it felt like progress.

I wiped the blade clean, methodical, precise. When the steel vanished from my hand, only the rain remained—falling harder, as if trying to wash something away it never could.

Uncle was right— there’s no corner of this universe they wouldn’t search to find me. 

And at last, they found Planet Vitarus. 

If this “Commander” was there, then he held the information I needed.

Most importantly, how many I’d have to kill before I returned to that wretched place. Back to the prison I despise. The place I once considered a sanctuary.