Swoosh!
The dart cut through the air right past my eyes, so close that I felt the metallic cold scrape my eyelashes. Another came right behind it, ricocheting off the guard of the sword strapped to my back. The blade, at least, saved me from treacherous projectiles, but its colossal weight dragged at my body like an anchor.
Every step was a burden. The pressure around us kept growing, as if the air itself were turning liquid, dense and crushing.
Axel, nestled in my arms, let out a low whimper, almost a warning. “I know, I know…” I muttered through clenched teeth.
Clang! Thunk! Shhk!
Projectiles of every kind spewed from the walls: wooden sticks, iron blocks, darts, even sharpened stones. The corridor looked like a throat spitting out death.
A dart went through the leg of a girl on my left. The dry crack of bone stole everyone's breath for an instant, until her scream was smothered by shock.
Before I could reach out a hand, a boy pulled her… but not to save her. He lifted her in front of his body, like a living shield. Blood spattered warm across my face.
“Poor girl…” I whispered through my teeth. The regret died right there. A whirring metal sphere crushed the skull of someone behind me, spraying the floor red. There was no room for compassion.
The chaos was absolute. Beatriz shot forward like an arrow, her body spinning like a cat's, dodging with the ease of someone dancing.
Oswin roared, every step a brutal advance, elbows and shoulders clearing a path through the flood of bodies. His face was already covered in deep scratches.
The reddish-skinned boy growled low, steady as a wall; the impacts he couldn't avoid slammed into him, tearing off strips of skin and blood. Anyone else would have fallen in the first volley.
Behind me… only the lilac-eyed girl remained. Out of breath, but unshaken. Her movements were cold, calculated, as if every dodge were the result of a problem solved in fractions of a second. Cruel, even. Proof? The boy who had just fallen with his skull crushed was now serving as her shield.
“Smart… but crazy.” I pressed Axel against my chest, protecting the pup with whatever I could. The little one whimpered, but I didn't let go. I leapt over the body of a fallen boy, trying not to look at the expression frozen in death.
Then the ceiling split open with a metallic tear. An axe came down spinning, a silver disc of death. There was no way to dodge it. There was no time.
Or rather… not by ordinary means.
Something twisted beneath my feet. The air.
A gust pushed me aside, steering me by a hair from the blade, which struck the floor with a dull thud. Axel complained at the sudden squeeze. My heart raced.
It was unconscious. A reflex. But as soon as I noticed it, it became conscious.
“Why didn't I think of this before…?” I muttered, realizing my mistake.
Another gust. Then another. With every step, wind was born beneath my feet, not as a command, but as a reflex of desperation. Each push lifted me off the ground for an instant, light enough that the sword stopped being a crushing burden.
I advanced quickly, almost running on top of the very pressure that was suffocating us.
But the end was already approaching. The parapet was there, just ahead, and many had already reached it.
I didn't want to be one of the last. My instincts burned in me, saying that any delay would be punished. Why? I didn't know. But it was as if the air itself were pushing me to hurry.
And then I felt it. An unpleasant hum vibrated in my ears, low, uncomfortable, almost like a muffled roar coming from below. Along with it, the smell. It wasn't exactly sulfur, it was harsh, acrid, like wet gunpowder mixed with the smoke of burning oil. Heavy, corrosive air.
My body shuddered on its own.
'Gas…?'
I thought. The metallic taste was already scratching my throat. “Shit.”
There was no time for stairs. I would never reach them.
— “Breeze!” —
With all the concentration I could gather, the air beneath my feet exploded in a diagonal burst, launching me upward. Smaller projectiles sliced around me, one or two tore my clothes, others left small cuts on my skin, but I ignored them. Higher. I had to climb.
— “Breeze!” —
The second push came, not as violent as the first. Softer, more controlled, but still hurling me upward. My muscles trembled with the effort, Axel whimpered, squeezed against my chest, but I couldn't stop.
And then the sound revealed itself.
BOOM!
A thunder of fire erupted in the corridor below, swallowing everything in a sea of flames. The heat rose like a punch, dry, crushing, burning the air out of my lungs. If I had hesitated a single step, I would have been charred.
On my downward arc, closer and closer to the parapet, I lowered my gaze.
I saw Issack.
He was there, steady, motionless, watching. A smile split his face, but there was no joy in it. It wasn't amusement. His eyes, serious, flat, almost dead, said something else. A manic smile without any pleasure at all.
But when our eyes met, something changed. The smile widened. The corners of his lips rose like hooks pulled by an invisible force.
And with it, the eyes that had been dull lit up.
A strange, feverish glow passed through them, so intense it seemed to come from the inside out. It wasn't the same monotony as before, it was ecstasy, a cruel ecstasy, an expression directed at me alone.
For a moment, the heat of the fire became small next to that gaze.
✦ ✦ ✦
At last I reached the parapet.
The landing, well, wasn't the best, but somehow I managed to cushion it enough to avoid serious injuries.
My lungs burned, my breath came in short rasps, and I needed a few seconds to gather not only my breath, but also my thoughts.
Issack remained there, motionless, the same twisted smile on his face. He didn't move to chase anyone, nor to encourage them. He just watched, patient, like someone awaiting the inevitable end of a hunt.
Some still had the audacity to charge at him. I saw the scene clearly: bodies thrown backward with a simple, dry, effortless movement. Like rag dolls being discarded.
After the tenth one fell without even touching his cape, no one else dared. Fear had taken hold.
And it was in that instant, while the chaos faded around me, that something struck me. A memory. A name. An ancient story, buried in time.
The name Issack was not just the name of a retired old man, or of a lunatic. There was more to him. Much more.
Almost no one in Dracknum remembered anymore. Only those who had seen it with their own eyes… and those who had heard it from those survivors.
Never recorded in a book, never spoken of in lessons, only whispered between generations like a legend they preferred to forget.
But by a coincidence of Fate, or not, I knew that story.
The story is about a knight called Issack DuskVeil.
“I must be imagining things, there's no way it's him,” I shook my head in a gesture of refusal.
“After all, that happened more than a hundred years ago.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Twenty minutes dragged on like centuries. Time, there, felt sickly, stretched like a rope about to snap. More than a hundred and fifty had already crossed, but the silence that followed each fall sounded like unanswered prayers.
My muscles were still trembling, though the sweat had dried on my skin. When I finally dared to look down, my breath caught in my throat.
The floor was a fresh graveyard. No face looked older than fifteen. All motionless, all broken.
Arrows still quivered in some of the skulls, as if the wind were mocking the instant their lives ended. Others lay torn open, their bodies turned into bloody honeycombs, bones exposed, skin like ripped paper.
And there were the burned… limbs twisted into grotesque postures, the smell of human fat still floating in the air, mixed with the raw iron of blood. Eyes reduced to black holes, cavities staring at nothing.
A boy up ahead wavered, put a hand to his mouth.
— Bluurgh! — he vomited.
And then the chorus began: one after another, bodies doubling over, retches spat onto the floor, the acidic smell spreading until it blended with the rest of the rot.
Not me. I stood still, like a distant spectator, staring at the scene with the same emptiness as someone watching another person's nightmare. No tears, no nausea. Only silence occupied me.
“Disgusting.” someone said beside me.
I turned my face. Her. The lilac-eyed girl. Her face expressionless, except for the clear disgust at the scene, arms crossed, posture upright as if the massacre were a mere distraction.
“Agreed.” I murmured, remembering how she had used another body as a shield without blinking.
I looked away from the dead to study her more closely. Fine scratches streaked her skin, nothing more. Almost unharmed. Unreal, as if tragedy itself didn't dare touch her.
Then another voice crept in, male, too calm for that setting: “I see you survived…”
The owner of the blue-tinted hair appeared among us, with sure steps. I recognized him: he was the same one who had pointed out Issack earlier. A green leaf turned lazily between his fingers, which he raised to his nose from time to time, like someone keeping a private ritual.
“Elaine.” he said, in passing, before fixing his eyes on me. “Alexander, right?”
I frowned, distrust throbbing in me.
Elaine took a step forward. “Damian?” Her voice carried more thorn than surprise. “If you dropped dead here, I'd swear they were talking about someone else.”
He let out a low, short, satisfied laugh. Almost intimate. I just watched the two of them trade words, as if they shared an old pact that excluded me.
Strangely, I realized that during the entire slaughter I hadn't noticed him. Now, looking closely, I saw cuts and tears spread across his clothes, but the skin underneath was intact. Not a scratch.
“Hey,” I asked, without holding my tongue. “How do you know my name? I don't remember telling you.”
Damian raised an eyebrow, inhaled deeply from the leaf as if deliberately prolonging the pause. “How rude of you. Has it been so long that you've already forgotten?”
My gaze narrowed. “And should I remember?”
He smiled from the corner of his mouth, a smile without warmth, that didn't reach his eyes. “At least you're still the same.”
A shiver, more from irritation than recognition, ran down my spine. The way he said it, as if he knew me completely, weighed on me.
Damian sighed, a tired breath, carrying something I didn't understand.
Elaine, quiet until then, tilted her head. “Is there a problem?” she asked, her voice low, firm, with no apparent emotion.
“My fault.” he said, shrugging. “I didn't imagine I'd end up on your list of nobodies.”
As he spoke, he slipped a hand inside his torn blazer. The cloth, stained with dust and dried blood, shifted until it revealed another green leaf, vivid against the gray landscape.
“By the way… narlith leaves. Want some?”
Elaine was first. “Just in time.” She held out her hand, and he gave her the leaf with an almost rehearsed lightness. She raised it to her nose, inhaling deeply.
“Ah… of course.” I murmured, watching the scene without moving. My gaze was fixed on the leaf, but my mind was digging through memories.
Narlith leaves… if inhaled, they had a calming and restorative effect, their sweet scent already drifting between us. Sparks of memory began to rekindle, gradually brightening.
“Damian… narlith leaves…” The memory fell on me like a weight.
I widened my eyes, gripping the leaf in my hands. “Ah! Damian. Yes… yes! The Vice-Patriarch's son. Because of your talent, you were such a loud topic of conversation that, even inside the thick walls of the library, I still heard the idiots in the hallway talking about you.”
He laughed, low, almost satisfied: “That's a curious way to be remembered…”
CLAP.
CLAP.
The sound cut through the air, dry, reverberating off the walls like a warning.
We turned toward the source of the applause.
It was Sir Issack. His figure upright, hands still raised in sarcastic applause, his face marked with disdain.
“Of three hundred… only two hundred and five made it.” His voice, deep, sounded like a sentence read aloud in a public square. His eyes, however, were fixed down below, on the grotesque trench of bodies. “How far has Dracknum fallen?”
The question spread like a blade. No one dared answer it. Some opened their mouths, but the words died before they were even born, swallowed by their own fear.
Issack sighed, a heavy sound, laden with impatience. He turned and began walking away from the parapet.
“There's nothing that can be done.” he murmured, his voice low, but still clear enough for everyone to hear.
He paused, letting the air out of his lungs. “I'll have to work with what I have.”
It was at that moment that we felt it. Not only me, all the more alert ones felt it at the same time: a crushing weight, an instinct screaming that our very existence was under threat. Pure reflex, we leapt back.
Those who didn't move… faltered. Their legs gave way, and some collapsed to the ground like puppets with their strings cut.
Issack spun with a crack of his neck. In the blink of an eye, he was beside a boy. His fist closed, and the impact echoed like thunder inside the boy's body.
The sound was not just flesh against flesh: there was the crack of bones, air being spat out, and then the boy flying through the air, dragged along until he landed on his back in one of the puddles of vomit, the liquid splashing around. The boy's body kept sliding until it fell off the parapet.
Motionless.
Silence reigned, but not for long. The next target was already being thrown away.
My heart was beating too loudly, my eyes wide. The air felt stuck in my throat.
And then, fury and horror mixed together, escaping through my clenched teeth:
“I just wanted to read my books in peace. How the hell did I end up in an old madman's slaughterhouse?!”