Page 141 of The First Scar
I didn't draw.
I dropped beneath the arc, letting his momentum carry the blade over my head, and came up inside his guard—close, too close for his sword, exactly where I needed to be. My elbow blade caught him across the ribs on the rise. He gasped, folding sideways, and I was already spinning—low to high, hips driving the rotation, every strapped edge on my body becoming a single continuous cut. Knee blade raking his thigh as I swept his legs. Wrist blade opening a line across his forearm as his grip broke. Shoulder catching his jaw on the upward arc, snapping his head back.
One revolution. Less than a breath.
He hit the ground and didn't get up.
I stood over him silently, the forest still ringing with the violence of it. Blood dripped from my elbow guard, dark against the steel. My hands were clean. I hadn't needed them.
The silence stretched. Then Maxx, from somewhere behind me, let out a whistle through his teeth.
"Well," he said. "That was new."
I wiped the blade on my thigh and kept walking.
"No, I'm serious." His boots crunched after me. "You just killed a man with yourelbow. I feel like we should acknowledge that."
"Keep up, Maxx."
"I amsavoringit, Flameheart. Let me have this."
I didn't slow down. He caught up anyway, falling into stride beside me, and I felt his eyes inventorying—elbows, knees, wrists. The full rig.
"You strapped blades to yourjoints." He said. "Every hinge on your body is a weapon and your hands are just—free. Walking around. Doing nothing." He shook his head slowly. "That's the most unhinged thing I've ever respected."
I didn't answer, but I allowed myself a soft smile and caught his eye to let him see.
The laughter died faster than it should have. One Enforcer scout, alone and starved, was a problem solved. A whole unit trailing behind him was a problem deferred.
The King wasn't stupid. He'd figure out where we were headed—if he hadn't already.
The Rupture site was still miles away. And the space between here and there felt like a trap waiting to close its teeth.
By the time the last of the light died, swallowed by the creeping shadows of the Veil, we crested a ridge overlooking a dried riverbed. A cluster of boulders formed a natural windbreak against the rising chill—slabs of granite stacked by some long-forgotten landslide, their faces dark with lichen. The groundbetween them was hard-packed dirt and gravel that bit through my leathers when I dropped on my ass. Kaelen said stop and I was already down.
It was a pitiful fortification, but it was defensible.
Dreadscale swung down from the mill horse first, the animal sagging with relief the moment his weight left it. He was already checking the perimeter with that clinical, terrifying efficiency. I watched him move—the ripple of muscle under leather, the way his hand hovered near his blades even in the quiet. He was a weapon sheathed in the shape of a male, and for one reckless second, watching him cut through the gloom, I let myself believe it might be enough. That we might be enough.
Serenya dropped her pack against the nearest boulder and immediately started sorting through it—pulling hearthsage, strips of clean cloth, the small clay jar of burn salve she'd restocked at the mill. Triage kit. She built one every time we stopped, even when nobody was bleeding. Especially when nobody was bleeding. It was her way of keeping the dark at arm's length. If her hands were busy, her mind couldn't spiral.
We dug the fire pit deep, banking it against the back wall of the overhang so the cliff face would eat the smoke. It was an old ranger’s trick—feed the flame dry, bark-less wood, keep it small, bury the light. Everything about surviving in this kingdom came down to making yourself smaller. I was getting tired of being small.
Brannick returned from the treeline, wiping his hands on a rag that was already stiff with grime. He didn't sit. He stood at the edge of the firelight, his eyes locked on a heap of shadows near the entrance of our shelter.
We hadn’t been the first to use this shelter.
The scout lay where Brannick had found him, tucked into a crevice as if trying to hide even in death. He was a stranger to us—wearing the drab woolens of the border rebels. He was young.Too young. His cloak was a ruin of wool and dried blood, stiff against the stone. The frigid weather had preserved him, but he’d been gone for days. The terror was still etched into the slack lines of his jaw. He had died waiting for help that never came.
I watched Brannick stare at the body. The firelight accented the hard planes of his face, deepening the hollows beneath his eyes. He didn't look like the boisterous warrior who cracked jokes over bad ale. He looked hollowed out. Like the war had finally caught up with him.
"We should bury him," I said.
"Can't. Ground's frozen." Brannick crouched near the fire, lips a hard line. "Look at that wound. He could've cauterized it. Could've tied it off and kept moving. But he didn't."
"Why not?"
"Because he thought someone was coming." Brannick snapped a twig apart, tossed it into the flames. "Sat here bleeding out, waiting for rescue that never showed."
