Nicolas was violently recoiling in his chair, his hands thrust out in a blind, desperate reflex.
And those hands were now dripping with thick, warm crimson.
Slumped dead-center on their table, face-first into Nicolas's plate of boiled mussels, was the massive, lifeless body of an Akran sailor. Protruding from the exact center of the man's back—driven flawlessly through his heart—was a pitch-black, intricately engraved dagger.
Even in the dim torchlight, the faint, unmistakable crest of the Harden royal family was visible on the hilt. It was one of Nicolas's own daggers, pulled straight from his scabbard.
Nicolas stared at his trembling, blood-soaked palms, his breath completely catching in his throat. "I... I didn't do anything! He just fell on me!"
The deafening, chaotic roar of the tavern didn't just fade—it was severed instantly, like a throat cut in the dark. For the hardened people of Akrafjall, there was no pointless screaming, no frantic panic. Their brand of seriousness was entirely lethal.
Slowly, the towering brutes known as the "Akrans" pushed back from their tables and rose to their feet. Dozens of cold, storm-gray and ice-blue eyes locked onto a single target: Nicolas.
"The Law of the Docks..." one of the scarred sailors hissed, his thick fingers wrapping around the leather grip of a brutal battleaxe at his waist. "He who enters the docks is sacred. He who spills blood here... pays his toll in saltwater."
The crowd began to close in, forming an inescapable, suffocating ring of muscle and steel around their table. From the entrance, the colossal Harbor Guards—men draped in heavy bear pelts—began their slow, thudding advance. The jagged edges of their executioner axes gleamed menacingly in the flickering orange light.
Nicolas shoved himself backward in sheer terror, his wooden chair clattering violently to the floor. "I swear to the gods, I didn't do it! Someone in the dark—"
"Do not draw your steel!"
Sir Alric Valthorne's voice boomed like thunder. He rose from his seat slowly, but his sheer, mountainous presence seemed to swallow the room. His voice carried the crushing, undeniable authority of a veteran Holy Knight, radiating a killing intent so thick it made even the bloodthirsty Harbor Guards hesitate for a fraction of a second.
But the situation was already spiraling past the point of no return.
Alex's mind was already racing, coldly and mathematically calculating the optimal kill order in the room. His right hand rested casually, lethally, on the hilt of his blade. If this mob lunged at them, he would slaughter them without a shred of mercy. Nicolas was a member of his team, and to Alex, that bond was absolute.
Beside him, Emily had already drawn her longsword halfway from its scabbard, the harsh ring of steel cutting through the tense quiet. "Take one step toward him, and I'll butcher the lot of you!" she roared, the fierce, protective fire of a cornered wolf burning in her eyes.
"I said, stand down!" Alric commanded.
Moving with blinding speed for a man his size, Alric clamped one massive hand onto Alex's shoulder, anchoring the boy in place. With his other hand, he slammed his palm down onto the pommel of Emily's sword, violently forcing the blade back into its sheath.
Having physically grounded his volatile team, Alric turned his hardened gaze back to the approaching Harbor Guards. He slowly opened his empty hands, a gesture of dangerous, calculating calm.
"Look at the scene," Alric stated, his voice ringing with absolute clarity. "This boy is a knight-in-training, not a back-alley assassin. A murder executed flawlessly in pitch darkness, leaving the murder weapon behind with the boy's own royal crest on it? This is a cheap, pathetic trap, deliberately set to make us butcher each other."
The leader of the Harbor Guards slammed the heavy, iron-reinforced shaft of his executioner's axe into the wooden floorboards. The deafening CRACK echoed like a gunshot through the silent tavern.
"In Akrafjall, oaths are written in blood, outsider," the towering giant rumbled, his voice dripping with malice. "An Akran has been slaughtered. By our laws, that boy is going straight to the bottom of the ocean."
Without moving his head, Alric's sharp eyes meticulously scanned the dark, smoke-filled corners of the tavern. Nothing stood out. No fleeing shadows. No smug onlookers. There is a deep rot to this setup, he thought grimly.
"I know the Law of the Docks and the Harbor Master's brand of justice," Alric declared, projecting his voice so every single cutthroat in the sprawling hall could hear him with crystal clarity. "Give us until dawn. If the sun rises and we cannot hand you the true killer... then it won't just be the boy sinking to the ocean floor. You can claim all of our heads."
The Guard Leader stared into the unshakable, steel resolve burning in Alric's eyes. To the hardened Akran people, a man's word was paramount; staking one's own life on it elevated that word to something entirely sacred.
He held Alric's gaze for a long, suffocating moment, then turned to the guard beside him with a curt nod. The guard slowly lowered his axe.
"Until dawn," the leader growled, pointing a thick, calloused finger at Alric's chest. "But the second any of you five step a single foot outside this tavern before then... your heads roll."
Slowly, reluctantly, the bloodthirsty crowd backed away into the shadows, leaving only the Mountain Killers and Nicolas isolated in a tight perimeter around the corpse. Nicolas was still hyperventilating, staring blankly at the sticky, drying blood coating his hands.
Releasing his grip on his longsword, Alex immediately leaned over the table. His eyes narrowed, stripping away the gore to coldly analyze the anatomy of the wound.
"The strike angle is perfectly downward, executed with absolute, professional precision," Alex murmured, his mind already running the geometric calculations. "Nicolas was sitting down and leaning back when the lights went out. Physically, it is entirely impossible for him to have struck this man's back from that trajectory."
Annie the Esper drifted closer to the corpse, her footsteps making absolutely no sound. Her hollow eyes fixated on empty space just above the dead man's head.
"There is a void in this man's mind," her telepathic voice echoed directly into their heads, chilling and utterly detached. "As he died... he was thinking of absolutely nothing. No fear. No pain. Nothing."
Emily stepped in, gripping Nicolas's trembling shoulder. Her hold was fierce and unapologetically protective. "We are not handing you over to them, do you understand me? We won't let you die here, Nicolas."
Alric smoothly slid his colossal broadsword back into the heavy scabbard across his back and turned to his team.
"Someone in this village is playing a very dangerous game with us," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, predatory octave. "And the only way to win this game is to hunt the hunter. We have until dawn."
Leaving the team to guard the body, Alric turned and approached the Guard Leader. "Can we speak?"
The behemoth sized Alric up, leaning heavily on the long shaft of his axe. Beneath his thick bear-pelt mantle, his massive shoulders were coiled tight, ready to snap into violence at a moment's notice. His eyes held an overt, violent threat, but there was also a glimmer of grudging respect born from Alric's sheer, unyielding posture.
"Your hourglass is already bleeding sand, knight," the leader rumbled. His voice sounded like coarse gravel being crushed between heavy millstones. "Flapping your jaw at me won't buy the boy a single extra breath."
"It might," Alric replied calmly, his tone every bit as hard and uncompromising as the guard's. "My name is Alric. Might I have yours?"
The Guard Leader paused, his expression guarded, before offering a single, heavy grunt.
"Thorleif."