he valley was no longer a battlefield it was a cathedral of agony.
Uktai Khan's scream was not human.
But Ulfat didn't stop. The scholar was gone.
The genius was also gone.
Ulfat mounted the Khan's chest, his knees pinning the warlord's arms into the mud.
He raised the jagged stone the same one from the slave pits and brought it down.
Crack.
The sound of bone meeting rock echoed. Ulfat didn't use a sword; he wanted to feel the vibration of the impact in his own bones. He struck again. And again. For five minutes and twenty one seconds, the only rhythm in the world was the wet,
rhythmic thud of the stone hitting the Khan's face
. Ulfat's vision was a blur of crimson. Every strike was for a different memory one for his mother's silk scarf, one for his father's books, and a thousand for the chains.
"STOP IT, ULFAT! STOP IT!"
Wasabi lunged forward, grabbing Ulfat's arm just as he raised the stone for the final blow.
Ulfat spun around, his face unrecognizable, masked in the Khan's blood. He slammed his bloody hand onto Wasabi's shoulder.
"WASABI! WHY ARE YOU STOPPING ME?!Let me kill him! Let me end this monster! He took everything! He made us into this!"
Wasabi stared into Ulfat's hollow eyes, his own voice trembling. "You wanted him alive, Ulfat remember? The information the plan you said we needed him!"
In his rage, Ulfat didn't see his friend. He saw an obstacle. he swung the stone. The rock tore skin, and Wasabi's blood sprayed into the dirt, mixing with the Khan's.
Both boys collapsed backward, gasping for air.
As Wasabi lay in the mud, his vision flickering, his mind drifted back to the day the world ended.
He remembered the smell of burning wood. The Mongols had swept through his village like a plague, burning the Samurai banners and slaughtering his kin . Uktai Khan had stood amidst the embers, looking down at wasabi.
"From now on," the Khan had said, his voice cold as iron, "you will be my successors. My shadow."
Wasabi had been different from Ulfat. He wasn't burned out yet. He saw no option but to survive, so he became the perfect student cold, calculated, and obedient. The Khan had praised him for it. "I am glad to see you don't need to be tortured like that other boy," the Khan had told Wasabi. "Because you are clever."
But Wasabi had watched Ulfat. He saw the way the guards broke sticks over Ulfat's back. He saw the way Ulfat was dragged through the snow. And yet, the fire in Ulfat's eyes never went out. Even through the blood and the tears, Wasabi had heard Ulfat whispering three words over and over, like a prayer:
"Kill. Kill. Kill."
Wasabi had made a choice that day.
He decided to save what was left of Ulfat's soul. He had bowed to the Khan, begging to take half of Ulfat's punishments upon himself. He had become the shield for the boy who only knew how to be a sword.
For the first time in years, Ulfat had found someone who understood his darkness without being consumed by it.
The Final Stroke
"Even if he was a monster," Wasabi screamed, "he still raised us! He made us who we are!"
Ulfat froze . The words seemed to hit him harder than any stone. He looked at his bloody hands, his breath coming in ragged shivers. For a second, it looked like the Scholar was coming back.
But the Khan was not finished.
Uktai Khan, blinded and broken, reached out with a trembling hand. Through pure, vengeful instinct, he felt for the hilt of the sword sheathed in his own armor. He pulled the blade free, swinging it blindly in a wide, desperate arc aimed directly at Ulfat's neck.
Ulfat, lost in his thoughts, didn't see the steel coming.
Wasabi saw it. There was no time to pull Ulfat away. There was no time for a speech.
Wasabi lunged. He didn't think; he simply reacted with the training the Khan had forced into him. He grabbed the hilt of his own sword and drove it deep into Uktai Khan's chest, right through the gaps in the golden armor.
The Khan stiffened. The sword fell from his hand.
Wasabi stood over the man who had been his father and his tormentor. He felt a wave of sickening happiness and soul-crushing sadness wash over him at the same time. The "Mountain" was dead. But the death hadn't come from Ulfat's revenge.
It had come from Wasabi's loyalty.
Uktai Khan died looking at the boy he called "clever," while the boy he called monster watched in total, horrified silence.