The scent of roasting meat and cheap, fermented ale led Arkin through the dense thickets of the Northern Wilds. To any other man, the forest at midnight was a wall of impenetrable black, a labyrinth of thorns and hidden roots that whispered of unseen predators lurking in the mist. To Arkin, the shadows were a map. They didn't hide the world; they revealed it in shades of violet and charcoal grey. He moved without sound, his grey skin blending into the fog, his breath coming in slow, shallow draws that didn't even mist in the freezing air. His lungs didn't burn from the cold anymore. His heart didn't race with fear. He felt like a ghost walking through a world of glass.
He found them in a wide clearing three miles north of the village ruins.
Ten men. They wore the same mismatched furs and the same iron-shod boots that had marched through Nopheria like a plague. They were huddled around a massive bonfire that sent sparks dancing into the canopy like dying stars. They were passing around a skin of wine, laughing—the loud, hollow laughter of men who thought they had already buried their sins in the ash of a peasant village.
"The girl's scream was the best part," one bandit chuckled, leaning back against a fallen log. He was tossing a small, scorched wooden flower into the air and catching it with a greasy, callous hand. Arkin's eyes locked onto it. Miri's flower. The last thing he had seen before the darkness took him. "High-pitched and sharp, like a trapped rabbit. I almost felt bad before I twisted the knife into her ribs."
The memory hit Arkin like a physical blow. In the void of his chest, something shifted. It wasn't anger—anger was too hot, too human. This was cold. This was a hunger that demanded to be fed.
Arkin didn't scream. He didn't roar a challenge. He simply stepped out of the tree line and into the flickering orange glow of the firelight.
The laughter died instantly, choked off by a sudden, unnatural chill that swept through the clearing. The bandits scrambled for their blades, their eyes bulging at the sight of the boy they had left for dead. He was a nightmare made flesh—covered in soot, his clothes charred rags, his skin the color of a week-old corpse. But it was his eyes that froze them; the warm brown was gone, replaced by a flickering, predatory red that seemed to drink the very light of the fire.
"You..." the leader, a man with a scarred lip and a heavy claymore, stammered. He dropped his wine skin, the red liquid staining the mud like a fresh wound. "I killed you. I watched the roof collapse on your head. I felt your ribs snap under my boot!"
Arkin didn't answer. He didn't have words for them anymore. He lunged.
He was fast—faster than any human had a right to be—but his movements were unrefined, driven by raw, cold hatred. He tore into the first bandit, his fingers digging into the man's throat like iron talons. He didn't use a weapon; he used his bare hands. He felt the man's windpipe collapse under his grip, a sickening crunch that vibrated up his arm. For a split second, a surge of warmth rushed into Arkin's chest, a dark energy that made the shadows at his feet writhe.
"One," a hollow voice hissed in the back of his mind.
"Kill him! He's just a ghost! Hack him to pieces!" the leader roared, finally finding his nerve.
The battle became a massacre of endurance. Arkin was a beast, but he was a beast without a shield. A spear lunged from the dark, piercing his thigh. The iron tip buried itself deep in the muscle, blood black as tar oozing from the wound. Arkin didn't flinch. He didn't even grunt. He simply walked forward, the wooden shaft splintering as he forced his body closer to the wielder. With a single, brutal tug, he ripped the spear from the man's hands and drove his elbow into the bandit's temple with enough force to shatter bone.
He took a heavy axe to the shoulder next. The blade bit deep, hitting the collarbone with a dull thud. Any other man would have collapsed in agony, his arm rendered useless. Arkin didn't even blink. He grabbed the axe-wielder by the face, his fingers sinking into the man's eye sockets, and slammed his head into a jagged stone until the sound changed from a thud to a wet, pulpy crunch.
But ten-to-one was a losing game for a body that was still learning how to be a monster. The "Despair" in his chest flickered. He was powerful, but he was clumsy. He relied on rage where he needed technique, and the bandits, though terrified, were experienced killers.
A heavy iron mace swung from his blind side, catching Arkin in the ribs with a sound like breaking dry wood. He gasped, dark blood spraying from his lips and staining the snow. Another blade opened a jagged gash across his back, and the impact of a second mace blow to his spine sent him crashing to the mud.
His vision swam. The unnatural strength was there, but his nervous system was failing him. The "Blessing of the Abyss" kept him moving, but it couldn't stop the physics of a shattered ribcage. His legs finally gave way, his knees hitting the blood-soaked earth. He tried to rise, his grey hands clutching at the dirt, but the leader was already there.
"Still breathing?" the leader spat, stepping over the twitching bodies of his fallen men. He looked into Arkin's eyes and saw the flickering red light refusing to die. For a moment, the leader's hand shook. This wasn't a boy. It was a grudge given form. "I don't know what kind of demon you sold your soul to, boy. But let's see if you can haunt us when you're nothing but smoke and bone. Even a demon needs a head to think."
The leader didn't use his blade. He swung the heavy, iron-wrapped hilt of his claymore against Arkin's temple with the force of a falling smith-hammer.
The world tilted and went black. Arkin didn't die, but his consciousness shattered into a thousand jagged shards of memory—his mother's face, Miri's laugh, the rope around his father's neck. He lay there, a broken heap of ash and grey skin, paralyzed as the remaining bandits began to cheer—a desperate, shaky sound. They weren't cheering for victory; they were cheering because they were trying to convince themselves they weren't next.
"Is he dead?" one of the bandits whispered, poking Arkin's limp arm with the toe of his boot.
"He's dead now," the leader panted, wiping blood and sweat from his brow. His face was pale, his eyes darting toward the shadows. "But I'm not taking chances. Throw him into the heart of the bonfire. I want to see his skin bubble. I want to see his eyes melt out of his skull. I want to see him turn to ash so he can never crawl out of the dirt again."
They grabbed Arkin by his arms and legs, his body dragging through the mud like a discarded doll. Every movement sent a fresh wave of agony through his shattered frame, but he couldn't even groan. He was a prisoner in his own meat. With a collective, panicked heave, they tossed the "corpse" into the white-hot core of the fire.
The heat was instantaneous. It roared around him, hungry and bright. But inside the flames, something changed. Arkin didn't feel the skin-searing pain he expected. Instead, the fire felt like a cold, heavy blanket. The darkness in his soul reached out to the heat, feeding on the energy of the blaze.
Outside the fire, the bandits sat back down, passing the wine skin with trembling hands. They stared at the flames, waiting for the scream that never came. They waited for the smell of burning meat, but all they smelled was the ozone of an approaching storm. The fire only crackled louder, the flames turning a strange, deep violet as they licked at the boy who refused to stay dead.
"He's not burning," one of the men whispered, his voice cracking with terror. "Why isn't he burning?"
The leader didn't answer. He couldn't. He just watched as a pale, grey hand reached out from the center of the inferno, gripping a charred log with a strength that shouldn't exist.
They thought the nightmare was over. They thought they could go back to being men.
They were wrong. The Harvest was just beginning.