The Anomaly's Path

The Rusty Mug was warm, but Roran felt nothing.

He sat at a table near the window with a half-empty cup of ale in front of him, but he had not touched it in the last twenty minutes. The ale had gone warm, and the foam had settled into a flat, ugly crust.

He did not care.

His eyes were open, but he was not looking at anything in the room. He was miles away, trapped in the past.

Clara’s face kept appearing in his mind.

He saw her standing in the kitchen of their old home, her hands covered in flour up to her wrists. She was laughing at something he had said, some stupid joke he could not even remember anymore.

But he remembered her laugh.

He would never forget that sound. It was bright and warm, like sunlight through a window, and it made everything else in the world feel smaller.

He saw her in the garden, kneeling in the dirt with her dress bunched around her knees. She loved flowers. She used to say that growing something from nothing was the closest thing to magic that ordinary people could do.

She would talk to the plants while she worked, telling them to grow, to reach for the sun, to be beautiful. And they always were.

He saw her on their wedding day, wearing a white dress that made her look like she was made of light. She had smiled at him and said, "You are crying, you idiot."

...And then he saw her on the floor of their home, her body still, her eyes open, her blood pooling around her like a crimson halo. The baby. The baby had been inside her. Seven months and almost ready to come into the world.

And Kael had taken both of them in a single night.

His hand tightened around the cup. The wood creaked under his fingers.

The Gambling King was at the table across from him, still counting his winnings from the dice game. His fingers moved over the coins like a pianist over keys, stacking them into neat little towers. The other men were laughing and drinking and slapping each other on the back.

The tavern was full of laughter, but Harren—who had stepped out to take a piss—hadn’t come back.

Roran noticed it. The Gambling King noticed it too. Harren had been gone too long. But neither of them said anything. Harren was a grown man. He could take care of himself.

Then the ground shook.

It wasn’t an earthquake. It was a sharp, focused impact, like a giant’s fist slamming into the gate.

The cups on the table rattled. The lanterns swayed. The music from the festival stumbled for a moment, then continued, but there was something off about it now. Something hollow.

The Gambling King looked up. "What was that?"

Roran did not answer. He was already on his feet, his hand on the hilt of his sword. His instincts were screaming at him.

The ground shook again. Louder this time. .

"That came from the eastern gate," one of the men said. His voice was casual, but there was a tremor underneath it.

"Probably nothing," another said. "Fireworks, maybe. You know how the kids get during the festival."

Roran walked to the door. His boots were heavy on the wooden floor. He pushed the door open and stepped outside.

The night air hit his face, cool and damp. The music from the festival was still playing, but there was something underneath it. Something wrong and dark. A silence underneath the noise, like the quiet before a storm.

A woman screamed.

Not a festival shout, but the sound of someone seeing something that shouldn’t exist. Then another scream. Then another.

Roran turned back to the men inside. His face was hard, his voice was low. "Something is wrong. All of you, stay inside. Do not come out. Do not follow me."

The Gambling King stood up. His face had gone pale. "Roran, what is—"

"I do not know yet. But I will find out."

He did not wait for an answer. He walked out into the night and closed the door behind him.

The village was burning.

He did not know how it had happened so fast. One moment, the streets were full of laughing, dancing people, their faces lit up by lanterns and firelight. The next, they were full of monsters.

Moldclaws tore through the market stalls, their green fungus glowing in the darkness like sick lanterns. Their claws ripped through flesh like it was wet paper, and the spores that drifted from their backs made the air thick and poisonous.

Roran could smell them from where he stood—a chemical smell, sharp and wrong, like burning medicine.

Needletooths darted between the legs of the fleeing villagers, their long teeth sinking into calves and thighs and stomachs. They did not kill quickly. They bit and pulled and tore, and the screams did not stop. Every time Roran heard a scream cut off, he knew another person had died.

A group of village guards ran past him, their spears raised, their faces pale in the firelight.

There were five of them. Young men, most of them. Farmers and mill workers who had been given spears and told to protect the village. They had never fought anything worse than a wild dog.

"Roran!" one of them shouted. His name was Elric. He had a wife and two children. "What is happening?!"

"I do not know," Roran said. He looked at the guards, at their shaking hands and wide eyes. "But you need to get these people to safety. Gather everyone you can. Fight the monsters. Save as many as you can."

"What about you?"

Roran looked toward the edge of the village, toward the jungle. He could feel something there. Something massive, that made the air feel thick and wrong, like the pressure before a thunderstorm. His skin prickled. His stomach turned.

"...There is something I need to check."

He did not wait for them to argue. He sprinted through the chaos.

The streets were a nightmare.

Bodies lay everywhere. Some were torn apart by monsters, their limbs scattered across the cobblestones. Some were crushed by falling debris, their faces buried under beams and broken wood. Some were simply lying still, their eyes open, their faces frozen in expressions of terror that would never fade.

Roran recognized some of them.

Old Man Jace was lying in the doorway of his shop. His chest had been torn open, and his insides were spilling out onto the step. His eyes were still open. He looked surprised.

The baker’s wife, Elara, was slumped against the wall of her stall. Her throat had been cut. Not by a monster but by a blade. Clean and Precise. Roran saw the wound and knew. A monster would have torn.

This was a cut.

A young man who had helped him carry firewood last winter was lying face down in a pool of blood. His back was covered in deep claw marks. He had been running. He had almost made it.

Roran wanted to stop. He wanted to kneel beside them and close their eyes and say something, anything. But there was no time. The screams were coming from everywhere, and he could not save the dead.

He could only save the living.

A Moldclaw was tearing into a woman who had been hiding behind a cart. Her arms were raised over her head, trying to protect herself, but the monster’s claws were already through her skin. Blood was running down her arms.

She was screaming, but the sound was weak, fading.

Roran didn’t waste any time, he moved.

His sword was in his hand before he knew he had drawn it. The blade caught the Moldclaw across the neck, and the head came off. The body slumped over the woman, and Roran kicked it aside. The green fungus on the monster’s back pulsed once, then went dark.

He knelt beside the woman. Her arms were a mess of torn flesh and exposed bone. She was not going to make it. He could see it in her eyes. She knew it too.

"Can you walk?" he asked.

She shook her head. Tears were streaming down her face.

"Then crawl. Find somewhere to hide. Do not stop until you are inside." He did not wait to see if she listened. He stood up and kept moving.

He found a Needletooth dragging a child by the leg.

The boy could not have been more than fourteen years old. His face was covered in dirt and tears, and his small fingers were leaving trails in the dirt as he tried to grab onto anything, anything at all. His leg was bent at an angle that made Roran’s stomach turn.

Roran caught up to the creature in three steps and drove his blade through its spine. The Needletooth let out a wet, gurgling sound and went limp. Its long teeth clicked together one last time, then stopped.

The boy was crying. He was not screaming anymore. He had no strength left for that.

Roran knelt down and scooped the boy up with one arm. The child was light, too light, and his leg hung at a wrong angle.

"Where is your mother?" Roran asked.

The boy pointed toward a burning building. The roof had collapsed, and flames were pouring out of the windows. No one could have survived that.

Roran’s jaw tightened. He set the boy down and pointed toward the village square, where the guards were trying to form a defensive line.

"Run there," he said. "The guards will protect you."

The boy limped away, dragging his injured leg behind him. Roran watched him go for a moment, then turned and kept moving.

He killed another Moldclaw, after another. Then a Needletooth that had been chewing on a dead horse.

His sword was slick with blood. His arms were tired. His chest ached from the effort of swinging, over and over, without stopping.

But he did not stop.

Roran stood there and looked around. The monsters were everywhere, but they were not the only threat. There was something else. Someone else who is killing everyone.

He did not have time to search for them.

But then, the air changed.

It grew heavy, thick, suffocating. The temperature dropped so suddenly that Roran could see his breath misting in front of his face. The hair on his arms stood up. His skin prickled.

A presence pressed down on him like a physical weight, and for a moment, he could not breathe. His lungs felt like they were full of water.

His back stiffened. His hands started to shake. Every instinct he had screamed at him to run, to hide, to get away. This was not fear. This was something deeper. Something primal. The kind of terror that animals felt when a predator was near.

He moved toward the source of that fear and reached the edge of the village. Then he froze at what he saw.

The creature stood twice as tall as a man

Its body was a nightmare of bone and shadow, thin and gaunt, like it had been starved for centuries. Its skin was pale, almost translucent, and beneath it, dark veins pulsed with something that looked like liquid night. The veins moved. They were alive.

Its eyes were hollow pits, empty and cold. There was nothing behind them.

From its back, long, skeletal arms reached out like the branches of a dead tree. There were four of them, maybe five. Each arm ended in a hand with too many fingers, and each finger ended in a claw that looked like it could tear through steel.

The creature was not looking at the village. It was looking at its own hands.

It turned its palms up, then down. It flexed its fingers, one by one, watching the joints move. It tilted its head from side to side, like a newborn trying to understand its own body.

It just became a Grade 7, Roran realized. It is still learning what it can do. It does not even know its own strength yet.

The creature turned its hollow pits toward Roran.

Roran felt a chill run down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold. The creature was not looking at him like prey. It was not looking at him like an enemy. It was looking at him like an object. A thing to be examined.

The creature opened its mouth. It was too wide, too full of teeth that were too long. The teeth were not sharp. They were flat, like grinding stones, made for crushing, not cutting.

A sound came out. Not a roar or a scream. A noise that was not quite a word, not quite a cry. It was wet and thick, like someone trying to speak through a mouth full of blood.

"Rrrr... rrrr..." its jaw worked, unhinging in a horrific angle.

It was trying to speak.

Roran’s blood ran cold. He had heard stories about high-rank monsters. He knew they had intelligence. Some of them could even think, plan, strategize.

But he had never seen one try to speak. He had never seen one look at its own hands like it was seeing them for the first time.

The creature tried again. Its throat bulged. Its jaw worked. Its hollow pits seemed to focus on something in the distance, something Roran could not see and then the word came out. Broken and wet, but clear enough to understand.

"...Kill..."

Roran gripped his sword. Every instinct in his body scream to him: kill it before it figures out how to use its power.

He lunged, channeling the mana of a Grandmaster. His blade moved so fast it made the air scream. He aimed for the throat—a killing strike.

Clang!

The creature didn’t parry. It simply raised a bare palm. The sword hit like it had struck a mountain of iron.

Roran’s eyes widened.

"...!"

His blade stopped dead against the creature’s palm—no cut, no scratch, not even a mark. The impact sent a shockwave up his arm, numbing his elbow, making his fingers tingle.

He jumped back, landing in a crouch, staring at his sword.

What in the hell...?

He had not used any of his forms. That was true. He had not channeled his full power into the strike. But that swing had been fast. It had been strong.

It had been backed by the mana of a Grandmaster and the creature had blocked it with its bare hand without even looking.

The creature tilted its head again, glancing at its palm and then back at Roran. For a moment, its empty eye sockets seemed to glow—a faint red light flickering deep in the void. Annoyance, maybe. Or just curiosity.

"...Kill!" The monster shriek tore through the night, loud and wrong, like a sound that didn’t belong in any throat.

Roran didn’t waste a second. He lunged again, swinging at the creature’s leg. The blade bit into flesh—a shallow gash, but it bled. Dark, thick blood oozed from the wound, and the creature let out a sound that might have been surprise, its head snapping down to look at the cut.

He swung again. And again. And again.

He cut its arm, its chest, its side. Each strike left a mark, each strike drew blood. But the cuts were too shallow. The creature’s skin was too thick, its body too dense—like trying to chop through a tree with a butter knife.

The creature looked down at the gashes covering its body, touched one with its finger, and stared at the blood on its hand. It turned its hand over and over, watching the dark liquid drip onto the ground, almost curious.

Then it screamed.

Not loud. Not a roar. A shriek—high and sharp—that came from everywhere at once. The ground shook. Windows shattered. Roran’s ears rang, his vision blurred, and blood trickled from his nose.

Then the creature moved.

The monster’s skeletal limb blurred, catching Roran in the chest. It was like being hit by a falling tree.

He felt his ribs crack and air leaving his lungs. He flew backward, tumbling through the air, and slammed into the ground a hundred feet away. He rolled and rolled, his sword flying from his hand, until he came to a stop against a pile of rubble.

He lay there for a moment, staring up at the sky. The stars were blurry. His chest was on fire, his ears were ringing. He could taste blood in his mouth, thick and metallic.

He pushed himself up onto his elbows and coughed. More blood. His ribs screamed.

He looked around for his sword. It was lying in the dirt twenty feet away, the blade glinting in the firelight.

He crawled toward it. His arms were shaking. His vision was blurry. Each movement sent a spike of pain through his chest.

How am I supposed to kill that thing...?

He reached his sword and grabbed the hilt. The familiar weight of the steel steadied him. He pushed himself to his feet, his legs trembling, and turned to face the creature again.

It was not coming toward him. It was still standing at the edge of the village, still looking at its hands, still testing its body. It had not even noticed that he was gone.

It does not see me as a threat, he realized. It does not see me at all.

He started walking toward it.

He didn’t know how he was going to kill it. He didn’t know if he even could. But he had to try. There were people behind him—people who couldn’t fight, people who were counting on him.

He took a step and then he felt it.

A familiar presence...

He stopped.

The world seemed to hold its breath. The crackle of flames faded. The distant screams became muffled, distant, like echoes from another world. All he could hear was the slow, steady crunch of boots on broken glass and rubble.

He looked up.

Through the smoke and flames, a tall figure in a black cloak walked toward him. The firelight danced across the blade at his hip, and the smoke parted around him like he was walking through water—like the flames themselves didn’t dare touch him.

The figure stopped a few feet away.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then the figure reached up and pushed back his hood.

The face beneath was older, scarred, pale. The brown hair hung long and unkempt, and the eyes—those hollow, obsessive black eyes—were unmistakable. The same eyes Roran saw every time he closed his eyes.

The figure smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. It was the smile of someone who had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.

"It’s been a while..."

The flames crackled between them.

"...Master."