When Judgment Learned to Kneel

I waited until the wind rose and night had swallowed the mountain.

My pack stayed behind. I took only the dagger from Braylen’s things and started back down the trail I had climbed the day before.

I gripped the weapon harder than I meant to. The leather wrapping compressed beneath my fingers until the metal tang warped against my palm. Blood gathered between my knuckles and slipped down my wrist in slow, warm threads.

I barely noticed.

The rage in my chest was worse than I wanted to admit. It had weight. Pressure. A living, corrosive thing grinding against my ribs. After an hour of walking, I was breathing hard—not from exertion, but because anger had turned every breath into labor.

I pressed a hand to my sternum and forced myself to slow down.

My fingers found scales.

I stopped.

For a moment, I thought it was dried blood or torn fabric. Then I opened my tunic and looked down.

Platinum scales gleamed beneath the moonlight.

They spread across the center of my chest, bright and immaculate, catching the pale glow like polished metal. More lined the base of my throat.

That should not have been possible.

This body was not half-dragon. I had examined it. Tested it. Taken it apart with magic as thoroughly as any healer or artificer could have managed.

Yet the scales were real.

I ran my fingers over them again, feeling the faint ridges beneath my skin.

Why now?

Why here?

I shook the question away.

Later.

Whatever was happening to me could wait until morning. The rot crawling toward my friends’ sanctuary could not.

I let my tunic fall open and hang from the sash at my waist. Moonlight washed over the new scales as I released the glamour hiding my eyes and hair.

Sky-blue irises burned clear in the dark.

My hair shifted from ash-brown to brilliant platinum.

They might not recognize me immediately.

But they would know enough to be afraid.

Step after step, I descended.

Every step down the trail draws me closer, until a cacophony of wet, pathetic noises leads me to their campsite. Five acolytes. ‘Huddled together’ is a wildly generous term for the shivering, grotesque orgy unfolding on the cliff edge. Fucking for warmth? Perhaps.

But listening to their breathless, desperate moans only fans the inferno in my veins. This is how they choose to spend the twilight of their miserable lives. One is missing from their shitty little roster—I don’t care who—but Fara is front and center.

She’s pleasuring a woman while the woman services two men with her mouth and hands.

As I slink closer, they begin to untangle.

“Morven, what’s your plan for dealing with…uh?” one of the men asks.

Fara pulls a fresh cock from her mouth and wipes her lips. “Caelen,” she supplies. “Dario, at least listen if I’m offering myself and Meyla as payment for killing the bastard.”

The man beneath Meyla chimes in. “Yeah, what are we doing—”

She cuts him off.

Meyla moans loudly as the man beneath her thrusts a few final times. Then she stands, letting fluid drip down her thighs before stepping over to Dario and grabbing him roughly by the balls.

“You can’t kill him,” she purrs, a sickening grin plastered across her face. “Not until I’ve had a piece of him. I can tell just by looking at him—he won’t break from a little torture.”

The man on the ground begins lapping at her core, drawing another moan from her lips.

Morven steps forward and shoves his spent member back into his trousers.

“Tayrese takes the flank. Dario and I will cloud-shift behind him. Once he’s subdued, you two can have your fun. Then we’ll reach the monastery, and I can fuck you on a proper bed. My knees are wrecked from this cliffside bullshit.”

Fara saunters over and kisses Meyla deeply. “Whatever you say, Morven. But Caelen… There's something wrong with him. Something powerful that lowers your guard despite your better judgment.”

She brushes out her hair before pulling it into a tight bun, her tone turning matter-of-fact.

“Eamon ruined everything. I could’ve turned him against Caelen and let the two of them tear each other apart, but the idiot lost control, forced me to call for help, and got himself killed before he could be useful.” Her mouth twisted. “Worse, Caelen saved me. I owed that proud bastard something, and I hate even admitting it.”

Meyla huffs.

“But you still said it. And Eamon is dead because he couldn’t keep his cock under control long enough to secure his place in the plan.”

She crosses the camp, catches Fara by the chin, and pulls her into another kiss. Fara barely has time to breathe before Tayrese interrupts while dragging the rest of his clothes back into place.

“That’s enough, you two.”

Tayrese waddles toward the precipice with his trousers around his ankles and begins to relieve himself.

“You were always weak against Master Sekrisk’s illusions at Highmoon,” he says with a scoff over his shoulder. “Couldn’t break free even when—”

I erase the distance between us in a heartbeat.

Before the punchline leaves his lips, I plunge the steel into his throat, tearing through cartilage and artery. I rip the blade forward, kicking his gurgling corpse over the edge.

Meyla unleashes a bloodcurdling shriek.

The remaining four scramble for their weapons.

I step fully into the amber glow of their campfire, flicking Tayrese’s arterial spray from my arm. "Well, look what I stumbled into. Five—excuse me, four acolytes, fucking away their final moments." I twirl the dagger, burying it into the dirt at my feet, and crack my knuckles.

Fara drops her guard, a transparent, pathetic ploy. "Did you want to join us... Caelen?" Her eyes blow wide as the firelight catches my platinum scales.

Confusion rippled through the others.

Morven looked at her.

“What the fuck is going on, Fara?”

He turned away from me for less than a second.

That was enough.

Silver mist folded around my body.

I appeared behind him, seized his jaw and crown, and twisted.

His neck broke cleanly.

Morven collapsed, but I caught him before he struck the ground. One hand around his throat, I lifted the body and hurled it into the darkness beyond the cliff.

“Three.”

Meyla dropped to her knees.

Dario threw down his weapon.

“Fuck this, Fara.”

He tried to run past me.

My arm snapped out.

I caught him by the throat and closed my hand.

This text was taken from NovelPhoenix. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Bone gave.

His head came free with a wet crack, and blood sprayed across my chest in a hot, brief storm of carmine rain.

Meyla screamed again.

Fara backed into the mountain wall.

She stared at me as blood traveled down my scales and dripped from the ends of my hair.

“Who…” Her voice barely worked. “What are you?”

I grin, savoring their unadulterated terror. "For sycophants touting the symbols of the draconic pantheon so blatantly, you’re remarkably blind when one stands directly before you."

The realization hits me—I’ve been radiating my draconic aura, suffocating them in primordial dread. Meyla tries to scurry away but slips in a puddle of her own fresh urine.

Taking two deliberate steps, I crouch beside her pathetic mess. "Shhh." I press a bloodied finger to my lips. She sobs uncontrollably, staring down the barrel of her impending execution.

"Name the pantheon. I'll wait."

Fara shouts Bahamut.

Meyla gasps out Garyx.

They frantically rattle off Astilabor, Chronepsis, Hlal, Sardior, Kereska.

Tamara.

That one twists the blade in my chest.

But they draw a blank on my name.

I gathered four jagged stones in my right hand before standing up. The blood on my skin was beginning to crust. I raised my left hand and pulsed my magic into the atmosphere.

The world violently obeys.

Thunder ruptures the night, unleashing a torrential downpour that washes the gore from my body.

"You forget the arbiter," I command, my voice slicing through the tempest.

"The one who carries out justice, for good or ill."

I drag a hand through my wet, silver hair.

As lightning strobes across the cliff, amplifying the horror on their faces, they whisper it in perfect, terrified synchronicity.

"Lendys."

Another bolt split the clouds.

I walked toward Meyla.

She gripped the earth so hard her fingernails tore and her palms began to bleed.

I crouched before her again.

My left hand opened and out.

The dagger ripped itself from the ground and flew into my palm.

I slowly slide the steel into her abdomen.

Blood bubbles over her lips, but she is too stunned to move.

Fara ran.

I did not turn.

The stones in my right hand brightened as I pressed divine force into them. One by one, I flicked them toward the trail.

Each struck a knee.

Fara collapsed with a scream.

A message whispered directly into her mind.

You do not get to leave.

She crawled anyway, but it was futile.

I returned my attention to Meyla.

"Was this the break you were hoping for?" I murmur.

She weakly shakes her head, weeping a pathetic “no.”

I savor the regret in her eyes before withdrawing the blade, systematically puncturing every major joint. I watch the life hemorrhage out of her until she finally goes limp.

When I stood, Fara had crawled nearly a hundred feet.

Blood streamed from her ruined knees, mixing with rainwater and tracing a pale-red path along the mountain.

Still, she moved.

My anger had not diminished.

If anything, her betrayal had given it a clearer shape.

She had accepted kindness and used it as a weapon.

The thought made the whole monastery feel contaminated. I imagined tearing its gates down, burning its doctrine halls, killing every Master who had taught these people that mercy was something to exploit.

But the monastery could wait.

Fara could not.

I followed at a walking pace, letting her gain another ten feet before catching up.

When I reach her, I straddle her lower back, grab a fistful of her hair, and wrench her neck back.

“You thought your tricks would kill me this morning,” I said near her ear. “The two idiots you sent after me did not even live long enough to curse your name.”

She began begging.

Apologies tumbled out between sobs. Promises. Offers. Anything she thought might purchase another breath.

“You can have whatever you want,” she cried. “Just let me live.”

Too late.

My rage had moved beyond bargaining.

“No,” I told her. “You die tonight.”

I slammed her face into the earth.

Again.

And Again

Harder each time.

Stone cracked beneath each impact.

By the time I dragged her head up once more, the only word she could form was a faint, broken plea.

“Please.”

I released her.

Not out of mercy.

I left her there because the mountain would finish what I had begun.

Slowly.

I returned to the camp.

Rain soaked the abandoned packs, so I lifted a hand and snapped my fingers again. The downpour ceased. Clouds unraveled. Stars returned as if nothing had happened.

That was when I remembered the missing acolyte.

I had counted five.

There should have been six.

I found her seconds later.

She crawled from behind a shelf of stone and threw herself to her hands and knees before me, forehead pressed to the mud.

“Mercy,” she whispered.

Interesting word.

I rifled through the dead acolytes’ packs while she remained there, trembling. An hour passed. She never lifted her head.

Eventually, curiosity overcame irritation.

“How long do you intend to stay like that?”

She shook beneath her soaked clothes.

“For as long as it takes not to end up like them, Lendys, sir.”

I raised an eyebrow.

She had heard everything.

Seen enough to understand what I was.

And somehow decided worship was the safest option.

Survival instinct, nothing more.

No sane person would pledge themselves to a being they had just watched dismantle five companions.

Then again, faith has begun from worse things than fear.

I finished gathering what I wanted, shouldered the pack, and approached her.

She was a small half-elf woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, with tawny skin, pale green eyes, and dark hair hacked unevenly with a knife. Fear had drained most of the color from her face.

I crouched and lifted her chin.

She is undeniably pretty, and the utter, authentic terror in her eyes sparks an idea in the back of my mind. "Very well. You will serve as my first follower. Your name?"

Her eyes widened at the prospect of survival. "Tessa, sir. Tessa Rill."

I let the glamour wash over me, restoring Caelen's unassuming features.

"I am Lendys, God of Justice." I said. “Inside the monastery, you will call me Caelen. Around acolytes and instructors, that is the only name you know.”

My expression hardened.

“When we are alone, you may address me as Lendys or sir. Understood?”

She nodded so fast I thought she might injure herself.

“Good. Get up. We reach the monastery by sundown. I am finished sleeping in the dirt.”

Tessa sprang to her feet, gathered her pack, and bowed again.

“Yes, Lendys, sir.”

I shook my head.

A minion.

No.

A follower.

Fate had placed her in my path for some reason, though I doubted either of us understood it yet.

We climbed for hours. I stopped only when exhaustion threatened to drop her where she stood. She did not receive the same treatment I had given Fara.

I had learned that lesson quickly.

Night had fallen by the time we reached the gates of the Cloud Peak Monastery.

Two guards called down from the walls. The doors opened after several minutes, revealing a courtyard cut directly into the mountain. We waited there until one of the Masters arrived.

He led us to a small room near the entrance.

Two cots.

One narrow window.

Nothing else.

“You will remain here until permanent quarters are prepared,” he said. “Sleep well, hatchlings.”

The door closed.

A lock clicked from the outside.

Tessa stared at the two beds, visibly uneasy.

“Do not worry,” I said, lying down on the nearest cot and turning toward the wall. “I am going to sleep. I do not subscribe to the same pleasure-seeking philosophy as your companions.”

Her shoulders relaxed.

Only slightly.

As I closed my eyes, she answered in a low voice.

“You will eventually.”

I considered the idea.

Indulgence did not repulse me.

It did not tempt me either.

Not then.

I let the thought pass and surrendered to sleep after the longest day this new life had yet given me.