He yelled the last words over his shoulder. His voice cracked. It echoed off the marble. It bounced off the silk and the copper and the candlelight.

The stranger did not react.

He did not flinch. He did not pull away. He did not raise his hands. He stood. His collar was in the prince’s grip. His violet eyes looked down at the prince’s face. They were still calm. Still unhurried. Still assessing.

He looked past Goliath. Past his shoulder. At Sera. At the bed. At her exposed body. At her bra, pulled down, her breasts bare. At her panty, soaked, the waistband pulled by the fat one’s thumb, her hairy pubes visible through the wet cotton. At her face. At her tears. At her trembling lip. At the blood.

"Is your name Sera?" he asked again.

His voice was the same. Quiet. Unhurried. As if the prince were not there. As if the hand on his collar were a fly. As if the knights he could hear running down the corridor were a distant wind.

Sera trembled. Her eyes were wide. Her mouth was open. The pill’s warmth was spreading through her body. Her skin was hot. Her nipples ached. Her pussy was wet. Not from the wine. Not from the fat one’s rubbing. From the pill. From the drug. From the chemical working through her blood.

She looked at him. At his violet eyes. At his calm face. At the way he stood—unmoved, unbothered, untouched by the chaos around him.

"Y-yes," she sobbed. The word came out broken. Shattered. "I am— hic— I am Sera— sob— please—"

He sighed.

A small sound. Almost inaudible. The sigh of a man who has confirmed what he expected. Who has found what he was looking for. Who has seen enough.

"Your grandfather sent me here," he said.

Sera’s body went still.

The trembling stopped. The sobbing stopped. The breathing stopped. She stared at him. At his face. At his violet eyes. At his mouth, which had just said the word "grandfather." The word that meant everything. The word that meant Old Tomas. The word that meant home. The word that meant the man who had raised her and massaged her arms and pulled splinters from her palms and told her the world would try to break her.

"Grandfather—?" she whispered. Her voice was barely a sound. A breath. A prayer.

"Please," she said. And then again. Louder. Breaking. Shattering. "Please save me—! Hic— please— sob— save me— PLEASE—!"

The knights arrived.

Two of them. They burst through the doorway behind the stranger. Their silver armor clattered. Their swords were drawn. The steel caught the candlelight. They moved with the practiced efficiency of Royal Guards—trained, disciplined, lethal.

They swung.

The first knight’s blade arced toward the stranger’s neck. A killing stroke. Clean. Fast. The second knight aimed lower—toward the stranger’s torso. A disabling cut. They moved in unison. Two blades. Two angles. Two killing trajectories.

The stranger’s eyes flickered.

Not his body. Not his hands. His eyes. The violet irises contracted. Pulsed. For a fraction of a heartbeat, something shifted in them—something deep, something old, something that did not belong to the human world. The candlelight caught the shift. The violet darkened. Deepened. Became something else.

"I see," he said.

The knights’ swords hit an invisible wall.

The sound was not a clang. Not a clash. Not the ring of steel on steel. It was a wet, heavy, concussive sound—a sound like a thunderclap compressed into a space the size of a fist. The blades stopped. They did not deflect. They did not bounce. They stopped. Dead. In midair. As if the air itself had become solid.

Then the blast came.

It was not fire. Not lightning. Not any element that Sera could name. It was force. Raw, invisible, overwhelming force that erupted outward from the stranger’s body in a sphere. The sphere expanded. It touched the first knight. It touched the second.

Both knights detonated.

The word was the only one that fit. Their armor did not crumple. It did not bend. It burst. The silver plates separated from the bodies beneath them with a wet, tearing sound—flesh from metal, bone from flesh, blood from vein. The knights did not scream. They did not have time. One moment they were men. The next they were clouds. Red. Wet. Expanding.

The blood hit everything.

It hit the walls. It hit the ceiling. It hit the silk canopy. It hit the candles. It hit the copper bathtub. It hit the marble floor. It hit Goliath’s face. His golden hair. His white shirt. His enhanced cock, still rigid, now streaked with red.

The room was painted.

The fat one screamed. The weasel-faced one screamed. The sound was high, piercing, animal—the screams of men who have never seen blood spilled and have just been covered in it. They stumbled backward. Their cocks went limp. Their hands went up. Their feet slipped on the wet marble.

Sera screamed.

She curled. She pulled her knees to her chest. She wrapped her arms around her shins. She made herself small. As small as she could. The smallest target. The least visible. The training of a fighter—the instinct to survive—even in the midst of something she could not understand, could not process, could not fight.

The chaos threw her. The bed shifted. The fat one stumbled into it. The weasel-faced one fell against the mattress. The impact sent Sera rolling. She tumbled off the edge. She hit the marble floor. The cold stone pressed against her bare skin. Her bra was gone—pulled off in the chaos. Her panty was still on. Soaked. She pressed herself against the floor. She covered her head with her arms.

The stranger looked at Goliath.

The prince was frozen. His hand was still gripping the stranger’s collar. His face was white. Not pale—white. The color of milk. Of bone. Of death. His ice-blue eyes were wide. So wide that the whites showed all around the iris. His mouth was open. No sound came out.

The blood of two knights dripped from his hair. From his face. From his shoulders. It ran down his chest. It pooled in the hollow of his collarbone.

"You must be Prince Goliath," the stranger said.

His voice was the same. Quiet. Unhurried. Calm. As if he were meeting someone at a dinner party. As if the room were not painted with blood. As if two men had not just been reduced to mist.

Goliath trembled. His mouth worked. His jaw moved. No words came. His eyes were fixed on the stranger’s face. On the violet eyes that were looking at him with the same calm, assessing gaze that one might direct at an insect.

"What— I— I—" Goliath stammered.

The stranger tilted his head.

A small motion. Barely perceptible. A fraction of a degree. The way a dog tilts its head when it hears a sound it does not recognize. The way a predator tilts its head when it has found the weak point.

Goliath screamed.

The sound was not human. It was the scream of a man whose body has been violated in a way that the mind cannot process. It was the sound of nerve endings reporting something that should not be possible. It was the sound of a body realizing, in real time, that a part of it no longer exists.

His left shoulder was gone.

’!’

"AAARGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!"