The wooden door of the merchant shop in Thornwatch splintered into pieces and crashed onto the floor.

Sera jumped up from the small dining table, her uncle dropped his ledger and grabbed an iron sword from the wall.

A tall man walked through the ruined doorway.

Meriel wore steel armor in the color of blood, carrying a long, broadsword resting casually on his shoulder. He looked like an executioner.

"Where is he?" Meriel asked, his voice was a low rumble that carried no emotion at all.

"I don’t know who you are talking about," Sera lied. Her uncle stepped in front of his niece with his hands shaking uncontrollably.

"We run a respectable business here. Get out of my house before I call the city guard."

Meriel swung his heavy sword without even blinking.

The sharp blade cut clean through the old man’s neck and sent his head rolling across the floorboards.

"AHHHHHH!"

Sera screamed in pure horror.

She reached blindly for her merchant daggers resting on the table, but Meriel closed the distance in a single step.

He grabbed her by her brown hair and pulled her roughly to her knees.

"Where’s Kai?" Meriel stated calmly, looking down at her tear-stained face.

"He is a coward who hides in ruins while his women die for him. I am going to send him a message so he knows exactly what is coming for him."

Sera spat directly in his face.

She did not beg for her life because she knew it was useless; her eyes burned with a fierce defiance even though her hands trembled.

"He will kill you for this," Sera promised him.

Meriel wiped the spit from his cheek.

He raised his sword high and brought it down without a second thought.

Swoosh.

He picked up her severed head by the hair and dropped it into a burlap sack. Right at that moment, a golden pulse of magic echoed through the city streets.

Meriel looked toward the underground entrance of the old temple, sitting miles away. The artifact had just broadcast Kai’s location, so the long hunt was finally coming to an end.

Kai sprinted down the narrow stone corridor of the temple. He desperately wanted to reach the exit portal before the monsters surrounded him.

His newly healed body moved with perfect speed, but a strange coldness settled deep in his stomach.

A new system window popped right into his vision.

It was not a normal quest update or a simple warning.

[Warning: Party Member ’Sera’ has been eliminated.]

[Incoming Transmission from High-Level Threat: Meriel]

’Huh?’

Kai stopped running and opened the message with trembling fingers. A highly detailed magical image materialized in the air in front of him.

It showed Meriel standing in a ruined merchant shop.

The armored man was holding a burlap sack, and Sera’s severed head was sitting on the wooden floor next to her dead uncle. Her beautiful purple eyes were wide open and empty of life.

The breath left Kai’s lungs entirely.

He stared at the blue window for a very long time.

The terrible image burned itself right into his retinas.

A suffocating silence filled the empty hallway.

Then a scream of pure, unfiltered agony tore straight from his throat.

The sound echoed off the weeping runes and shook the dust from the high ceiling.

Kai threw his fist forward and punched the solid stone wall.

The rock cracked under heavy impact. He punched it again and again until the skin on his knuckles tore open and hot blood dripped down his fingers. The physical pain was absolutely nothing compared to the crushing weight sitting right in his chest.

’I am going to kill him,’ Kai thought.

The intense grief twisted and hardened into a toxic rage. ’I am going to tear him apart piece by piece.’

Kai turned away from the glowing exit portal and looked much deeper into the temple.

He didn’t care about the countdown timer anymore because he was not going to run away.

Meriel stepped through the broken stone archway of the Whispering Halls. He carried the dripping burlap sack in his left hand.

The ancient temple usually attacked intruders with hallucinogenic magic and swarms of glowing parasites.

Eliza was thankfully nowhere to be found.

But the weeping runes on the walls seemed to recognize the pure malice radiating from the armored man. The shifting murals stopped moving completely and faded into the background. The glowing worms hid deep inside the cracks in the stone.

The temple itself bowed to his terrifying presence and offered him a clear, completely unobstructed path downward.

"You can run as deep as you want," Meriel said to the empty air, his voice echoing down the spiraling staircase.

"But there is no exit at the bottom."

Kai waited for the footsteps to arrive, keeping his breathing slow and steady.

He checked the invisible layers of slippery black ice coating the floor to make sure his trap was perfect.

The silence stretched thin, but the sound that finally broke it was completely wrong.

It sounded like an entire stampede of wild animals rushing headlong into the room.

’Something’s wrong,’ Kai thought, gripping his dagger tighter until his knuckles turned white. ’He should be alone.’

The stone doors at the far end of the arena exploded inward with a deafening crash.

A flood of twisted temple monsters poured into the starlit room.

There were corrupted knights with glowing red eyes, and giant four-armed beasts that walked heavily on their knuckles.

Fast, feral void hounds with rotting teeth snapped at the air.

Meriel had not just walked past the monsters. He had completely dominated them.

The armored man used his unique energy-drain ability to turn the temple’s defenses into his personal hunting pack.

The horde rushed forward without any hesitation, so Kai shifted his stance and met the first wave head-on.

Slashing his water-coated dagger through the neck of a charging hound, he immediately spun to kick a leaping beast directly in the ribs.

The invisible ice he laid on the floor worked perfectly for a few short seconds.

Dozens of monsters slipped and impaled themselves on the broken statues littering the room.