the blood that clung to the stones and filled the cracks. Raine stood in a square that was once a field of championship, now turned into an open graveyard. His body stood upright, his sword tilted lightly, and his eyes did not see the corpses—they had surpassed them… searching.
Another Arkanis head flew off, crashing into a shattered wall, while his other hand crushed a foe's rib before the scream could finish. Ten… fifteen… thirty? Raine no longer counted, or cared. This wasn't a fight. It was a cleanup.
"The moves repeat… the gazes repeat… like they're repeated copies of something trivial."
He whispered it to himself, not mockingly, but as if apologizing—to himself, to a body that memorized killing patterns more than warmth. He wasn't in danger. He wasn't fighting to survive. But to search… for a feeling.
