Chapter 158: A Father's Lament
Eighteen years earlier.
An elven warband cut through the forest at a relentless pace, feet tearing moss and loam as they drove forward. Bloodlust rolled off them in waves strong enough to clear their path, leaving only the occasional mindless beast to stray too close, and those were ignored rather than slain, brushed aside as delays unworthy of notice.
The hunt came first. It always did. Beasts offered no honor and no songs. Tonight, only humans were worth the blade.
Word had reached their king that humans had begun pressing deeper into the freelands, sinking roots where none were permitted. From his place in the column, Kal-Ulith watched the leader's aura churn and lash, a pressure that bled outward and infected the entire warband. Rage sat heavy in their king's stride, and it settled just as deeply into the rest of them.
The coastal city had already been an insult, a bright scar on land that should have remained wild, but its size and defenses had made it untouchable. A second settlement had pushed them further, and when they tested that glittering human nest, the response had been immediate and brutal enough to teach restraint. A third, however, was unforgivable. Scouts reported it was small, newly raised, its defenders thin and careless. It would be erased before it had the chance to harden. The hunt would be clean. The hunt would be satisfying.
The settlement matched the reports: rough walls slapped together without care, shard-slaves stationed as symbols rather than threats. At its center squatted a colossal oval hollow, ringed with broken tiers and fractured benches that descended toward an exposed floor. It could have held thousands once. Now it looked like a collapsed arena, its shape perfect for trapping bodies in the open. To the elves, it read as a slaughter pit waiting to be filled.
Kal-Ulith kept to the rear, where the slow and the unwanted were forced to march. He was neither slow nor weak, but his tusks told a different story. Stunted from birth, they marked him as lesser in the eyes of his people, a flaw that outweighed strength or skill. Even those he could outfight stood above him in the hierarchy.
So when the king raised his arm and gave the signal to loose the hunt, Kal-Ulith felt none of the shared exultation rippling through the warband. He knew what came with that frenzy, knew that once bloodlust took hold and discipline frayed, someone like him would become an easy target for cruelty.
But he didn't falter. He honored his ancestors. He honored his father. And when the killing began, many humans still died by his hand.
Fire ran unchecked and the ground filled with screaming. Bodies dropped as the warband tore through the settlement, and while a handful of humans managed to slow the slaughter for a breath or two, none lasted once the king turned his attention on them.
One such human stood directly ahead of Kal-Ulith, lightning crawling over his eyes and hands as he faced down six elves alone. Energy snapped from his fingers as he shouted warnings, his stance wide and desperate, while two women cowered behind him with nowhere left to run.
From the line, the strongest among them, an elf bearing twin bulbous growths split across his back, raised a hand toward Kal-Ulith and gave a single order.
"Pull his strike."
There was no room to hesitate. Kal-Ulith fed will into the Gorgon Vine embedded in his chest, felt it respond, and watched as the flesh of his palms split to birth two slick lengths of living cord. They spilled free, heavy and coiling, eager for motion.
He advanced and lashed out, one vine snapping low toward the human's legs, the other arcing for his head. The human vanished faster than Kal-Ulith judged, and a fist crashed into his abdomen before the vines could land. Lightning detonated through his body, locking his muscles and driving the breath from his lungs.
Heat flooded his chest, not pain, but the sharp burn of humiliation. Still, the feint had done its work.
The elf leader seized the opening and expelled twin streams of corrosive fluid from the flowers embedded in his back, the jets angling past the human toward the women behind him.
The human screamed something Kal-Ulith didn't understand and spun around, tears streaking his face as he threw himself back toward them. He was too slow. One of the women, the older, was struck mid-turn, her body collapsing into a steaming slurry before she could even fall. The human wrapped the other female in crackling light, electricity flaring as it fought the acid eating through the air.
That was when Kal-Ulith lost control.
Shame still burned across his spine, and before sense could catch up, he acted. One vine shot forward, tension singing through it as he snapped his arm back. The living cord cracked like a whip, and the human's skull split cleanly down the center, the lightning dying with him as his body folded where it stood.
The instant the shard-slave collapsed, Kal-Ulith understood the cost of what he had done.
He had taken a kill that was not his.
The screams of the surviving human blurred into noise as the warband's leader turned, tusks bared, eyes fixed on him with open fury.
"You dare to steal?!"
The first blow smashed into his face, the second crushed Kal-Ulith's throat, and then the ground rushed up as he fell. Feet followed. Kicks rained down in a steady rhythm, cracking ribs and driving breath from his lungs. Kal-Ulith did not raise his arms. Fighting back would only prolong it. When the beating ended, fingers tangled in his hair and dragged him upright, his vision swimming.
"How do you still draw breath, Kal-Ulith? No status. No honor. Not even a female willing to carry your blood. An elf who has never mated is a disgrace to the hunt."
Heat seared his scalp as droplets of acid fell from the leader's hand, hissing where they struck flesh and dirt. He was hauled forward, step by step, toward the surviving human, her screams sharp and raw.
"You stain us all. So you will lessen it. Breed her."
He was thrown down into the churned earth. Laughter broke out around them as the others closed in, a loose ring of bodies and weapons.
Kal-Ulith pushed himself up on shaking arms and looked at the human. Her eyes were empty, fixed on the corpse beside her. He turned back to the warband and spoke before fear could stop him.
"I won't. Humans are beneath us. Strike me again if you wish, but I will not touch her unless it is to end her."
"You have no say, runt. Breed—"
The twin growths on the leader's back swelled, their interiors sloshing as they expanded.
"—or I erase your shame from the warband. You stole my kill. Your life is mine by right."
The certainty in his gaze left no room for doubt. Kal-Ulith understood then that refusal meant dying beside her.
"Ul-ktan, this is taboo."
Nothing shifted in the leader's expression. He leaned closer, letting more acid drip and smoke against the ground between them.
"Breed. Or die. Choose."
Kal-Ulith looked back at the human, black hair matted with blood, dark eyes wide, her lean body trembling. Every instinct in him recoiled. Everything in her screamed prey.
But death was not an option.
Around them, the fighting burned itself out fast. The peak passed, and with it the sharp edge of sound, until the screams and death-cries thinned and only elven laughter rolled through the dark. Although one sound cut through it all, raw and human. A woman's voice, breaking as she screamed.
Even that eventually silenced.
Ul-ktan and the others laughed as they dragged their trophies away, bodies hauled by limbs, blood streaking the ground as they left Kal-Ulith behind with the woman. By their laws, she belonged to him now. No hand but his could touch her. Not theirs. Not even his own could end her.
Not until it was known whether she carried life. Until then, she was protected by the same rules that mocked him, so it was far too soon for him to erase the stain by killing her.
He rose in silence, pulling his armor back into place piece by piece, then spat on the naked woman where she lay. Rage had guided him, not restraint, and her body bore the evidence. Bruises bloomed dark across her skin, blood dried along her legs, one hip twisted wrong where it had slipped free. She did not cry anymore. Whatever tears she had were spent.
The warband moved on that night after finishing the purge. The hunt was declared a success, and the celebration dragged on for days. At its center was the joke of Kal-Ulith. They asked him where his woman was, what name he would give his son, how it felt to finally be useful.
Even the king laughed. Asked after his new mate as if it were sport.
He could not kill her, but he was not required to keep her alive. He left her in the wreckage where the settlement had been, among broken walls and cooling corpses. Whether she lived or died meant nothing to him. The decision only fed their laughter.
Time moved on. Fresh insults replaced the old ones, new ways were found to strike him down. The human incident faded into story and song, retold often, though his role was carefully omitted, buried under humor and drink.
Years passed, and the warband held its ground without challenge, its rule maintained through constant movement and constant killing. The hunt never truly ended. The freelands suited the elves, wild and unstable, free of ancient dwarven stoneholds and the old forest beasts that demanded caution. Nothing here slowed them. Nothing here told them no.
Prey spilled in from every realm. The things humans called dungeon drops became sport. The warband learned their patterns, took positions around the falling cubes, laid snares and kill lanes, then waited for the shells to split before crashing in all at once. Whatever emerged was smothered under numbers and blades. It was simple. It was reliable. It kept them fed and alive.
Years went by before humans wandered back into reach.
Humans were fearful creatures, but their fear rarely made them careful. When the warband spotted a caravan stretching through the trees, steel wagons creaking under weight, the charge came without hesitation. Steel and vine tore through flesh and metal alike. Even Kal-Ulith felt a buried surge return as he cut into soft bodies, the old rhythm coming back to his hands.
But for him, good things never lasted.
A scent rose from one of the humans, strong and unmistakable, and the warband froze in shared recognition. It was Kal-Ulith's. Against all reason, against every expectation, the impossible had happened. The woman from years past had lived. She had carried his blood. She had borne a child.
They dragged the half-breed to him and threw her down, laughter spilling out with the insults that followed. Old words. Familiar wounds. All of it washed over him and vanished the instant he looked down at her, the instant her scent reached him fully.
He understood then.
He was a father.
In that moment, when instinct overrode reason, he did what he believed a father must do. He had to keep her alive. He had to guard her. He needed to shape her to survive.
So he beat her.
The blows were never meant as cruelty, never thrown from indifference or spite, but from a belief carved into elvish bone. Among his people, attention was the only language of care, and affection as humans understood it simply did not exist. Each strike carried instruction, each correction meant to harden rather than break. He shattered bones of his own, kneeling before the king to beg for proper quarters, only to be granted a stall meant for animals. The insult cut deep, and he accepted it without protest.
But his pride followed her wherever she went. Each time her abilities turned the tide for the warband, his chest tightened with it, and each time her skin split open without a sound escaping her lips, he felt something close to satisfaction. Tears were almost unknown among elves. They understood their purpose but had no use for them beyond birth, where crying ended quickly and permanently. Pain was expected. Endurance was assumed.
So he watched her closely, stepping in before missteps could draw the warband's attention. He traded away a month of rations to learn the rough edges of human speech, forcing himself through unfamiliar sounds so he could speak to her in the tongue she understood best. He told himself he would not soften her, that he would raise her to stand among elves, yet from the moment she entered his life, restraint slipped away. Most nights he slept standing in the dark beyond the stables, listening for movement, unwilling to leave her alone even for a breath.
No amount of mockery or punishment ever moved him from that post.
Marching beside her became the anchor of his days, the moments he measured his worth against, the times he would gladly bleed for. When the warband returned from another successful slaughter, the dragon-beastmen torn apart so thoroughly there was no pursuit to fear, he knew rest would not come. His blood ran hot, and his thoughts refused to settle.
The king had noticed her. He had allowed her to choose a trophy of her own. Sitting with his back pressed to the stable wall, heart heavy with pride and mind wandering toward a future he had never allowed himself to imagine, the sound that came from inside shattered something old and buried.
Murdering an elf for a half-breed was madness, a crime that carried no forgiveness, especially when the victim was Ul-ktan, one of their finest hunters. He split his skull without hesitation, felt bone give way, watched blood spill across his daughter's face as she recoiled in terror. Rage swallowed him whole, erasing rank, law, and consequence.
Someone had touched his child, and that meant only one thing. Death.
He had no sense of what would follow, no space left to prepare for it, yet what came next stripped the rage from him in a single breath.
She was crying.
The sound cut through him before thought could form, raw and uncontrolled, and something older than instinct seized hold. It was the reflex of a father hearing an infant wail, a response he had never known, never been taught, never witnessed himself.
Had he been born anything other than elvish, he would have gathered her up, pressed her close, and spoken comfort he did not possess the words for. He would have promised safety, presence, protection. But elves did not hold. They did not soothe. What followed was not learned behavior but a fracture, a small reach across a boundary that should not have moved.
Elves did not give care, yet his hands found a blanket. It was the only thing that came to him. Warmth mattered. He wanted her to feel something that did not hurt, even if he could not name why.
The gesture was plain, almost nothing, but for one of his kind it carried weight enough to bend him. He sat with his back against the stable wall, listening as her breathing settled, as night thinned and the moon slid across the sky into morning. Before the sun cleared the horizon, he did something no elf had ever done. He cried. Not a grimacing sob, just tears falling on their own.
He didn't understand it. He spent the long hours trying to reason it away, searching for cause, for fault, for weakness, but the tears continued until dawn forced them to stop by simply running dry.
He rose to fetch food for her when steel and shouting tore through the camp. The warband was under attack. His thoughts snapped to her instantly. He turned back, seized Teal, and moved to pull her clear, ready to stain his honor beyond repair by choosing her over all others. He pushed past unfamiliar demons, ignored shard-slaves fighting alongside them, focused only on escape. It wasn't enough.
Lightning struck him mid-step, tearing him away from her grasp. Pain detonated through his body, dragging old memory with it. The night he had been forced, the same current flooding his veins, the same violation burning through muscle and bone.
The fury returned whole and unrestrained, fixed on the towering human woman who stood between him and his child. She glowed with power he could not match, a living barrier that refused to fall.
Being forced back, watching as his daughter vanished deeper into the chaos, he tore himself forward, killing without pause, cutting down even his own kin to reach her. It didn't matter. Nothing broke her line.
She ripped him half before he could close the distance.
Terror seized him the instant he struck the ground, overwhelming and absolute, but it had nothing to do with his own survival. Every thought locked onto Teal. She needed protection. From the humans. From the warband. From what he had helped create. To do that, he had to keep breathing.
His hand plunged into the torn cavity of his abdomen, fingers closing around the second heart bound to him since birth, the Gorgon Vine. He dug in until bone scraped nail, then tore free a length of it, the agony ripping through muscle and nerve and sinking straight into his core. He didn't slow. He crawled across the churned earth, hauled himself to a fallen imp, and forced the remaining half into its corpse.
The living vine reacted at once. Tendrils erupted from his ruined torso and punched into the demon flesh, knotting together into a crude circuit that began to siphon vitality back into him. It was a stopgap, nothing more, a borrowed breath that would fail soon, but it gave him minutes. Minutes were enough to try. To plead. To force his king to see her, to shield her, to do anything.
Watching the clash unfold, seeing his king locked in combat while the powerful demon toyed with him like prey, the truth settled in hard and final. There would be no rescue. No command given. The only mercy left was a last sight of her face, a chance to speak what he had never allowed himself to say.
Bleeding into the dirt as the vine thinned and the borrowed strength bled away, he lunged at one of the larger imps, grabbing at it with shaking hands, forcing words through blood and breath in a frantic attempt to reach her by any means left to him.
Luckily, the demon he grabbed was Snare.
Thinking back to the moment, Kal-Ulith looked to the broodling and bowed his head.
"Thank you for listening."
Snare nodded once. He had already broken their tongue apart and understood their language without aid. He was the only one who didn't need Seo-jin to translate.
Kal-Ulith's breath rasped shallow and uneven, his skin leached of color as the light drained from his eyes. He turned his head with effort, forcing his focus onto his daughter, and even through the haze he could read it clearly: hatred sharp in her stare, fear locked tight in the way she held herself.
He wished he had something to cover her with.
For the last time, he shaped words in her tongue.
"You… strong. Teal, my pride."
His vision had already failed, so he never saw her reaction, never saw her clamp her hands over her ears and shake her head in denial. His arm still lifted, shaking with exhaustion, the motion slow and careful despite everything.
"Stay… warm."
A dull sound followed as his hand dropped lifelessly to the ground. The vines withered and collapsed in on themselves. Kal-Ulith died reaching for something no elf before him had claimed.
Love.
As the life left the elf's body, Seo-jin took a long pull from his ale, his throat raw from speaking words that were never meant to exist.
Grimm hovered low beside him, entrails dragging in the dirt as his hollow gaze stayed fixed on Teal. Seo-jin could feel the weight hanging from him.
Sniffling spread through the camp. Humans stood with wet faces and hollow stares, even Min wiping at her eyes. Only the brood remained still, untouched and unmoved, as expected.
What no one expected was Teal.
She screamed, the sound ripped raw and jagged, fueled not by terror but by fury.
"Why?!"
She lurched forward, snatched up the elven blade, and threw herself onto the corpse, driving the weapon down again and again.
"Why—why—why—why—why—?!"
She stabbed until her arms failed, until the blade slipped from her grasp, then collapsed atop Kal-Ulith's body, sobbing hard enough to shake. Her breath hitched, her voice breaking under the weight she couldn't carry.
One by one, the others turned away. They felt it without being told. This wasn't something meant to be witnessed.
Even Seo-jin stepped back.
He was a demon. He dreamed of rot and conquest, of turning green places black and breaking human worlds with his own hands. But there was no satisfaction to be found here, no pleasure in standing over grief earned by someone else's cruelty.
He would give her time. Let her pull herself together. Then she would be useful, or she would be discarded without hesitation.
As he walked off, fire snapping and blood stench thick in the air, one human remained behind, crying softly. Her soul cracked in those tears. Her mind emptied by a loss she had no shape for.
Death coated everything. But to Teal, death had missed someone.
Life was too painful.