The merchant caravan arrived at dawn, carrying spices from the east and news from the border territories.
It also carried three Apostles disguised as guards.
Kars noticed them immediately—the wrongness in their scent, the way reality bent slightly around their forms, the hunger radiating from their barely-contained true natures. They were watching the castle, studying defensive positions, counting soldiers.
Reconnaissance.
He could kill them now. Should kill them, logically. Three Apostles in the capital represented a clear threat to his continued observations.
Instead, he followed them.
The Apostles split up after the caravan entered the market district. Professional tactics—harder to track multiple targets, easier to gather comprehensive intelligence. Kars chose the largest one, a man whose human form barely contained the mass of whatever monster lurked beneath.
The Apostle made his way through crowded streets, observing, cataloguing, occasionally stopping to ask questions of merchants who answered nervously without knowing why this particular customer made their skin crawl.
Kars stayed back, matching his movements to the crowd's flow, becoming invisible through perfect mimicry of human behavior. A skill he'd once used to hunt Hamon users, now repurposed for simple observation.
The Apostle eventually made his way to the slums—the part of Windham where royal authority grew thin and human desperation grew thick. Here, buildings leaned against each other like drunks, and the smell of unwashed bodies mixed with rotting refuse.
And here, in an alley too narrow for sunlight to reach, the Apostle found what he was looking for.
A child. Maybe eight years old, dressed in rags, clutching a piece of moldy bread like it was salvation itself.
The Apostle smiled.
Kars watched from a rooftop as the creature approached the child with false kindness, offering better food, promising safety. The child hesitated—survival instinct warring with desperate hunger—then nodded.
The Apostle's hand closed around the child's wrist.
Kars dropped from the rooftop.
He landed without sound, without warning, without the Apostle registering any threat until Kars's hand was already through its chest, fingers wrapped around something that pulsed with stolen life force.
"Hello," Kars said pleasantly.
The Apostle screamed—a sound that shattered windows and made the child bolt in terror. Its human form dissolved, revealing chitin-plated horror with too many limbs and a mouth that opened vertically instead of horizontally.
Kars ripped out what passed for its heart.
The Apostle collapsed backward, ichor spraying from the wound, its body already beginning the grotesque transformation that accompanied death. But it wasn't dead yet—these creatures were frustratingly resilient.
"Impressive durability," Kars observed, examining the heart in his hand. "Your species sacrifices humanity for supernatural endurance. Fascinating trade-off."
The Apostle tried to speak, but its reforming mouth couldn't manage human language anymore.
"Shh." Kars crouched beside it. "I know what you're trying to say. 'Why?' or 'How?' or perhaps 'Please, mercy.'" He smiled. "The answer to all three is the same—because I wanted to."
He placed his free hand on the Apostle's head.
And then he absorbed it.
Not ate—absorbed. His flesh flowed over the dying creature, breaking down biological matter, extracting information directly from neural pathways, learning everything the Apostle knew in the seconds before complete dissolution.
When Kars stood, the Apostle was gone. No body, no ichor, no evidence it had ever existed.
Kars licked his lips thoughtfully. "Interesting. You were sent to scout defenses. The God Hand is positioning pieces for something. And you thought that child would make an acceptable snack while you worked."
He looked down at the heart still in his hand, then casually tossed it aside. It dissolved into ash before hitting the ground.
"One down. Two to go."
The second Apostle died in a tavern.
Kars walked in during the evening rush, spotted his target immediately—the thing was trying to blend in, nursing ale it couldn't properly taste, watching the soldiers who drank nearby.
Kars sat down at the Apostle's table without invitation.
The creature looked up, irritation flickering across its human mask before recognition set in. Its eyes widened.
"You," it whispered.
"Me," Kars agreed. "Now, we can do this quietly, or we can do this memorably. Your choice, but I'm leaning toward memorable. The first one was too quick."
The Apostle bolted for the door.
Kars let it get three steps before his hand shot out, fingers extending into blade-like appendages that punched through the Apostle's spine and out through its sternum.
The tavern erupted in screams.
"Everyone out," Kars said calmly, not raising his voice but somehow being heard over the chaos. "This doesn't concern you. Those who linger will be considered participants."
The tavern emptied in seconds.
The Apostle was transforming now, its human disguise shredding as the true form emerged—something between a wolf and an insect, with crystalline protrusions that refracted light into rainbow patterns.
"Pretty," Kars observed. He twisted his blade-fingers, and the Apostle howled. "You sacrificed humanity for predatory aesthetics. Bold choice. Inefficient, though. All that crystalline armor weighs you down."
The Apostle tried to strike back, claws extending, mandibles snapping toward Kars's throat.
Kars caught its head with his free hand and squeezed.
The crystalline armor cracked. Then shattered. Then pulverized under pressure that exceeded any material tolerance.
"The problem with abandoning humanity," Kars continued conversationally as the Apostle's struggles weakened, "is that you lose adaptability. You optimize for one form, one set of capabilities. Meanwhile, I can be anything."
His arm reformed, flowing from blade to crushing vice to something with serrated edges.
"Anything at all."
He tore the Apostle apart methodically, almost clinically, learning its physiology through direct dissection. When he was done, the tavern floor was painted with ichor and organic matter that dissolved slowly into ash.
Kars stood in the center of the carnage, unblemished, considering his next move.
The third Apostle would know by now. Would be running or hiding or calling for backup.
Good.
A chase was more entertaining than an execution.
He found the third Apostle at the castle gardens, standing among winter roses with a desperation that bordered on panic.
"Running to my home?" Kars asked, emerging from shadows. "Bold. Stupid, but bold."
This one was smaller than the others, younger perhaps, if such creatures aged. Female in human form, dressed as a noblewoman, convincing enough that she'd probably infiltrated court functions.
"Please," she said. "I wasn't going to hurt anyone. I was just observing. Just following orders."
"Orders from whom?"
"Conrad. He sent us to measure the capital's defenses, to count military strength, to assess... to assess you."
"Ah. So I'm the primary target." Kars moved closer. The Apostle backed away, bumping against a rose trellis. "What were his exact words?"
"He said... he said you were an anomaly. A variable that couldn't be predicted. That we needed to understand your capabilities before the Eclipse."
"The Eclipse." Kars's eyes narrowed. "Tell me about the Eclipse."
"I don't know! They don't tell us! We're just soldiers, just—"
Kars's hand shot out, gripping her throat, lifting her off the ground. "Then you're useless to me."
"Wait! Wait, please! I know where Conrad is! I can tell you! Just let me—"
"I already know where the God Hand operate." Kars tightened his grip. "They exist in conceptual space, outside normal causality. You can't give me anything I don't already have."
The Apostle's human form was cracking, true nature bleeding through, but Kars's grip prevented full transformation.
"But," he continued thoughtfully, "you did confirm something interesting. Conrad is actively gathering intelligence on me. Which means the God Hand are preparing their Eclipse trap specifically with my interference in mind."
He leaned closer, examining her terrified eyes.
"Thank you for that. It's nice to know I'm considered a genuine threat."
He crushed her throat.
The transformation happened instantly—the Apostle's body exploding into its true form, a mantis-like horror with bladed limbs and composite eyes.
Kars didn't flinch.
His body simply adapted. Skin became armor, bones became blades, muscles reconfigured for explosive power. The Apostle's attack—a strike fast enough to bisect a human—met reinforced biomass that turned the blade aside.
Then Kars moved.
Not with the measured precision he'd been showing for months. Not with the restrained efficiency he'd used on the first two Apostles.
With enthusiasm.
He became a blur, striking from angles that shouldn't exist, reforming his body mid-attack to exploit openings, laughing as the Apostle desperately tried to defend against something that moved faster than thought.
"This," Kars said between strikes, "this is what I am! Not a careful observer! Not a restrained scholar! A predator that murdered its way to the top of the evolutionary ladder!"
The Apostle managed one solid hit—blade-limb carving through Kars's side, opening him from ribs to hip.
Kars looked down at the wound, watched it heal in real-time, then smiled at the Apostle.
"My turn."
What followed wasn't a fight. It was a demonstration.
Kars showed the Apostle exactly how outmatched it was, extending the conflict not from necessity but from curiosity. Testing new combat forms, practicing techniques he'd been conceptualizing, using the creature as a training dummy that could actually survive multiple hits.
When he finally ended it—blade through the Apostle's core, twisting, extracting something vital—he was grinning.
"I'd almost forgotten," he said to the dying creature. "How much fun combat can be when you stop pretending there's any real threat."
He absorbed this one too, extracting every bit of information from its dissolving neural matter.
Then he stood alone in the garden, surrounded by rose bushes and moonlight, considering what he'd learned.
The God Hand were moving. Conrad was scouting. The Eclipse was being prepared with his interference specifically calculated into their planning.
Excellent.
A true challenge at last.
He was still standing there, lost in thought, when he heard movement behind him.
"Three Apostles in one day," Griffith observed, emerging from the castle shadows. "Efficient."
"They were scouting. Gathering intelligence for Conrad." Kars didn't turn around. "The God Hand is preparing something. Something that involves me specifically."
"Should I be concerned?"
"That depends. Are you concerned about your own plans intersecting with theirs?"
Silence.
Kars finally turned to face Griffith. The moonlight made the man's white cloak glow, gave him an almost angelic appearance that Kars found ironically appropriate.
"You know something," Griffith said. Not a question.
"I know many things. Specifically, I know the Behelit you carry isn't decorative. I know the God Hand are real. And I know they're planning something involving both of us."
"You've been researching."
"Obsessively." Kars moved closer. "The royal archives are quite comprehensive once you know what you're looking for. Information about sacrifices, transformations, ceremonies that remake humans into demons."
Griffith's expression remained perfectly neutral. "Interesting reading."
"Very. Particularly the parts about how the sacrifice must be meaningful. Must hurt. Must involve offering up the very foundation of what makes you human." Kars stopped a few paces away. "The Band of the Hawk, for instance."
"Speculation."
"Observation." Kars corrected. "You're marked. They're marked. The mechanism exists. The only question is when you'll activate it."
"You assume I'd sacrifice my soldiers."
"I assume you'd sacrifice anything for your dream. That's not criticism—it's recognition." Kars's smile held genuine respect. "I sacrificed my entire species to achieve perfection. Murdered everyone who knew me before I became this. I understand the mentality."
Griffith was quiet for a long moment.
"If such a moment came," he finally said, "if I had to choose between my soldiers and my dream... what would you do?"
"Watch. Learn. Observe how human ambition interacts with supernatural mechanism." Kars's tone was matter-of-fact. "Unless interfering serves my purposes, in which case I'll disrupt everything and see what happens when predetermined fate meets unpredictable variable."
"You wouldn't save them out of kindness?"
"I don't have kindness. I have curiosity." Kars gestured to the garden around them. "But I might save them anyway, just to see if I can. Just to test whether the God Hand's causality can accommodate genuine random chance."
"You're not the hero of this story."
"Neither are you." Kars laughed softly. "We're both villains, Griffith. Different methodologies, different scales, but the same fundamental truth—we put our goals above everything else."
"Yet you train Rickert. Warn Guts. Give Casca truth she doesn't want to hear."
"Because it's interesting. Because watching them struggle with awareness is more compelling than watching them die in ignorance." Kars started walking back toward the castle. "Don't mistake experimentation for altruism."
He paused at the garden entrance, glanced back.
"But Griffith? When your moment comes—when you have to choose—remember that I'll be watching. And if you bore me, I'll interfere just to see something unexpected happen."
He left Griffith standing alone among roses that bloomed despite winter.
The next morning, Kars found a dead puppy in the training yard.
Someone had killed it deliberately—snapped its neck, left it in the center of the yard where everyone would see. A message, presumably from Julius or some other faction threatened by his presence.
The Band gathered around it, expressions ranging from disgust to anger to sadness.
Kars crouched beside the small corpse, examining it with clinical precision. Young dog, maybe three months old, healthy before death, killed quickly without extended suffering.
He picked it up gently.
"Where are you going?" Casca asked.
"To find who did this."
"It's just a dog."
Kars looked at her, and something in his expression made her step back.
"It's a dog," he repeated. "An innocent creature killed to send a message to me. That's..." He paused, searching for words. "Inefficient. Wasteful. Pointless."
He stood, cradling the dead puppy, and walked toward the castle.
His senses were already cataloguing scents, tracking trails, analyzing every human who'd passed through this area in the last twelve hours. The killer had been careful, but not careful enough. Human sweat had distinctive chemical signatures, and fear left its own markers.
He found the man in the barracks—a soldier wearing Julius's colors, trying very hard to look innocent.
"You," Kars said.
The soldier looked up, saw what Kars was carrying, and went pale.
"I don't know what—"
Kars crossed the distance in a heartbeat, hand at the man's throat, lifting him off the ground.
"You killed this dog to send me a message," Kars said quietly. "To prove you weren't afraid. To show your loyalty to Julius by striking at something connected to me."
"I didn't—"
"Don't lie. Your scent is all over the corpse." Kars's grip tightened. "Now, I'm going to explain something. I don't care about humans. You're all insects to me, interesting but ultimately disposable. But this dog? This innocent creature? That bothers me."
The soldier's eyes were bulging, his face turning purple.
"Because killing it served no purpose except cruelty," Kars continued. "It didn't advance Julius's position. Didn't weaken mine. Just snuffed out a life for symbolic value. That's..."
He paused, genuine anger flickering across his features.
"That's wasteful."
He dropped the soldier, who collapsed gasping.
"Tell Julius," Kars said, placing the dead puppy carefully on a nearby table, "that if he wants to send messages, send them through channels that can fight back. Kill another animal to spite me, and I'll demonstrate exactly what I can do with his internal organs while keeping him alive to experience every second."
He walked away, leaving the soldier trembling on the floor.
That afternoon, he buried the puppy in the castle garden, among the roses where he'd killed the third Apostle.
Rickert found him there, hands covered in dirt, expression unreadable.
"You're burying it?" Rickert asked.
"It deserves better than being left for scavengers." Kars patted down the soil, then stood. "Such a stupid thing to be angry about. A dog. One dog. I've killed thousands of humans without remorse."
"But you didn't kill the soldier."
"Killing him would have been easy. Boring." Kars wiped his hands clean. "Letting him live knowing exactly how outmatched he is? That's more satisfying."
Rickert was quiet for a moment. "You're still a monster."
"Yes." Kars agreed without hesitation. "But I'm a monster who respects innocence when I encounter it. That dog never chose to be part of this. Never had ambitions or schemes or dreams worth dying for. Just existed, harmlessly, until someone decided to use it as a message."
He looked at Rickert directly.
"That's the difference between acceptable death and pointless cruelty. One serves a purpose. The other just creates suffering for symbolic value."
"Like what Griffith might do to us?"
"No." Kars shook his head. "What Griffith might do to you serves his purpose. His dream. That makes it acceptable in a way that stupid dog's death wasn't." He smiled without humor. "I disagree with it strategically, but I understand it philosophically. We're all sacrificing pieces on a board. The question is whether the game we're playing is worth the pieces we lose."
Rickert looked down at the small grave. "Was your game worth it?"
Kars was silent for a long moment.
"Ask me after the Eclipse," he finally said. "When I see how human sacrifice compares to what I did. When I understand whether Griffith's ambition produces something better than my perfection."
He started walking away, then paused.
"Oh, and Rickert? Keep that crossbow close. You're going to need it."