Kaelen's first instinct was to attack immediately. Soulrender was already in his hand, his body moving before his mind caught up.
The cultist didn't even flinch. "Move one step closer, and I snap her neck."
Kaelen froze. The cultist's hand was on Lia's throat, positioned exactly right to make good on the threat.
"Smart," the cultist said. "You can follow instructions. That's promising."
Kaelen forced himself to calm down, to think tactically. The cultist was alone—no visible backup. The villagers were controlled, probably through shadow magic, but they weren't soldiers. He could fight through them if needed.
But not before the cultist killed Lia.
"What do you want?" Kaelen asked, keeping his voice steady.
"Soulrender, obviously," the cultist replied. "Drop the blade, step away from it, and I'll release your partner unharmed. Simple transaction."
"You're lying," Kaelen said. "Marcus wouldn't let me walk away alive."
"Probably not," the cultist admitted cheerfully. "But this way, at least the girl lives. That's better than both of you dying, isn't it?"
Kaelen studied the situation, looking for options. The cultist was maybe twenty feet away, holding Lia between them as a shield. The controlled villagers formed a circle around the square, blocking easy escape routes. And Kaelen was exhausted from the well fight, his Shadow Scars burning, his stamina depleted.
Bad odds. But not impossible.
"How did you even know we'd be here?" Kaelen asked, stalling for time. "This mission was assigned yesterday. You couldn't have set this up that fast."
"We didn't set it up," the cultist said. "The corrupted well was real—residual contamination from failed experiments decades ago. We just monitored Shadow Hunter mission assignments and waited for one in a remote location. You made it easy by splitting up."
Damn. He'd walked right into this.
"Marcus has resources everywhere," the cultist continued. "Informants in the Shadow Hunter network, spies in the City Guard, contacts in places you've never heard of. You think you won three days ago? You survived. That's all. Marcus is still out there, still planning, still ten steps ahead of you."
"If he's so far ahead, why send one cultist to ambush us?" Kaelen asked. "Why not overwhelming force?"
The cultist's expression flickered—just for a moment, but enough. Uncertainty. This wasn't a confident commander. This was someone following orders they didn't fully understand.
"Doesn't matter," the cultist said. "What matters is your choice. Give me Soulrender, or watch your partner die. You have ten seconds. Ten... nine..."
Kaelen's mind raced. He couldn't give up Soulrender—the cultist would kill them both anyway. But he couldn't attack fast enough to save Lia. Which left—
"Eight... seven..."
—tricking the cultist into making a mistake.
"Alright," Kaelen said, raising his hands in surrender. "You win. I'll drop the sword. Just don't hurt her."
"Six... five..." The cultist paused. "You're giving up? Just like that?"
"She's more important than the sword," Kaelen said. He slowly, carefully, lowered Soulrender toward the ground. "I'm not letting her die for a weapon."
The cultist watched, suspicious but hopeful. "Keep going. Drop it completely."
Kaelen let Soulrender touch the ground.
And then he triggered the shadow tendril technique—not from the sword, but from his own hand, the ability he'd developed through weeks of channeling its power.
The tendril shot across the twenty feet separating them, not aimed at the cultist but at the ground beneath their feet. It hit, and Kaelen yanked hard.
The cultist stumbled, balance disrupted. Their grip on Lia loosened for a half-second.
That was enough.
Kaelen grabbed Soulrender and was moving before the cultist recovered. Twenty feet in three seconds, fueled by desperation and muscle memory from endless training drills.
The cultist saw him coming, tried to raise a defensive spell.
Too slow.
Soulrender cut through the forming shield and caught the cultist across the chest—not deep enough to kill instantly, but enough to incapacitate. They fell backwards, releasing Lia.
Kaelen caught her before she hit the ground, checking for pulse and breathing. Both present. Just unconscious, probably from a sleep spell.
The controlled villagers began moving, closing in on him. Slowly, mechanically, but moving.
"Stop!" the cultist gasped from the ground, clutching their wound. "They're not your enemies! They're innocent people!"
"I know," Kaelen said. He was already working on Lia's restraints—magical bindings that burned his fingers when he touched them. "Which is why you're going to release them from your control spell right now."
"Or what? You'll kill me?" The cultist laughed weakly. "I'm dying already. That wound is fatal. You've got maybe three minutes before these villagers tear you apart, and there's nothing you can do to stop it."
Kaelen looked at the approaching villagers. Tomás was among them, the kindly elder now moving with jerky, puppet-like motions. Others too—the woman from before, young couples, even a few children.
He couldn't fight them. Not without killing innocents.
But he couldn't let them kill him either.
*Soulrender*, he thought desperately. *Any ideas?*
*One,* the sword replied. *But you will not like it.*
*Tell me anyway.*
*The control spell is powered by the cultist's remaining life force. When they die, it breaks. But you can accelerate the process by consuming their soul.*
Kaelen's stomach turned. "Consume their soul?"
*It is what I do,* Soulrender said matter-of-factly. *What I was made for. Their death is inevitable. You would simply be... hastening it. And freeing the villagers in the process.*
"That's murder," Kaelen said.
*They attacked you. They tried to kill you and your partner. By most definitions, killing them would be justice.*
"They're dying anyway," Kaelen argued with himself. "If I accelerate it by a few minutes to save dozens of innocent people, is that really worse than letting them die naturally?"
The villagers were ten feet away now. Reaching out with blank expressions.
Kaelen made his decision.
He stood, walked to the dying cultist, and placed Soulrender against their chest.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly.
"For what?" the cultist whispered. "You've already won. I failed. Marcus will be disappointed, but that's my—"
Kaelen activated Soulrender's soul-devouring ability.
The effect was immediate and horrifying. The cultist's eyes went wide, their mouth opened in a silent scream. Darkness flowed from their body into the blade, visible as streams of shadow energy.
The cultist's body aged rapidly—skin wrinkling, hair turning white, flesh sunken. In seconds, they looked a century old. Then ancient. Then simply dust, collapsing into nothing.
Kaelen felt the soul entering Soulrender, felt it being processed and converted into raw power. His Shadow Scars increased to forty-seven, but something else happened too—knowledge flooded into his mind. The cultist's skills, their training, their understanding of shadow magic.
It was wrong. It was violation on a fundamental level.
But it worked.
The villagers stopped moving. Blinked. Looked around in confusion.
"What..." Tomás said, his voice his own again. "What happened? Why am I in the square?"
"Shadow magic," Kaelen said, sheathing Soulrender before anyone could see the blade. "You were all controlled temporarily. It's over now. You're safe."
The villagers began talking all at once, confused and frightened. Kaelen ignored them, returning to Lia. The magical bindings had dissolved when the cultist died, and he could see her starting to wake.
"Kaelen?" she mumbled, eyes fluttering open. "What... the cultist..."
"Dead," Kaelen said shortly. "We need to leave. Now. Before people start asking questions we can't answer."
Lia saw his expression and didn't argue. They gathered their equipment, made a quick excuse to Tomás about needing to report back to headquarters immediately, and left the village at just shy of a run.
Two hours later, safely away from Millbrook, they stopped to rest in a clearing off the main road.
"What happened?" Lia asked. "The last thing I remember is standing by the well, then someone grabbed me from behind and everything went dark."
Kaelen told her. All of it—the shade in the well, the cultist's ambush, the controlled villagers.
And what he'd done to break the control.
Lia was silent for a long moment.
"You consumed their soul," she finally said.
"They were dying anyway," Kaelen said defensively. "I just—"
"I'm not judging," Lia interrupted. "I'm trying to understand. How did it feel?"
Kaelen considered lying, saying it felt like nothing, like any other combat kill.
But Lia deserved the truth.
"It felt powerful," he admitted quietly. "Wrong, but powerful. I can feel their knowledge now, their skills. Parts of their personality, even. Like they're still alive inside the sword, inside me."
"That's horrifying."
"Yeah." Kaelen looked at his hands, at the Shadow Scars creeping up his arms. "I'm turning into the monster everyone says Forbidden Blade wielders become. And the worst part is, I made the right choice. Those villagers would have died if I hadn't done it. But it still feels like I crossed a line I can't uncross."
Lia moved closer, took his hands in hers despite the Scars. "You're not a monster. Monsters don't feel guilt about their actions. Monsters don't question whether they made the right choice."
"Marcus probably feels guilt too," Kaelen pointed out. "Doesn't make him less dangerous."
"Marcus justifies his actions with philosophy about the greater good. You're just trying to survive and protect people." Lia squeezed his hands. "There's a difference. As long as you remember that, you won't become him."
Kaelen wanted to believe that. He tried to believe that.
But the cultist's soul was still there in Soulrender, still whispering at the edges of his consciousness. And he could feel himself changing, bit by bit, with every soul the blade consumed.
How long until he stopped feeling guilty?
How long until it felt normal?
"We should report back," he said, standing. "Tell the Shadow Hunters that Marcus is actively sabotaging missions. They need to know."
"Agreed," Lia said. "And Kaelen? Thank you. For saving me. Whatever you had to do, whatever line you think you crossed—you saved my life. That matters."
It did matter. He held onto that thought like a lifeline.
They walked back toward Eredor, leaving Millbrook and its corrupted well behind.
Behind them, in the cultist's final resting place, shadow energy slowly dissipated into the wind.
Marcus would hear about this failure. He'd adjust his plans.
The game continued.
And Kaelen was learning the rules.
Whether he liked them or not.