That night, Nordvik did not sleep because of the cold; it stayed awake because of a premonition.
The air felt strange, as if the oxygen had been sucked out and replaced by heavy metallic particles. Inside the shack, I stood behind my dark bedroom window, staring toward the tree line. I could feel my father's heartbeat in the next room. Fast, shallow, and full of anxiety. I could hear my mother's faint prayers directed toward the gods. They prayed for safety, while I... I prepared for a celebration.
Exactly at midnight, the silence shattered.
It wasn't the sound of thunder, but the sound of wood groaning violently. BOOM! The noise came from the direction of the village hall. The impact was so powerful that the vibration traveled through the foundation of our house, knocking the family photo frame off my bedside table.
"Leon! Stay where you are!" My father shouted, his voice hoarse with panic. I heard him grab his hunting spear leaning against the living room wall. The front door slammed open, and human screams began to slice through the blizzard like a knife tearing through silk.
I did not obey his order. Orders are for those who have something to protect; I only had something to unleash.
I leaped out the window, my feet touching snow that now felt warm, not because of the weather, but because of the blood beginning to seep into the earth. In the center of the village, the scene was pure chaos. Three giant polar bears, far larger than the one I had faced in the woods, were on a rampage. Their bodies were encased in a layer of unnatural black ice, and their eyes were no longer red, but a dark purple, a color I knew all too well. The color of the Abyss.
"Monsters! Get back!" A village youth, perhaps one of my childhood friends whose name I had already forgotten, tried to thrust a short spear toward one of the bears.
The beast didn't even flinch. It simply swiped its claw, and in an instant, the youth was hurled a dozen meters away, his body slamming against the stone well with the sound of crushing bones.
"Leon! Get inside!" My father stood between me and those monsters. He gripped his spear with hands that shook violently. He looked so small before those beasts. So fragile. So... human.
I stared at his back, then shifted my gaze to the monster in front of me. I felt no sympathy. I felt no courage. All I felt was a tremendous hunger. The part of me left behind in those dark depths thrashed about, demanding to be fed by this carnage.
I didn't need a wooden spear. Near a neighbor's woodpile, I saw a wood-splitting axe embedded in a pine stump. The iron was slightly rusted, the handle rough from sweat and snow. I stepped past my father, wrenching the axe out with one hand. The weight was right. The balance was crude, but it was enough for what I was about to do.
"Hey, fatso!" I shouted. My voice wasn't loud, but somehow, it cut through the noise of the storm and the screams of the villagers.
The largest bear, the leader of the pack, turned to me. It roared, a sound capable of vibrating a normal human's lungs until they burst. It lunged at me, snow flying behind it like a devastating white wave.
The world around me began to slow down. This was what Malphas had taught me. Speed is not about how fast you move, but how slow you allow the world to move in your eyes.
One second.
I could see its breath, smelling of rotting meat. I could see every muscle fiber in its front legs tensing as it prepared to crush me.
Two seconds.
I saw the gap in the layer of black ice covering its neck. A weak point a normal hunter would never see.
Three seconds.
Now.
I didn't dodge to the side like a cowardly human. Instead, I lowered my body, sliding right between its massive legs. The momentum of its movement was my weapon. As I was directly beneath its belly, protected only by coarse white fur, I swung my axe.
I didn't rely on arm strength alone. I twisted my hips, channeling the raw energy I'd learned from the Abyss into the axe's fulcrum.
CRACK!
It wasn't the sound of wood splitting, but of ribs breaking and flesh sundering. Warm blood sprayed out, drenching my face and my mantle. The smell... ah, the smell was exquisite. The scent of iron rust from the blood and the cold of the snow was the perfect combination to awaken a sleeping predator.
The bear collapsed, but I gave it no time to howl. I used its back as a stepping stone, leaping high into the air. At my peak, I saw the second bear trying to tear my father apart.
"Don't touch him," I hissed.
I plummeted down like a meteor. The rusted axe in my hand began to vibrate violently. I wasn't using a Fusaka, but the water elemental energy nearby, from the snow melting due to the heat of the blood, began to pull toward the axe. The iron that was once rusted was now shrouded in a sharp, pure aura of water.
My axe slammed into its collarbone, and I used the momentum to spin, driving my elbow straight into its purple eye. The beast went down, its head hitting the ground with a heavy thud.
"Leon! Stop! What are you doing?!" My father screamed. But his voice sounded distant, as if he were at the end of an incredibly long tunnel.
The voice in my head screamed louder. More. More. MORE!
I danced. Yes, this was a dance. Every step, every swing of my axe, was a stanza of death poetry written upon the white snow. I no longer felt like a human child. I felt like a sword finally drawn from its sheath.
The last bear tried to flee, its animal instincts realizing that the small creature before it was far more dangerous than the darkness that had transformed them. I didn't let it go. I took a deep breath, focused all the remaining vibrations in my body into my right arm, and threw the axe.
The tool spun through the air, cleaving the blizzard with a lethal hiss of water, and embedded itself so deeply in the beast's skull that the handle snapped.
Silence returned to the village of Nordvik. There was only the sound of my ragged, shallow breathing and the drip of blood falling from my fingertips onto the now crimson snow.
I stood there, in the middle of three giant carcasses. My face was bathed in blood, my eyes likely still glowing with the remnants of purple energy that hadn't yet faded. I looked at my hands. I felt whole. I felt... home.
"Leon..."
My father approached with hesitant steps. He looked at the corpses of the bears, then at the shattered axe, and finally at me. His gaze was no longer that of a worried father. It was the gaze of a human who had just seen a demon tear through a man's skin.
"What have you done?" he whispered, his voice full of pure horror.
I turned to him. I wanted to smile, wanted to show him that I had saved them. But as I saw my reflection in his terrified eyes, I knew. The Leon he knew was truly gone. What remained was a weapon hungry for a much greater war.
"I saved the village," I replied flatly. "Why aren't you happy, Father?"
My father didn't answer. He only took a step back, and that was when I realized: I no longer had a place among these mortal men. I was too large for this small house. I was too loud for this quiet world.