After that little sword practice, I was feeling... good.
Self-reflection is an underrated skill—especially when you’re as mentally shattered as I am. If I don’t keep checking in with myself, I’ll lose whatever thread of control I have left. And in this world, losing control means losing everything.
I couldn’t return home empty-handed, so I spent the rest of my time hunting. A few pigeons here, some tracking there—nothing too dangerous. After catching five, I decided it was time to head back before nightfall taught me exactly why people fear the dark.
Yeah... that’s one mystery I’m not eager to solve today.
I reminded myself of the Reincarnation Scroll rules—now my rules. The ones etched into my soul ever since this cursed reincarnation began.
Rule Eight: The Dead Do Not Rest Easily.
- If a body is left unburied, there is a reason.
- If a name is not spoken, there is a reason.
- If the villagers lock their doors at night... don’t ask why. Just do the same.
On the way back, I checked the wards I’d placed along my usual paths—little protective knots of spellwork, woven from instinct and desperation. Some had been triggered. I smirked.
Yeah, I probably made a few Fae scream.
Good.
The idea of telling others—about the cold wards under the cave stones, the protective glyphs, the traps laced with hexed iron—I considered it. I really did. But I already know how that ends. They’ll ask too many questions. And when the time comes, they won’t remember what I did for them. Only what I didn’t.
That’s the nature of people.
So I keep my secrets. My paranoia might be chewing at the edges of my sanity, and sure, I might be a little shell-shocked—but that doesn’t make me wrong. I’ve learned what trusting others gets you.
Pain. Loss. Regret.
So now? I’m cold. Calculating. Spiteful, even.
Because this world doesn’t care if you were once good. It only asks one question: Can you survive the dark?
I don’t like this wild world. 'Beyond the firelight, the laws of man mean nothing. Kings and chiefs rule by force—but the wild? The wild rules by hunger.'
Damn right it does.
I reached the river, crouched low, and splashed the cold water on my face. The shock helped. It cleared the fog of thought, settled my nerves. I caught my reflection—a stranger, a survivor, staring back with golden flickers in his eyes.
With one last glance, I straightened.
“All right, handsome.” I muttered. “Let’s go home.”
As I neared the cave, the familiar hush before the twilight wrapped around the valley. Smoke curled lazily from the main hearth, and the scent of something boiling—roots, maybe bone stew—hung in the air.
i noticed that clubfoot boy Kael sat just outside the entrance, his twisted foot tucked beneath him as he wove strips of bark into a rough basket. Women’s work, by tradition, but no one mocked him for it anymore. The boy had long since earned his place, in sweat and silence. Still, I said nothing, just nodded as I passed. His eyes followed me—thoughtful, cautious. I let it be.
Not far from him, a group of younger boys were playing one of their usual games. Rough, loud, stupid. They tossed a carved wooden animal back and forth, taunting a smaller child who chased it between them, arms flailing, breath hitching.
Then, with a sharp crack, one of them smashed the toy on a stone.
The smaller child froze. His eyes welled with tears. He stared at the broken pieces and whispered, “Why?”
Laughter answered him.
Before I even realized it, I was already walking toward them.
“Because they can,” I said, my voice calm but edged like flint. The laughter stopped. The air shifted.
“It’s fun for them. And you can’t stop them. That’s all the reason they need.”
The child blinked up at me, confused, betrayed by the world.
“They don’t understand how you feel,” I continued. “They don’t want to. Some people—” I pulled the monkey-fist from my belt, the old knot dark with wear, heavy in its silence. I handed it to him. “they don't have the mental capacity to understand how you feel and sympathize,—some people are just animals. They only learn through pain or reward. Teach them which you are, be the pain.”
His small hand closed around the weapon. he was probably to young to understand my words yet his instinct did, Something in his eyes was changing.
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“And don’t feel bad when you hurt them,” I added, already turning away. “They don’t feel bad for you now. They won’t remember your pain. So make sure they remember your answer.”
Kael watched me as I passed. His gaze wasn’t judgment. Not exactly. It was more like a question I didn’t feel like answering.
I delivered the pigeons to the women near the cookfires. They nodded thanks, already plucking feathers and muttering about portions. I left them to it and slipped into the deeper shadows of the cave.
Inside, I took a moment to breathe. To organize my things. To let my mind settle like dust after a storm.
Winter was coming fast. I needed to plan—food stockpiles, magic reserves, contingencies for cold, and worse. The Fae were still prowling the edges of our safety like wolves outside the firelight, and that paranoid itch at the base of my spine hadn’t stopped since the last moon.
But before I could sit down with my thoughts, noise erupted from outside—shouts, footsteps, too many voices speaking too fast. Excited. Not afraid, but almost… celebratory?
That never meant anything good.
I stood and made my way back out into the dimming day. The fire had grown brighter. People were gathering, heads close, whispering with too much energy in their eyes.
I flagged down one of the boys standing near the entrance. “What happened?”
He grinned, teeth white against soot-streaked cheeks. “Bronlo and the hunters found something. A family—banished, they say. Survivors, traveling alone. They caught them in the woods, trying to find shelter.”
My pulse quickened. A family?
Something twisted in my gut. Not pity. Not yet. Just the awareness of another thread being pulled tight in the ever-growing web of power and fear.
And Bronlo never does anything without turning it into a spectacle.
Whatever came next, it would be more than just a captured family.
It would be a statement.
And I intended to hear it all.
The air was thick with the scent of sweat and iron as Bronlo dragged the banished family into the center of the camp. The father’s body had already been left for the crows, his throat slit before he could beg. The mother had fought—uselessly—clawing at the hunters until Bronlo’s brother silenced her with a stone axe to the temple.
Now, only the three survivors remained: two girls, trembling and wide-eyed, and a young man, barely more than a boy, his wrists bound with sinew rope.
Bronlo circled them like a wolf deciding which limb to tear off first. The firelight carved shadows into his face, making his grin look jagged. He didn’t just want utility—he wanted theater.
He pulled the flint blade from his belt—a ritual tool, not a hunting one. The edge was serrated, cruel by design. The tribe pressed in, a ring of hungry eyes. No one spoke. No one dared.
Bronlo grabbed the young man by the hair, yanking his head back. The young man gasped, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he stared up at the sky—maybe praying, maybe just disbelieving.
Then Bronlo began castrating him in-front of the tribe.
He wasn’t quick. He wasn’t clean.
The first cut drew a scream. The second a gurgle. Blood splattered the dirt, black in the firelight. Bronlo held up the ruined flesh like an offering, letting it drip onto the embers. The sizzle made a few of the women laugh—nervous or eager, I couldn’t tell.
Then he turned, slow and deliberate, and showed the blade to the boys of the tribe, showing off the Bronlo family dominance. "This is the price of weakness." His voice was a growl, but his eyes flicked to me. Just a heartbeat too long. if the old me the naive me was faced with that look, I would have missed it or excused it, but i learned my lesson.
Ah.
I kept my face stone. But inside, something cold settled in my gut, the politics of it was clear.
Bronlo’s son, that sniveling runt, had been slipping in status. And I’d been rising. Now, with this display, Bronlo wasn’t just Taming a new slave—he was sending me a message.
'This is the price of Challenging me, Follow or You’re next.'
No one wept. No one looked away.
Compassion? That was for kin. For people whose names you knew. These strangers were nothing—meat, labor, a lesson. If anyone pitied them, they buried it deep, replacing it with a sneer or a jeer. To show mercy was to mark yourself as other. And in this place, other meant alone, it meant to be the next victim, the sacrifice for tribe unity, to be dead.
The girls were dragged off to the weaver’s hut, to be married off later or traded with another tribe. The castrated young man if he can be called a man anymore, barely conscious, was kicked toward the small Shaman for healing but later he will be sent to the flint mines. He’d die there, if not from infection, then from exhaustion.
The Realization hit me Hard, This wasn’t just a tribe.
It was a cult.
A machine that fed on pain and loyalty, where morality was decided by the strong and enforced by the cruel.
Bronlo had made a mistake, though.
He’d shown his intentions. he reminded me, motivated me, warned me.
And now? , I’d play the game better than him.
After a moment of resolve, I made my Decision.
Kill him. Kill his wife. Kill his son. Kill his brother.
No half-measures. No survivors to seek vengeance. Just old-fashioned Royal line extinguishing.
Because in this world, mercy was suicide.
And I didn't jump between reality's to end it here, no I wasn’t dying on the hands of savage.
I started plotting murder, carefully plan, this needs to be a step after another, slowly chip away at the base and be sure i wont fuck it up. i cant wait for my aura to ignite its time to be creative.
Smoke and Silence
After the shit show spectacle—the screaming, the ritual blade, the stench of piss and pride—the cave settled into an uneasy stillness. The air was heavy, not just with smoke from the fires, but with the tension that always follows public violence. No one said it aloud, but everyone felt it.
Still, routine is a stubborn thing.
Food was prepared, chants muttered half-heartedly. The rituals went on, dull and mechanical, the way people do things when they're too tired to question the old rhythms. Hunger always wins in the end, and so meat was carved, roots were boiled, and even the echoes of that grim power play were smothered under the crackle of flames.
Before the mouth of the cave was sealed for the night, meals were passed around to the smaller fires. Anything needing a strong flame was cooked outside, but the rest—simple broths, roasted insects, root mash—were heated indoors, low and slow. The scent of earth and smoke clung to everything, a kind of second skin we all wore without complaint.
I sat with my bowl in hand, chewing slowly, savoring the warmth more than the taste. That’s when Monire sat beside me without a word. I didn’t look up. His presence wasn’t a surprise. He always came sniffing around when things got dangerous.
Then, a few moments later, Kael approached too, limping quietly and settling across from us. That one was a little more surprising.
I glanced at them both. No conversation, no shared jokes. Just the silence of men who didn’t want to eat alone anymore.
I see.
They were circling around me for safety.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
I didn’t say anything. No need to spook the herd. Let them come close. Let them feel protected.
In this world, proximity to danger is sometimes the closest thing to safety.
So I just kept eating. and thought on how this made me stronger, if i can build my own little cult, a more sane one built for mutual defense.
And in the flicker of firelight, I allowed myself the faintest smile.
was chapter 20 too dark?