He crouched beside the cage and glanced inside.

  Pity flared for a single, treacherous heartbeat as he saw the child huddled against the bars—knees drawn in, fingers white where they clutched the cold iron.

  The feeling tugged at his heartstring. He immediately silenced it, a useless emotion.

  Voices approached—familiar. The same man who’d locked the children up before.

  A feeling surfaced—stemmed from an interesting idea.

  Not anger. Not mercy.

  Curiosity.

  He looked back towards the child locked in the cage in front of him.

  “Pst.”

  The boy looked up, eyes widening as he registered a different figure this time.

  “You wanna get out of here, kid,” Arion whispered, low and steady, “together with the others?”

  The boy’s mouth opened on instinct, but Arion raised a finger to his lips. The child froze, then mirrored the motion, clamping a hand over his own mouth as he nodded, small and frantic.

  “Good. When I give you this signal,” Arion continued, lifting his thumb into a slow, deliberate thumbs-up, “you get that big guy’s attention—the guard who put you in here. Understand?”

  The boy stared at the gesture, something sharp and bright flickering behind the fear. He nodded again, harder this time.

  Arion slipped back into the darkness, fingers closing around the dead bandit’s collar as he dragged the body with him, boots soundless over dirt as both vanished between stacked crates and sagging sacks.

  …

  Then, the signal came.

  “Mister! Help—there’s a monster here!” the boy screamed.

  The camp’s noise swallowed most of it—laughter, clanking metal, distant shouting—but not all. Enough carried.

  “Gah! You annoying brat!” the brutish guard snapped as he hauled himself upright, irritation thick in his voice.

  He stomped closer as the boy screamed again. “Help! Quick—it’s right here!”

  The man scowled, scanning the shadows, seeing nothing.

  “You little shit. I’m gonna beat the—”

  Hands seized the backs of his knees.

  Coagulate Lock.

  The spell snapped into place as he spun, axes manifested themselves in his hands, their blades carved into the dirt behind him.

  Before him stood a man in white robes, silver hair stark in the low light, dark eyes unblinking. A staff rested across his shoulder with infuriating ease.

  “Well now,” the bandit grinned, rolling his shoulders as he rested the axes against them. “What’ve we got here? A boy playin’ hero?”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Arion didn’t answer. He simply watched.

  Waiting.

  Step.

  The bandit watched Arion take a step back, then another.

  “And where do you think you’re goin’?” The bandit said as he took a step forward. “I’m gonna enjoy tearin’ you—”

  Then he saw it. A grin appeared.

  The man’s leg buckled mid-stride. Then the other followed.

  Shock twisted his face as his weight betrayed him, axes clanging as he collapsed, barely catching himself.

  Footsteps thundered.

  Arion was on him instantly. One axe swung—heavy, clumsy—but Arion deflected it cleanly, the staff snapping across the haft as Recall came around in a brutal arc, smashing into the man’s face.

  Again.

  And again.

  Each strike punctuated by another whispered invocation.

  His arms shook. Slowed. Then failed entirely.

  “Bastard! What did you do to me—”

  Arion’s hand clamped around his jaw.

  “Coagulate Lock.”

  The words died in his throat.

  Speech vanished. Muscles refused command. He lay there, eyes wide, lungs workin—his body useless.

  It was a gamble. Arion had theorised that Coagulate Lock could influence blood flow directly—but whether another person’s Vitalis would resist, override, or nullify the effect had remained untested.

  Each cast of Coagulate Lock sent Luminary threading through the limb, bypassing muscle to seep into the bloodstream. The flow thickened, sluggish, then stopped; the body tried to obey the brain, but the signal died before reaching the extremities.

  Capillary constriction starved nerves of oxygen. Muscular conductivity collapsed. A burning misfire rippled outward before numbness claimed everything.

  Arion crouched lower, fascinated.

  Induced Ischemic Stasis.

  Vascular Conduction Arrest.

  “Magnificent…”

  The once mighty bandit now laid helpless, he could only stare into Arion’s eyes. Fear, dread he had never felt before took hold within his mind.

  “Now,” Arion said softly, tilting his head, “shall we begin the next experiment… lab rat?”

  Dread gripped him as the bandit tried to scream, but only muffled wet moans escaped, as if he’d forgotten how to speak

  …

  Conscious, breathing, terrified, and unable to move.

  The bandit was conscious, trapped and locked in his own body.

  Like a sleep paralysis demon, Arion loomed over, looking down at the disabled bandit. I'm sure at this point, he wished Arion was only that, a hallucination.

  He glared right into his eyes—behind them, into his consciousness. The voice inside.

  “I could make it quick,” he mused. “But it’s never quick for them, is it?”

  He paused, eyes narrowed.

  “Entropy may be patient,” he continued, voice cooling, “but I am not.”

  His hand stretched forth.

  “Let’s see which kills faster—heat or frost.”

  His palm planted itself onto his test subject’s chest, audible moans tried to reach out, but it was mere background noise to him now.

  “Scald Burst.”

  Heat pushed into the chest cavity, Luminary Essence mixed with blood—super-heating every liquid near the heart.

  The bandit felt his chest slowly being microwaved from the inside. Then another spell was casted.

  “Frost Snap.”

  Ice bloomed as frost fizzled, spreading over the skin of the chest and torso. The expanding heat trapped beneath reacted, tissue violently detonated with micro-explosions.

  Steam had nowhere to go. It bled through pores, searing and hissing, then froze on contact—a cycle of explosion and stillness repeating in miniature.

  The bandit’s body convulsed, limbs twitching against paralysis as the dual elements warred inside him. Each heartbeat triggered a new detonation—flesh popped beneath the ice like tiny mines going off under glass.

  Pains of muffled moans tore through the subject's cracking throat.

  The smell grew dense—a mixture of burned tallow and cold iron. The frost shimmered cyan against the fire’s red pulse.

  The colours danced across Arion's deranged, purely logical face.

  The man burned alive beneath his own frozen shell—a candle of blue fire sealed inside a sculpted corpse of ice.

  Physiological and psychological torture.

  Then, Arion had enough. Releasing the Coagulate Lock, the body started to collapse in a hiss of steam and frost.

  THUNK–TSSKRK!

  The shell imploded, spraying shards and steam. The remains hissed on the frozen dirt—flesh, frost, and smoke blending into one indistinguishable slurry.

  Silence retook its part, only slight whispers of frost swelled up from the finished experiment.

  —— ? —— —— ? —— —— ? ——

  He stood and brushed frost from his hands.

  He made sure to have his back to the cage—the children, unable to witness his experiment.

  Turning back, he crouched, and met the boy’s eyes through the bars. The child’s breathing hitched, eyes wide, small shoulders trembling.

  Arion smiled faintly, almost gentle, and raised the iron key between two fingers.

  “Let's get you out, kid.”

  Arion opened the door to the cage, the boy first hesitated, then finally left. Arion gave him a pat on the head and a nod, trying to relieve some fear inside of him.

  “The others…” The boy whispered.

  Arion smiled and went over to unlock the rest of the cages, after they were all freed, he did a head count.

  Six children stood in front of him. They aged around six-ten years old. He stood there, his hand on his chin.

  Then he crouched down further as he heard more voices coming closer to their position.

  And there were more than one.

  This might be harder than I thought…

  —— ? —— —— ? —— —— ? ——