Night hugs the city like a bruise. Lanterns gutter. Tii’s corroded raft is hidden away in a cliff cave; his cloak is pulled up like a low flag of warning. Nyx lives in his shadow as usual — a silent bulk of fur and teeth folded into darkness, eyes like lantern coals. Tii walks the lane slow, staff tucked at his side in its short-hook form. He smells the city: desperation, iron, diesel and the sour breath of people who have stopped expecting miracles.

  That’s when the staff is lighter.

  Three quick hands — small, nimble, practiced — lift the staff right out of Tii’s grip. A fourth child freezes it on the street corner. They run like smoke through the alleys.

  Tii grins the sort of grin that used to get him a special kind of trouble back home. He lets them go. He doesn’t react until they’re two blocks away and duck into a collapsing manhole. Then he follows, barefoot, laughing low. Nyx folds into the same shadow and melts after them.

  Down in the sewer tunnels the kids lay the staff on a ratty blanket and argue like a court of tiny, feral nobles. The eldest — an elf girl with too-pale hair and eyes old before her years — keeps the staff on the table like a relic. A human boy with oil under his fingernails fingers a cracked set of lenses and a jury-rigged phone. An orc boy plays with a short length of rope, flicking it like a blade. A demon-blooded girl keeps one hand on the staff and the other hand on a pair of badly-handled nunchaku, eyes darting if any shadow moves.

  Tii sits down at their table and watches. He looks like an adult and a kid at once: a human-looking boy, body braided with a dozen scars, carrying an island’s worth of patience and a heap of mischief. He listens while they tell the story — the orphanage, the whispers, the locked cages, the children taken away in the night and never returning. Ly’sia, the elf, says nothing at first; she just passes a small scorched toy across the table. Gadget — the human boy — shows them a hacked CCTV feed he found: cracked frames, two priests in ceremonial robes, children led like lambs down cellar stairs. Gu’ork’s voice catches as he tells about the ropes the keepers used. Mira’s hands tremble. They’re not hardened thieves: they’re survivors.

  Tii’s face softens, then goes flat. He slides a finger along the staff’s grain like he’s reading secret instructions. “You were going to sell this?” he asks.

  They nod. Gadget swallows. “We need food. And the big men would—”

  Tii holds up a hand. “You could have asked.”

  Ly’sia snorts. “Ask who? We were the ones who had to take the lads out. We were the ones.”

  Tii studies them. He remembers the islands: the Mu way to break weakness by building skill, not by breaking spirits. He dons the simplest grin. “Alright. I’ll teach you. But three rules. One — no killing unless you’re saving someone who can’t be saved otherwise. Two — invention beats strength. Three — you don’t sell this staff. Ever.”

  They look up, wide and suspicious. Then they accept. Their relief is a small, fierce thing.

  —

  Training.

  Tii turns the sewer den into a classroom. He gives each child a single tool chosen to weaponize a weakness and build a strength:

  ? Gadget (human): a plain, heavy stick — deliberately anti-tech. Tii forces the tech-reliant boy to learn to rely on his body, not his gadgets. The stick teaches range, balance, close-quarter leverage, and how to disarm bigger enemies when the circuit boards are useless.

  ? Gu’ork (orc): a plain length of rope. Gu’ork’s problem is mobility — heavy feet, too much straight power, not enough finesse. Tii teaches rope-work: swinging, grappling, binding, momentum transfer. Rope becomes whip, tether, aerial swing and a way to move like the city’s rats — quiet, fast, versatile.

  ? Mira (demon girl): nunchaku. She’s fierce and fast and will hurt herself without focus. Tii forces focus drills: controlled strikes, breathing timing, rhythm work. When Mira slackens and hits herself she laughs, then wins. The nunchaku root her fury into discipline.

  ? Ly’sia (elf girl): no weapon. Tii makes her learn his hand style — a mixed Mu system combining pressure points, gentle-fist mechanics and acrobatic grappling. Ly’sia’s natural magic affinity is a liability here; he drills her to be body-first, sense-first. Her high IQ meets Mu’s ruthless simplicity — she becomes surgical with empty hands.

  Training is brutal and exacting. Tii times every movement; he forces repetition until the smallest twitch becomes a habit. Nyx teaches them stealth by example: vanish into shadow, read presence by scent, strike where the body is blind. Tii makes them practice at night, crawling through gutters, tightening knots and throwing short shuriken shaped from scrap metal. Gadget grumbles but learns to throw with the stick as an extension, Gu’ork becomes nimble on the rope, Mira learns to tie her breath to her strikes, and Ly’sia becomes a short, lethal storm of barehands.

  Most important: Tii teaches planning. He sets them up with recon exercises. They study patrol patterns, the way the priests rotate guards, where the cameras blind-spot. Gadget, using his stolen salvaged phone and a jury-rigged receiver, maps the orphanage wiring. He isn’t allowed to bring in tech on raids, but he is taught how to think like a hacker: timing, social engineering, where the weak knees of an institution are. Gadget’s fingers learn to move like Tii’s; the hardware becomes his second language, the stick his first.

  —

  The Operation (no deaths, maximum shame):

  They wait a week, watching the compound. Gadget hijacks a street broadcaster’s feed during the noon news — old tech, a weak uplink, but sometimes weak uplinks mean no oversight. Tii sets signals; Nyx and the kids are shadows at the edge of light. Ly’sia steps into the dark to disable a guard silently, Gu’ork loops a ladder that becomes a ropebridge, Mira uses nunchaku to bludgeon a door lock open without a scream, Gadget crawls into the wiring like a rat.

  At evening, they strike. Ly’sia neutralizes the entrance guard with a single pressure point lock — no blood, no noise. Gu’ork binds the inner gate before the guard can call, rope whipping, folding muscle into submission. Mira moves like a streak and knocks the ceremonial seal off the priests’ storage room. Gadget, at the mezzanine, hijacks the feed and injects the orphanage footage into the local news channel — raw, grainy, hard truth: priests carrying children into the cellar, children’s mouths gagged, a ledger of missing names.

  The priests scramble. The guards wake. The orphans cry. The four kids move like four blades: swift, precise, not to kill, but to expose. Tii whispers, “No blood, remember?” — and they do. They beat and bind and take photographs, not throats. They bring the kids out, onto the street, place them where the cameras can find them. Gadget’s hacked broadcast loops the footage through every public screen within minutes. Phones buzz. Voices shout. People gather, first in shock, then in fury.

  The priests are dragged from their robes. The town has no patience left. The newly-streamed images light a torch under the city's conscience — and the press won’t stop asking questions.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Tii stands at the edges watching the human boy who used to steal tech for bread replace his hunger with a smirk of satisfaction. Gadget breathes, for the first time, like he’s swallowed something other than fear.

  —

  Aftermath.

  No one dies that night. The orphanage collapses administratively: arrests, investigations, courtrooms that move slowly but move nonetheless. The four kids stand together on a roof, Nyx at their shoulders like a dark godparent. They are tired and filthy and grinning like fools.

  Tii stitches a thin sigil into each of their wrists that night — a quick, crude shadow mark that will let them be recognized later by Mu friends if they ever make it to the Isles. Not a Bond sigil (not yet), just a promise that someone saw them and chose to lift them.

  Ly’sia bows, never one for thanks. Gu’ork grunts like a throaty laugh. Mira nearly cries. Gadget coughs into his sleeve, the grin too big to hide.

  Tii ruffles their hair and says what he always says when kids learn to fight: “Now you owe me. You come back for training. We make you fast and ugly.”

  They promise.

  Gadget slips Tii’s staff back into a corner of his pack afterwards — not to sell, but because he’d been tempted and because the moment of temptation had been the key to the entire rescue. He swallows hard; he knows he will never steal anything like that again.

  Nyx pads close and leans his great flank against Tii’s leg. In the darkness beneath the city, the four pupils and the runaway master share a small instant of quiet. The pipes drip. The homeless watch from windows. The city tastes a shade less rotten.

  Tii smiles, half-mischievous and half-fatherly. “Alright. Tomorrow we start weapons work at sunrise. Gadget — you’re on stick drills. Gu’ork — rope. Mira — nunchaku until you stop hitting yourself. Ly’sia — whoever you punch, make sure they know why they lost.”

  Ly’sia answers with a small, precise salute.

  Gadget imitates badly, then laughs.

  They train until the city sleeps. The staff — returned and safe — rests in a corner, glittering with a few drops of sewer water and the residue of a choice that changed four tiny lives.

  Night spreads across the outskirts of the outerworld like a black sheet pinned down by distant city lights. The broadcast Tii and his four students leaked has shattered the orphanage operation. The higher powers noticed — they always do when someone breaks a pattern they own.

  The Demon Tyranny Faction notices hardest.

  Deep beneath the capital, in a cathedral built from the ribs of an ancient fossilized leviathan, their Seers writhe across obsidian floors, whispering visions.

  Visions of:

  ? A missing pirate fleet.

  ? A squad of orc raiders wiped out.

  ? A necromancer split in half by an axe and wind compression.

  ? A boy who shouldn’t exist.

  ? A shadow wolf beside him.

  Their hands tremble as they trace his location.

  Not precisely — the Fog of Mu protects him too well.

  But they know enough.

  He is near towns. He is helping children. He is killing the ones who prey on them.

  And that means he is a threat.

  So the Order sends one of their own.

  A demon so feared among the Tyranny that even they whisper his name with distaste.

  Muerto Stein THE BONE COLLECTOR.

  Cannibal. Child-killer. Necromancer of elder craft.

  A walking famine wearing a man-shape.

  Tii senses all this long before a blade is drawn — not the seers, but the shifts.

  The way shadows lengthen.

  The way big predators avoid certain valleys.

  The way Nyx’s fur prickles with instinctive hatred.

  So Tii does what any Mu-raised guardian does:

  He protects his pack.

  He trains the four sewer kids until their knuckles blister and their confidence stops shaking.

  He teaches them:

  ? How to craft basic blades from scrap.

  ? How to brew three low-grade potions: numbing balm, clotting agent, and sleeping dust.

  ? How to hunt cleanly, cook meat properly, and strip game without waste.

  He teaches them the Mu creed:

  “If you can feed yourselves, you can free yourselves.”

  Then he kneels before them — the first time they’ve ever seen him bow his head.

  “Lay low,” he tells them.

  “Stay hidden. Do not look for me. Hunters are coming. I’ll lead them away.”

  Ly’sia wants to argue.

  Mira nearly cries.

  Gu’ork clenches the rope so hard it squeaks.

  Gadget swallows.

  Tii grins his Half-Savage, Half-Angel grin.

  “Don’t worry. I bite harder than whatever they send.”

  Then he walks into the wilderness with Nyx pacing beside him.

  Two days pass.

  Silent terrain.

  No towns.

  No witnesses.

  Exactly what the seers wanted.

  Exactly what Tii intended.

  On the second dusk, the wind dies.

  Birds fall silent.

  The trees arch backward as if trying to get away from something approaching the clearing.

  And then he steps out.

  Long, thin, pale.

  Wearing a cloak made from stitched spines.

  Eyes sunken, cheeks gaunt.

  His smile too wide, too many teeth.

  He sniffs the air.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Then grins.

  “Children… you have children’s scent clinging to you…”

  Tii’s blood turns to a cold fire.

  His face stops moving.

  His breath becomes silent.

  Even Nyx takes one step back.

  The Bone Collector drags a long nail across his tongue.

  “Little ones… four… scared… clever… oh, one of them smells like rope. One like toys. One like fear. One like—”

  He never finishes.

  Tii’s voice drops to a tone Nyx has never heard.

  “You said their scent.”

  The Bone Collector laughs. It rattles like bones in a jar.

  “Yes. They’ll taste—”

  That’s when Tii loses every fraction of restraint he’s ever learned.

  The Bone Collector raises his hands.

  The forest floor trembles.

  The earth splits like a wound.

  Thousands of corpses drag themselves upright.

  Children.

  All races.

  Small bones.

  Empty eyes.

  Some still clutching old toys, faded by dirt and rot.

  Each one manipulated like puppets by strings of bone essence.

  Their presence hits Tii harder than any blade ever has.

  His teeth grit so violently his jaw cracks.

  Nyx growls, hackles exploding upward like black flame.

  Then the Bone Collector whispers:

  “They’ll join my collection.”

  Something inside Tii breaks.

  Something ancient. Something dangerous. Something grey and boiling.

  TII’S UNTAPPED POTENTIAL.

  Tii sprints.

  No wind-style activation.

  No stance.

  Just pure instinct.

  He grabs the Bone Collector by the face, fingers piercing into cheekbones, and SLAMS his head into the ground so hard the soil caves inward.

  Tii doesn’t stop running.

  He drags the demon’s face across the ground, carving deep trenches, peeling flesh, shredding skin.

  Half the demon’s face becomes a smear across thirty meters of dirt.

  Then Tii throws him upward — straight into the sky.

  As the Bone Collector falls, Tii leaps and meets him mid-air with a barrage.

  56 punches.

  In three seconds.

  Each cracking bone.

  Each shattering something vital.

  Every strike is a wordless roar:

  “Don’t.”

  “Touch.”

  “My.”

  “Kids.”

  He grabs the demon’s leg mid-fall and swings him like a child’s toy.

  Side to side.

  Eight brutal arcs.

  Trees splinter.

  Branches explode.

  The wind screams at the force.

  Tii spins the demon in circles and launches him into a clearing.

  The Bone Collector hits the ground, skidding, collapsing trees behind him like dominos.

  His face is pulp.

  His bones are dust.

  But he still lives — barely.

  Tii steps forward.

  The undead children shoot arrows, claws, bone shards at him.

  He walks through them.

  He does not dodge.

  He does not block.

  He tanks every hit — arrows thudding into muscle, shards cutting skin.

  His essence is boiling out of his pores, dense, grey, volatile like pressure-filled smoke.

  It curls off him in spirals, cracking the ground beneath every step.

  His eyes glow with a dim, ancient stormlight.

  The Bone Collector stares in horror.

  “W-what ARE you—”

  Tii appears in front of him.

  One kick.

  Just one.

  It hits the Bone Collector’s face so hard he blasts through two trees and embeds into a third like a crushed insect.

  Tii sits on his chest.

  And punches.

  Over.

  And over.

  And over.

  No technique.

  No style.

  Just fury.

  A guardian’s fury.

  The Bone Collector tries to wheeze a spell, but only blood comes out.

  He tries to lift his hands, but they’re paste.

  Tii keeps punching until the demon stops existing as anything other than a shape in the dirt.

  When the necromancer dies, the spell breaks.

  The corpses collapse.

  Thousands of small bodies fall to rest.

  Tii doesn’t stop.

  He hits the ground, the corpse, the air — blind with rage and grief he never learned to process.

  Nyx leaps from the shadow and clamps his jaws on Tii’s arm, pulling him back.

  Tii’s eyes finally flicker.

  His essence sputters.

  His body collapses.

  He falls backward into Nyx’s fur and passes out.