I had to reapply the [Mute] effect a few more times on the ride over, because I did not trust it to hold all the way to the cemetery. He might have had his hands and feet bound, but that did not stop him from thrashing like he was trying to shake himself apart. And I was not about to wipe out on the road because my captive decided it was time to audition for a wrestling match. I stopped long enough to bind his elbows to his body and then him to the bike, but he still struggled.

  I reached back and smacked him a couple of times to get the message across.

  After the fourth smack to the back of his head, he finally learned. He went still, breathing hard through the tape, and we made it to the cemetery in relative peace.

  The moment I arrived, I knew something was off.

  Eric was not alone. That little shit.

  Shawn and Jess were standing with him, and Siva was parked nearby, sitting on a paramedic’s motorbike like he had been waiting for the show to start.

  Of course he had called them. Of course he did. They already knew what this part of the plan was, but I had not been ready to test it in front of them. I did not even know why. Maybe I was afraid it would not work. Maybe I was afraid it would work too well. Either way, it did not matter now.

  They were here. We were doing this.

  I rode right up and killed the engine. Shawn did not even wait for me to dismount. He hauled my captive off the bike and dumped him onto the ground with a wet, ugly splat like he was unloading groceries.

  He grinned while he did it.

  I gave Eric my best stink eye. He pretended not to notice.

  I opened Eva’s chat again, asking the same question I had been circling around the whole ride.

  Chris: Eva, you sure this will work?

  Eva: My answer remains the same, Chris.

  Okay then.

  I nodded at Siva and Jess. Jess looked worried. Siva looked like he wanted to ask ten questions and was forcing himself not to. They all backed off a few steps anyway, giving me space with the captive.

  I pulled out my remaining [Mute] scrolls and handed them to Jess. She could apply it without needing to touch him, which meant she could refresh it the moment it started to fade.

  She nodded once and they disappeared into her inventory.

  Then I knelt and tore off the duct tape from his mouth and eyes. It came off with a nasty rip, and his eyebrows came with it.

  He flinched and blinked fast, eyes wild, scanning the cemetery, the trees, the four of us, the open ground and the graves. He tried to speak and then froze when nothing came out. The realization hit him a second later and he swallowed hard.

  His gaze locked onto me.

  There was still fear there.

  Good.

  I grabbed him by his bound wrist and hauled him upright, sitting him down like a child I was about to scold. Then I started questioning.

  At first he resisted, shaking his head too quickly, refusing to meet my eyes. So I pulled an arrow from my inventory and lied straight to his face, telling him it had a [Bleed] enchantment and that one tiny prick would be enough to leave him bleeding out in the cemetery while we watched.

  He did not know what was real anymore. That was the point.

  For effect, Shawn stepped closer and carved a fresh grave beside him with the kind of casual ease that underlined our intent. The captive immediately tried to squirm away, boots scraping dirt, shoulders twisting, panic rising again.

  That was the last of his courage.

  After that, he answered with nods and shakes of his head while Jess kept watch on the debuff timer and refreshed the [Mute] whenever it threatened to drop. He had no spells and no chat function. No way to warn his Temple friends. Just him, us, and the still of the cemetery.

  When I saw a flicker of defiance return to his eyes, when he started sitting a little straighter like he had remembered pride, I nodded at Shawn.

  Shawn walked over with his scythe, leaned in slightly, and did just enough to remind the man that his bones were not fully his anymore.

  The fear snapped right back into place.

  Shawn pinged in chat, asking if we should waterboard him.

  Jess smacked the back of his head without even looking.

  I kept going for a while, circling the same questions from different angles, checking for contradictions, pushing until the pattern held. In the end, we got what we came for.

  I did not feel good about it. It was not just the interrogation. It was pressure, fear, humiliation. Psychological torture dressed up in necessity.

  But in the end, we did what we had to.

  Next came the part that mattered more. The real test.

  I stood and walked over to Eric. He had gone pale somewhere along the way, and I had seen him flinch when I talked about making our captive bleed out alone in the cemetery.

  “How close do you have to be?” I asked.

  Eric looked like he was only half here, eyes flicking between me and the prisoner like he expected the man to suddenly explode. I grabbed Eric by the arm, rougher than I meant to, and felt him stiffen immediately.

  I forced myself to breathe and loosened my grip.

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  “Eric. It’s going to be okay,” I said, keeping my voice low. “How close do you have to be?”

  He swallowed. “This… this is fine. I can feel it,” he replied, hesitant but certain.

  “Okay. Wait for my signal.”

  I walked back toward our prisoner but stopped a couple of meters away. Then I glanced at Siva and gave him a single nod.

  Siva’s wakizashi appeared in his hand. He moved in without a word, knelt, and cut through the duct tape and bindings with a few clean, precise swipes. Then he stepped away like he had never been there.

  The prisoner stayed crouched for a heartbeat, rubbing at his wrists and ankles, flexing his fingers. He looked around again, taking us in, measuring the circle we had formed around him. Siva in front. Shawn off to one side, scythe casually resting like a threat. Jess watching his debuff timer. Eric behind Siva, trying very hard not to look sick.

  I kept my distance.

  “Get up,” I said. “Fight me.”

  He hesitated, and I could see it in his eyes. He was trying to figure out what this was. A test? A trap? A show before the execution.

  “Get up,” I repeated. “This is your one chance to make it out of here alive.”

  It was a lie. He did not need to know that part.

  My composite bow appeared in my hands.

  That did it.

  He rose slowly, shoulders tight, posture shifting the moment he decided to fight. And then, finally, I saw what I had been waiting for.

  His metal hands began to change.

  Panels slid apart with soft mechanical clicks, plates shifting and unfolding like some sick origami. The metal thickened up his forearms, growing bulk. Spikes pushed out around his wrists and knuckles. Then the blades emerged, rows of sharp, upturned edges lining his forearms like kitchen knives made for war.

  He started circling, tight and cautious, trying to force me to commit first.

  So I did.

  I snapped a regular arrow off the string, aimed high and fast for his shoulder.

  He reacted instantly, raising one arm to shield his upper body. The arrow clanged off metal and skittered away into the dirt.

  He lunged.

  The distance between us vanished. He came in low and hard, blades leading, trying to close before I could nock another shot.

  I pivoted and dropped, diving to my left as his body cut through where my head had been. I rolled, came up on one knee and he was already turning, swinging a punch at my face with spiked knuckles.

  I brought the bow up like a staff and swatted the punch aside, the impact shuddering through my arms. Before he could reset, I hooked his wrist with my bowstring and twisted, dragging him off balance.

  He stumbled.

  I yanked again and he went down, hitting the dirt with enough force that the breath punched out of him.

  For half a second I thought I had him.

  Then he showed me he was not just augmented. He was trained.

  Even as he fell, his leg scythed out in a smooth, practiced sweep. His boot caught my ankle and my feet went out from under me.

  I hit the dirt hard, bow still in my hands, the impact rattling my teeth.

  He was on me before I could even suck in a breath. He swung into a full mount, knees pinning my hips, and raised both fists to hammer down. The spikes on his knuckles caught the sunlight and for a stupid split second my brain supplied the worst possible thought.

  So this is how it ends. In a cemetery. Getting punched to death by a guy with robot hands.

  I bridged hard, driving my hips up and twisting at the same time. It was ugly and desperate, but it worked. He pitched forward and I shoved, throwing him off to the side.

  I caught movement in my peripherals. Siva and Shawn were already stepping in.

  I shook my head at them. No. This fight was mine.

  I came up on one knee and swung the bow like a club. The limb caught him square in the face with a crack that made my wrists sting. He sprawled, but he used the momentum like he had done it a hundred times. He rolled with it, coiled, and lunged from the ground.

  His fist landed as pain exploded up my leg. His spikes punched through flesh and hit bone. I felt my ankle give with a sickening snap. A shout ripped out of me before I could swallow it down. My HUD lit up with alerts and pings and I slapped at the air like that would make them go away.

  I activated a healing potion on instinct.

  Heat flooded my leg. The break knit itself back together with a sensation that made my stomach lurch. The spikes did not gently slide out. The potion forced them out. It was like my body rejected the metal and pushed it back where it came from.

  He was still in close, trying to keep pressure, still trying to tear me apart with those forearm blades. I slammed my knee into his elbow, hard enough to jar his arm, and pinned it to the ground before he could draw back.

  My bow came up again. Point blank.

  I nocked an arrow without looking, muscle memory doing the work, and brought the tip right to his face.

  Jess screamed. “Chris, stop!”

  I froze, panting so hard my lungs burned. The arrowhead hovered inches from his eye.

  Then I realized what I had pulled.

  The [Boom] arrow.

  Of course I had. Of course, the one time my hands acted faster than my brain, they picked the arrow that would turn his skull into a fireworks display.

  He stared up at me, eyes wide and silent. The [Mute] spell still had him locked down, so there was no begging, no threats and no last words. Just raw terror and the rasp of his breathing.

  For a second, we stayed like that. The sun shining down on us. My knee pinning him. The arrow waiting.

  My throat was dry when I finally managed to croak, “Eric. Do it.”

  Behind me, Eric flinched like I had slapped him with the words.

  I felt it before I saw it. A vibration in the air, a pressure against my skin. Then the prisoner’s whole body started to shudder under my knee. Neon green light crawled over him in thin lines, like circuitry waking up under his flesh.

  I backed off fast, stumbling on my still-tender ankle, and gave him space.

  He grimaced and tried to bring his arms up.

  His hands began to change.

  The knife-lined forearms folded in. Plates shifted. The spikes retracted. For a breath, it looked like he was reverting back to the plain metal hands I had seen earlier.

  Then his forearms just… came apart.

  It was like the system decided those parts no longer belonged to him.

  The metal detached at mid-forearm and dropped to the ground with a heavy, dead clank.

  He stared at the stumps like his brain refused to accept what his eyes were telling him. Then he scrambled back on his knees, gasping, panic rising fast enough to choke him.

  Jess let the [Mute] drop the moment she saw the glow fade.

  “What… what did you do?” he rasped, voice cracking as he looked between me and the ruined ends of his arms. “How… how did you do this?”

  He did not wait for an answer. He collapsed sideways and curled into himself, shaking, sobbing into the dirt like a child.

  Jess was already moving. She knelt beside him, hands glowing gold as she started healing the raw damage, her jaw tight with focus.

  “He’s…” she swallowed, eyes wide as her system readout updated. “He’s not connected to the system anymore…”

  I stood there, still panting, bow in one hand, the [Boom] arrow in the other, like I had forgotten how to put either of them away.

  When I finally looked up, I caught Eric’s face.

  He was terrified.

  Siva had a hand on his shoulder, speaking softly to him, steadying him the way you steady someone who has just watcheda particularly bad car crash.

  Shawn walked over and gently took the arrow from my fingers like he was disarming a bomb. I let him, because my hands were shaking and I did not trust myself to make good decisions anymore.

  I found my voice as a whisper. “What did I do? What have we become?”

  Shawn didn’t flinch. He just met my eyes, calm as ever, and said, “Whatever we have to be.”

  Whatever we have to be.

  And right now, I didn’t even know what that was.