Kalagrim took a long, shaking breath, fighting to regain control over the rising tide of emotion that twisted his weathered features. His hands trembled visibly, gripping the edges of the table with white-knuckled force. He looked slowly from Kaiser to Ivan, then finally settled on Martha, eyes burning with raw, barely-contained fury.

"You want the full truth, Martha? Fine," he said hoarsely, his voice shaking slightly beneath the intensity of his anger. "Forty damned years ago, I took a Tale from the Northern Liberatorium. It was supposed to be simple—retrieve or rescue a party of Liberators who went missing on that damned mountain. The family who lived there, that very same family, had called for help. They begged for anyone to come, and the Liberatorium, in their infinite wisdom, considered it a safe Tale. Because that family said it was warm enough, that the snow was light, just a dusting… a simple job even a novice could handle."

His voice became venomous, eyes locked with Martha's hateful stare. "But those liars, those twisted monsters deceived everyone. The snow wasn't shallow, it was deep enough to swallow you whole. The temperature wasn't mild, it was cold enough to freeze your flesh to your bones. I still don't know why they lied, why they damned us all."

Martha scoffed openly, arms crossed tightly across her chest. "Oh, please. Enough excuses, Kalagrim. You think some snow and cold justify murder?"

Kalagrim slammed his mutilated hand onto the table, making Ivan jump in alarm. He raised both of his hands, thrusting them into the dim light to reveal he had only two grotesquely scarred fingers on each. His voice rose in volume, cracking with bitterness and long-held pain. "You see these, Martha? You think these wounds are lies too? I've known cold, but that mountain was something unnatural. The weather… it changed. It changed like nothing I'd ever felt in my life."

His chest heaved, memories clearly tormenting him as he stared unseeingly ahead. "Night fell, and with it came cold unlike anything I'd ever imagined. It ripped through me, freezing me from the inside out. I would have died on that mountain, just like the Liberators I'd come to retrieve, if not for that house. That one single damned house, where those liars lived."

Kalagrim leaned forward, his voice dropping to a harsh, trembling whisper. "They locked me out. They stood there, warm and safe, behind their walls, knowing they had condemned me. Me! The one they had tricked, the one risking his life to help them! I begged for shelter, just shelter for one night. They turned me away. Their eyes… they saw my pain, saw my frozen fingers snapping off, and yet they stared me down through that door."

Martha sneered coldly, unyielding. "So that gives you the right to force your way in, kill a man, murder his wife, and abandon their child? You're pathetic."

Kalagrim lunged up, the chair crashing behind him. "Pathetic?" he roared, veins standing out sharply on his forehead. "You were not there, Martha! The man attacked me! He came at me with a knife, aiming to gut me like some animal. I was half-dead already, delirious with pain and frostbite. What would you have done, Martha? Lay down and just die?"

"I would never have been in that position," Martha spat, eyes narrow and judgmental. "Because I would never force myself into someone's home. Never!"

"You're lying," Kalagrim snarled, his eyes wild and desperate. "You would have fought for your damned life, just like anyone else. Just like I did."

He slammed his palms onto the table, his breath ragged. "And the woman… she started sending messages on her Albus, sending lies to the Liberatorium, saying I broke in for no reason, saying I attacked unprovoked. She was smiling—smiling while she condemned me! I was desperate, Martha! Can you even begin to understand desperation?"

He turned, gaze haunted, locking eyes briefly with Kaiser, who watched silently. Kalagrim's voice dropped again, shaking. "The child… the child was upstairs. I didn't know, Martha. I swear on whatever miserable honor I have left—I didn't even know the child was there. Neither did the Liberators who came for me. But they left him. Everyone left him too! And they did nothing. For seven days, Martha! For seven goddamned days, that child was left to starve. Left by the Liberators, left by everyone who pointed their fingers at me."

Martha glared at him with contempt, shaking her head slowly. "Convenient excuses, Kalagrim. A murderer always finds someone else to blame."

Kaiser finally spoke, his voice cutting the tension like a blade. "You should have been honest, Martha. Manipulation doesn't suit you."

She turned sharply toward Kaiser, her confidence flickering. "Are you serious? You believe this monster?"

Kaiser's crimson eyes met hers, unyielding and cold. "I believe only what's useful. Your lies have wasted enough of our time."

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Kalagrim, breathing heavily, lowered himself slowly back into his chair, eyes clouded with exhaustion. Ivan, deeply shaken, cleared his throat, glancing cautiously at Kaiser. "So… what happens now?"

For a tense moment, nothing but Kalagrim's ragged breaths filled the room, each inhalation crackling with rage and decades of betrayal. Martha's lip curled in disdain as she stepped back from the table, her posture straight and imperious, chin raised high.

"I've had enough of this," she snapped, her gaze never leaving Kalagrim. "We're going to the mayor's house, in the center of the village. The mayor and his bodyguards are there. We'll be safe until proper Liberators arrive. I suggest you come with me." She jabbed a finger toward the door, as if daring them to challenge her command.

Kalagrim shot to his feet, face flushed with hate. "Safe? With you? I'd rather rot in the streets than trust a second of my life to a viper like you. You never cared about the truth. All you do is run to whoever pays you in Sul and praise the damned Liberatorium for every scrap of comfort they toss your way. You're nothing but another one of their lapdogs." he spat at Martha, but his burning eyes cut straight to Kaiser. "And what about you, stranger? You think you're any different? You wear that armor, take orders from a lying bitch, chase after Sul and praise from the Liberatorium like every other dog they breed."

Kaiser's gaze met Kalagrim's. He rose with deliberate calm, sliding his chair back. "I follow no one, Kalagrim. I don't care for Sul, nor for the Liberatorium's praise. Only the Tale and its completion matter to me. Everything else is noise." He paused, a razor smile flickering at the edge of his mouth. "If you're looking for another loyal hound, try elsewhere."

Kalagrim's eyes narrowed, pain and bitterness clashing across his battered face. "Then you're just another dog, one that bites when it's told. I hoped for more." In a sudden, almost violent gesture, he twisted a small ring on his ruined hand, with a sharp, determined motion, crushed it between his fingers.

Kaiser's instincts screamed. He barely managed to draw his sword, moving to strike at Kalagrim as the air suddenly thickened, awash with the taste of Sol. But before steel met flesh, the world exploded into blinding white.

An agony unlike anything Kaiser had felt in this world, different even from wounds or poison or fire, stabbed straight through his skull. He barely heard Kalagrim's voice, warped and echoing: "Fool. That's what Sol Sight gets you, so close to all these damned paintings. Blind yourself for good, monster."

Kaiser fell hard to one knee, clutching his head, gasping through clenched teeth. The pain was alien, raw, a spike of light boring through his senses. He heard Ivan shout for him, felt the boy's hands try to steady his slumping body, but every movement only twisted the pain deeper.

Kalagrim, wild-eyed and foaming with hatred, lunged at Martha, his voice no longer merely angry but splintered and desperate, the sound of a soul unraveling. "You lied!" he howled, grabbing at her sleeve as she tried to scramble away. "You did nothing for him! NOTHING! You watched him die and you let them blame me—"

Martha shrieked, batting at his scarred hands, her composure crumbling as he pressed closer, spittle flying, eyes burning. "Let go of me! Guards! Get him away from—"

Kalagrim's voice only rose, ragged and trembling. "Don't call for help! Where was your help when my grandfather needed you?" His fists slammed the table, making the paintings rattle on the walls. "You were the only doctor in this damned village! The ONLY ONE! You did NOTHING, nothing but watch him rot in agony, screaming for mercy—" His voice cracked, and suddenly, tears streaked through the grime on his cheeks. "You watched him die in pain, and then you lied, you lied and LIED—"

He pointed a shaking, mutilated finger at her, each word sharper than a knife. "You told them I killed him. You told them I poisoned him. You let everyone whisper, you let them spit at me in the street. You let them turn me into a monster. All those years, you let everyone hate me for a crime you KNOW I never committed!"

Martha, white-faced, pressed herself against the wall, stammering. "He—he was old. He was ill, Kalagrim—"

"HE WASN'T!" Kalagrim's scream nearly broke him. "He was fine until you started treating him! He trusted you—" His face twisted, sobs breaking through his words. "He trusted you and you let him die, and you LIED and LIED and LIED. You killed him, Martha! Not me! You—killed—him!"

Martha finally snapped, voice shrill, desperate to reclaim the narrative. "I did what I could! It's not my fault your family's cursed—!"

But Kalagrim's pain drowned her out. "No, you just wanted to watch me suffer. You wanted a monster in your stories. You needed someone to blame so no one would see what you really are." His sobs became laughter, wild and brittle. "Well, you got your monster. Are you happy now?"

Ivan's clone leaped forward to shield her, but Kalagrim's hidden blade flashed, slashing through the illusion, dissolving it into blue Sol vapor. With a guttural snarl, he drove his dagger into Martha's eyes, once, twice, again and again, each strike a brutal punctuation on forty years of unhealed wounds and spite. Blood splattered across the painted frames, staining them anew.

Ivan, eyes wide with horror, tackled Kalagrim from behind. The real Ivan, desperate and terrified, wrestled the madman's arms back, while another of his doubles snatched the dagger away and tossed it into a dark corner. Still Kalagrim thrashed, stabbing at the empty air, fingers curled in remembered violence, mouth foaming with the effort.

"You'll kill her you idiot!" Ivan shouted, straining to hold Kalagrim down.

Kaiser, vision still swimming with spots of agony, forced himself upright, drawing deep, ragged breaths as the white-hot pain dulled to a low, throbbing ache. Every muscle trembled, his skull felt split open, but he gritted his teeth and surveyed the carnage: Martha collapsed on the floor, blood seeping from her ruined eye, Ivan panting, hands slick with sweat and fear, and Kalagrim, a fallen pillar of hate, weeping and snarling on the wood.

Ivan's gaze snapped up, haunted. "What do we do? She—she needs help, Kaiser. We can't just—"

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