Vurok hung there, suspended by his own hair, his breath coming in shallow, gurgling gasps. The glade was silent, the golden hour passing into a bruised purple twilight.

Sol looked at the man's shattered face. The nose was flattened, blood leaked from both ears, and the arrogance that had once defined him was nowhere to be found.

"Is this it?" Sol asked, a dark, hollow laugh escaping his lips. "Is this the 'Elite' strength you used to brag about while you were kicking me in the dark? You are weak, too weak."

Vurok's good eye flickered open, filled with a watery, animalistic terror. He tried to speak, but only a bubbly moan escaped his ruined mouth.

"P-please... wait..." he managed to wheeze, the word barely audible, a string of bloody saliva trailing from his lip to the dirt.

But Sol didn't wait. He didn't even hesitate. He yanked his head back with a brutal, neck-straining wrench, forcing him to look up to the sky.

"Wait for what?" Sol asked, his voice a soft, terrifying hum. "Wait for you to find another friend to throw to the pigs? Or wait for you to make good on your threats against my family?"

"N-no…no, no."

"Please!" Vurok gurgled, spitting blood. "Sol! Stop! I was joking! About the girls—I was joking!"

"But I'm not," Sol said softly, leaning in, his mouth inches from Vurok's ear. He could feel the frantic pulse in Vurok's neck, beating like a trapped bird.

Vurok let out a high-pitched, sobbing whine. "N-no... please... I'll give you anything! Please let me go!"

"Do you really think I'll let you go?"

Hearing this, Vurok's eyes, bloodshot and bulging. For a moment, a flicker of that old, arrogant "Elite" fire sparked. He wasn't ready to beg. Not yet. With a guttural, desperate snarl—"Gyaaagh!"—Vurok lunged upward. "I'll kill you! I'll tear your throat out!"

He pulled a jagged bone shiv from his belt and drove it toward Sol's thigh.

Sol's reaction was mechanical, as he had been observing all his moves with cold eyes. He didn't even let go of Vurok's hair. He simply pivoted his hips, the bone blade whistling through the empty air where his leg had been a microsecond before.

WHACK.

Sol's elbow came down like a falling log, slamming into Vurok's collarbone.

CRACK.

"Aaagh! Nnnngh!" Vurok screamed, the bone shiv clattering into the mud as his shoulder slumped at a sickening angle.

"You're still fighting," Sol murmured, almost appreciative. "Good. I'd hate for this to be too easy."

Sol launched a systematic assault. He didn't use the bone dagger; he used his fists, the very hands Vurok had once mocked as "weak."

THUD. SQUELCH.

A heavy left hook caught Vurok in the jaw, sending teeth and a spray of crimson flying into the leaves. Vurok's head snapped to the side, but Sol's grip on his hair kept him from falling.

WHAM.

A punch buried itself deep into Vurok's solar plexus. The air left Vurok's body in a long, rattling wheeze—"Hhhhhhh"—and his eyes rolled back, showing only the whites.

"Get up," Sol commanded, jerking him upward.

Vurok was a mess now. His face was a mask of purple-black swelling, his nose was a flattened ruin, and one eye was already swollen shut. He tried to raise his good arm to protect himself, but Sol caught the wrist.

SNAP.

"You remember Drogg?" Sol asked, his voice a soft, terrifying hum. "He asked 'Why' before he died. Do you want to know why?"

Vurok let out a high-pitched, sobbing whine. "N-no... please... I'll give you anything! I'll stay away from you! I'll never touch your cousins ever again!"

"You think I'll believe you?" Sol asked with a dark smirk. "Or more accurately... do you really think I'll let you go alive today?"

He let go of Vurok's hair and suddenly grabbed his wrist—the one that had held the dagger.

With a brutal twist, he snapped the bone.

SNAP. SQUELCH.

"AAAAAAAGH! MY ARM! MY ARM!"

Vurok's scream echoed through the glade, a sharp, jagged sound that sent birds fluttering from the trees. He thrashed in the mud, clutching his dangling, useless wrist against his chest, tears streaming down his face.

Sol watched him with a detached curiosity. He felt the hunger in his chest—the Ash Gray energy wanting to feed on the pain.

"You're really pathetic," Sol murmured.

He looked down at the shivering wreck that had once been the village's golden boy. Vurok was a ruin, his face a mottled mask of purple swelling and leaking crimson, but his eyes were still wide, darting with a frantic, animalistic desperation.

"P-please..." Vurok wheezed, his body's survival instinct kicking in."Don't... don't kill me..."

Of course, Sol wanted to kill him right here and now. But he suppressed the urge. A quick death was too lenient for someone like him. He had to suffer the pain all his victims had ever suffered. He wanted to torture him. He wanted to let him feel the true ferocity of the wild.

Sol didn't let him finish. He didn't want to hear the promises of a man who had already bargained away his soul. With a sharp, clinical pivot of his shoulder, Sol drove a final, heavy fist into Vurok's temple. The sound was dull, like a hammer hitting a sack of grain.

"Gah! H-haa..." Vurok's eyes rolled back instantly, his jaw going slack as his head snapped to the side, and his body went body went limp, due to his nervous system short-circuiting under the sheer trauma.

Sol stood over him for a moment, his chest heaving slightly, the Charcoal energy in his chest beginning to settle into a cold, dense mass. He looked around the glade. The sun was dipping lower, casting long, skeletal shadows across the forest floor. The scent of Vurok's blood was already thick in the air—it wouldn't be long before the smaller scavengers, or worse, the night-stalkers, arrived.

He wouldn't let the forest have Vurok, at least not yet.

…

reached down and grabbed Vurok by the ankles. The man was a dead weight, his muscles limp and his breathing a shallow, wet rattle. Sol didn't carry him; he didn't owe him that much dignity.

He began to walk, dragging Vurok behind him like a discarded carcass.

The sound was visceral… a rhythmic, heavy shhh-thump, shhh-thump as Vurok's body was hauled over the jagged roots of ancient trees and through the thick, sucking mud of the forest floor. Sol's grip was like iron, his enhanced muscles making the task feel effortless, even as Vurok's head bounced off stones and his broken ribs ground together under his own weight.

Sol moved with a predatory silence, the matte-black scales of his cloak sliding through the brush without a sound. He headed deeper into the Eastern Zone, away from the path, toward a place he had scouted during his time in the Western fringes… a massive, lightning-struck iron-bark tree that stood like a rotted tooth against the darkening sky.

The tree was a gargantuan husk, its core hollowed out by centuries of decay and an old fire that had left the interior charred and smelling of ancient soot. It was a perfect, silent tomb.

Sol reached the base of the tree and, with a sudden, violent heave, swung Vurok's body around and shoved him into the narrow opening. Vurok slid into the dark, damp interior with a sickeningly wet thud, his limbs tangling in the rotting mulch at the bottom.

Sol stepped into the hollow after him, the space cramped and suffocating. The air inside was stagnant, heavy with the suffocating scent of ancient soot and the rising, metallic tang of fresh blood. Outside, the forest was sinking into a bruised purple twilight, but inside the trunk, it was already midnight.

He knelt beside the unconscious man, his silhouette blocking the last sliver of grey light from the entrance.

…

"Vurok, Vurok... it's not the time to sleep. Wakey, wakey," Sol whispered.

The words were soft, almost tender, but they carried a low, terrifying hum that bounced off the charred walls of the hollow tree, echoing like the rasp of a sharpening blade.

Varok didn't move, of course, he couldn't move in the current situation.

"Seems like I have to be a bit rough. Well, don't blame me… you forced me. It's not like I wanted to do this," Sol added, his voice dripping with a mocking, false regret.

A moment later, he drew back his foot and delivered a heavy, calculated kick directly into Vurok's shattered ribs.

CRUNCH.

"Wake up."

Vurok's eyes flew open, his pupils dilating into pinpricks in the gloom. He let out a sharp, ragged gasp that ended in a wet, rattling wheeze. Instinctively, he tried to scramble away, his hands clawing at the rotting wood of the tree's interior, but his body was a ruin. His broken arm flared with a white-hot, blinding agony, and as he tried to shift, he realized his legs were useless, the knees dislocated and swollen into purple knots.

"P-please..." Vurok wheezed, his face turning a mottled, bruised blue as he struggled to draw a full breath. "Don't... don't kill me..."

Sol didn't answer immediately. Instead, he reached down and gripped Vurok's good hand. He didn't squeeze; he simply held it with a cold, terrifying stillness.

"Ohhh… You're crying, Vurok," Sol noted, his voice devoid of any human warmth. "Is it the pain? Tell me where it is hurting, I'll help you make it 'go away'." Even though he had said it tenderly, but that dark smirk on his face made the words creepier than anything Vurok had ever heard.

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