I used to think killing and devouring were the only good things life had to offer me. I don’t compin, because I truly enjoy killing and eating. Being surrounded by a battlefield covered in corpses, with the screams of enemies who were still alive, with warm blood touching my lips, the adrenaline of the hunt and the victory resting in my cws…

  I truly felt like I belonged there…

  “Stay away from me, monster!”

  “Help me!”

  “Please, stop!”

  “Run!”

  I truly felt like I belonged there…

  “Another failure… Even if we used Lord Vdimir’s blood, all we got was this: a stupid woman who doesn’t know when to stop. Her body is still valuable, after all, so it would be a shame to kill her. You—put this failure with the other specimens. Maybe in the future we’ll find a use for her.”

  That was the voice of that man.The man who locked me in here… as well as the man who created me…

  I don’t know how much time passed. I’m not sure. Everything was very dark, but it was also very noisy. I have blurry memories of those moments. I used to sm myself against the walls. I used to scream and ugh endlessly. I didn’t know why—my ughter just came out while I kept screaming.

  I tried to talk to the others, but it seemed no one understood what I was saying…

  All that time I was hungry. Desperate. I couldn’t stop the annoying feeling of my stomach growling every second that passed. It hurt so much. It felt horrible. My mouth was always dry, craving another drop of blood every time.

  How much time passed?

  I don’t remember.

  Every night, when the darkness grew deeper, the others would begin to cry and scream, begging for blood. Hearing all that desperation was the first time I thought about what I was.

  I understood that I wasn’t different from the others.

  “A stupid animal that only kills and eats.”

  Maybe it was at that moment when my words finally made sense to the others. At the same time, I was also able to calm the rage that hunger caused within me.

  There, in the depths of that cell, for the first time I saw the light stretching from outside through the small window in the door.

  For the first time… I came to know myself.

  ***

  “Well, well, big guy. Let’s dance a little, yeah? Hope you’re ready,” Briar said, imitating the gesture of cracking her neck like Darius had done, though her neck didn’t crack.

  She was already ready for battle, but Midas still stood there doing nothing like a pathetic lobster. Even though Briar had told him to leave, he remained where he was, staring with boiling fear in his soul.

  “Briar…” Darius tightened his grip on the axe, recalling certain things he had been informed of beforehand. “I’ve heard some stories about you. You were relentless on the battlefield. Both enemies and allies ran from you.”

  He slowly walked around Briar, his heavy armor creaking.

  “You have the strength to be one of the best, but not the head to think about it. Your actions have disrupted the prosperity of the Empire. If you refuse to fight for Noxus and instead choose to stand against it, I’ll have no choice but to kill you.”

  “Hehehe. Right now I’ve got a few little things to do. I thought about fighting for Noxus again, but I think friendship is worth more than a position in the army—and if that leads me to fight against you…” The hemolith trembled violently. “I won’t have any problem doing it.”

  ‘This isn’t good…’

  Midas was already pnning to run away. He certainly had to, but guilt gnawed at his soul. This girl, despite being a crazy killer, was the one who had given him the chance to be free.

  If he abandoned her here, Midas wouldn’t be able to sleep with another person’s death haunting his nightmares.

  ‘I should help her… but what could I possibly do?’

  Midas was weak—both in body and mind. He had always been a coward, and he had always needed someone else to protect him. It had been exactly the same in Zaun, when his older sister would fight gang members to protect him.

  “Briar…”

  He clenched his fists inside the inhibitor. Seeing Briar standing in front of Darius inevitably reminded him of his sister about to fight someone simir.

  While Midas remained there, thinking and silently regretting everything, Briar opened the pillory and a mystical snap echoed through the air. Once again she took on that demonic appearance, and her sharp-toothed grin widened.

  Unable to contain herself, she lunged at Darius, raising both blood bdes that erupted from her severed wrists.

  But Darius only snorted in boredom, turning the axe so the blunt side faced forward.

  Like a hammer, Darius maneuvered the weapon and struck Briar in the face.

  The blow unched Briar into the air, causing her skull to crack inside her head. She let out a monstrous, pained scream, but before falling she regained her composure midair and nded on both feet.

  “Aah… aah… pain… blood…”

  Kneeling on the ground, she whispered as drops of blood began to run down her forehead.

  When she looked up, she saw that Darius was already preparing a downward strike with his axe.

  She reacted purely on instinct, immediately rolling across the ground at the exact moment the axe came down, splitting the earth apart.

  The ground trembled slightly—and that was Briar’s signal.

  She attacked again, taking advantage of the brief fraction of a second when Darius lifted the axe.

  Briar used all the strength in her body for the attack, driving her bdes toward Darius’s face.

  But the man was faster.

  He blocked both bdes with the haft of the axe and shoved Briar backward. Though it seemed like Darius had done this to increase the distance, he suddenly pushed the axe forward to the end of the shaft and drove the bde into Briar’s back.

  He had done it to turn the axe into a hook and pull his target back.

  When he pulled his arm back to drag Briar toward him, he used his free hand to grab her by the neck and sm her into the ground.

  Completely immobilized, Briar…

  “Hehehe… Surprise, big guy.”

  Darius didn’t understand Briar’s ughter at first—but he certainly did a few seconds ter when he noticed that his arms had begun to bleed.

  Blood dripped onto Briar’s face, and she licked her lips.

  By the art of that very same magic, her wounds began healing at an overwhelming speed.

  “Impressive.”

  Even Darius admitted it. He hadn’t noticed when he had been struck, but the bdes must have reached him the moment he used the axe as a hook.

  However, a little blood doesn’t work miracles.

  Briar was still wounded and cornered. Her skull barely held its shape after the blow from the axe, and her back was releasing a pool of blood that spread across the ground. That st wound was the one that closed the fastest, since the bleeding stopped a second ter.

  “We should finish what you started. This is the path you chose—so die with dignity.”

  Maybe it was Briar’s imagination, but behind Darius she could have sworn she saw a masked mb holding a bow beside a sinister bck spectral wolf floating nearby.

  At the same time, she also saw the edge of Darius’s axe approaching her neck.

  …

  …

  ***

  When I was a child, I used to be very easily frightened. I was scared of so many things that it was almost ridiculous.

  However, no matter how afraid I was, she was always there to save me.

  She always saved me from the darkness, from insects, from creepy sounds, and from bad, intimidating people.

  She saved me from this horrible, shitty world…

  Now that I remember it, she used to whistle a song our mother sang to us the day she died. Neither of us remembered the lyrics, but we remembered the melody, so my sister would whistle it while we went about our daily lives.

  She also used to whistle that song before starting a fight.

  No matter how many times they hit her or how many times she fell to the ground on the verge of tears, for my sake she was willing to kill any bastard…

  And that was the reason I left her.

  Because I also wanted to protect her.

  All of that came rushing into my mind like a ticking bomb. Seeing Briar fall and ugh about it made me think of the sister who protected me with her life.

  I remembered the wounds they used to give my sister…

  I remembered how much she suffered to protect me…

  Before I even realized what I was doing—

  “Get away from her, bastard!”

  —I was already running toward Darius, trying to knock him down with a charge. I used the right side of my body and threw all my weight into him, but—

  “Huh?”

  When I hit him, I saw that Darius was looking at me silently, crouched in the same pce he had been from the beginning.

  Huh…

  Darius didn’t move even a single centimeter after my attack.

  Instead, he shifted his axe from pointing at Briar… to pointing its bde at me.

  “Midas…” Choking under Darius’s grip, Briar looked at me as her hemolith closed the pillory again. Then she turned back to Darius, and her eyes showed an emotion very different from the one I had ever seen in her before. “No! He’s my friend!”

  Hearing her shout, a powerful blow sent me flying, dragging my body four meters away.

  Pain spread throughout my entire body after my face kissed the ground. Desperate, I got back up to make Darius move away from Briar—but I felt a warm liquid running down my chest, accompanied by a strange burning sensation.

  When I looked at Darius, I realized that behind them… stood death itself.

  Kindred.