Year 1464 AD, Borders of Buckland (Formerly Horsin)

  The wooden cage smelled of rot, old hay, and the sharp tang of urine. It was dark, save for the slivers of moonlight cutting through the cracks in the walls.

  Lia sat in the corner, her knees pulled up to her chest. Around her, the other children were weeping. Some were calling for their mothers; others had simply given up, staring blankly at the dirt floor.

  He is coming..... Lia told herself, squeezing her eyes shut. Brother Alaric is coming. He promised.

  She wasn't crying. Alaric had told her once that tears blurred your vision, and you needed to see clearly to survive.

  She wiggled her wrists behind her back. The rope was coarse and tight, cutting her skin raw, but she ignored the pain. She focused on the warmth in her chest.

  Ever since that night in the first day of orphanage, when Alaric had first shown her the spark of flame, she had been practicing flame magic.

  She channeled the tiny bit of mana she had into her fingertips. It wasn't enough to create a flame, but it was enough to make the fibers of the rope smolder. The heat stung her wrists, burning her skin, but she bit her lip and kept going.

  Snap.

  The rope gave way.

  Lia didn't waste a second. She crawled toward the wooden door of the makeshift cell. The lock was old iron, but the wood holding it was rotting. If she could just weaken it.....

  She pressed her hands against the wood near the latch. Creo Ignis.

  A small flame flickered to life. It licked at the dry wood, turning it black. Smoke began to curl upward.

  Just a little more.....

  Suddenly, the door didn't burn down. It swung open.

  Lia scrambled back, extinguishing the flame instantly, but it was too late.

  A tall, broad-shouldered man stood in the doorway. He wore worn leather armor with the insignia of the Horsin military scratched out. A scar ran down the left side of his face, pulling his lip into a permanent sneer.

  The Leader of the bandit group.

  He looked down at the charred wood, then at Lia’s red, blistered hands.

  "Well," he rasped, his voice sounding like grinding stones. "I don't like it when my toys try to act smart."

  He stepped into the cage. The other children scrambled away, pressing themselves against the far wall, terrified.

  Lia tried to back away, but he was too fast. He grabbed her by the hair, hauling her up. Lia cried out, her feet dangling off the ground.

  "You have spirit. That's annoying," the Leader said, inspecting her face. "Maybe I should make an example out of you. There's a noble in the capital..... he has a fetish for broken things. Loves girls with no hands or legs. Says they can't run away that way."

  He grinned, revealing yellow teeth. "He pays double for them."

  He reached for her arm, his grip tightening. He was going to snap it.

  Lia shut her eyes tight, her heart hammering against her ribs. Brother!

  "Touch her," a voice cut through the darkness, cold and absolute, "and I will burn you in hell itself."

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  The Leader froze. The temperature in the room seemed to plummet instantly.

  He turned toward the entrance of the hideout.

  Standing there, framed by the moonlight, was a boy. He looked small, insignificant against the backdrop of the large bandits, but the air around him was vibrating. His eyes were not the eyes of a child. They were glowing with a deep, terrifying azure light.

  The Leader felt an involuntary shiver run down his spine. It was a primal reaction, the kind a prey animal feels when a predator enters the clearing.

  "Kill him!" the Leader shouted to his men. "What are you waiting for? It's one kid!"

  Five bandits drew their swords and rushed Alaric.

  Alaric didn't flinch. He didn't even draw a weapon. He simply raised a hand.

  "Creo Aqua."

  Water materialized in the air around the charging men, not as a stream, but as a fine mist.

  Temperature rise.

  "Steam Explosion."

  The mist flashed into steam instantly. The expansion was violent. A wall of white, superheated fog erupted, blinding the bandits and scalding their skin. They screamed, stumbling back, swinging their weapons wildly at nothing.

  Alaric walked into the fog.

  He moved like a ghost. He didn't aim to kill them yet, that would be too quick.

  He ducked under a wild swing. A blade of compressed wind formed in his hand. Slice.

  The first bandit collapsed, clutching his hamstrings, unable to stand.

  Alaric stepped over him. The second bandit lunged. Alaric sidestepped, grabbed the man's wrist, and drove a knee into his stomach. As the man bent over, Alaric drove a blade of wind through his ankles.

  The third man tried to run. Alaric pointed a finger. A small bullet of ice caught him in the back of the knee, shattering the bone. 4th and 5th already collapsed being too close to the steam explosion

  In ten seconds, five men were on the ground, wailing in agony.

  The fog began to clear.

  Alaric stood in the center of the room, untouched. He looked at the Leader.

  The Leader’s face had gone pale white. He realized, with dawning horror, that this wasn't a normal mage.

  He yanked Lia up, dragging her in front of him like a shield. He pressed a serrated dagger against her throat. A thin line of blood appeared on her skin.

  "Stop!" the Leader screamed, his voice cracking. "One step closer and she dies! I swear it! I'll cut her throat right now!"

  Alaric stopped.

  He stood perfectly still, about fifteen meters away. His face was unreadable. There was no panic, no fear. Just that cold, azure stare.

  "You think you can save her?" the Leader spat, backing away slowly. "She's going to hell with me!"

  Alaric tilted his head slightly.

  The Leader frowned. The room was spinning.

  Why was the room spinning?

  He tried to tighten his grip on the dagger, but his fingers felt numb. His heart was racing, pounding in his ears like a war drum. He felt nauseous.

  What..... what is happening?

  Alaric had not been idle during his approach.

  On his way through the hideout’s tunnels, he had burned every wooden support beam, every crate, every piece of furniture he passed. He hadn't just burned them for light; he had burned them to create gas.

  Carbon Monoxide. Carbon Dioxide.

  Using his control over atmospheric mana, he had guided the invisible, odorless smoke ahead of him, pooling it around the Leader’s head.

  The Leader was breathing in death with every gasp, and he didn't even know it.

  "You....." The Leader slurred, his vision blurring. "You devil....."

  "Lia," Alaric said softly. His voice carried across the room clearly. "Close your eyes."

  Lia didn't hesitate. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  The Leader swayed. His grip on Lia loosened just a fraction as his brain starved for oxygen.

  Now.

  Alaric raised his right hand. The mana coalesced instantly.

  "Creo Aqua."

  A massive amount of water gathered above Alaric. He froze it instantly.

  It wasn't a small icicle. It was a lance, dense and heavy, almost a meters long. It hovered in the air like a ballista bolt, the tip sharpened to a needle point.

  "Creo Ventus."

  Wind wrapped around the lance, spiraling, compressing. Alaric created a vacuum tunnel in front of the projectile to eliminate air resistance.

  Launch.

  The sound was deafening. A sonic boom echoed in the confined space as the lance broke the sound barrier.

  It accelerated to three hundred and fifty meters per second, Supersonic.

  In Alaric’s previous world, this was the speed of a handgun bullet. But a handgun bullet weighed a few grams. This lance weighed as much as a tank shell.

  The Leader never heard the sound.

  One moment, he was standing there, confused and dizzy. The next moment, everything above his shoulders simply ceased to exist.

  Thud

  The lance smashed into the stone wall behind him, embedding itself deep into the rock, shattering into a thousand diamond-like shards.

  The Leader’s body stood for a split second, a gruesome statue, before collapsing backward.

  Blood splashed across the floor, painting the walls crimson.

  Alaric stood there, his hand still raised. His chest heaved once.

  It was his first human kill.

  He looked at the headless corpse. He expected to feel sick. He expected to feel guilt.

  Instead, he felt..... nothing. Just a cold satisfaction that the threat was removed.

  He walked forward, stepping over the blood.

  "Lia," he said gently. "It's over."

  Lia opened her eyes. She saw Alaric standing in front of her. She didn't look at the body behind him. She didn't want to see.

  She threw herself at him, burying her face in his chest.

  "Brother!" she sobbed, finally letting the tears fall.

  Alaric wrapped his arms around her, patting her head awkwardly. He looked at her wrists, red and raw from the ropes and her own fire. His eyes softened.

  "I'm here," he whispered. "I'm here."

  Heavy footsteps echoed from the tunnel entrance.

  Torren, Jacob, and Kellan burst into the room, weapons drawn, ready for a fight.

  They stopped dead in their tracks.

  They saw the moaning bandits on the floor with their legs crippled. They saw the massive crater in the stone wall where the ice lance had struck. And they saw the headless body of the Leader.

  Torren looked at Alaric, who was holding the crying girl.

  The veteran hunter swallowed hard. He had seen violence. He had seen death. But the precision of this..... the sheer, overwhelming force used by a ten-year-old boy.....

  "Clear the room," Torren ordered his men, his voice low. "Get the kids out. Don't let them look at the body."

  Jacob and the others moved quickly, ushering the terrified children out of the cage and toward the exit.

  Kellan walked up to Alaric. He looked at the corpse, then at Alaric’s face.

  "You okay?" Kellan asked.

  Alaric looked up. The blue glow in his eyes had faded, returning to their normal color.

  "She's safe," Alaric said simply.

  "Yeah,"

  Kellan nodded, clapping a hand on Alaric's shoulder. "Yeah, she is."

  They walked out of the cave, leaving the carnage behind them in the dark.