Blood still stained Sabastin's coat as he crouched in the underbrush, his breath low and steady. The forest around him was silent—eerily so. He could smell the scent of ash from the distant town, and the coppery tang of blood still lingered in his nostrils. But he wasn't done. Not yet.
Aleister had made it personal. Now it was Sabastin's turn.
He moved through the woods like a ghost, stepping lightly, his sharp eyes scanning the trees ahead. He needed help. Not just fighters, but men who had reason to hate Khalifa's regime—men who had suffered, men with nothing left to lose. And in the blood-stained shadows of Blackwood's borders, there were plenty of them.
He first visited the burned-out remains of Hollow Creek—a small village once under Sir Frederick's protection. It had been razed to the ground by Khalifa's enforcers five years ago. Bodies were left as warnings. But Sabastin knew someone had survived.
And he was right.
He found them in a shattered mill, hidden deep beneath the wreckage—three hardened men and one silent woman with a scar across her face. Their leader, an older man with a metal arm and a black eyepatch, stepped forward when Sabastin entered, revolver drawn.
"You've got ten seconds to explain why you're breathing," the man growled.
Sabastin didn't flinch. He pulled back his hood, revealing his face. The scar across his cheek. The fury in his eyes.
"My name is Sabastin. Son of Frederick."
Silence.
Then the sound of metal scraping as the man holstered his gun. "We heard you were dead," he said.
"I'm not," Sabastin replied. "And neither is the war."
The woman with the scar stood. "What do you want from us?"
"I want blood," Sabastin said. "And I want vengeance."
The old man's smirk turned cold. "Then you've come to the right place."
By nightfall, Sabastin had seven fighters at his back—each one burned by Khalifa in some way, each one deadly in their own right. One was a silent bowman known only as Thorne, who could strike a bird out of the sky mid-flight. Another, a former soldier with fire in her eyes and grenades on her belt. Sabastin didn't ask for names. He asked for loyalty. They gave it.
Their first target was a supply caravan—four wagons guarded by a dozen of Aleister's men, headed through the northern trail. It was supposed to be a quiet transport. But Sabastin made it a massacre.
They struck just before dawn. The forest exploded into violence. Arrows tore through the trees, hitting their marks with bone-snapping force. The woman with the grenades—Raya—lobbed a charge into the first cart, and it went up in flame, taking three men with it.
Sabastin moved like a wraith. One man turned too late and caught a blade to the throat. Another raised his pistol, but Sabastin grabbed his wrist, twisted, and slammed the man's head against the cart until blood sprayed the wheels.
A third man tried to run.
Sabastin shot him in the back without hesitation.
Screams filled the forest, echoed by the groans of the dying. By the time the smoke cleared, eleven bodies lay broken across the road. Only one was left alive—a young recruit, barely a man, his leg crushed under an overturned cart.
Sabastin knelt beside him.
"Go back to Aleister," he whispered, wiping blood from his blade. "Tell him this is just the beginning."
The boy sobbed but nodded. He would carry the message. Fear would do the rest.
That night, they made camp in a hollow carved beneath the rocks. The firelight flickered off their faces—blood-streaked, hollow-eyed, and hungry for war. Sabastin sat sharpening his blade, listening as the forest settled. They had made noise. Aleister would retaliate.
Good.
But Sabastin needed more than fighters—he needed strategy. And that meant information.
He left the camp before dawn, traveling alone, moving through secret paths known only to forest-born hunters. He reached the outposts at Black Hollow, a fortress of spies and silent watchers. There he found her—Liora, a former member of Aleister's inner circle, now turned traitor.
"You've made quite a mess," she said with a grin, tossing him a flask.
"I plan to make more," Sabastin replied.
Liora unfurled a map across the table. "Aleister is moving. He's pulled his elite guards from the east to protect himself. But that leaves the southern mansion—his weapons depot—undefended for two days."
Sabastin's eyes narrowed. "That's our next target."
She raised an eyebrow. "You sure? It's a fortress."
"Then we tear it down."
He returned to his allies with the plan. They would strike before nightfall the next day. No survivors. No mercy.
As they prepared, Sabastin pulled Raya aside.
"If I don't make it out—"
"You will," she said. "Because if you fall, we all do."
They moved at dusk. Sabastin led the charge, cloaked in shadow and bloodlust. The southern depot was surrounded by high walls, but that didn't stop them. Thorne picked off the guards with silent precision. Raya rigged explosives along the north wall.
Sabastin scaled the eastern side himself. A guard spotted him too late—Sabastin slit his throat and climbed higher, blood dripping down the stone.
Inside, the depot was alive with activity. Weapons, ammo, and documents. All of it ripe for destruction.
They struck fast and brutal.
Explosions rocked the building. Bullets flew in all directions. Sabastin moved through the chaos like death itself. One man lunged at him with a blade—Sabastin twisted, disarmed him, and drove the knife into his eye socket.
Another tried to shoot him in the back.
Sabastin spun, caught the barrel, and drove the man's head into a steel beam until he went limp.
Blood coated the floor.
The depot burned.
When it was over, only the seven remained—bruised, burned, but alive. Sabastin stood in the flames, watching the last of the weapons explode in a brilliant orange fireball.
He turned to the survivors. "This is what we do. One by one, we break his world."
"And when we reach Aleister?" Raya asked.
Sabastin's smile was cold. "We gut him."
They disappeared into the trees once more, the smoke trailing behind them like a promise of war.
Blackwood would never be the same.