Kael's world shrank to the face and figure across from him, his brother Darius, whose presence seemed to extract the very shadows from the air around him.
The ache in his shoulder was a red-hot brand, a reminder of the havoc he had brought down upon the city. He had been fleeing from the guards, but it appeared he somehow ran into a fate far more sinister, one that would snuff him out in a rush of blood and dark.
Darius's smile widened, his eyes glittering with cruel desire in the half-light, like the glowing coals from a blaze that had long burned away all sense and compassion.
Kael recognized that look and knew what it meant, or that his brother had come to collect him, to drag him back to face the music for his botched mission.
It also meant that their organization had already been made aware of Killian Voss's death and the messy aftermath, given that Darius was here waiting for him at the city gates.
As Kael froze, all he could think about was the carnage he had left in his wake.
The merchant's wife still warm on the chilly cobblestones, throat cut open like a gruesome smile.
And that one guard who had hung back, who was now only a drooling husk of his former self, had crusts of flesh around the blade hilt buried deep within his chest.
And now when he stood there facing his brother, the urge rising in Kael was manifestly unholy, one to unleash the very gates of hell upon that dark, forsaken world.
Kael was bolstered up by a surging wave of adrenaline-fueled insanity rushing up from the rooftop as he trained on Darius with an unblinking gaze.
His brother was not going to be outrun or outfought now. But perhaps he could take as many of them with him as they tumbled into the void.
"You're here to take me home," Kael said through clenched teeth, his voice steady only through sheer will not to let the maelstrom swirling inside him show through.
Darius laughed low in his throat, gravel sliding down a bloody drainpipe. "Oh no, little brother," he whispered, and every word sounded as if it dripped with sadistic pleasure.
"I'm "here to finish what you started, and I'm going to make you watch while I butcher every last soul who dares get between us."
More and more figures emerged from the shadows around them, each one armed and ready to kill, as if summoned by some dark deity itself.
The night air grew thick with anticipation, thick with bloodlust and death's promise.
All at once there was only perfect dreadfulness; a moment when time itself froze yet still, like icy glass at the verge of breaking into a thousand pieces, frozen time pointing at different pangs but all suffering in their own right.
The pale figures were closing in on them, mouths twisting into cruel mocks of a smile; Kael could feel his mind drifting into the depths of madness.
Everything was stripped away, and the city dissolved into a vast stretch of blood-stained stone, the stench of death thick in the air.
His brother's words reverberated in his mind like a mantra of mayhem: "You know what's going to happen now, don't you? I'm going to make you watch while I butcher every last soul who dares get between us."
The first to go was a young guard, no older than his teens, foolishly thinking he could take on Kael.
Darius's blade cleaved the air with a deadly whisper, slitting the boy's throat from ear to ear.
Kael heard the other boy scream and gurgle, which made for the sweetest sound he could imagine.
Then an old woman walked into the melee, eyes wide with terror, clutching a basket of bread to her chest. One of Darius's goons grabbed her, flinging her against the wall while he drove his dagger deep into her belly.
Her screams were suddenly reduced to a wheeze when he gripped the handle and twisted the dread blade, shredding her insides with a sickening tear.
Kael's eyes were blurring with everything as more and more bodies piled up, all witnesses to the sheer brutality that was now unchained upon this poor city.
A child was silenced by a crack in his back; a man begged for mercy, but the sound of his screams drowned him out as Darius's men flayed him alive.
Kael was becoming part of the darkness in this mess of death and destruction.
But the pain and the fear were replaced with a sense of unholy freedom as madness took him.
Howling like a beast, Kael wove into Darius's men, dagger glinting in the low shadows as he sliced a bloody trail through them.
For one fleeting moment, it seemed like Kael might emerge from this slaughterhouse of terrors with a win.
Then came Darius, eyes burning with otherworldly fury as he raised his sword to deliver a deathblow.
"Too bad you didn't stay hidden in the dark, little brother," Darius hissed as if his voice were ice scraping upon stone.
"For "now you will sleep alongside all of these others for all of time."