The traveler's corpse lay slumped against the rotting wooden wall, his lips still frothing from the poison. The dim lantern light flickered, casting long, jagged shadows across the floor. Salvatore stood motionless, his expression unreadable as he studied the dead man.
A professional assassin. A messenger of death.
And yet, in the end, he had chosen to purge himself rather than face the fate that awaited him.
Salvatore let out a slow, deliberate breath. His fingers reached down and gently traced the Black Guard's still-warm forehead, pressing against the cold sweat that had settled there. The man had been afraid—not of death, but of something far worse.
And he was right to be afraid.
Salvatore did not believe in mere death as punishment. No, he had long since transcended such primitive notions. Death was an escape, a fleeting moment of suffering before oblivion. True punishment—true purification—was something far more intimate, far more permanent.
He knelt beside the body and touched his fingertips to the man's closed eyes.
"A wasted soul," he murmured. "But even in death, you will serve."
Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, Salvatore reached inside his robe and withdrew a thin, bone-handled blade.
Not for cutting. No, this tool was for something far more delicate.
With unnerving patience, he pressed the tip of the blade against the traveler's forehead and began to carve.
Deep. Precise. Ritualistic.
The skin split open, dark blood oozing down the man's pale face as Salvatore etched symbols into his flesh. Not words, but expressions of suffering—ancient markings older than any kingdom, drawn in twisting, agonizing patterns. It took time. He had mastered the art long ago. The hand must be steady, the lines perfect, or the process would fail.
By the time he finished, the face was unrecognizable.
The man's frozen expression of death had shifted, his features distorted by unnatural carvings, his flesh reshaped into something no longer human.
A grotesque effigy of torment.
Salvatore wiped the blood from his blade and tilted the body's head back, staring into the lifeless, defiled face. His gaze was impassive, as if studying a piece of unfinished art.
"Not yet," he whispered. "You are not yet cleansed."
Then, with eerie gentleness, he reached into the dead man's mouth, forced it open, and retrieved the soft, half-dissolved remains of the poison capsule.
Carefully, he placed it onto his tongue—not swallowing, but letting the taste settle, absorbing the venom. A lesser man would die in seconds. Salvatore merely closed his eyes, savoring the bitter aftertaste of death.
It was a reminder.
A lesson.
Even poison could be endured. Even death could be rewritten.
He exhaled sharply and spat the remains onto the ground before turning back to his work. The true purification was about to begin.
The Ritual of the Flayed Mind
From beneath his robe, Salvatore pulled out a small glass vial—the liquid inside thick, dark, and pulsing with something almost alive. A concoction of his own making, a blend of alchemy, decay, and something older than science.
It was not meant for the living.
It was meant for the dead.
He pried open the assassin's left eye, tilting the vial ever so slightly. A single drop slid down the glass and landed on the lifeless pupil.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then—
A sound.
Not a scream, not a whisper, but something deeper. A vibration in the air, a shuddering pulse of energy that made the lantern's flame flicker violently. The assassin's body convulsed, though he had long since passed into death.
His eyes snapped open.
Not alive. Not undead. Something else.
The assassin's gaze was now empty, yet full. His pupils had dissolved into nothingness, replaced by swirling voids of pure darkness. His mouth trembled, lips curling back as if forming words that no longer belonged to him.
Salvatore leaned forward, his voice soft.
"Now… speak."
The body twitched violently, the jaw cracking as it moved. Then, from deep within the corpse, a voice emerged.
Not the assassin's voice.
Something else. Something ancient.
"The King watches."
Salvatore smiled faintly. "Yes. And he will send more."
"They are already coming."
Salvatore reached out, running a single finger along the assassin's exposed, bloodied forehead. His voice remained calm.
"And tell me, messenger of rot… do they know what awaits them?"
The body shuddered. The carved symbols on its skin began to burn, smoke rising from the wounds as if the flesh itself was rejecting its own existence.
"They… will know… suffering."
The words were broken, faltering—fragments of consciousness held together only by pain.
Salvatore closed his eyes for a brief moment. It was enough.
With a slow, deliberate motion, he **pressed his hand against the corpse's throat—**and the body instantly collapsed in on itself, its flesh withering, its bones cracking and folding inward. The assassin who had once been a man was now nothing more than a heap of decayed matter, a crumpled husk robbed of its very form.
Salvatore let the silence settle.
Then he stood, dusting the dried blood from his hands.
"Cleansed."
The process was complete. The assassin had been reduced to nothing, his soul shattered, his body erased.
No afterlife. No resurrection. No remembrance.
A fate worse than death.
The Hunt Draws Near
Salvatore turned to the window, peering into the darkened village beyond. The night was silent, but he could feel the shifting of fate in the air. This was only the beginning.
More would come.
And when they did, he would welcome them.
For he did not fear death. He did not fear kings, warriors, or assassins.
He had become something greater.
And soon… they would understand.