The silence that followed the first kill was fragile and it shattered the moment the leader's body hit the sand.

  The two remaining men on the pier were professionals in the trade of flesh, men who had bartered their souls for coin long ago. They did not scream. Their reaction was honed by years of violence. Hands dipped into pouches, fingers curling around powerful runestones: purchased magic.

  Paley did not give them the courtesy of a duel.

  The man on the left raised a stone glowing with the pale, jagged light of a wind shear, but he was too slow. Paley didn't run; he exploded from his standstill. He poured Strength into his legs, the sand bursting beneath his feat as he turned into a projectile. He slammed into the man's chest, the impact sounding like a clap of thunder. Ribs broke and collapsed inward, Paley's attack too strong for the man's Protection Magic. The man folded around Paley's shoulder, the breath driven from him in a spray of blood.

  The second man, standing ten feet away, panicked. he thrust his hand forward, clutching a Fire Rune of high grade. "Die, you freak!"

  A cone of roaring, white-hot flame erupted from the stone.

  Paley, with a snarl that belonged to a beast, grabbed the man he had just tackled by the belt and tunic, lifting the wheezing broken body like a shield.

  The fire engulfed the human barrier. The scream was horrific, full of agony, before it was abruptly cut short by the searing heat. Paley held the body steady, feeling the heat lick against his own knuckles, smelling the cloying and acrid stench of burning hair and cooking flesh.

  The flames sputtered and died as the rune was exhausted.

  Paley dropped the charred, smoking corpse. It hit the wood of the pier with a sickening crunch.

  The last slaver stood frozen, his eyes wide, his hand trembling as he reached for a knife at his belt. He looked at the smoking remains of his partner. He looked at the boy standing amidst the smoke, untouched, red eyes glowing through the haze.

  He had seen a great deal fights, murders, flayings, burnings. But never had he felt like a hare being hunted.

  Paley lunged.

  He caught the man by the throat and the waistband, lifting him off the ground. With a grunt of exertion, he threw him. The man sailed through the air, crashing onto the hard-packed sand near the carriage wheels. He tried to scramble up, coughing sand, but Paley was already there, landing atop him with the weight of a falling anvil.

  Paley grabbed the man's hair, pulled his head back, and drove a fist into the temple.

  Crack.

  The skull gave way like an eggshell. The man's head deformed, one side flattening instantly. His limbs went rigid, then slack.

  Silence returned, heavier and wet with even more blood this time.

  Paley stood up, his chest heaving. The violence terrified the part of him that was Paley. He looked down at the corpse. A sturdy hunting knife in the man's belt.

  Paley took it.

  A sound drifted from the shed near the tree line. The sound of struggling. The sound of a woman's heavy desperate breathing.

  Paley turned. The world narrowed down to a tunnel. The sand, the sea, the sky, the slaves - it all blurred into just gray static. The only thing in focus was that door. He already knew what was behind it.

  He moved.

  He didn't bother with the latch. He hit the door with his shoulder, splintering the wood and tearing the hinges from the frame.

  The interior was dim, smelling of old nets, dry rot, dead rats, and sweat. In the center of the room, Grish, the brute had the dark-skinned woman pinned to the dirt floor. Her rags were torn open. He was fumbling with his own trousers, his face buried in her neck, grunting with exertion as she clawed weakly and hopelessly at his back.

  He hadn't heard the commotion outside over his own lust. He looked up at the sound of the door breaking, his face flushed, eyes hazy.

  "What the-"

  He never finished that sentence.

  Paley drove the stolen knife into the side of Grish's head, just above the ear. The blade sank to the hilt with a wet thunk.

  Grish went stiff, his mouth opening in a silent 'O'.

  Paley didn't let go or stop. He straddled the dying man's chest, shoving him off the woman. The hunger roared in his ears - a deafening demanding static. It wasn't enough to kill. He needed to rip apart. He needed to eviscerate.

  Paley grabbed the handle of the knife with one hand and Grish's jaw with the other. He planted a knee on the man's chest for leverage.

  Open him... Rip out his brains!

  With a roar of exertion, Paley pulled.

  The sound was atrocious - the tearing of bone, the wet suction of membrane giving way. The top of the skull peeled back.

  Paley dropped the corpse. It slumped sideways, the contents of the skull spilling onto the dirt floor - gray, pink, and glistening.

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  Paley stared at it. The smell hit him instantly. Not the copper of blood, but something richer. Iron. Fat. The electric tang of the nervous system. His stomach cramped with a ravenous need. His mouth watered. He could almost taste the salty, savoury taste of that darkness.

  He leaned forward, his hand trembling as it reached out. Just a taste. Just... one... It's right there.

  A sound stopped him.

  A whimpering intake of breath.

  Paley froze. Slowly, agonizingly, he lifted his head.

  The woman was huddled into the corner of the shed, clutching her torn rags to her chest. She was shaking so violently her teeth chattered. Her eyes were huge, fixed on him.

  The hunger shattered. Paley saw himself through her eyes. Covered in blood. Standing over a man whose head he had just ripped open. Reaching for the brains like a starving dog.

  Then, the image shifted. The woman's face blurred, and for a heartbeat, it wasn't the stranger in the corner. It was Madella, sitting in the corner of their kitchen, looking at him with that same expression of absolute, soul-breaking terror. Madella watching her son eat a human. Not just Madella... Diabba... An elf woman. Beautiful. Who was she? He didn't have time to think because the horror of it hit him like a blow to the gut.

  Paley retched. He scrambled backward, scuttering away from the corpse, away from the tempting, horrific pile of gray and red matter. He turned to the side and vomited until his throat burned. He heaved again and again, trying to purge the hunger.

  "I'm sorry," he gasped, wiping bile from his mouth with a bloody hand, which only smeared more red across his face. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

  He couldn't look at her. He couldn't bear the weight of her gaze.

  Paley stumbled to his feet and ran out of the shed.

  The air outside was cool and salty, but it felt suffocating. He stood by the carriage, shaking uncontrollably. The slaves on the boat had stood up. They were watching him. Eleven pairs of eyes, wide and quiet. They'd seen him kill the men on the beach. They'd seen him enter the shed. They saw him come out covered in gore.

  They waited. To see if the new master was worse than the old ones.

  Paley looked at them, his expression barely holding back his intense, searing emotional pain. He looked at their chains; he knew what to do. He looted the leader's corpse to find the key and walked to the end of the pier. He didn't trust his voice so he just held out the ring of keys, his hand trembling.

  A young man near the edge of the boat hesitated, then stepped forward. He took the keys from Paley's hand, flinching as their fingers brushed.

  "Go," Paley whispered.

  The young man nodded. He turned and began unlocking the chains of the woman next to him. A ripple of movement went through the group as realization hit them. The chains clattered to the deck.

  Paley turned away. He leaned against the wheel of the carriage, trying to stop the world from spinning. His hand brushed against his hip.

  The satchel.

  The heavy leather bag was still there. The school fees.

  Paley stared at the bag. He looked at his hands, stained crimson up to the wrists. He looked at the bodies strewn across the beach - the burned husk, the man with his throat opened to the sky.

  He had killed people. He had wanted to eat one of them. And he did not regret it at all.

  'You don't deserve this money. You don't deserve the uniform. You don't deserve to sit in a classroom with innocent children.'

  Madella's face flashed in his mind again. You are my son

  "How?" Paley choked out. "I'm a murderer..."

  He couldn't bring this money back. It felt tainted now, not just because it was stained in blood. He had to pay for what he had done. Perhaps it was an excuse to allow himself to keep it all a secret. He couldn't bear the truth. That he did not feel any remorse for killing those men. That he did not see how what he did was not beneficial to the world.

  And yet he had to balance the scales.

  He unbuckled the satchel.

  He walked back to the boat. The slaves were disembarking now, helping the woman from the shed, wrapping her in a cloak one of them had found. They froze as Paley approached.

  "Here," Paley said with a cracking voice. He held out the bag. "Take it."

  The young man who had taken the keys looked at the bag, then at Paley. "What is this?"

  "Money. Should be enough to help you the next few weeks." Paley said, tears finally spilling over, cutting clean tracks through the blood on his face. "Please. Just take it."

  The man hesitated, then took the bag. He opened it, his eyes widening at the gleam of metal. He looked back at the slavers' bodies, then at the carriage.

  "Boy," the man said softly. He gestured to the dead leader and the carriage. "They have money. Big bags."

  Paley blinked, his mind slow and sluggish from trauma.

  The slaves moved with a sudden efficiency. They stripped the slavers of their pouches and found a lockbox under the seat of the carriage. They pooled it all on the pier. It was a small fortune - what their lives were worth all together to Eri.

  The young man walked back to Paley. He held out Paley's satchel.

  "We have enough," the man said, his voice thick with an accent Paley didn't recognise. "We can't take from you."

  Paley stared at the bag. He didn't want it. He wanted an excuse, an exchange so that he could lie to Madella: never let her find out what he did today.

  "I can't," Paley whispered.

  The woman Grish had dragged to the shed stepped forward with a limp, supported by another slave. Her hair was braided with shells. She stopped in front of Paley.

  She reached out and took his bloody hand without hesitation. She opened his palm and placed the handle of his satchel back into it, closing his fingers around it.

  Then, she reached into her mouth. She pulled out a small, wet object on a chain. She dipped it in the sea water to rinse it, then held it out.

  It was a small pendant. A bear with black and white patches. A panda. It was carved from jade, worn smooth by generations of hands.

  "For the knight," she rasped, her voice damaged from screaming. "We save this. For the one who came. I want give to you."

  Paley looked at the panda. He looked at her eyes - dark, deep, and filled with a profound and quiet grace.

  A knight who saved slaves.

  "I'm not a knight," Paley whispered.

  "You hero."

  "I'm not a hero... please don't... I'm a monster."

  "Moster eats," the woman said simply, pointing to the dead men. "Hero saves." Then she pointed at herself and the others.

  She pressed the panda into his hand.

  "Thank you." She said, smiling with watery eyes. "Hero saved me."

  Paley stepped back. He clutched the panda and the money bag to his chest; the weight of their forgiveness was heavier than their fear could have been. He couldn't handle it. He couldn't be what they wanted him to be. Or rather, he was afraid of trying. Something ate at him; the fear of failing again.

  He turned and ran.

  He didn't look back, he just sprinted away from the beach until he was alone, until the pier was a speck. Then, he summoned the wind.

  He shot into the sky, higher and faster than before. The air was cold, biting at his exposed skin, freezing the blood on his face into a stiff mask. He flew until the clouds wrapped around him, hiding from the world.

  He hovered there, suspended in the white mist, clutching the money and the jade panda, and closed his eyes, letting himself drift.

  He was at a crossroads.

  'Decide now. Who do you want to be? Which one?'

  A moment of silence and clarity. The sun looked beautiful with its rays splintering throughout the clouds.

  'I want to be Paley.' He looked at the items in his hands, then fastened the satchel back onto his hip and the panda around his neck.

  'I want to be Paley.'

  "I am Paley." He said out loud.

  The voice was gone.

  The hunger was gone.