Vaughn's last defenses shattered. He began to sob openly, tears and snot mixing as his whole body shook. "Please… Axel, don't. I'm begging you, I don't want to die. I was wrong—please!"

He pissed himself. The smell hit the air almost immediately.

Axel stared down at him, unmoved. He'd killed before—but he'd never seen someone break like this.

He crouched down, grabbed Vaughn's chin, and tilted it up. "Look at me."

Vaughn's jaw hung crooked, still half-healed. Axel's fingers tightened, and the joint popped again with a wet crack.

Then, expressionless, Axel reached for the knife on the ground. The blade caught the firelight, gleaming dully.

A swift motion. A wet sound.

Vaughn's scream tore through the room—raw, muffled, then strangled. Axel didn't flinch.

He stood behind him, pressing one hand against the man's neck. "Bear with it," he murmured. "It'll be over soon."

Then his fingers clenched—precisely, surgically—and Vaughn's voice was gone.

The body twitched, then went limp.

Axel stared at him for a moment, expression unreadable. Then he picked up his phone. The screen glowed pale blue in the dark. 1:03 a.m.

He crushed the bloody fragments of flesh in his hand, dropping them into the wood-burning stove. They hissed and vanished into ash.

Then he pulled up a chair, sat across from the unconscious Vaughn, and waited.

Twelve minutes later, Vaughn came to. His body jolted upright, eyes wide with terror. The ropes bit into his limbs again, and when his vision cleared, Axel was still there—calm, unblinking.

"Vaughn," Axel said softly. "You and I never had real bad blood. So why go out of your way to humiliate me?"

He spoke gently, even kindly. "Don't blame me for tying you up like this. I know who your family is. If I just let you go, you'll come back for me—and I'm just a commoner. I can't fight your kind of power."

He clasped his hands together, bowing slightly, a strange, almost reverent expression on his face. "So please. Just swear you'll leave me alone. Swear it, and I'll let you walk away. No more trouble. Alright?"

He looked at Vaughn with eyes full of humility—pleading, deferential.

Vaughn stared back, trembling. He tried to speak, but only a strangled rasp came out. His crushed vocal cords and the absence of his tongue reduced him to a grotesque silence.

Axel waited, still smiling faintly, head bowed. The performance was unsettlingly sincere—too sincere. Vaughn's heart pounded. He didn't understand what Axel was doing, but he knew one thing: this man would not let him go.

Still, seeing Axel's posture, his tone, his apparent desperation, Vaughn almost wanted to believe him. Almost.

He felt the faint pulse of Force returning in his limbs. The severed tendons had begun to mend, ever so slightly. Just a little more, and—

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Axel sighed quietly. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "But if you won't promise… I really can't afford to take the risk. I don't have the luxury of losing."

Bang!

The world went black again.

Even as consciousness faded, Vaughn's last thoughts weren't of fear but disbelief. Back in the Landscape Scroll… I wasn't this weak. How is he this strong now?

When Vaughn had fought Axel before, the gap between them hadn't been this vast. He'd healed at least a third of his injuries, his Force reserves full—yet Axel had flattened him in one hit. Impossible.

When Vaughn passed out again, Axel's mask of humble fear dropped completely. His face hardened, eyes like the ice outside. He glanced at the clock, then sat down across from Vaughn, the silence between them broken only by the soft, whining breath of the wind through the cracks in the door. The sound was thin and mournful—like a woman crying.

An hour later, a faint green light shimmered around Vaughn's body. He groaned and opened his eyes.

And again, he saw Axel—sitting there, eyes full of that same uneasy mix of fear and pleading.

"Just swear you'll leave me alone," Axel whispered. "And I'll let you go."

Those words repeated, over and over, like a nightmare that refused to end. Each time Vaughn came to, they were the first thing he heard.

In his mind, he screamed for mercy—Brother, I swear, I won't touch you again. I was wrong. Just let me go.

But no sound came. Only silence.

The more Axel spoke, the more Vaughn understood that the words were never meant for him to answer. They were a ritual. A rehearsal for what would come next.

Each time he regained consciousness, he tried to fight. Once, twice, three times—launching desperate attacks in those brief windows when Axel's voice fell quiet. But every time, he failed.

Axel was faster now. Stronger. The difference between them wasn't just skill—it was evolution.

Even Vaughn's famed defensive Force, which had once turned aside blades and energy bursts alike, crumpled under Axel's strikes as if it were nothing more than wet paper.

When he finally collapsed for the last time, his body barely recognizable, Axel crouched beside him.

The first light of dawn crept through the cracks of the boarded window, thin as a knife-edge. Axel rose slowly, stepped outside, and drew a deep breath of the frigid air. The cold burned his lungs, clearing the fog from his mind.

"Good thing this place is so far out," he muttered.

The farm stretched silent and vast across the frozen plain. In summer, rich families would rent it out as a rustic getaway. But now, in the heart of March, it was nothing but a forgotten corner of Shiverstone—buried in snow and solitude.

Axel walked back to the cabin. Vaughn was still there, limp in the chair, pale and sunken.

Axel looked at him for a long while and shook his head faintly. "This should've been a good day," he murmured.

After absorbing the Rock Spinal Cord, his strength had surged beyond expectation. The passive defense it granted made his body tougher than steel, and even the Heavenly Spirit Fruit Tree within him had grown again. His compressed Force count had jumped past twenty-eight hundred, total Force beyond thirty-seven hundred.

It should have been a triumph.

Instead, he'd come home to this.

He'd killed before—clean kills, quick kills, efficient and silent. But never like this.

At first, seeing Vaughn's pitiful pleas, the piss soaking his legs, the wild, animal terror in his eyes—it had shaken him. But that feeling had burned away, and what replaced it was stillness.

A cold, measured calm.

Axel checked the time again. The second hand swept past the twelve.

He exhaled slowly, flexed his face, and rearranged his features—expression softening, gaze filling once more with that same counterfeit fear and humility.

Then he leaned forward, reached out, and woke Vaughn.

Vaughn had stopped counting how many times Axel had woken him. Each return from the dark blurred into the next until resistance itself felt pointless. He waited now like something hollowed out, hoping somebody — a teammate, his father — would notice he was gone and come looking. But he'd come at night. They'd probably think he'd gone off with friends. By the time anyone worried, Axel could already have finished him.

A slow, bleak resignation crept over him. He even wished Axel would just kill him and end it.

"I'm tired too, Vaughn," Axel said once more, voice frayed with someone else's exhaustion. "We don't have that kind of hatred between us. Why do you have to settle scores like this? If you really want revenge, what do you want me to do?"

Axel's performance was theatrical—hysterical, desperate, the image of a bullied commoner pushed to the edge. Vaughn felt sick with disbelief: the role fitted Axel better than any man should be able to pretend.

The sun climbed. The room warmed as the fire dwindled to coals. The wind's keening through the broken door sounded like a woman crying.

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