Chapter 15: The Slow Agony of Grisel
The Declaration of War did not arrive with fanfare or proclamations. It manifested in the blood that soaked the cobblestones of Grisel's streets, in the screams that tore through the night, and in the slow and methodical siege imposed upon the Nest of the Weaver by the Guild of the Golden Anvil.
Lord Silas Vane had woven his web with diabolical cunning, cutting off the Nest's supplies and contracts, leaving its mercenaries hungry and desperate, the perfect meat to be torn apart by the "justiciars" of Theron the Inflexible.
---
In the Nest, the air was a thick stew of tension.
The stench of fear, sweat, and the metallic scent of blood already shed mixed with the soot of the braziers.
The mercenaries, more accustomed to fast and decisive brutality, were growing desperate in the face of a war of attrition.
The song of the shadows in Kaelen's mind had transformed into a constant roar, a symphony of warnings and opportunities, but also of deep frustration at the slowness of the process, the impotence of his direct brutality against Vane's invisible manipulation.
"Trap! Hunger! Slow! Cut! Tear!" cried the voices.
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The first blow from the Golden Anvil was surgical. They did not assault the Nest directly. Instead, they attacked its weak points: the clandestine food warehouses, the smuggling contacts, the gambling dens that financed the guild.
The men of the Golden Anvil, led by figures like Kael the warrior, moved with a discipline and equipment that far surpassed the Nest's meager forces.
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Kaelen was sent to defend one of the warehouses, a labyrinth of barrels and crates that served as their main supply depot.
He was with Darian and a handful of Nest mercenaries, their faces tense and exhausted.
The Golden Anvil's ambush was relentless.
Warriors clad in cleaner armor and bearing the symbol of the Golden Anvil -- a hammer over a shield -- fell upon them with a furious war cry.
---
The skirmish was an explosion of violence.
Swords clashed against steel, flesh was pierced, screams of pain mingled with the sound of bones breaking.
Kaelen moved like a specter, his axe a murderous blur. Every strike was not just meant to kill, but to mutilate, to instill terror.
A Golden Anvil warrior, a burly man with a two-handed axe, charged at him.
Kaelen did not dodge. He activated his Shadow Skin, his flesh darkening and hardening for an instant.
The axe blow, though powerful, merely grazed him.
Then Kaelen counterattacked.
He did not aim to kill instantly.
He aimed at the knee, the groin, the tendons.
The axe sank into the man's thigh, opening it with a wet, nauseating sound.
Blood gushed in spurts, soaking the floor.
As the warrior fell, Kaelen extended a hand, activating the Malignant Blood Flow.
The wound opened even more, a crimson fountain that would not clot.
The man screamed, his eyes bulging in horror at seeing his own life drain so quickly, his flesh turning pale and cold.
His agony was prolonged, a bloody spectacle for his companions.
---
Darian, beside him, fought like a wounded beast, his warhammer pulverizing skulls and limbs.
His sky-blue eyes burned with uncontrollable fury, and his breath was a guttural roar.
The Golden Anvil men, though disciplined, were unprepared for the deranged ferocity that the Nest, under Kaelen's influence, could unleash.
But they were more numerous, better organized.
---
And then Kaelen saw him.
A familiar figure, moving with the lethal efficiency of a seasoned predator.
Kael the warrior, cutting through the skirmish, his machete gleaming with deadly light.
His emerald-green eyes locked onto Kaelen, and an expression of horror and determination crossed his face.
He had not forgotten.
Kael saw him not as an enemy, but as a lost soul, a young man who had fallen into a darkness Kael fought against.
--
"Kaelen," Kael's voice was a growl, full of pity and a steel-hard conviction. "Stop this madness. This is not honor. This is butchery."
--
Kaelen smiled, a hollow grimace.
"This is Grisel, Kael. This is survival."
--
There was no further exchange of words.
Kael attacked, not with uncontrolled anger, but with the cold precision of an expert.
His strikes were meant to disarm, to immobilize, not to kill if possible.
But Kaelen did not play by those rules.
The voices in his head mocked Kael's "morality."
"Weak! Blind! Break him! Show him the true Grisel!"
---
The fight was a whirlwind of steel and flesh.
Kael was fast, a storm of strikes Kaelen could barely block.
His skills were superior in traditional combat.
But Kaelen was no longer traditional.
His Shadow Echo Vision allowed him to anticipate Kael's movements by tracing his rage and determination.
And his madness gave him an indifference to pain that Kael could not match.
Kaelen did not care for his own wounds; each cut was just a distraction.
Instead, he activated his Torment Echo.
---
A wave of fear and despair, fed by Kaelen's own experiences in the Seren Valley and the atrocities he had committed, flooded the space between them.
Kael felt a chill.
His movements faltered for an instant, his mind assaulted by images of his own losses, of the mistakes that haunted him.
Doubt and terror struck him with unexpected force.
Kaelen's vision, with burning amethyst eyes and a hollow smile, seemed to deform into that of a demon.
---
It was only a moment of hesitation, but it was enough.
Kaelen took advantage.
He did not attack with the axe.
Instead, Kaelen extended a hand, fingers sharp, and lunged toward Kael's face.
With brutal speed, his fingers sank into Kael's eye.
There was no scream.
Only a wet sound, a tearing, and a spurt of dark blood that splashed Kaelen's face.
---
Kael collapsed, screaming, hands to his face, his eye destroyed, the socket now a bloody pit.
He was not dead, but broken, blinded.
The Shadow Echo Vision showed the whirlwind of pain, of shock, of impotent rage in Kael's mind.
It was a brutal, merciless victory, leaving Kael as a reminder of the cost of morality in Grisel.
---
The rest of the warehouse battle was a disaster for the Nest.
Despite Kaelen's brutality, the Golden Anvil's discipline was superior.
With Kael down, his comrades withdrew, not without inflicting considerable damage.
The warehouse was left in ruins, its provisions destroyed, and several Nest mercenaries lay dead or gravely wounded.
Kaelen's victory over Kael came at the cost of one of the Nest's few supply strongholds.
---
The war between guilds became a slow and painful process.
The Golden Anvil, under Vane's subtle influence, did not seek total annihilation of the Nest, but its slow and painful erosion.
They attacked smuggling routes, sabotaged operations, framed members to the Guard, and confiscated what few resources they had.
It was a tactic of strangulation, designed to drive the Nest to desperation, forcing them to take ever-greater risks, to bleed out little by little.
---
The Nest, already in a precarious position, was forced to retreat from several districts, its territories shrinking like the skin of a dried corpse.
Mercenaries starved or were captured and "reeducated" by the Golden Anvil, their faces marked by discipline or punishment.
Kael's guild was annexing territories, consolidating power, taking advantage of every Nest weakness.
Morale in the Nest plummeted.
---
Zoltan, his face paler and his onyx eyes emptier than ever, barely left his study, muttering about possible "tipping points" that never came.
Darian, his hands bandaged and his eye scarred, moved like a ghost, his silent fury barely contained.
---
Seraphina, however, delighted in the slow carnage.
Her icy blue eyes gleamed with mad joy.
"The blood flows, Kaelen," she whispered one night, while watching from the Nest as a Golden Anvil patrol massacred slavers affiliated with the Nest.
There was no mercy in her eyes, only a cold appreciation of chaos.
"It's beautiful. Isn't it? Watching life bleed out slowly."
Kaelen did not respond, but nodded.
The vision of Kael, blind and broken, replayed in his mind.
He felt no guilt. Only a cold satisfaction.
He had won, even if his victory was the beginning of a greater defeat for his guild.
The slowness of suffering, the prolonged agony, was a new lesson in brutality Silas Vane was teaching.
And Kaelen, with his empty amethyst eyes, was learning.
---
As the city slowly bled in the war of the guilds, far above the bloodstained streets, in the highest tower of the Royal Palace, Lord Valerius, the Royal Advisor, watched the massacre.
His deep purple eyes were the only light in the darkness of his chamber.
A servant approached, the news of the "Phantom of the Alleys" and the brutality of his resistance to Vane was the talk of the court.
--
"The white rat is interesting," Valerius whispered, his voice an ethereal murmur, emotionless. "More than I expected from a simple pawn.
And the hammer... is becoming too efficient. It will need a rein."
--
An inscrutable smile drew on the Royal Advisor's lips.
The war between the guilds was only the prelude.
The blood spilling in the streets was merely fertilizer for the true game about to begin.
And the Phantom of the Alleys, with his madness and brutality, was a piece Valerius had yet to decide whether to crush… or mold to his will.
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