thief of fate-Chapter 46: Predator Awakening 2

The silence that loomed over the headquarters was as terrifying as the screams of death that would follow.

Heavy breaths pierced through the stone ceiling of the "Black Moon" base. At the southern entrance stood the usual guards: four warriors heavily armed, their eyes scanning the branching rooms, and their bodies sculpted by a thousand battles.

But they didn’t notice the wind.

The wind that came suddenly, with no prelude, not even a whisper. It carried the scent of burning iron and embodied savagery. Then... the first one fell.

"What?!" the second shouted, but the sword that sliced his jaw from the side didn’t wait for an answer.

Irkalos had entered.

His bare eyes, glowing with a red gleam like cracks in hell itself, fixed on the third. He wasn’t as massive as the others, but his face carried a trace of pride a mocking smile erased before it had the chance to grow, for his body had already been cleaved in half before he could comprehend who his enemy was.

"Arghh!!" the fourth screamed, igniting his spear with a purple flame. But he didn’t complete his strike.

Irkalos wasn’t there.

He was behind him, holding his head.

"Your screams don’t entertain me." He said it with a voice soaked in coldness, then crushed the head like a ripe fruit.

He entered calmly.

As if the massacre was his morning ritual.

Inside the corridors, he moved like a beast of flesh and iron. Everyone who stood in his way... vanished. No screams, no defense, not even resistance. Just death.

But he didn’t take pleasure in it.

The blood that stained his hands and face was not lust it was a question.

"Are you really human? Or merely shadows of humans?"

Every look thrown at him with skills or swords was a display of their ignorance. They didn’t know him. They didn’t know who Irkalos, the Predator of the Arkanis, truly was.

He stood before an open hall, inside which were nearly ten elite warriors of the Black Moon. They were gathered around a stone table, their eyes on the maps.

They didn’t look up immediately.

His steps were heavy enough to pull the air from one’s lungs.

Then, with a single motion, he threw the corpse of one of the guards he had slain onto the center of the table.

Silence.

"Irkalos..." one of them murmured, voice trembling with the shiver of acknowledgment.

"You are pure," he said with a cold tone as he drew his sword from his back, a double-edged blade as if forged for slicing, not combat.

"So I will make your deaths... swift."

He leapt.

Screams. Explosions. Fire. Clashing swords. But nothing stopped him.

Inside, he wasn’t screaming, laughing, or savoring.

He was silently asking:

"Why am I here?" "What makes me different?"

Then he heard it.

A single voice, different. Not like the screams, but like an ancient sigh.

"Enough."

It wasn’t a shout.

It was a command, coming from a voice devoid of fear or challenge only certainty.

Irkalos turned.

In the corner of the hall, where no one had noticed his presence before, stood a tall man, his eyes like they had witnessed thousands of sunsets. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"I’ve been waiting for you," said the leader.

Silence.

Irkalos didn’t move, but he felt his body tense not from fear, but from strangeness.

"Who are you?" he asked in a low voice.

"Leader of the Black Moon... but you know me, even if we’ve never met."

The leader stepped forward, slowly, as if walking on sacred ashes.

"I knew you would come. And I knew... you would bring a massacre."

Irkalos spun his sword, then said, "That doesn’t grant you the right to speak... but to die."

"Then come... and do what you do." said the leader, raising his hand.

The silence before the first strike... was louder than all the previous screams.

Irkalos moved first.

Like a storm, he charged with his blood-covered body, his serrated claws in a horizontal stance as if to tear through the air itself. But his claws didn’t reach.

In a moment he didn’t perceive, didn’t see, didn’t understand... he found himself behind.

The leader didn’t move like others did.

He had disappeared and reappeared without a trace. Just the sound of his cloak.

Irkalos turned, slashing at the void, but a bare hand strike hit his chest and sent him like lightning into the stone wall, shattering it with half his body.

He growled.

Not in anger... but in doubt.

"What is this? Who is he?"

"Why don’t I feel his fear?"

He stood up, dust falling from his shoulders.

"Who are you?" he asked again, his voice now holding a trace of acknowledgment.

The leader didn’t answer.

He only raised his hand, and in it was a spear not forged from metal, but from something strange. A spear that looked like it was woven from human flesh or some other creature.

The strikes began.

And each strike carried a weight, as if knocking on a door inside Irkalos’ mind.

He deflected. Twisted. Tore. But each time, the leader wasn’t fighting to win he was fighting to restrain.

Irkalos felt something strange...

"He’s not trying to kill me. He’s stopping me."

But why?

The battle stretched within the hall until it turned into a field of rubble, walls torn apart, maps burned, bodies scattered.

Irkalos wasn’t defeated, but he... withdrew.

His knee fell to the ground, for the first time in years.

"You..." he said, breathless, "you’re not human."

The leader smiled, a cold smile, then said, "And you... are not a beast."

He approached.

And Irkalos did not resist when the leader placed his hand on his shoulder.

"Come."

Silence. But his legs moved.

It was something closer to surrender, but not from fear. Rather, from a killing curiosity. An ancient feeling that had haunted him since he left the Abyss.

"Who am I? Why was I created?"

They passed through corridors he didn’t know existed, carved deep into the mountain, unlit by torches, but glowing with walls that shimmered in pale blue.

They reached a massive door, etched with symbols in an ancient language... a language of blood and fire.

The leader opened it without a key.

"Enter."

Irkalos entered.

The room was different.

Not a throne. Not a prison. But a shrine.

At the center, a black orb hovered in the air, surrounded by seven stone circles, each bearing a statue of a different creature. Faces that were neither fully human, nor entirely Arkanis.

"This..." Irkalos muttered, "These aren’t human rituals."

"Nor Arkanis," the leader added, standing beside him, eyes fixed on the orb.

"But something older. Something that goes back to our origin... and yours."

He turned to him, eyes filled with honesty and savagery.

"Do you know who you are, Irkalos?"

"A Predator," he said with stillness.

The leader stepped forward, then spoke calmly: "No. You’re the answer."

The walls began to glow, and the symbols slowly shifted.

"Thousands of years ago, the Arkanis weren’t just beasts, but a people. A full civilization that overshadowed continents. But they weren’t worshipped as gods... they were feared. Even by themselves."

"Then came the time of division."

"Some Arkanis chose to stay in the Abyss, ruled by rage and violence. But others... they rebelled. They wanted out. To break free from the inherited curse."

"These... are the ones we are trying to liberate."

Irkalos remained silent, then said, "You’re humans. Why do you care?"

"Because we are not fully human."

The leader opened the front of his robe, revealing skin etched with Arkanis marks, slowly pulsing with a blue glow.

"We are the Half-Bloods. Children of sin. But we carry the memory. And our goal... is your freedom."

He stepped closer.

"And that’s why... we’ve been waiting for you."

"Why me?"

"Because you’re the only one born from the womb of the Abyss... and refused to become its slave."

"The time is near, Irkalos," the leader whispered, reaching toward the glowing orb.

"The time to free your kin... from themselves."

The room stilled.

No sound, no flicker of light. Only Irkalos’s heavy breathing, and the pulse of ancient symbols across the walls.

The leader gazed at him, then said with unwavering voice:

"My name... is Cain Valdweir."

Irkalos didn’t respond.

"Cain Valdweir..." he repeated the name internally. It wasn’t familiar, yet he felt a strange weight to it.

Cain stepped toward the seventh circle, where a statue stood an odd creature, a blend between Arkanis and human, its eyes closed, its hands bound by broken chains.

"This is where it began, in this symbol... the statue of one who resembles you."

"And for him... we built the plan."

He turned suddenly, speaking with calm seriousness:

"Our plan began long ago, but its true execution... started recently."

"Where?" Irkalos asked, emotionless, but with eyes burning with suspicion.

Cain smiled that smile one that held no promise, but rather an impending catastrophe.

"At the academy."

He paused, watching the reflection of Irkalos’s eye in the black orb, then continued:

"The academy that gathers the children of noble families... the dreamers... the ambitious... and the watched."

"They thought they were safe. But they never noticed we planted chaos from within."

Irkalos raised an eyebrow.

He stepped into the center of the circles, and the orb began to rotate slowly, faint whispers emanating from it like forgotten memories from centuries of shadow.

"Everything started with your movement, Irkalos."

"We needed one of you..."

"We were waiting for someone..."

Irkalos remained silent, his eyes narrowing as he pieced together the fragments.

"That day... when I felt different from them..."

"It wasn’t a coincidence?"

Cain smiled, then said slowly:

"You are the first step."

"You are the crack in the wall we’re breaking through."

"You are the message we will drop in the heart of the system, to collapse it from within, not from outside."

Irkalos stood in the center of the seventh circle, gazing at the statue, at the chains, at the closed eyes.

And he felt something... not rage, but a terrifying question:

"Have I, from the beginning... been part of someone else’s plan?"

But before he could open his mouth, Cain spoke with a tone heavier than stone:

"Do not fear. We don’t ask for obedience... only choice."

"Either return to the Abyss, and remain a beast..."

"Or stay with us... and become the herald of an era they will never forget."

The room fell silent again.

Irkalos raised his gaze, the lights dancing on his face.

The blood still on his body.

The ash in his heart.

But something within him... almost stirred.

"Can I be the beginning?"

"Of course I can."