Kal’s world bent around him as his mind burned with a sudden flash of images and sounds, Exterminator’s Regards still steady just inches above the boy’s skull. But then it was gone.

Before him, the endless mire of blood, bone, and viscera stretched out to the horizon. Every inch of it writhed as those within it died in agony over and over again.

All Kal could do was laugh, laugh at the dead, the dying, the corpses… It was endless. He was beyond fear, beyond desperation, beyond pain, and beyond feeling, but still Kal laughed and cried.

Who even was he? A child no longer Kal hung in the space just beyond the endless horror. The thought felt so foreign that it was almost discarded immediately but still his mind wandered. Then he understood.

The writhing world before him was slowly receding and its cries were growing less incessant, less overbearing. Kal’s laugh became a cry of despair, “No! I can’t! Bring it back!” He couldn’t let his thoughts return, he couldn’t let himself remember what he was before. Insanity was better than understanding what he had lost and what he was supposed to do.

“Kal?” A slight pressure touched Kal’s shoulder, sending a cool shock through his body.

“What! Who!” Kal reeled back but the hand remained firmly on his shoulder.

Recognition came slowly as his giggles and cries merged before falling away, “Fyborh?”

“Kal… You have done remarkably,” Sorrow radiated through the man’s voice.

Joy mixed with guilt and fear overwhelmed Kal as he felt Fyborh’s presence within his mind. How long had it been? Truly? With Fyborh here, things became clearer and dread returned to push away the joy, “How long?”

Kal couldn’t see Fyborh but he felt the man shake his head, “If my count is correct and your chronurgic acceleration is as malleable as I suspect. You have been here for two-th-... Too long…”

Fyborh’s presence moved to Kal’s right and the pressure on his shoulder returned, “But now is not the time Kal.”

Ahead the writhing mass began to grow closer again and Kal felt his mind wrench back to focus on it.

"Come, if I am going to free you we must get beyond her reach.”

"No! I can't I... What they did to me..." Kal croaked aloud, his throat tightening around the words.

Kal's vision warped and then separated as he suddenly found himself free of whatever held his sight toward the writhing mass. It continued its rush toward him but instead of retreating, he found himself peering through it into the middle distance.

A small boy no older than six looked up at him with a mix of terror and awe. Kal shuddered both within that horrible world of carnage and standing, caked in blood at the end of his path of slaughter.

A shock lanced up his arm from Exterminator's Regards before it felt suddenly heavy in his hand. Kal's double vision flickered to the blade in his hand. White light flickered across its surface before shooting up his arm and making his mind shudder as the two sights clashed.

In one sight the wall of endless carnage fell into him, writhing appendages wrapped around his limbs, twisted bones, and jagged teeth tore into his flesh. In the other, the young boy no older than six flinched as a woman screamed words that never reached Kal's ears. Kal's mind quaked but Fyborh's presence at his side and Exterminator's Regards in his fist focused his mind toward the barrier and through the tide of flesh.

Rage came roaring from Kal's soul in response and he felt his focus waver. Kal felt one of his teeth snap as he clenched his jaw. Screams reached his ears but he couldn't tell which sight they originated from as he slammed his eyes shut. It did nothing for his current self as his Slayer Sight pierced his own burned and ruined eyelids but the writhing wall vanished, leaving only the squirming intestines, malformed maws, and... and something else.

Something called to him, something within the cries of the twisted dead, but not only the dead. The screams of dying people all around him mixed with those of the carnage.

They must end...

Free us...

Only then can we cease...

Only then can we thrive...

End the suffering...

The voices brought Kal to his knees as his strength left him. The quiet words within the screams of the living fell away before the crushing weight of the other.

HE WHO RENDS...

HE WHO SUNDERS...

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

HE WHO KILLS...BE OURS...

"They call to you Kal... They have called to you from the moment you arrived in this place. She would free you the moment you accept. I would not fault your choice. No one deserves this Kal..."

Kal felt the sorrow in Fyborh's voice again but this time none of the guilt and insane joy came. Instead, Kal growled as he had thousands of times before and screamed in defiance his ragged voice reverberating through the world around him if only he could remember. However, this time something was different.

I WILL REND!

I WILL SUNDER!

I WILL KILL!

BUT I WILL NEVER BE YOURS!

AND I WILL BE FREE!

The flesh all around him convulsed, its bloody mass retreating a step in a way he had never seen before, and as it did a calm settled in the center of the raging fury that was his wrath.

Kal straightened as he regained his control, his will condensing around him as he felt his eyes flash with the light of Eyes of the Slayer shedding gold light over both the flesh and the terrified crowd of people.Ignoring the memory for a moment Kal looked down at Willum who had fallen in his panic when Kal had raised his sword.

"Stand up Willum, I will not hurt you," Kal turned to the crowd, "When the barrier falls a man named Dalen will arrive. Follow him if you want to survive this mess."

Kal's focus didn't falter but he could feel the memory moving along in his mind and he felt the clarity he was feeling now wouldn't survive its ending. Wrath still poured from his pores and wounds but none of it was reaching out to burning the people around him.

"Now. Move!" Kal boomed and the crowd parted in a rush as Kal tried his best to restrict his fear aura.

The moment the path was clear the memory returned in full force and Kal's vision doubled once more. Fyborh's presence felt even stronger than before and this time joy radiated from the dead god's voice, "I agree. You will be free..."

Kal moved. Each step was slow and with purpose as he concentrated on maintaining control both the survivors of the massacre and the writing dead flinched further away from him as he passed. Not wasting any time in his approach Kal used what little will he had remaining to form the will blade using Exterminator's Regards as a base.

The white light pulsing from the sword only grew as Kal condensed his will tendrils over its surface. Keeping his mind on his goal and maintaining the blade was difficult but the strange calm that fell over his mind and soul made the task seem almost simple.

Kal could feel more Dhinir soldiers on their way making his soul rage in the background of his mind but for the moment his wrath would need to wait. The barrier shone before him as he raised his blade into the sky, its white light beginning to be tainted with the fires of his wrath.

Now that Kal could focus his eyes caught the shine of the thousands of tiny threads that arced through the sky away from the barrier and into the tower he had only recently escaped. Sundering them all at once was obviously impossible but he had already seen barriers like this fall to his will. Kal only hoped Dalen was clear of the tower...

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Dalen and the others ran, with their rag-tag militia and the survivors of Uton's Tower. Kal moved with such speed and brutal efficiency that he had carved a path directly to the city gates and beyond. At first, they had run after him worried that his slaughter would extend to the people at the city's edge but something had changed just as the gates came into sight.

The malevolence that weighed down on all of them suddenly changed becoming something altogether different but still just as intense.

Melisia was jogging by Dalen's side, her eyes glowing the eerie blue that told him she was using her perception skill, "What do you see?!"

"I don't know his mana suddenly collapsed so I can't see anything other than the barrier threads," Melisia replied in a rush, "But I don't think he is weakening."

Nearby Jayne's already dark look became even darker as she noticed the change too, "What's happening!-"

BOOM!

Dalen's ear exploded with pain almost as badly as when his insane bomb went off but before he even got the chance to shout out in surprise a searing white light flashed across the sky. Everyone in their little skirmishing part stopped dead in their tracks while even enemy soldiers in nearby streets paused to look up at the cacophony.

Melisia gasped, "Gods! We need to move! Now!"

"If we turn back now there's no way we will make it without being cut off!" Leo said from further ahead.

Melisia shook her head, panic rising into her eyes, "No! The Tower! We need to get away from the tower its-"

Streaks of crimson suddenly marred the pearlescent sky to match the smoke flames of the city but then the streaks grew brighter to a level even more blinding than the scorching white. Then in a rush, the weight upon Dalen's should magnified feeling almost as if Kal's wrath had returned.

Shrugging off the weight Dalen shouted over the rising chaos, "You don't need to tell me twice! Everyone! Run like fu-"

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Kal roared as his will warped the air around Exterminator's Regards and he plunged it into the barrier with everything he had. His wrath flowed through the tendrils of will flashing crimson growing deeper yet brighter with each passing instant.

The sheer potency of his wrath and will burned the mattered blood from form, revealing the clean but gouged and scarred flesh of his hulking body. He could sense the people, -not corpses, not for now- back away but he ignored them, focusing utterly on his goal.

Images continued to burn through his mind as his past self continued his stride through the endless insanity that was his prison. The words he had spoken rung through his mind again and again each time refocusing his will but also building an inferno inside him alongside his furious soul.

Soon he would lose his focus and turn on everyone around him and at the thought the words sprung to mind once again. Something about them rang false and his soul raged against the injustice.

Strangely Fyborh seemed to notice Kal's thought despite the memory being just that, a memory. Fyborh's presence deepened somehow and the pulsing from Exterminator's Regards increased as Fyborh's voice came to him both in mind and memory, "Who are you Kalum Lesta?"

The endless flesh seemed to part and burning eyes peered through seas of blood and tearing threads. Kal roared in both exhilaration and rage and wrenched his blade free of the barrier as he took his final step in the memory.

The already blinding light of the falling barrier flashed crimson as his wrath-infused will tore its way through the millions of threads that held it together. In an instant the sheer number of sundered threads detonated into a cascade of mana backlashes that stormed across the entire surface of the barrier, even more violently than what he had done at the place of his return.

In the next instant, the sky appeared to rain fire of white and crimson as the burning threads snapped away from the surface of the barrier toward the city below and as Kal had expected the tower that had been his prison.

Kal did not turn to see what he had wrought, instead he through himself the failing barrier wall with another detonation of mana that tore several more wounds open across his body but he had no choice.

It was coming.

Heat and destruction battered his back but Kal ran, his body surging across the clearing before a dense jungle that flared crimson as his will began to fail. The double vision began to fade as well and Kal found himself staring at the sea of blood.

"Come Kal we are nearly free of this place!" Fyborh said by his side.

Kal nodded-

Snap!

Overwhelming agony erupted through Kal's chest. His eyes fell to find five crimson claws piercing his chest from behind. The claws snapped into a fist and Kal's mind shattered into oblivion as he was wrenched back into the endless carnage.

Before his perception faded a feminine voice filled his mind, bringing the insane back across his face, "No Ender, You are not ready. Not yet..."