Chapter 647: What Is a good Person?

Frigoris’s head turned first—snapping toward me with that mechanical precision, her heavy-lidded eyes finding me instantly.

Hawthorne’s followed a fraction of a second later, his gaze dragging away from his opponent with visible effort.

Both of them saw me.

And Hawthorne’s brown eyes widened in bewilderment.

"Wha—?! Agora?! What are you doi—"

Hawthorne’s voice never finished the question.

The words were cut off as though severed by a blade, swallowed by the sudden violence that erupted in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

The thing they had been fighting moved with the suddenness of a striking serpent—as though it had simply decided to exist in a new location and reality had obliged.

A single, open-handed chop cut through the air with a whistle that only sounded gentle and connected with the side of Hawthorne’s neck and shoulder.

The force behind the blow was monstrous, incomprehensible—a force that should not have been possible from a body so slender and visually delicate.

Hawthorne’s massive frame was driven sideways as though struck by a siege ram, his feet leaving the ground, his arms flailing once before going limp.

He hit the broken cobblestones hard, bounced once with a sound like a sack of grain dropped from a height, then finally slid to a stop against an almost collapsed wall.

Dust settled over his still form, coating his broad back in a fine gray shroud. He did not rise.

Frigoris’s head snapped from the unmoving man to me—that mechanical, doll-like motion, her heavy-lidded eyes finding me instantly across the distance.

For the briefest moment something flickered in those eyes, something that might have been concern and recognition, might have been a spark of an awareness she so rarely showed to anyone.

She immediately took one step in my direction, her small foot lifting, her body turning.

But she never completed it.

A slender hand closed around her ankle with casual precision, the fingers wrapping around her thin limb.

The owner of that hand lifted her small body as easily as one might lift a doll—no strain, effort, or acknowledgment that they were handling a living creature.

It drove her face-first into the street. The sound of bone and flesh meeting stone was wet and final, a sound that seemed to hang in the air long after it should have faded.

It lifted her again and smashed her down a second time. Then a third.

Each impact left a darker stain on the cobblestones and sent a visible shudder through her limbs, her small frame, and the body that had seemed so indestructible only moments before.

When it finished, it held her suspended for a heartbeat longer, studying the result of its work with some curiosity, its head tilted, its expression thoughtful, as though it were examining a piece of art and deciding whether it was complete.

"So stubborn," it muttered, then hurled her away.

Her body became a distant blur that vanished beyond the ruined rooftops, swallowed by smoke and distance. My eyes could not follow the trajectory, so I could not see where she landed.

Then the thing turned and looked at me.

Crystal-blue eyes met mine and held them—not with malice, not with anger, but with something far worse: interest.

The longer I stared, the more the rest of the world seemed to fall away, the ruined street, the wounded women and the settling dust all fading into insignificance beneath the gravity of that gaze.

Its skin was fair and flawless, smooth as polished marble under soft light, unmarked by the violence it had just committed.

Short hair the color of light-struck oak framed a face that might have been carved by the most exacting gods of beauty, a face that belonged on a statue in a temple rather than on a creature standing in the ruins of a district it had helped destroy.

The body beneath the simple, travel-stained clothes looked delicate—slender wrists, narrow shoulders, a frame that suggested grace rather than power.

But the magical pressure rolling off that frame was so dense it pressed against my lungs and soon forced my knees to buckle.

I dropped hard onto the broken stones, palms scraping against grit, the impact sending pain shooting up through my wrists and into my shoulders.

"P... Please..." The word left my mouth as little more than a cracked whisper, barely audible even to my own ears.

Even someone standing an arm’s length away might not have heard it. "Those... girls... they are good people."

Then the figure chuckled.

The sound was bright and boyish, and completely out of place amid the ruin—a sound that belonged in a tavern, or a meadow, in some peaceful place far from blood and broken stone.

It glanced once more at the scattered, wounded forms of Zanya, Saharit, Zuri, and the distant places where Hawthorne and Sekhmet had been thrown, then returned his attention to me.

Its eyes sparkled with amusement. Or, at least, I thought it was amusement.

"Who is a good person, old man?" It tilted its head, seemingly curious, as though I had posed a philosophical question rather than begged for mercy. "What do you have to do? What requirements must you fulfill before the world decides you merit the title? Tell me. And stand up."

Something older than reason seized my body—something primal, something that lived in the marrow of my bones and had kept my ancestors alive through ages of danger.

Primal fear, cold and absolute, drove me to my feet before I could think of resisting, before I could remind myself that I was old, tired, and had no business standing before a creature like this.

My legs trembled, but I stood. I stood because I had no choice.

Because kneeling was not acceptable at the time.

"First," it said, still smiling and radiating that terrible, casual aura, "I am a ’he,’ not an ’it.’ You should keep that in mind. I am not a thing or a monster."

The smile softened into something reassuring and kinder.