Liam and Leon had been inseparable since age four. Two orphans huddled together in the cold stone halls of Rome's Church of Saint Agnes, finding in each other the family they'd both lost. While other children cowered during thunderstorms, Leon and Liam would sneak to the bell tower, watching lightning split the sky as they whispered dreams of glory.

  "We'll be knights one day," Liam would say, his bright blue eyes reflecting the storm's fury. "The greatest knights in all of Christendom."

  At twelve, they began training with wooden swords in the church courtyard, mimicking the moves they'd seen real knights perform during festivals. By sixteen, both had become squires, their childhood dreams crystallizing into achievable goals.

  When the Pope's call for the Second Crusade echoed through Europe, Liam had grabbed Leon's shoulders, his eyes wild with excitement.

  "This is it," he'd whispered. "Our chance for glory."

  Now, four days from Damascus, Leon trudged through foreign soil, armor chafing against his sweat-soaked tunic. Their company of forty men moved through a narrow valley, dense forest pressing in on either side. Conversation had died hours ago, replaced by the rhythmic sound of armored footfalls and labored breathing.

  Commander Bartholomew raised his hand, signaling a halt. "We'll rest here. Water your horses and yourselves, but stay alert. We're in enemy territory now."

  Leon sank to the ground beside Liam, gratefully accepting the waterskin his friend offered. "My feet have blisters on their blisters," he complained, pulling off a boot to examine the damage.

  Liam chuckled. "Should've worn two pairs of socks like I told you. The old knights' trick."

  "Next time I'll—"

  Commander Bartholomew's voice cut through the air like a whip. "SILENCE!"

  The company froze. Leon felt it then—the unnatural quiet. No birds sang. No insects chirped. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

  The commander's eyes widened in realization. "GET DOWN!"

  The first arrow struck Bartholomew's second-in-command, Sir Reginald, directly in the center of his tunic's red cross. The shaft punched through chainmail with terrible efficiency, the tip emerging from his back in a spray of crimson. Reginald remained standing for three heartbeats, staring in disbelief at the wooden shaft protruding from his chest before his legs folded beneath him.

  The forest erupted. Arrows sliced through the air from all directions, finding targets with unerring precision. A young crusader to Leon's left took an arrow through his eye socket, the back of his skull exploding outward in a shower of bone and brain matter. Another fell with three shafts clustered in his throat, blood bubbling from his lips as he drowned in his own fluids.

  "DOWN!" Liam screamed, tackling Leon to the earth as an arrow whizzed through the space his head had occupied moments before.

  Commander Bartholomew bellowed orders, trying to organize a defense, but an arrow caught him beneath the chin, punching upward through his mouth and into his brain. He dropped like a stone, eyes still wide with command.

  From the forest emerged shadows—dozens of Seljuk warriors, their curved blades already wet with anticipation. They fell upon the surviving crusaders with methodical savagery.

  A bearded Seljuk cleaved a crusader from shoulder to sternum, the man's ribcage parting with a wet crack as his heart was exposed to open air for the brief moment before death claimed him. Another warrior hamstrung a fleeing knight, sending him tumbling to the ground before methodically removing his limbs—first hands, then forearms, then upper arms, the knight's screams diminishing with each cut as shock and blood loss overtook him.

  Leon and Liam crawled backward on their bellies, seeking cover behind a fallen log. They were the only survivors now, watching in horror as their compatriots were butchered one by one.

  "We need to run," Liam whispered, his voice trembling. "On my mark, we break for the—"

  A heavy boot slammed into Liam's back, pinning him to the ground. A Seljuk warrior towered above them, his face split in a yellowed grin beneath his black turban. Five more warriors emerged from the shadows, surrounding them.

  "The children try to escape," the leader said in heavily accented Latin, his voice carrying the harsh cadence of the desert. He gestured to his men, who seized Leon's arms, dragging him to his knees.

  The leader—a burly man with a jagged scar bisecting his left eye—hauled Liam up by his hair, pressing him against a tree trunk. Cold steel kissed Liam's throat as the commander's curved blade settled against his pulse point.

  "Watch your friend die, crusader," the commander growled, his breath hot and sour in Leon's face. "Like the pig he is."

  Two warriors held Leon's arms while a third produced a cruelly serrated dagger. With theatrical slowness, he pressed the blade against Leon's chest, just below the sternum, and began to push. The knife parted flesh and muscle, sliding between ribs. White-hot agony exploded through Leon's body as the blade twisted, scraping bone.

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  Darkness crept in from the edges of his vision. As consciousness faded, Leon found himself floating in a void of absolute blackness. Before him, a pair of eyes materialized—crimson, filled with ancient malevolence, pupils like vertical slits in blood-colored pools.

  KILL THEM, a voice rumbled through his skull, seeming to emanate from everywhere and nowhere. KILL THEM ALL. ACCEPT YOUR BLOODLUST.

  The world snapped back into focus as Leon heard Liam scream. The Seljuk commander had driven his blade through Liam's forearm, pinning him to the tree like an insect to a collection board. Blood flowed freely down the bark, soaking into the earth below.

  Something inside Leon shattered.

  "NO!" The word tore from his throat, primal and raw. "I WON'T LET YOU DO THIS, GODDAMMIT!"

  His voice rose with each word, transforming from human speech to something bestial. When the commander plunged his knife deeper into Liam's arm, twisting it with sadistic pleasure, Leon broke.

  The change was instantaneous and horrifying. His eyes flooded with crimson, the green irises drowned in blood as capillaries burst. Veins bulged across his face and neck, throbbing visibly beneath his skin. His muscles tensed and swelled, stretching his tunic tight across his frame. The world around him sharpened to crystalline clarity—every detail, every movement, every heartbeat of his enemies cataloged and processed with inhuman precision.

  With a roar that seemed torn from the depths of hell itself, Leon surged upward. The warriors holding his arms found their grips suddenly ineffectual as Leon's strength multiplied tenfold. He seized the ankles of the nearest Seljuk, lifting the man bodily from the ground as if he weighed nothing.

  Leon swung the screaming warrior like a flail, smashing him against the thick trunk of an oak tree. The impact was catastrophic—the warrior's upper body exploded in a fountain of gore, his ribcage collapsing inward before viscera sprayed outward. His spine separated at the third vertebra, allowing what remained of his torso to slide wetly down the trunk while his legs remained in Leon's grasp.

  Leon discarded the twitching limbs and turned to face the remaining warriors. Their eyes widened in primal fear as they beheld him—no longer a boy, but something else entirely. Something monstrous.

  Two warriors charged together, blades extended. Leon caught the first scimitar with his bare hand, the edge slicing deep into his palm but finding unexpected resistance. Blood flowed, but Leon felt nothing beyond cold fury. He wrenched the blade sideways, snapping it at the hilt before driving the jagged remainder through its owner's eye socket. The warrior collapsed, the broken sword protruding from the back of his skull, brain matter clinging to the metal.

  The second attacker managed a wild slash across Leon's chest, opening a shallow cut. Leon seized him by the throat, fingers digging into soft flesh until they met around the man's spine. With a savage twist, he separated the vertebrae, the crack echoing through the forest. He didn't release his grip, instead crushing the throat in his fist like overripe fruit until his fingers touched through the pulverized flesh.

  A third warrior attempted to flee, dropping his weapon as terror overtook him. Leon was upon him in an instant, driving him to the ground and straddling his back. With methodical brutality, Leon dug his fingers into the man's mouth, hooking into his upper jaw. He pulled upward with inhuman strength, tearing the entire upper portion of the warrior's head away from the lower jaw. The scalp, skull plate, and brain lifted free in a single, horrific motion, leaving only the lower mandible attached to the spasming body.

  Blood soaked into the earth, turning the soil to crimson mud beneath Leon's feet as he whirled to face more attackers. A warrior lunged with a spear, which Leon caught mid-thrust. He yanked the attacker forward, headbutting him with such force that the man's facial bones collapsed inward, driving fragments of his own skull into his brain.

  The remaining warrior fell to his knees, hands raised in surrender, lips moving in desperate prayer. Leon seized a discarded scimitar, the curved blade fitting strangely in his hand. With a single, fluid motion, he decapitated the pleading man. The head tumbled through the air, eyes still blinking in confusion, mouth still forming words even as it rolled to a stop at the base of a tree.

  Only the commander remained, his blade still pinning Liam to the tree. Horror had replaced cruelty in his expression as he beheld the blood-drenched boy who had single-handedly slaughtered his elite fighters.

  "NO, STOP!" the commander begged, releasing his sword and backing away, hands raised. "STAY BACK! IN THE NAME OF ALLAH, STAY BACK!"

  Leon advanced with deliberate slowness, each step squelching in the blood-soaked earth. His expression was eerily calm, at odds with the crimson veins still bulging across his face and the inhuman light in his eyes.

  "You are not human," the commander whispered, his back pressed against a tree trunk. "What devil walks in your skin?"

  Leon said nothing. In one fluid motion, he seized the commander by the throat, lifting him off his feet. The man clawed desperately at Leon's arm, fingernails tearing furrows in the skin without effect. With clinical precision, Leon drove his other hand into the commander's abdomen, fingers piercing through muscle and sinew. He pushed deeper, past the squirming intestines, until he found the man's spine. Grasping the column of bone, Leon pulled, extracting the vertebrae through the abdominal wound while the commander still lived, still screamed.

  As the light faded from the commander's eyes, the forest erupted once more. More Seljuk warriors poured from the trees—dozens, then scores. A hundred blades catching the dying light of day.

  Leon turned to face them, a blood-soaked demon in crusader's garb. He moved among them like a scythe through wheat, each swing of his appropriated blade ending another life in increasingly grotesque ways. He tore limbs from sockets, punched through ribcages to extract still-beating hearts, separated heads with his bare hands when blades proved too slow.

  One warrior found his jaw torn completely free, leaving a horrific cavity where his lower face had been. Another was impaled on his own spear, the shaft driven upward through his groin and emerging from his shoulder. A third had his eyes gouged out before Leon forced his own severed hand down his throat, choking him with his own fingers.

  By the time reinforcements from the main crusader army arrived, drawn by the sounds of slaughter, they found a scene from the darkest circles of hell. One hundred and sixty Seljuk warriors lay dead, their bodies dismembered, disemboweled, decapitated—killed with a savagery that left even hardened crusaders retching into the underbrush.

  In the center of the carnage stood Leon, drenched head to toe in gore, cradling Liam's unconscious form in his arms. Tears cut clean tracks through the mask of blood on his face as his eyes, now returned to their normal green, stared vacantly at something only he could see.

  "He needs a physician," Leon said, his voice hoarse and small—a child's voice once more. "Please... he's all I have."