RUST AND AETHER - The Intruder in the Hut

Mid-morning sunlight bled through

Intruder in the

Mid-morning sunlight bled through the perpetual haze over the

Dregs, turning the stagnant mud of the alleys into a dull, brassy sludge.Julian kept his head down as he walked, his boots squelching in the rutted tracks.

He held his torn grey tunic together with one hand to conceal the six stalks of

Dragon-Heart

Grass bound tightly against his ribs.

The herbs throbbed against his chest, radiating a deep, pulsing warmth that felt like a hot hearth in the cold mountain air.Underneath the rags, his new skin felt different—cleaner, tougher, humming with a quiet vitality that made every breath taste crisp.”The air in this shantytown is atrocious,” Kaelen murmured in his mind, his voice carrying the faint, echoing resonance of an aristocrat forced to walk through a cattle barn. “It smells of decayed cabbage and unwashed grease.

How you survived seventeen years in this pit without your meridians rotting from sheer boredom is a mystery.””Oh, close your spectral trap,

Kaelen,” Vanya snapped, her voice flickering like a hot ember behind

Julian’s sternum. “The boy just climbed five hundred meters of vertical rock with his bare hands and six pounds of spirit-herbs strapped to his collarbone.

Let him breathe.”Julian ignored them both.

He was used to the noise now; it was like carrying two squabbling parrots in his skull.He turned the final corner toward the isolated rock outcrop where his cottage sat.

He was looking forward to a cup of boiled water, a piece of dry salt-turnip, and a few hours of quiet sleep before he began refining the

Dragon-Heart

Grass.Then he stopped.The small willow-branch fence he had spent three weekends weaving around his garden was smashed to splinters.The stone pots—twenty of them, filled with ordinary yellow rock-lilies and blue frost-bells he had gathered from the high mountain paths—lay shattered across the dirt.

The wild flowers were trampled into the mud, crushed under heavy leather boots.Julian’s eyes narrowed.

The quiet, relaxed mood melted away, replaced by a cold, prickling stillness in his gut.He didn’t draw his rusted iron sword.

He didn’t run.

He walked forward, his boots making no sound on the soft earth as he approached the low timber doorway of his hut.The heavy oak latch had been sheared completely off the frame.

The wooden door swung inward on a broken leather hinge, creaking softly in the morning breeze.From inside came voices.”—tell you,

Eric, the little bastard’s dead!” Seth’s voice rasped out.

It was wet and lisping, missing half his front teeth from where

Julian’s pommel had smashed his jaw two nights ago. “He went out toward the waste cliffs after he broke my knee.

Must’ve slipped into the

Nobody survives a fall off the edge.””He better be dead,” a second voice replied.This voice was smoother, heavier, backed by the casual arrogance of someone who ate white bread and fresh mutton every day.”I didn’t come down to this cesspool to play hide-and-seek with a sweeper boy,” the second voice continued. “Toby paid me three silver pieces to make sure

Finch never walks up those three thousand steps again.

If he’s at the bottom of the abyss,

I’m taking whatever he left behind as a finder’s fee.”Julian reached the threshold and looked through the broken doorway.Seth was there, leaning heavily on a crutch made from a peeled pine branch, his right knee wrapped in dirty, blood-stained bandages.

He looked paler, thinner, his face swollen and bruised.Standing near the stone hearth was a taller boy, sixteen or seventeen years old, wearing the clean indigo-grey wool tunic of an

He had a polished steel longsword in a leather sheath hanging from a brass-buckled belt, and a copper medallion—the mark of a recognized

Initiate of the

Order—glinting on his lapel.It was

One of the outer-tier bullies who frequented the lower market to enforce

Mercer’s small-time rackets.Eric was sitting on the single wooden stool by the hearth.And beneath his mud-smeared leather riding boots, folded twice to form a dirty, makeshift seat cushion, was

Clara’s red coat.The coarse, threadbare cloth—the salmon-pink jacket that

Julian had washed with his own hands until his fingers bled, the coat that held the last lingering scent of his little sister—was pinned under

Eric’s filthy heels, smeared with black sludge from the alleyways.Julian’s breath stopped.For a fraction of a second, the entire world went dead silent.The wind outside ceased to whistle.

The bickering spirits in his head fell instantly mute.

The sunlight streaming through the cracked windowpane seemed to freeze in mid-air.”Julian…” Kaelen started, his tone suddenly stripped of all pomposity, replaced by a sharp, warning chill. “Control your—”Julian didn’t hear him.A red haze flooded the edges of his vision.

It wasn’t the analytical, calculated coldness he’d felt during his fight with

It was a violent, suffocating tide of pure, unadulterated human rage.

It started deep in his chest—right where the middle core lay—and rushed up his spine like a blast of furnace heat.He stepped over the broken threshold.THUD.His boot hit the floorboards.Seth turned first, his lisping mouth opening to yell, his eyes widening in sheer, terror-stricken disbelief as he saw the boy he thought was dead standing in the light. “E-Eric!

He’s—”Eric turned his head casually, a smirk playing on his lips, his right hand drifting toward the hilt of his polished steel sword. “So the scrap-pig didn’t fall after all.

Saves me the trouble of searching the—”Julian moved.He didn’t draw the rusted sword at his waist.

He didn’t use footwork from the

He didn’t care about form, balance, or trajectory.He simply lunged forward, his lead foot driving into the oak floorboards with enough raw physical force to crack the timber beneath his boot.Eric’s smirk froze.

The sheer, terrifying speed of the approach shocked him—Julian covered the ten feet between the doorway and the hearth in less than a heartbeat.Eric tried to draw.

His steel blade cleared its scabbard by two inches before

Julian reached him.Julian didn’t aim for the weapon.

He pulled his right arm back, his knuckles locking into a tight, white fist, and drove a straight, raw punch square into

Eric’s chest.There was no

Aether behind the strike.

No glowing light, no frost, no flame.Just two thousand pounds of raw, milk-stone-forged muscle and bone, propelled by seventeen years of buried grief and vengeance.BOOM!The impact sounded like a iron hammer hitting an anvil.Eric’s steel-reinforced leather guard shattered like dry glass under

Julian’s knuckles.

The sheer kinetic shock wave ripped through

Eric’s chest, snapping his sternum with a wet crack and driving the air out of his lungs in a bloody spray.Eric’s eyes bulged out of his head.

He didn’t even have time to scream.The force of the punch lifted

Eric’s six-foot frame completely off the wooden stool, blasting him backward through the air like a stone shot from a catapult.CRASH!Eric’s airborne body hit the rear wall of the cottage.

The thin pine planks gave way instantly, splintering into a shower of kindling and plaster as

Eric tore straight through the structure, hurtling into the dirt courtyard behind the hut before tumbling twice and coming to a dead stop against a rock pile.Dust and bits of dry straw floated down from the shattered wall.Inside the cottage, the wooden stool clattered to the floor, rolling twice before coming to rest near the stone hearth.Seth stood paralyzed near the door, his crutch slipping from his fingers, his lower jaw hanging so loose it looked unhinged.

He stared at the gaping, man-sized hole in the cottage wall, then slowly turned his head to look at

Julian.Julian stood in the center of the room, his right arm still extended, a thin trail of gray dust rising from his knuckles.

His chest heaved in slow, heavy cycles, his breath coming out in faint white plumes despite the warmth of the room.He didn’t look at

He didn’t look at the hole in the wall.Julian knelt down.His hands, which had just shattered leather armor and broken timber, moved with absolute, trembling gentleness.He picked up the small red coat from the floor.

He lifted it to his chest, carefully brushing away the black mud

Eric’s boot had left on the sleeve.

He checked the collar, the hem, the mismatched blue thread on the cuffs—making sure every stitch was intact.Satisfied, he turned, walked to the wooden peg driven into the central oak pillar, and hung the coat back where it belonged.Then he turned around to face

Seth.Seth wet his pants.

A dark, warm stain spread across the front of his grey trousers, dripping onto the floorboards as he fell to his knees, weeping hysterically. “D-Don’t…

Julian… please…

I didn’t touch it!

Toby paid us!

Please, don’t kill me!”Julian walked right past him, stepping through the ruined gap in his cottage wall and out into the bright morning sun.In the courtyard dirt,

Eric was groaning, coughing up dark clumps of blood as he tried to push himself up on one elbow.

His steel sword lay ten feet away in the weeds, completely forgotten.Julian walked over, picked up the steel sword by the leather sheath, and looked down at the

Disciple.”Toby

Mercer paid you three silver pieces?” Julian asked softly.Eric coughed, his face pale as chalk, his fingers clutching his caved-in chest. “Y-Yes… please… my uncle is a junior steward… if you kill me—”Julian didn’t let him finish.

He brought his right boot down, stomping hard on

Eric’s right wrist.CRACK.Eric shrieked, his head snapping back into the dirt as his wrist bones splintered under

Julian’s heel.Julian leaned down, unclipped the heavy leather coin pouch from

Eric’s belt, and tossed the steel sword into his left hand.”Tell

Toby,” Julian said, his voice flat, clear, and cold as the mountain frost, “that if he wants my life, he better come down here and try to take it himself.

I won’t just break a wall.”