Nayden opened his eyes, ready for death. The wall was empty. The raven was gone. Vanished, as if blown away by the wind. Only a single black feather remained, swirling in the air, slowly turning into ash.

  Instead of the bird, with his back to the Zmey, stood a man. He came from nowhere. He had simply cut a hole in reality and stepped out of it. He wore a loose, beige coat with a deep hood. Underneath, visible was the black of stiff fabric—the same dead linen whispered about in legends.

  The man stood motionless, squinting against the dust. His gaze—completely white, devoid of pupils and irises, like a blind man’s—jumped from Nayden to the pool of blood where Lovro’s crushed body lay. He pulled his boot back, looking with disgust at the red stain soiling the hem of his coat.

  “This was not in the plan,” he hissed. His voice was clear, devoid of fear, merely annoyed. “Absolutely not in the plan. You are bleeding on my shoes...”

  Nayden, stunned and aching, opened his mouth but made no sound. The white eyes pierced him through.

  “Great,” the stranger muttered to himself, massaging his temple. “Just great. A mess again.”

  At that moment, the Zmey lunged with a terrifying hiss. Its massive maw opened, ready to swallow both men at once. “Watch out!” Nayden croaked, trying to crawl backward.

  The man abruptly raised his left hand toward the monster. The air between them compressed with a boom, creating a visible shockwave. An invisible force hit the Zmey straight in the snout. The beast’s head snapped back with the sickening crack of breaking cervical vertebrae. The monster, weighing tons, was thrown back, its claws gouging deep furrows in the cobblestones.

  The man swayed slightly. He grimaced as if feeling a sudden migraine. “Doesn’t matter,” he growled, not looking to see if the monster was getting up. “I’ll file complaints later. Now we are changing location.”

  He grabbed Nayden by the arm. The grip was iron. Nayden felt a crushing headache and a sudden twisting in his stomach. His vision blurred. Space ground, swirled, and went out.

  The world returned. Different cobblestones. Different stench. Nayden fell to his knees and vomited bile straight at his savior’s feet.

  They were further away. The Zmey’s roar could still be heard, but it was muffled by the walls of buildings. They had moved several blocks. The man let go of him and straightened up, obsessively dusting invisible dust off his beige coat. He looked around the burning city with an expression of deep distaste. “What a dump...” he muttered.

  The street was drowning in mud. A cart was burning out on the corner. Somewhere in the distance, peasants with pitchforks were fleeing in panic. Suddenly, a shadow in a nearby gateway came alive. A lesser spawn—massive as a bear but agile as a spider—shot out of the gloom. It didn’t roar. It hunted. Jaws full of hooked fangs snapped right next to Nayden’s face. A claw slashed his cheek, marking the skin with a stinging line.

  Nayden shielded himself with his arms, screaming. The man was faster. He didn’t use magic. A long, black dagger, thin as a needle, appeared in his hand. He stepped into the monster’s reach, closing the distance. The blade entered the beast’s nape. Not just anywhere. It found the only gap—the soft space between the base of the skull and the first cervical vertebra. The dagger severed the spinal cord. The beast went limp in mid-air, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. It fell dead at the man’s feet, not even making a sound.

  The man wiped the blade on the creature’s fur and looked down at Nayden with white, empty eyes. “Can you stop screaming now? My head hurts.”

  Nayden took a step back. Then another. This wasn’t a fight. This was cleaning up. The dagger disappeared under the man’s coat with the same ease with which it had taken a life.

  “You... you didn’t even blink,” Nayden choked out, feeling a shiver of fear, worse than with the beast, curdle his blood.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  “Blinking is a waste of time,” he stated dryly, moving toward him. “Get up.”

  That was too much. Nayden turned on his heel. Adrenaline drowned out the pain in his ribs. He broke into a run down a dark, smoky alley.

  “Stop! That’s a dead end, you idiot!”

  Nayden didn’t listen. He wanted to be anywhere but near this man. The man sighed heavily and took a step to pursue, but the rubble on the right side exploded. Two more Zmeys, smaller but still dangerous, burst from the ruins of a tavern, cutting off his path. They hissed, dripping black sludge.

  He ran a gloved hand over his face. “Do you reproduce by budding?” he muttered with irritation.

  The monsters didn’t answer. The first one leaped, and the man extended an open palm. Veins on his temples and forehead stood out instantly, thick and blue, pulsing above the edge of his black mask. The air in front of him rippled. An invisible battering ram hit the beast in mid-air. The Zmey hit the ground, squealing as its own broken ribs punctured its lungs.

  When the second monster attacked, the man didn’t have time to raise his hand. He kicked. His boot struck the beast’s underbelly. Normally, it would be like kicking a wall, but at the moment of impact, the air around his leg cracked with a boom. A kinetic impulse sent the two-hundred-kilogram body across the entire width of the street. The beast slammed into a brick wall, leaving a bloody smear and sliding down motionless.

  The man leaned heavily with his hands on his knees. His joints popped with a dry, painful crunch, protesting against the inhuman overload. The black fabric of the mask at nose level darkened rapidly, soaking with moisture. A moment later, a heavy, thick drop of blood ran down the edge of the fabric, dripping onto the snow. “What the hell is happening here?” he rasped, the wet sound of swallowing blood audible in his voice. “I’m too old for this amateur hour.”

  A shadow covered the street. The wind stopped. A great Zmey hung above them, claws dug into the edge of the town hall roof. Its spread wings blocked the glow of the fires. It opened its maw. Green light bubbled deep in its gullet. Acid hissed, pooling between its fangs.

  The man didn’t bother with jokes. His white eyes narrowed. “Just not in the face,” he muttered to himself.

  The Zmey retched. A stream of acid crashed down like a waterfall. The man threw himself to the side. No grace. Pure survival instinct. He hit the mud with his shoulder, rolling behind the corner of a well. The acid hit the spot where he had stood a second ago. The cobblestones hissed and collapsed, turning into a smoking, liquid mass. Acrid vapor burst into the sky. The Zmey didn’t wait. Its tail, thick as a trunk, swept the square. Escape was impossible. The range was too great. The man cursed quietly. He dug his boots into the ground and crossed his arms in front of him.

  The air in front of him thickened, creating a vibrating barrier. The tail struck. It wasn’t a soft landing. The force of the impact pushed the man back several meters. His boots plowed the pavement, leaving deep furrows. The barrier held, but the bones in his forearms ground dangerously. When the tail retracted, the man lowered his arms. They were shaking. Another portion of blood flowed from his nose under the mask.

  The beast roared, furious that the prey was still standing. Its tail wrapped around the wreck of a horse cart lying against the wall. Wood groaned and snapped under the pressure. The Zmey wound up. A ton of wood and iron hurtled toward the man like a projectile from a catapult.

  The man didn’t attempt finesse. He jerked his right hand to the side, as if slicing the air with an invisible cleaver. A thin, compressed blade of pressure hit the flying wreck. The cart split in half. Both halves missed the man, hitting the tenements behind him, but the rain of smaller splinters and iron didn’t miss. A shard of wood sliced his coat sleeve and the skin on his arm, and a piece of fitting struck his thighs.

  The man staggered, hissing through his teeth. He looked at the cut arm. “Damn it...” he muttered, wiping blood with the back of his hand.

  The Zmey didn’t wait for the effect. Instead of staying on the roof, it began to descend. It drove massive claws into the facade of the town hall. Bricks exploded into dust, cornices cracking under the weight. The beast slid headfirst, slowly, with the methodical cruelty of a spider descending a web. When its paws touched the cobblestones, the earth trembled. The Zmey straightened to its full height, spreading its wings. It was enormous. It blocked the entire street. At the same moment, Nayden’s terrifying scream and the hiss of lesser beasts came from the dark mouth of the alley.

  The man froze. He glanced at the giant in front of him, then at the dark alley. “Damn,” he snarled, shaking his head. “Twenty minutes of fun and a liter of blood.” He pointed his thumb at the alley. “And my return ticket just walked into a dead end and has the lifespan of a fruit fly.”

  The Zmey tensed its muscles. The man took a step back, not assuming a guard. “Forgive me, reptile.” He clapped his hands. “The customer is king.”

  The shockwave didn’t go at the monster. It went into the ground. A cloud of snow, mud, cobblestones, and dust shot upward, creating a dense, dirty curtain straight into the eyes of the charging beast.

  The Zmey roared in disorientation, flailing its paws blindly at the cloud, biting dust instead of meat. The man was no longer there. He turned on his heel and broke into a run toward the alley, ignoring the giant’s roar behind him. “Don’t die on me there!” he shouted into the gloom, jumping over an overturned stall. “Do you hear me, kid?!”