Kaiser stared down at Kalagrim, his expression icy and utterly unreadable. He lowered his sword slightly, the tip of the blade pointed casually towards the floor, yet still radiating a silent promise of swift and merciless retribution should the need arise.

"Now," Kaiser spoke softly. "You have a chance to repay at least some portion of your debt. Tell me everything you know about these monsters of ink." He paused briefly, his voice dropping to a whisper so chilling that it sent shivers down Ivan's spine. "And when I say everything, I mean something more valuable than what a frightened civilian could scream as they run from these horrors."

Kalagrim sat motionless, his gaze fixated again on Martha's limp and unconscious form, as though locked in an eternal, silent dialogue with her ruined face. Seconds stretched agonizingly into minutes, a taut, painful quiet reigning over them. Finally, Kalagrim's eyes began to waver, losing focus slightly, drifting from Martha's body to the growing pool of blood around him. The blood from his severed arm had begun to pool ominously beneath him, painting the floorboards a deep red.

Kaiser observed this, lips pursed. Without any further hesitation, he stepped closer, kneeling beside the broken man. With clinical precision, he gripped the stump of Kalagrim's arm. The suddenness of the gesture caused Kalagrim to flinch violently, a gasp of pain forced through gritted teeth.

"Hold still," Kaiser ordered coldly, the icy calm of his voice more terrifying than any rage. "I have no intention of allowing you to slip away yet ."

A surge of cold radiated from Kaiser's palm. At first, it seemed to soothe the pain, but then it intensified, biting deep into Kalagrim's flesh, searing it with a cruel, precise chill. Kalagrim cried out sharply, trembling uncontrollably as the freezing sensation cauterized the wound. When Kaiser finally withdrew his hand, Kalagrim's breathing had steadied slightly, and the bleeding had halted completely, replaced by a crusted shell of frost.

Kalagrim lifted his head slowly, his eyes red-rimmed and wild. The hatred in his gaze burned fiercely enough to melt glaciers, but Kaiser merely regarded him coolly, utterly untroubled.

Turning slightly, Kaiser looked directly at Ivan. "See this, Ivan?" he murmured, almost conversationally. "If you spare a man, grant him the chance to redeem himself, and he refuses that chance, refuses the opportunity to contribute to the greater good, then what use is he?" Kaiser's voice sharpened, each word striking with merciless logic. "A man who will not repay his debt is worthless. He is a burden, an obstacle, something to be removed. Killing such a man is neither cruelty nor vengeance, it is the most rational, merciful thing you can do for a world that must move forward. For such a man, everything I said before goes out of the window"

Ivan swallowed, throat dry, eyes wide. Kaiser's reasoning cut through all his moral objections, his hesitation evaporating under the sheer weight of that merciless pragmatism.

Kalagrim, sensing the finality in Kaiser's words, finally broke his stubborn silence, raising his remaining hand in desperate surrender. "Stop! Gods damn you—stop!" he gasped, voice ragged, pleading, almost breaking.

Kaiser slowly lowered his sword, a faint but triumphant smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Kalagrim looked away, swallowing the bile of defeat. His voice dropped, hoarse but determined. "Promise me one thing. Promise me Martha faces justice. If you're truly Liberators, if you really represent some greater good—don't let her escape what she deserves."

Ivan immediately replied, his voice firm, almost eager in its sincerity. "Of course we will. But you—"

Kalagrim laughed then, bitter and broken, an almost hysterical bark that echoed grotesquely off the painted walls. "Good. Then everything I've done… it was worth it," he rasped, a dark, broken satisfaction etched into his voice.

His laughter subsided into a twisted, weary sigh. He slowly lifted his gaze back to Kaiser, a trace of reluctant admiration mingling with the burning hate. "I despise you, Liberators. Every one of you. You destroy lives and claim virtue while you drown in all the Sul you steal from the unfortunate." He took a breath, steadying himself, voice growing calmer. "But the people in this village—most are innocent. Some have treated me decently, despite Martha's lies. For them alone, I'll help."

Kaiser inclined his head slightly, acknowledging the concession. "Then speak."

Kalagrim steadied himself with a shuddering breath, eyes dark with memory and pain. "Those monsters... They're not natural. They're constructs, made entirely of Sol. Because of that, they're essentially immortal, at least by conventional methods. Ordinary steel is worthless. Only Sol-infused weapons or direct Sol-based attacks can destroy them. Nothing else."

Ivan blinked, visibly unnerved. Kaiser merely nodded, absorbing each word with meticulous care.

Kalagrim continued, gaze distant now, as if revisiting the horrific scenes in his mind. "They vary wildly. Some are like twisted animals—feline shapes, grotesque and distorted. Some have countless eyes—those serve as scouts, alerting the others. Then there are those with mouths everywhere, their teeth large, sharp, able to tear through armor as though it were parchment. The last type are those covered in dense, ink-like fur. They absorb blows easily. I faced one myself—I was a Heroic Liberator once, and even my blade could not end its life. It shrugged off my strongest attacks without even flinching." Kalagrim's voice shook slightly, haunted by memory. "I barely escaped."

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Kaiser's eyes narrowed slightly, assessing. "You fought one personally? Outside this house?"

Kalagrim blinked, shaken from his reverie. He looked up, confused at the question. "Yes. Why?"

Kaiser's voice was colder still. "Because Martha described you as extremely antisocial—someone who wouldn't leave their house even under threat of death. Yet you willingly confronted these monsters?"

Kalagrim's expression hardened, his face taut with bitterness. "Martha lied, as always. I did not hide from cowardice, Liberator. I hid from shame. Every gaze on the street was judgment. But when those creatures arrived, I had no choice. I stepped outside, because they were killing innocents. They were slaughtering neighbors who'd done nothing to deserve such cruelty." His voice broke with restrained anguish. "I could not simply watch it happen. Not after what I've lived through."

Kaiser absorbed the information like a sponge: methodical, deliberate, and coldly attentive. But there was a single, glaring question still burning at the back of his mind. That was a lie, he realized; he had a thousand questions, but one stood out, raw and demanding, above all the rest.

He turned his gaze on Kalagrim, eyes narrowing, voice dangerously quiet. "You say you left your house to save people. Fine. Did you succeed?" His tone cut like a razor. "Or, when you realized you couldn't kill that monster, did you abandon them? Did you run and let them die?"

Kalagrim laughed, the sound brittle and filled with something manic. "No. I didn't abandon them." He gestured around the dim, painting-choked room, his smile twisting. "They're all here. We're currently surrounded by the very people I saved.'"

Ivan's stomach dropped, his eyes darting from canvas to canvas, a dawning horror growing in his gut. "Wait… you mean… these paintings—" He couldn't even finish the sentence.

Kaiser finished it for him, his tone flat and unbothered. "Humans. These are all people." He said it as if stating the weather, his gaze sweeping the rows of pearled portraits lining every wall. "I noticed they were different, scattered all around the village, in places that made no sense for art piece to be. And each is filled with Sol. What really convinced me was the pearls: every one is different, holding a unique amount of Sol, like fingerprints."

Kalagrim chuckled again, a little louder this time, almost mocking. "Perceptive, aren't you?"

Kaiser ignored the barb entirely, pressing on, voice clinical and relentless. "Tell me: how does it happen? Are people killed first, or only dragged away? How does the transformation begin?"

Kalagrim's bravado faded. He stared at the floor, a flicker of true disgust ghosting over his features. "All I ever saw… they had to be unconscious. The monsters would pin the person down, then drive a spike straight through both shoulders. Then the thing would… melt. Just collapse over them, like hot tar, seeping into every pore." He swallowed hard, his voice barely above a whisper. "It would fuse. You could hear the bones popping, skin crackling. And when it finished, there'd be nothing left but a canvas and that goddamned pearl at the top."

Ivan was pale, barely holding himself upright, one hand clamped over his mouth. Kalagrim, for all his violence and bitterness, looked queasy as the memory played out. But Kaiser, as always, was unmoved, only blinking slowly, as if processing a particularly interesting but abstract puzzle.

Kalagrim looked at Kaiser, searching—perhaps for disgust, perhaps for some trace of sympathy. But he found nothing. That emptiness disturbed him more than the memory itself.

Kaiser broke the silence with another question, sharp as ever. "Have you tried to free them?"

Kalagrim shook his head, frustration in every line of his face. "Of course I have. I've tried everything—cutting the canvas, burning the pearls, even Sol attacks. Nothing works. It just… reforms. I don't know how to break it."

Kaiser nodded, not surprised. He muttered, almost to himself, "It's a prison. Each painting is a vessel, maintained by someone's Sol. Meaning someone made this. They're keeping it alive." His mind was already racing, mapping out probabilities and solutions, his words half-lost in thought.

Ivan, still shaky, managed to find his voice. "But… isn't that just guessing? We don't know there's a person behind this."

Kaiser shot him a look, sharp, dismissive and almost pitying. "Of course we don't know. But these things aren't natural. They aren't Grounded, Silvarin, or Human. They're made of Sol, artificial and organized. Someone created them, and if they're not simply killing, but harvesting people… then they're collecting Sol." He paused, letting the implications settle over the room. "So either we find that person, and stop them… or we drag every painting to the Liberatorium and pray someone there can break the curse."

A heavy silence hung. Kalagrim's shoulders slumped with exhaustion. Ivan kept his gaze low, eyes flickering uneasily from painting to painting.

Kaiser turned, voice clipped. "Is there anything else, Kalagrim? Anything at all? When do these monsters usually show up? Is it when something changes, is there some kind of pattern?"

Kalagrim shook his head, misery in his eyes. "I… I don't know. There's no pattern I can see. I tried to watch, but… I never figured it out."

Kaiser's voice was razor-sharp. "The numbers. Have they increased? More than a hundred now?"

"I don't know that either. They come and go. Maybe there are more, maybe some hide. I've stopped counting."

"Anything else?" Kaiser's stare was unblinking, pitiless.

Kalagrim just shook his head, defeated. "I'm afraid not."

Kaiser studied him for a long moment, red eyes narrowing with final judgment. "That's good enough. You've served your purpose. You're of no further use awake."

Without a flicker of hesitation, Kaiser delivered a precise, open-handed strike to the side of Kalagrim's head. The man slumped instantly, collapsing fully onto the floor, unconscious before he even hit the wood.

Ivan flinched, but Kaiser ignored him, already turning toward the door, voice low and cold as winter. "Let's go, Ivan. There's real work to be done."

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