Chapter 29: Red Baptism
Despite the savagery of his upbringing, despite all the years of blood-soaked training, Aric Blackthorn had never truly killed a person.
Darkspawn? Dozens. Maybe hundreds. He'd torn through them like a windstorm through bone-dry trees. But this?
This was different.
This was human.
And now she lay before him: her limbs trembling, her voice raw from sobbing, blood pouring from wounds too shallow to kill yet deep enough to break.
He watched her struggle to breathe, to speak, to understand what was coming. But his eyes, those cold, ink-drenched mirrors, betrayed nothing.
"She’s not a monster," his mind whispered.
"But neither am I."
The thoughts clashed like steel inside his skull. Countless, tangled, unvoiced.
But through it all, one truth roared louder than
