ShadowBound: The Need For Power-Chapter 497: Kill... Or Get Killed

The room exploded into madness the instant Marcus vanished. One heartbeat—he was there, standing before a horde of snarling mercenaries. The next—he was gone, swallowed by shadows. Then, like a phantom tearing through flesh, he reappeared amidst the men, and blood painted the air.

His twin blades gleamed with dark myst, humming with life as they cut through the first wave. The steel kissed skin, tore through muscle, and shattered bone. The sound of it—wet and heavy—echoed beneath the wooden rafters.

A mercenary barely had time to raise his axe before Marcus appeared at his flank, moving like smoke given form. The curved blade sang as it sliced clean through his throat, and his body dropped before his brain could even register death.

"Too slow," Marcus muttered with a chuckle, already gone again.

He emerged behind another, his left sword thrusting through the man’s spine and out his chest. The mercenary gasped, blood bubbling from his mouth. Marcus leaned in close to his ear, voice low and mocking. "Next time, maybe don’t blink."

Then he twisted the blade and yanked it free.

The floor became a canvas of crimson, slick with blood and fragments of bone. Bodies piled atop one another, and Marcus—dark myst trailing off his body like ghostly tendrils—moved through them with fluid precision. Each step was a calculated dance between life and death.

A mercenary swung a broadsword at him, a clean horizontal slash. Marcus ducked beneath it, spun, and severed both of the man’s legs in one motion. The man screamed as he fell, his weapon clattering uselessly. Marcus kicked him backward into another mercenary, using the momentum to leap forward and drive his blade into the second man’s chest.

"Two for one," Marcus said with a laugh, twisting his weapon as he wrenched it free.

Someone behind him fired a crossbow bolt. Without even looking, Marcus tilted his head slightly, the projectile grazing past his mask. He turned, dark mist coiling around his arm, and flicked his wrist. Shadows erupted from the floor, latching onto the crossbowman’s legs and dragging him screaming into the ground, his body swallowed whole into the darkness.

Another swung at Marcus’s back. This time he didn’t vanish. Instead, he pivoted, catching the blade with his own and stepping in close. Their weapons locked for an instant. Marcus’s eyes gleamed with that eerie, unshakable calm. "Cute effort," he said. Then, in one quick motion, he headbutted the man. The crunch of breaking nose was followed by a savage upward slash that cleaved through jaw and skull.

Blood sprayed across Marcus’s cloak, yet he didn’t flinch—if anything, the grin behind his mask only grew wider.

Around him, the mercenaries hesitated. Fear began to creep into their movements. The once-coordinated line had devolved into chaos—each man fighting for his own life, not for victory.

Marcus blurred again—appearing above them this time, his silhouette outlined against the lantern light. He descended like a reaper, twisting midair. His twin swords carved a wide arc, and three heads rolled free from their shoulders before his boots even touched the ground.

He landed smoothly, dark myst rippling beneath him like a living thing. "Oh, come on!" he barked out, his tone half-mocking, half-laughing. "There were a hundred of you a minute ago. Don’t tell me this is all you’ve got?!"

One desperate man roared, charging him with dual daggers. Marcus met him halfway. Steel clashed with steel, sparks flying as their weapons collided again and again. Marcus leaned backward, ducking under a slash, then flipped his grip and countered with a clean, slicing uppercut that opened the man’s chest from hip to shoulder.

The man stumbled, gurgling on blood. Marcus gave a soft, disappointed hum. "You had good form too."

With a flick of his wrist, he sent a wave of dark myst slashing through the air. The energy burst outward like an invisible blade, cutting down another row of attackers in a single motion. The scent of iron thickened in the air.

The mercenaries faltered—hesitation replacing bravado.

Marcus could feel it—the shift in their rhythm, their fear coiling in their steps. He thrived in it. It was intoxicating. The pulse of combat filled him with a savage thrill he hadn’t felt in months. His muscles burned, but his grin widened.

Every move he made was an art form—controlled chaos, deliberate precision. He moved not like a man, but a shadow sculpted to kill.

Then, amidst the carnage, his eyes flicked to the side. Through the blur of movement, he noticed three mercenaries breaking off from the group, slipping toward the far end of the room—toward Galen.

The prince was still struggling to his feet, breath ragged, myst only beginning to stir beneath his skin. The realization made Marcus pause for half a second.

He watched as the three men closed in on Galen, weapons drawn. One held a dagger, the other a spear, and the last—a spiked club.

Marcus tilted his head slightly, exhaling through his nose. "Tch... of course they’d go for him."

For a moment, his fingers twitched on the hilt of his blade, the instinct to protect flashing through him. But then he stopped himself, straightening slightly as his tone shifted to something almost indifferent.

"...No. Let’s see what you do, kid."

His voice was low, barely audible under the chaos. "Now’s your choice—kill... or get killed."

He turned back toward the main crowd just as another wave of mercenaries surged at him. Without a word, he vanished again—his form blurring, reappearing behind them in an instant.

His blades carved through their ranks like whispers of death. A step, a twist, a slash. The rhythm of his movement was flawless—he anticipated every strike, adapted to every shift, flowing like water through their formation.

A heavy axe came down from above—he sidestepped, letting the weapon bury itself into the floor, then spun and severed the wielder’s arm before burying his other blade into the man’s ribs.

A spear thrust came from his right—he caught the shaft with his bare hand, ripped it from the attacker’s grip, and drove it through his throat.

Another tried to stab him from behind—Marcus ducked low, then with a backward stab without looking, impaled the man clean through the abdomen.

Every kill was clean, effortless—like breathing. And all the while, his taunts never stopped.

"You swing like a drunk farmer!" Slash.

"Did your mother teach you that footwork?" Stab.

"Try aiming next time—oh wait, never mind."

Blood drenched the floor, painting the walls, dripping from the ceiling beams. The smell of it was suffocating.

Still, Marcus stood unfazed, his dark myst swirling around him in ribbons of living shadow, every tendril responding to his pulse. He looked like something torn straight from nightmare—half man, half myth, moving too fast for the eye to follow, too precise for chaos to touch.

And amidst it all, the sound of Galen’s struggle rang faintly from the far end of the room—the clash of steel, the heavy panting of someone forced to make a choice.

Marcus didn’t look back, but a faint smirk tugged at the corner of his lips beneath the mask. "Atta boy," he muttered under his breath, before turning back to the next wave of terrified mercenaries and stepping forward into their screams.

***

Moments later, silence fell over the warehouse—a silence so heavy it felt alive. The air was thick with the copper tang of blood, and the once-spacious room was now a graveyard of mutilated corpses. Bodies upon bodies were strewn across the floor, stacked atop one another in grotesque heaps. Blood slicked the wooden boards, seeped into the cracks, and splattered across the walls in broad, violent strokes. Even the ceiling beams bore the evidence of slaughter—severed limbs dangling limply from them like macabre decorations.

The devastation was total with no movement or breath. Only the slow drip of blood hitting the floor echoed in the dim, flickering light.

And amidst that sea of death, where the scent of iron and death mingled thickly, sat a lone figure—Marcus.

He perched atop the mound of bodies like a dark monarch upon his throne of carnage. His hood and mask had receded, revealing his dark, messy bun and strands of hair matted against his temples from sweat and battle. Shadows still coiled lazily around his frame, retreating into the dim air as if reluctant to leave him. His chest rose and fell with heavy, uneven breaths, every exhale fogging faintly against the blood-tainted air.

His eyes—cold, dark, and glimmering faintly beneath the lantern light—swept across the aftermath with detached amusement.

"Wow," he murmured, voice low and hoarse with exhaustion. "I almost forgot how much I missed this."

A faint smirk curved his lips as he leaned forward slightly, resting his forearm on his knee. "Killing bastards down here in the underworld..." He exhaled a laugh, dark and content. "There’s just something pure about it, isn’t there? Like therapy—but louder."

He tilted his head slightly, his expression unreadable behind that cruel amusement as he surveyed his own handiwork. The shadows whispered faintly, responding to the rhythm of his pulse, alive in their own eerie way.

Then—a sound.

A soft, broken groan cut through the silence, faint but distinct.

Marcus’s smirk faltered, and his gaze turned toward the sound. His eyes found movement, weak and shaky, near the far end of the room.

Galen.

The prince stood barely upright, one hand pressed against the doorway of the chamber where he’d been bound. His body trembled from exhaustion, blood running from small wounds, but his eyes were alive.

Marcus stared for a long moment, then a spark of humor flickered through his gaze. Slowly, he rose to his feet atop the mound of corpses, the soft squelch of blood beneath his boots echoing faintly in the hollowed silence.

"Well, would you look at that..." he drawled, voice carrying through the room. "Seems the prince does have some will to live after all."

A low chuckle followed his words, dark yet oddly proud, as he stared down at Galen through the haze of death and dust.