Chapter 2:
Chapter 2 The Kindness Of The Ruthless
The Last Prayer Part 1 : Send Us the Devil
Behind her, shouts rose. The boots of soldiers hammered against the earth, closer with every heartbeat.
“Find her!” one bellowed. “Don’t let her reach the river!”
Her lungs felt as though they would burst. She pushed herself up, ready to run again—until she saw it.
A shadow ahead.
It stood still. Broad-shouldered. Silent. Watching her.
Her blood froze. For a heartbeat, she thought she had run into Death itself. The air around him seemed heavier, colder, as if the night bent itself to his presence.
The girl staggered back, but her strength gave way. She collapsed again, trembling, eyes wide. “Please…” Her voice broke. “Don’t… don’t let them take me back.”
She crawled toward him without knowing why, desperation stronger than fear. Her fingers clutched the rough fabric of his coat, gripping it like the last rope before drowning.
The torchlight behind her caught his face.
Handsome. Too handsome for the mines, too sharp to belong to the enslaved. Not the beauty of a savior, but the cruel perfection of a blade—something forged to kill. His eyes were black fire, steady and merciless, fixed not on her but on the men closing in.
She whispered, barely able to breathe:“Who… who are you?”
He said nothing.
The silence pressed harder than any answer. The kind of silence that made her heartbeat louder in her own ears, that made the approaching soldiers’ shouts sound faint, distant, irrelevant.
Her grip on him tightened. She shook, not from the cold, but from the terrible certainty that she had clutched onto something far more dangerous than the men chasing her.
And yet… something in her chest eased.
Because even in his silence, in his stillness, she felt it. Not hope. Not comfort. Something darker. Something that made the fear of the soldiers behind her seem smaller.
The Devil didn’t need to speak. His very presence said enough.
---
The shouts grew nearer. The soldiers’ torches licked the night, throwing their laughter across the empty fields.
The girl buried her face against his back, tears burning her cheeks. She had no words left, only trembling breaths.
The figure finally moved. Slowly. Deliberately. He took one step forward, then another, placing himself between her and the oncoming flames. His shadow swallowed hers.
The soldiers saw him now. They slowed. Some cursed under their breath. One spat, pretending courage he didn’t feel.
The girl felt his muscles shift beneath her clutch, calm and unhurried, as though he had already measured every man chasing them and found them unworthy of fear.
And in that moment, she understood one truth with bone-deep certainty:
Whatever he was—man, monster, or Devil—the night did not belong to the soldiers anymore.It belonged to him.
The first soldier raised his torch high. The firelight caught the stranger’s face, and for the first time, they saw him clearly.
Not a slave.
Not a farmer.
Not a man begging for life.
His expression was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that only comes before violence.
“Who the hell are you?” the soldier barked, trying to sound braver than he felt. His boots dragged against the gravel as he stopped. Others formed a half-circle, rifles lifting, bayonets gleaming under the moon.
The girl pressed her face harder into the Devil’s back, fingers digging into his coat. She whispered, trembling, “They’ll kill us…”
He didn’t answer.
He stepped forward instead.
---
The first gun cracked.
A muzzle flash split the dark.
But the man was already moving. His hand snapped up, caught the soldier’s wrist, and twisted it until the bone tore through the skin with a wet snap. The rifle clattered to the ground.
Before the soldier could scream, the Devil rammed the broken arm’s jagged bone straight into his throat. Blood sprayed in a hot arc, steaming in the cold air. The body convulsed and dropped.
Silence. Then chaos.
The other soldiers shouted and surged forward
The Devil didn’t retreat. He advanced.
A bayonet thrust toward him. He stepped inside the strike, slammed his knee into the man’s gut, and drove an elbow into his jaw. Bone shattered like glass. The soldier’s head snapped back, limp before he hit the ground.
Another swung his torch. The fire whooshed past the Devil’s face, searing the air. He caught the man by the throat, lifted him off the ground with one arm, and squeezed. The soldier’s boots kicked helplessly, his hands clawing. Then came the crunch—cartilage collapsing, windpipe crushed. The body went limp, and he tossed it aside like rotten cloth.
The girl gagged behind him, her hands covering her mouth. She couldn’t look away. Couldn’t breathe.
The Devil moved without hesitation. Without mercy.
One soldier screamed and charged with a bayonet. The Devil stepped to the side, grabbed his head with both hands, and twisted. The sound of vertebrae snapping echoed across the riverbank. The soldier dropped, his face frozen in shock, eyes staring at nothing.
Another lunged with a blade. The Devil caught his wrist, bent it backward until the knife turned inward, and forced it through the man’s own chest. The blade slid between ribs, scraping bone. The soldier’s scream was short, choked off by blood flooding his lungs.
The Devil let him fall and turned, eyes burning, his face splattered red.
--
The ground grew slick beneath their boots. Bodies littered the dust, twitching, bleeding into the dirt. The torches sputtered, their flames shaking as if even fire was afraid to burn too close to him.
One soldier remained. He was young, barely older than a boy. His rifle shook in his hands. Sweat poured down his face.
He pointed the barrel at the Devil’s chest. “S-stay back… stay—”
The Devil walked forward.
The boy fired. The shot cracked the night, echoing across the river. Smoke rose from the muzzle.
The Devil didn’t stop. The bullet had grazed his shoulder, tearing cloth, but he moved through the smoke like a shadow that refused to break.
The boy dropped the rifle, fell to his knees, sobbing. “Please! I don’t want to—”
The Devil crouched in front of him, silent. He placed a hand on the boy’s trembling chin and lifted his face until their eyes met.
And then, with one swift motion, he slammed his palm against the side of the boy’s skull. The head twisted unnaturally. Silence.
The body slumped.
The riverbank was quiet again. Only the girl’s ragged breathing broke the silence. She had seen soldiers butcher men before. She had seen cruelty, hunger, torture. But never this.
This wasn’t cruelty. This wasn’t murder.
This was execution.
She realized her hands were still clutching his coat. Her knuckles were white. She tried to let go, but her fingers refused.
He stood there, chest rising slowly, blood dripping from his hands. His face was unreadable. Calm. Empty.
But his silence was louder than screams.
And the girl understood something bone-deep, something that made her skin crawl and her pulse hammer in terror:
If the Devil truly walked this earth—
he was standing in front of her.
The riverbank was silent, save for the sound of corpses settling into the dust. The girl’s hands trembled against his coat. She finally forced herself to look—at the blood dripping from his fingers, at the broken bodies sprawled like discarded dolls.
Her throat was dry, but words escaped anyway.
“Why…?” she whispered. “Why would you… someone like you… save me?”
He turned his head slightly, just enough for her to see his profile in the dying torchlight. His jawline was sharp, streaked with blood. His eyes were not soft, not even human—they burned like coals dug from the deepest pit.
She swallowed hard. “You… you’re ruthless. Merciless. I saw you kill them without blinking. How can a Devil like you show kindness?”
For the first time, he spoke.
His voice was low, steady, not raised—but it carried like a blade dragged across stone.
“Kindness…” he said slowly, tasting the word as though it were poison.
“Do you know what it truly means?”
The girl’s breath hitched.
“Most people believe kindness is smiling. Forgiving. Helping every lost soul. But that… is weakness.”
He stepped forward, over a corpse, his boots leaving red prints in the dirt.
“Kindness is not about helping anyone who cries for it. True kindness is selective. It is cold. It is the strength to help only the desperate, only the ones who cannot rise without a hand. To give it to everyone is not kindness—it is betrayal of those who deserve it most.”
His eyes shifted to hers. She shivered.
“I never help anyone. Remember that. My kindness is simpler: I do not kill the ones whose goal is the same as mine.
The girl gasped softly. “Then… then why me? Why not let them take me?”
His gaze did not waver.
“Because you are not them.”
He gestured to the corpses with a slow movement of his hand.
“To the innocent, I can be a shield. To the desperate, a hand. But to the wicked… I am their Devil. Their punishment. Their end.”
His voice deepened, each word sharper than the last:
“If they are ruthless, I will be worse.
If they are cruel, I will be crueler.
If they are monsters, I will be the Devil they fear in their nightmares.”
He stepped closer. She had to tilt her head up to keep his gaze. His shadow swallowed hers in the torchlight.
“That is kindness. Not soft. Not gentle. A kindness written in blood.”
The girl couldn’t breathe. Her heart thrashed against her ribs, but it wasn’t only fear anymore. It was something heavier. Something that gnawed at her—an instinct telling her that this man was not lying, that his words were not madness but law.
Her lips trembled. “Then… what is your goal?”
He didn’t answer. Not yet. His eyes turned toward the river, black waters reflecting the stars like scattered shards of glass.
And for a moment—just a moment—his silence was louder than his words.
The wind hissed along the river, carrying with it the smell of iron and wet stone. The girl stood frozen, his words still echoing in her skull.
Kindness written in blood.
The phrase clung to her bones like frost.
She tried to speak, to protest, but her voice was frail. “If that is kindness… then what are you? Savior? Or executioner?”
His lips curved—neither smile nor frown. Something colder.
“Neither.”
He stepped past her, his boots crunching over gravel and ash. His voice followed, steady, inexorable:
“A savior dies for others. An executioner kills on command. I am neither. I choose.”
His eyes cut back to hers, sharp enough to flay her soul.
“I choose who lives. I choose who dies. That is my kindness. That is my curse.”
---
They walked along the riverbank, the corpses behind them already fading into shadow. Her legs wobbled with every step, but she followed. She couldn’t explain why. Perhaps terror chained her to him, or perhaps something worse—an instinct that told her straying from him meant death, not survival.
At times, she thought she saw his hand twitch, almost as if remembering something. His knuckles flexed, then stilled. His eyes darkened as though looking at someone far away, someone who wasn’t there.
A flicker of memory tore through his mind—
A woman’s hand clutching his arm.
A boy’s scream fading into chains.
His father’s head falling into the dirt.
His jaw tightened. He forced it down, buried it in silence.
The girl didn’t notice, too busy clutching her arms around herself. But she felt the air shift around him—heavier, colder, filled with ghosts.
After what felt like hours, the path veered from the river. Rocks jutted upward, broken teeth in the earth. The Devil pressed his hand against a slab of stone and pushed. It shifted with a groan of hidden hinges, revealing a narrow passage.
The girl’s eyes widened. “What is this…?”
His voice was flat. “A place they have forgotten. A place where the hunted can breathe.”
He stepped inside without hesitation. She followed, every instinct screaming against the dark, but the alternative—the soldiers, the Lords—was worse.
The passage opened into a cavern beneath the rocks. Water dripped from the ceiling, echoing in the gloom. In the far corner, a few rusted tools lay abandoned. Crates broken, cobwebs stretched across beams. A forgotten shelter of some past rebellion, untouched for years.
For the first time, she realized how quiet it was. The river’s roar muffled by stone, the world above sealed away.
The Devil set down a broken lantern he had taken from the corpses. Flame flickered, shadows sprawling across the walls like restless spirits.
The girl hugged herself tighter. She wanted to ask more, to demand answers—who he was, why he fought, what he sought. But his silence was crushing.
Finally, she whispered, her voice trembling:
“Why… why did you save me?”
He looked at her, eyes unreadable, voice low:
“Because you are not my enemy. And until you are, my kindness will spare you.”
The words chilled her more than the cave’s damp air.
He turned away, sinking into the shadows as though they were his true home. His final words before the silence settled burned in her ears like a brand:
“Remember this. I am not your savior. I am your Devil. And for now… that is enough.”
The lantern sputtered, casting the cavern in half-darkness. The girl sat against the wall, hugging her knees, trembling—but not daring to flee.
Outside, the Krishna river roared on. Above, the Lords still ruled with chains and blood. But beneath the stone, in the forgotten dark, something far worse had arrived.
Not a savior. Not a saint.
But The Devil.
And the night belonged to him.
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