Like Father, Like Son

The execution square reeked of dust, sweat, and dried blood.

The afternoon sun beat down on the scaffold while hundreds of people crowded the square below. Some stood with folded hands, praying that justice would finally be served. Others pushed between bodies with cups of watered wine or strips of roasted meat bought from passing vendors.

To some, it was justice.

To others, it was entertainment.

Either way, they had come to watch a man die.

"KILL HIM!"

"MONSTER!"

"HE MURDERED THEM!"

The square trembled beneath hundreds of stomping feet. Dust rose with every movement until the execution platform seemed to float inside a haze of drifting sand. Stones flew from somewhere in the crowd. One struck the prisoner's shoulder; another shattered against the wooden post behind him.

Someone spat at his feet.

Others screamed curses loud enough to tear their throats raw.

His hands were bound behind his back, his face swollen beneath layers of bruising. Blood had dried along one side of his mouth and continued to run slowly from a fresh cut across his cheek.

Still, he never looked at the crowd.

He searched for only one face.

"Dad!"

The man's eyes found him.

For the first time since being dragged onto the platform, his expression softened.

He smiled.

It was a tired smile, the kind that seemed to carry a weight far heavier than the chains around his wrists.

Kah pushed forward, but the bodies around him were too large. Adults pressed shoulder to shoulder, blocking the way. He could barely see between them.

"Dad!"

The executioner stepped forward and lifted his blade.

"The criminal has confessed to the murders of forty-three innocent citizens."

Cheers erupted before the sentence had even finished.

"Justice!"

"Finally!"

"Execute him!"

The man closed his eyes for only a moment.

When he opened them again, they immediately returned to his son.

"Kah."

The boy froze.

Around him, the crowd continued shouting, completely unaware that dozens of ordinary-looking townspeople had gone still.

Kah noticed them only because they were the only ones not moving.

Men.

Women.

An old merchant.

A young mother holding a child.

They stood scattered throughout the square, their bodies perfectly motionless while everyone around them screamed and shoved.

Not one of them blinked.

They were watching his father.

Waiting.

Then, one by one, their heads tilted.

Too far.

Far enough that bone should have snapped.

Their smiles widened.

Not with joy.

With hunger.

Kah stopped breathing.

The executioner rested the edge of his blade against the prisoner's neck.

"Any final words?"

The man ignored him.

"Kah..."

His voice was barely louder than the wind.

"I'm sorry."

The boy's tears stopped.

Confusion replaced them.

"...Why?"

His father shut his eyes.

Not because he feared death.

Because he feared what he was about to do.

"I'm sorry..."

His fingers tightened against the ropes binding his wrists.

"...but I have to do this."

The wind died.

The shouting seemed to disappear with it.

For one impossible second, the entire square became still.

The dust hanging in the air stopped drifting. The heat pressing against Kah's skin seemed to vanish. Even the hundreds of people surrounding him faded into something distant and unreal.

There was only his father.

And him.

The man looked directly into Kah's eyes.

Something passed between them.

Kah couldn't see it, but he felt it.

A crushing weight pressed behind his eyes.

He gasped.

His vision blurred.

The world stretched and twisted, faces dissolving into shapes that no longer made sense.

Then the people in the crowd changed.

The motionless merchant's eyes became empty black pits.

The young mother's skin split down the center of her face, revealing rows of wet teeth beneath.

A man's smile stretched from one ear to the other.

Another creature stood inside the shape of a woman, its limbs bending backward beneath borrowed skin.

Dozens of them.

Monsters hidden among ordinary people.

Watching.

Waiting.

Hungry.

Kah stumbled backward.

"What..."

No one reacted.

A woman beside him continued screaming for the execution as though nothing had happened.

Kah blinked.

The monsters were gone.

Ordinary faces filled the square again.

"KILL HIM!"

"KILL HIM!"

The chant grew louder.

Kah looked back toward the scaffold.

His father's eyes were still on him.

The executioner's blade flashed beneath the sun.

Then—

Darkness.

A scream tore across the square.

Years later, Kah would never remember whether it had belonged to his father...

or to him.

He remembered only the final expression on his father's face.

Not fear.

Not regret.

Only sorrow.

Desert wind carried thin streams of sand through the empty streets of a dying town.

Weathered buildings leaned beneath faded wooden signs that creaked whenever the wind changed direction. Sun-bleached shutters hung crooked from rusted hinges, and nothing along the road looked as though it had been repaired in years.

Outside the saloon, a wanted poster flapped against a crooked post.

WANTED

Beneath the word was a rough charcoal sketch.

The face had been copied and redrawn so many times, by so many different hands, that it barely resembled a person anymore. Rain had washed away part of the jaw. Sunlight had faded the eyes into dark smudges.

Only two things remained perfectly clear.

Name: Kah

Dead or Alive

A traveler stopped in front of the poster.

His hood concealed most of his face.

He stared at the drawing for a moment, expression unreadable, before pushing through the saloon doors.

Warm air rolled over him.

Laughter.

Music.

The sour smell of cheap beer mixed with old wood, sweat, smoke, and something greasy cooking somewhere in the back.

No one paid much attention to him at first.

Not until he sat down.

The stool beside him scraped quietly across the floor as the man occupying it picked up his drink and moved farther away.

The traveler didn't react.

"A beer."

The bartender silently filled a mug and pushed it across the counter.

Behind him, conversations continued.

"Another one disappeared last night."

"Told you it'd happen."

"It's that murderer."

"The son."

A burly man near the center of the room slammed his mug onto the table hard enough to send beer splashing across the wood.

"Just like his old man."

Several men nodded.

"They should've killed the brat when they killed his father."

The traveler lifted his mug and drank.

"If I ever find that Kah..."

The burly man cracked his knuckles.

"I'll snap his neck like a dry twig."

Laughter rolled through the saloon.

The traveler lowered his mug.

"...You talk too much."

The laughter died.

One conversation after another stopped until nearly every face in the room had turned toward him.

The burly man's smile disappeared.

"What did you say?"

The traveler didn't bother looking over.

"I said..."

He took another sip.

"...you talk too much."

The giant pushed himself away from the table.

"You got a death wish?"

He swung.

The traveler moved barely an inch.

The fist cut through empty air.

His own punch landed straight into the man's stomach before anyone realized he'd moved.

The giant folded with a strangled gasp.

A second strike snapped his head sideways and sent him crashing through a wooden table, splintering it beneath his weight.

The saloon erupted.

"You bastard!"

Chairs scraped against the floor as people jumped to their feet.

The giant staggered upright, blood running from the corner of his mouth.

Before he could charge again, the front door creaked open.

A frail old beggar shuffled inside.

Filthy rags hung loosely from his narrow shoulders. His back curved with age, forcing him to lean heavily on one side as he moved.

He stopped near the burly man.

"Please..."

His voice trembled.

"...just a little food."

The bartender sighed.

"Get out."

The beggar didn't move.

The burly man spat blood onto the floor.

"You picked the wrong time to beg."

He grabbed the old man by the collar.

The traveler quietly lowered his mug.

Something wasn't right.

The old man's shadow stretched across the floor behind him.

Then moved.

A heartbeat too late.

The traveler sighed.

"Damn it..."

The beggar slowly lifted his head.

Only one person in the room saw what changed.

His eyes had become pools of endless black with tiny golden pupils floating at their centers. The corners of his mouth pulled wider, stretching beyond the limits of a human face.

The burly man's grip loosened.

"What the..."

The demon moved.

Its arm shot forward.

Bones cracked.

The giant flew across the room as though struck by a battering ram, smashing through chairs and crashing into the far wall.

People screamed.

Tables overturned.

Bottles shattered against the floor.

The creature slowly straightened.

To everyone else, the starving old beggar was still standing there.

But Kah saw what occupied the borrowed shape.

Its spine twisted upward with a series of wet, sickening pops. Long limbs unfolded beneath sagging flesh, and curved horns rose until they nearly brushed the ceiling.

Its impossible smile widened.

Kah set his mug on the counter.

"...Seriously?"

The demon's golden pupils fixed on him.

"...You can see me."

Kah's hand closed around the hilt at his side.

Steel whispered from its sheath.

The demon lunged.

Kah stepped once and swung.

The blade passed through flesh before the creature could even raise its claws.

For a heartbeat, the saloon went completely still.

The demon's grin disappeared.

Its body collapsed.

And just like that, the monster was gone.

To everyone else in the room, a frail homeless man lay dead on the floor.

Blood spread beneath his body.

Someone screamed.

"He killed him!"

"It's Kah!"

"Call the guards!"

Kah looked around.

Not one grateful face.

Not one person wondering why the old man had thrown someone across the room with impossible strength.

Only fear.

Only hatred.

He knew those expressions.

He had seen them before.

Twenty years ago.

Outside, a church bell began to ring.

Once.

Then again.

The town guard.

Kah pulled his hood lower.

"...Same as always."

He stepped into the street as the saloon doors burst open behind him and whistles echoed between the buildings.

By the time the guards forced their way through the crowd and entered the saloon, the most wanted man in town was already gone.