Roeyachi

working on a dark, gritty action story where the combat is the main focus.

CHAPTER 1 -

A thousand years ago, the world broke.

Something swept across the continents so silently, no one realized it until it was far too late. Every creature born with fang or feather or fin shuddered beneath the same curse.

Backs straightened.
Spines twisted upright.
Wings folded into arms.
Raw instinct sharpened into thought.

Beasts became something else.
Something cunning.
Something organized.

Humanity staggered on the edge of extinction in those early years, clinging to survival by blood, grit, and desperate invention.

And now, deep within the wilds that once belonged to humans alone, the echoes of that transformation rang beneath the night sky.

Sparks flared.
Steel scraped against talon.
The forest sang with violence.

A young man moved within that storm.

Roeyachi.

---

He felt like prey caught in a spider’s web.

He stood with his sword in hand, his breath thin in his throat. Ahead of him, the beast clung to the trunk of an oak, claws sunk deep with a silent precision that made it seem weightless, as if the world had simply stopped trying to pull it down.

Its eyes gleamed.

Then it sprang. A blur of sinew and claw. Talons streaked for his throat.

Roeyachi raised his sword just in time, steel catching only the edge of the strike. The impact hissed across the blade as the beast tore past him in a flash of fur and motion.

He spun.

Nothing.

The creature had vanished again.

His breath slowed.
Sight sharpened.
Every sound became a threat.

A branch snapped to his left.
A bush rustled on his right.
Behind him, a single leaf drifted down, spinning lazily through the air as if mocking his panic.

Bark cracked to his left. Loud. Close.

He turned just in time to see the creature already lunging.

I won't make it.

A streak of motion carved past his shoulder. Cloth ripped. Flesh opened. Warm blood beaded along his skin as the beast landed behind him, its movements too fluid, too deliberate, too silent.

It leapt again, vanishing into the canopy, swallowed by the world it belonged to.

Roeyachi dragged in a slow breath.

Ten minutes.
Ten minutes of chasing shadows.
Ten minutes of bleeding for every heartbeat he managed to keep.

If he kept fighting like this, the whole forest would hear. The smaller ones would creep closer. The bigger ones would come to claim a corpse.

He needed to slow it down.

His left hand dipped toward his belt. Only two kunai sat in the pouch. His fingers brushed the cold metal, weighing the risk, the consequence, the hope.

A soft tremor rippled through the bush ahead.

Roeyachi moved first. His arm snapped forward, the white runes of the kunai catching the moonlight for a single breath before the translucent crystal in its pommel flared into pale brilliance. The projectile screamed through the air, too fast for human eyes to track.

The beast lunged from the brush.
A blur of muscle.
A twist of bone.
A predator born in calamity.

It saw the kunai.
But it didn’t falter.

Roeyachi watched the beast’s own crystals awaken beneath its skin. The red shards housed deep in its flesh pulsed once, then raced through its arm like liquid light. The creature’s grey hide writhed as the crystal slithered under it, fat cords bulging grotesquely from shoulder to wrist. Veins swelled. Muscle convulsed. A crystalline spike tore out through its palm, a dagger grown from its own body.

The beast seized that blade midair.

A single, violent swipe.

The kunai was struck aside, sent spinning into the dark.

Roeyachi smiled.

Because behind that first kunai, hidden in its wake like a hunter stalking its prey, came the second.

Red runes pulsed along its length, glowing like buried embers. Flames crawled the blade, rising from tip to hilt in a hungry sprint. When the fire finally kissed the red crystal locked inside the pommel’s socket, the air itself seemed to tighten.

A heartbeat.
A flicker.
Then the crystal ignited.

The explosion ripped through the forest.
Light. Heat. Pressure.
A roaring impact that swallowed sound itself.

The beast took the blast in full. Its body folded backward, limbs thrashing, a cloud of scorched earth throwing itself skyward.

Roeyachi felt the shockwave reach him a moment later. His boots left the ground. The world spun. His spine slammed against a tree trunk with a wooden crack that tore the air from his lungs.

Blood splattered from his mouth as he slid to the roots. His vision blurred. His head swayed.

Somewhere through the haze, he saw the beast rise in the smoke.
Slow.
Angry.
Alive.

Its crystalline spines glowed like molten rubies. Its silhouette flared red against the drifting ash.

Roeyachi forced himself onto his knees. Every bone shook. His fingers dug into the dirt.

He had hurt it.

But hurting was not killing.

And it was coming back.

The smoke thinned.
Slow threads of grey peeled away to reveal a shape inside, hunched but unbroken. Heat shimmered across its frame. Burnt flesh peeled like old bark, then knit itself back together with a slow, pulsing rhythm.

Roeyachi tensed.

That rhythm…
It matched the one crawling through his own shoulder.

He glanced down. The torn flesh he had ignored moments ago wriggled as fibers drew together, blood thickening into new skin. The sensation crawled beneath his ribs. He forced his breathing steady.

Not now.
Focus on the beast.

A low growl curled through the clearing.

The creature lifted its head.
Ash drifted from its horns.
Cracks in its chest glowed faintly like coals breathing in the dark.

Then its free hand flexed.

Crystals buried deep in the muscle surged forward, racing under the skin in jagged lines. The flesh along its forearm rose and split as another crystalline blade erupted from its palm. Longer than the first. Sharper.

It was dual-wielding now.

Roeyachi barely had time to set his stance.

The beast lunged.

A flash of red eyes.
A streak of crystal.
The forest seemed to close around them.

Roeyachi gritted his teeth, forced his battered legs to move, dragged his body upright in one rough motion and hurled himself forward to meet it.

Steel and crystal, breath and fury, rushing toward collision.

Darkness swallowed the moment.

And the chapter ended there.

CHAPTER 2 -

A soft voice broke through the memory.

"Then what happened next?"

Roeyachi blinked, the roar of the explosion fading from his ears. The forest. The claws. The heat. All of it slipped away as his vision focused on the dim wooden room around him.

His aunt sat across the low table, wrapped in her worn shawl, her pale eyes fixed on him with a mix of worry and stubborn curiosity. The bowl of herbal broth between them steamed quietly.

Roeyachi looked down at his hands. They were steady now.
They hadn’t been an hour ago.

"I charged it," he answered. The words felt heavier when spoken aloud. "I didn’t have much of a choice."

His aunt exhaled. Half relief. Half dread.

"You always have a choice," she muttered.

He wished that were true.

---

Roeyachi rose from the mat, joints stiff from the earlier clash. Their home greeted him with its familiar silence. A cramped cottage of worn pine beams. A single lantern trembling against the draft. Shelves half-empty. Walls patched more times than he could count.

Everything they owned felt fragile.
Everything they needed felt distant.

He walked to the small table by the window and set down the coin pouch. It barely made a sound.

His master’s eyes flicked to it. “Is that… all?”

He hesitated. The memory of the refiner’s smirk flashed through his mind. The way the man weighed the crystals, plucked the best of them, then casually declared half were “blemished” and therefore worthless.
Roeyachi could still feel the heat in his chest, the urge to reach across the counter and—
No. That would only make things worse.

He forced a shrug. “The beast was young. Its crystals weren’t fully formed.”
A lie wrapped in calm.
A lie coated in shame.

His master studied him for a moment. Her gaze was sharp enough to cut, but she looked away before it could wound him. “I see.”
Not fully believing.
Not wanting to push.

Roeyachi loosened the pouch strings and tipped the contents onto the table. A handful of dull coins rolled outward, tapping against the wood with hollow little clinks.

“Still,” he said, keeping his tone light, “it’s enough for supper tonight.”

“That it is,” she whispered.

“And the rest…” He gathered the coins again, careful not to let the tremor in his fingers show. “We can put aside. Little by little. For the new home.”

Her expression softened, just barely. The kind of softness that came from endurance rather than hope.

“Roeyachi,” she said quietly, “you don’t have to carry everything alone.”

He turned toward the crooked window. Outside, the moon hung low, silvering the dirt road and the dark treeline beyond. Somewhere out there, the beasts roamed. And somewhere beyond them, the people who wanted him dead.

“It’s fine,” he said, voice steady. “This is nothing.”

But as he touched the healing wound on his shoulder, warm under the bandage, he felt the truth pulse beneath his skin. His strange blood. His strange strength. The thing he could never tell her.

He must fight.

For food on the table.
For a roof that didn’t leak.
For the woman who risked everything for him.
For the life they were trying desperately to hold together.

Little by little.
Hunt by hunt.
Until it finally meant something.

---

Roeyachi forced a breath through his lungs, letting the tension ease from his shoulders. “Come,” he said, turning toward her. “Let’s get some air. We need dinner anyway.”

She nodded, her eyes softening. He walked behind her and took hold of the handles, guiding her forward. The wooden chair creaked as it rolled out of the cottage, the lantern’s dying glow settling behind them. Only then did the illusion fall away. Not a normal chair. A wheelchair. Faded paint. Worn wheels. Patches where the metal met wood like badly healed scars.

They joined the early evening crowd on the main street. Vendor calls rose above the shuffle of boots and hooves. A pair of guards laughed near the gate. Children darted between stalls, their shadows flitting through lanternlight.

They passed a crystal refinement shop first. Glass cases glittered with shards harvested from beasts, each sliver humming faintly with color. Apprentices hammered chisel to core, sparks rolling across the floor.

Next came the armor shop. Breastplates hung from rafters like silent sentinels. A halberd gleamed in the window, engraved with fresh white runes.

Then the auction hall. Its marble steps were crowded even at this hour. Fortune seekers. Haggling. Greed thick as incense.

A weapons enchanter’s tent stood across from it. Runes floated above the counter, little specters of light waiting for a socketed blade to call them home.

Each sight tugged at him. These were the tools other hunters used to grow stronger. Faster. Richer. And there he was, counting coins to buy meat for supper.

A rough grinding sound snapped through his thoughts. Wood dragging against stone. The wheelchair stuttered once, then again. Roeyachi glanced down. One wheel wobbled at the bolt.

“It sounds worse today,” he said quietly.

His aunt lifted her chin toward a nearby forge. “Should we check it? Before it breaks entirely?”

He nodded and steered them toward the blacksmith.

Inside, heat pressed against their skin. The smith lifted his gaze from a glowing iron hook, his expression softening when he spotted the wheelchair.

“Loose bolt again?” he asked.

Roeyachi pushed the chair forward. “Think so.”

The smith crouched and spun the wheel. Wobble. Scrape. A groaning whine. He clicked his tongue. “Same issue as last month. I can patch it, but these parts are cheap. They wear faster than they fix.”

“How much?” Roeyachi asked.

“The usual bronze,” the smith replied.

Roeyachi nodded, though the words twisted something in his stomach.
The usual.
Again.

He knew the sum by heart. Repairs upon repairs. Enough bronze spent to buy a new chair twice over. Maybe three times. But the durable chairs, the ones reinforced with refined alloys, were out of reach. Always out of reach.

He clenched his teeth. If he could just train properly. If he could use magic like the others. If he didn’t have to hide. By now he could hunt stronger beasts, earn more coin. They would not be stuck fixing this same failing wheel every few weeks.

His frustration must have slipped through the cracks. His aunt reached for his hand, her fingers light but steady. “We can walk less,” she said softly. “Save the chair for longer trips.”

He shook his head. “No. You like these walks. And I… like them too.”

He looked to the blacksmith. “How much for the strongest material you have?”

The smith blinked in surprise. “The reinforced alloy? Three silver.”

Three silver.
Three hundred bronze.
Ten hunts’ worth.
But with food, rent, supplies.
More like thirty.

Roeyachi swallowed the weight of the number. Three silver. Far beyond what he had left in his pouch. Far beyond what he could earn before the next month’s repairs.

He lowered his gaze. “Then… the regular material. The usual.”

The smith’s shoulders eased, as if he had expected that answer from the start. “Alright. I can patch it again and replace the worn bolts. About an hour.”

Roeyachi nodded and handed over the smaller sum of bronze. It scraped at him, knowing it wasn’t a solution, just another delay. Another circle that would start again next week or the week after.

The smith wheeled the chair into the back room. Roeyachi crouched, letting his aunt settle carefully onto his back. When he stepped outside, the forge’s warm glow slipped away, replaced by the cool bite of open air and the low murmur of evening traffic.

A few people stared as he passed. Some with pity. Some with that tight, questioning look he had grown used to. A young man carrying an old woman where a chair should have been… it always drew whispers.

He didn’t spare them a glance. His eyes stayed forward.

A subgoal took shape quietly in his mind.

Stronger hunts.
Better crystals.
More coin.
The reinforced alloy chair.

A real chair.
One that wouldn’t splinter under the smallest bump in the road.
One that didn’t break every time they dared to breathe too freely.

He would reach it.
He had to.

CHAPTER 3 -

The fire cracked softly beneath the turning spit.
Fat rolled off the meat in slow drops that hissed when they struck the coals.
Evening settled around the cottage like a tired cloak, shadows stretching long across the worn wooden boards beneath their feet.

Roeyachi sat opposite his master. Smoke drifted between them, warm against the cold creeping in from the treeline. She stared into the flames, hands folded in her lap, expression calm in a way that never fooled him.

When the fire flared brighter, she finally spoke.

"Then what happened next?"

No warmth this time.
No softness.
Just the flat, disciplined edge of a woman who once gave orders on battlefields instead of quiet porches.

Roeyachi straightened by instinct. His bruises tugged at his ribs. The gash along his shoulder throbbed. He ignored both.

He reached into his pack and pulled out a small, battered book. Its spine was warped from rain, its pages swollen and scribbled with frantic sketches, footwork diagrams, mistakes circled in rough ink.

Her eyes dipped briefly.
Recognition.
A flicker of approval.
Gone just as quickly.

"Start from where you stopped."

---

He opened the book.
Old ink drifted up.

Crimson Spine Beast.
Fire attribute.
Low tier, but fast.
Ten minutes of evasion.
One explosion used.

His thumb paused on the last line. The page trembled faintly.

She leaned forward a fraction. Not close, just enough for him to feel her attention sharpen like a blade leaving its sheath.

"Read," she said.

But she didn’t need him to.
He saw it in her eyes.

She was already there—
in the smoke,
in the forest,
in the moment he almost died.

He inhaled.

"When the smoke cleared," he said quietly, "it was standing again."

---

Her gaze softened in a distant, unsettling way.
Not pity.
Memory.

As he spoke, she rebuilt the battlefield in her mind with the precision only a former warrior could manage.

The burnt silhouette.
The curling smoke.
The beast stepping forward, half-regenerated, half-ruined.

She saw the drop in his stance where pain pulled him off balance.
The subtle hitch in his breath.
The tremor he tried to hide.

She saw how his wounds knit together at the same rhythm as the beast’s.

She did not interrupt.
She did not question.
She simply watched the fight take shape behind her eyes.

"Go on," she murmured.

And the forest swallowed the firelight.

---

A few hours earlier, beneath the churning dark of the wilds, Roeyachi and the beast closed in on each other like two arrows fired from opposite bows. Each step gouged the earth, carving motion through the clearing.

He read its movements in fragments of calculation.

Its legs were slower.
Breath uneven.
Crystal pulses flickering.
Regeneration lagging behind its fury.

Yet the crystalline blades jutting from its hands glowed with murderous steadiness.

A long fight would kill him first.

He needed something decisive.
Cruel.
Final.

By the time the plan settled, they were already in the deep wilds, trading blows at blinding speed.

A silent agreement formed.

No more running.
No more trees.
Just a kill.

Steel and crystal kissed in sharp bursts of light.
Their feet barely shifted.
Only their arms moved, a blur of strikes and counters that cracked the air with every clash.

Roeyachi watched everything.

The rhythm of its shoulders.
The stutter in its breath.
The half-second delay in its left arm after every overreach.
The way its weight shifted a heartbeat before each lunge.

With every parry he mapped another piece of its pattern, assembling the shape of the next strike before it even began.

He saw the opening form.

Not luck.
Not instinct.
Pure calculation.

He angled his blade a fraction off-center and let the beast’s spike rake across his chest, tearing a deep burning line through flesh.

Pain tore through him.
He welcomed it.

Because this was the wound he chose.

Before the blood could fall, he thrust his left palm forward. The air buckled. A shockwave burst out, hurling the droplets in a scatter of red needles.

The beast blinked—
too slow—
as blood splashed into its eyes.

Roeyachi was already moving.

His blade carved upward in a savage diagonal, splitting hide and crystal.
The beast staggered back from the blow, its balance slipping.
Roeyachi pushed off the ground in the same heartbeat, launching himself upward.
He twisted midair, body turning like a leaf caught in a sudden wind.
His left foot slammed into the beast’s chest.
The right followed a breath later.
Both strikes drove it stumbling, claws gouging trenches in the dirt.

Roeyachi hit the ground meters away. Pain roared through him.
He didn’t stop.

He charged.

The beast reacted, but too late.
Its earlier wounds dragged at its movements, slowing the once-fluid rhythm into something rough and uneven.

It only just caught the gleam of steel before Roeyachi was on it.

His blade carved through flesh in a storm of horizontal and diagonal strikes.
Each cut stripped another piece of grey hide.
Each impact drove the beast further into retreat, its footing slipping under the relentless pace it could no longer match.

The beast shrieked.
It raised its left spike and drove it down.

Roeyachi didn’t block.

The spike punched through his shoulder.
Agony burned red and sharp.

He grinned through it.

His left hand clamped around its wrist.
His right arm swung low and brutal.

His blade cleaved the beast’s arm in half.

The creature howled.
He stepped into that cry, ignoring the blood soaking his side.
Strike after strike forced it back another step.

Then he leapt.

Both hands lifted the sword.
Blood slid down the blade.

He brought it crashing down.

Crystal met steel.
The beast dropped to one knee under the force.

Roeyachi acted first.

He let go of the hilt with his left hand, tore the spike from his shoulder in a single violent pull.
Blood trailed after it in a thin red arc.

His blade dipped from the sudden shift in balance.
The beast flinched, its muscles hesitating, misfiring.
It tried to pull away.

Too late.

The crystal point touched its skull like a cold fingertip.
Then slid through.

A soft crack unfurled inside its head.
Not loud.
More like something delicate giving way after holding on too long.

Warmth streamed down its face.
Its own blood.
Its own life.

Under the pressure, the inner crystals burst one by one.
Soft pulses.
Muted flares of dying light.
Each collapse dimmed the world around it.

The trees blurred.
The ground shifted.
The sky folded into shadow.

Its legs lost their shape beneath it.
Its claws loosened.
Breath slipped out of its lungs in a long, broken sigh.

Roeyachi landed lightly beside it.
The creature felt the vibration through the earth, faint as a fading memory.

Then even that sensation left.

Its vision folded inward.
Sound folded with it.
The world thinned to a single trembling moment.
Then nothing.

The beast toppled in slow surrender, its body yielding to gravity at last.

The forest accepted the weight of it without a whisper.

---

Roeyachi finished speaking with a quiet exhale.

“…and after that, I carved out whatever crystals I could find and headed home before anything else showed up.”

The fire cracked softly.
Smoke drifted in thin pale ribbons between them.

He waited for her response.
A correction.
A lecture.
Anything.

But she said nothing.

Her gaze rested on him, steady in a way that made the air feel heavier. Not angry. Not disappointed. Something older. Something he couldn’t read if he tried.

She lifted her hand slightly, as if brushing an invisible thought aside.

“You took too many risks,” she said. Her tone was calm, but every word felt measured. “Again.”

“I handled it,” Roeyachi said quietly.

Her lips pressed into a thin line.“You survived,” she replied. “That isn’t the same as handling it.”

Roeyachi lowered his gaze. The bruise along his ribs throbbed. The cut across his chest still burned in slow pulses. He gripped the edge of the book a little tighter.

“I did what I had to,” he murmured.

The fire snapped once, sending a brief flare of orange across her face. In that light her expression shifted, but only slightly, something flickering behind her eyes too quick for him to decipher.

For a moment she seemed to study him, not the way a master studies a pupil, but like someone evaluating the damage of a weapon they never wanted forged.

She didn’t voice any of that.

What she said aloud was simple.

“You’re careless.”

His head lifted, surprised. “I’m—”

“Quiet,” she cut in softly. Not harsh. Not irritated. Just final. “You take wounds you don’t need to take. You choose pain as if it’s a tactic.”

He held his breath, unsure how to respond.

She leaned back, the faintest sigh escaping her—something weary, something old.

“You think strength is measured in what you can endure,” she said. “It isn’t.”

Her gaze drifted to the fire again.
That tiny motion was all she offered him.

Inside, where he couldn’t hear her, where her voice remained silent in the world… her thoughts moved differently.

He heals too quickly.
Bones knit too fast.
Wounds seal without scars.
Just like before.

She kept her expression still.
A calm mask.
A necessary one.

If he rises too fast… they’ll find him.
If he shows too much… they’ll come.
I cannot allow that.

Her hands remained folded, the picture of serenity.

Out loud she said only, “You’re done hunting for the week.”

He blinked. “What? But we need—”

“No.”

A single word. Quiet. Absolute.

He swallowed whatever argument he had.

She returned her gaze to him, softened only by the fire’s glow. “Eat. Rest. Tomorrow we train.”

He nodded reluctantly.

But the silence that followed was thick with things unsaid.
He thought it was judgment.
He thought it was disappointment.

He didn’t see the truth.

He didn’t see the fear buried deep beneath her calm.

He didn’t see the way her hand curled slightly, as if gripping the memory of a promise made years ago.

He didn’t see how hard she worked to keep her voice steady when she finally said:

“Go on now. Check the meat.”

Roeyachi rose, moving toward the spit, the firelight brushing his face.

She watched him go.

That seal will keep him hidden, she thought.
For a little longer.
Just a little.