Supreme Hunter of Beautiful Souls

"I love you," she said, her eyes blazing with pulsating hearts and her horns sparkling like living embers. 'I want you... for myself.'

Kael watched her for a moment, his face completely expressionless. 'Why do I get involved in so much shit like this?' Then he scratched his head, as if trying to remember if he had left his clothes on the clothesline.

"Okay. Cool." He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the still flickering mirror. 'Now... can you send me back, or do you also have an emotional questionnaire for me to fill out?'

She blinked. That wasn't what she expected.

"Are you really ignoring me?" Her voice now sounded almost... offended.

The floor beneath her feet darkened further, cracking into bright veins of red energy.

"I'm not ignoring you, I'm choosing." Kael replied, walking around her as if inspecting an exotic sculpture in a museum. "You look like trouble... the kind that kisses well but then rips out your soul."

She took a step forward, and her entire body glowed subtly with arcane runes that snaked across her skin like living tattoos.

With a snap of her fingers, the currents of magic around the room loosened, making the air denser... more tempting.

"I can give you everything," she whispered, each word like warm honey. 'Power. Immortality. Love. Even... peace.'

Kael turned to her with a genuinely puzzled expression.

"Peace?" he repeated, raising an eyebrow. "Do you think someone who carries a sword this size is looking for peace?"

She smiled.

"Then... eternal pleasure? Unlimited desire?" Her eyes sparkled, and for a moment, the view around them changed. They were in a golden hall, Kael lying on black satin cushions, surrounded by echoes of fantasy itself.

Kael looked around and could only sigh...

"Lies and manipulation... I'm disgusted. Just like your arguments."

The illusion shattered with a sharp crack. They were back in the house, and she... seemed frustrated for the first time.

"You really are unbearable," she murmured, unable to hide the fascination in her voice. 'Everyone else would grovel for me. You reject me as if I were dust.'

"You are dust. Beautiful, dangerous, radioactive perhaps... but still dust." He pointed to the mirror. "Now go ahead, magic mirror. Open that dimensional door or whatever you use."

She stared at him intently for a few seconds. The smile that appeared now was different. Less seductive, more... respectful. Or maybe... curious.

"You're the first human who dares to refuse me without trembling." She walked slowly toward him. "And for that very reason... I'm not going to let you go so soon."

Kael snorted.

"Fine. Let's do this the hard way, then?"

She didn't answer — she just moved closer until she was an inch away from him. She reached out a hand, touching Kael's chest with an almost reverent delicacy.

"Your heart is different," she said. "There's something inside it... broken. But still beating. Strong. Obstinate."

Kael grabbed her wrist before she could deepen her touch.

"Get out of my head."

She smiled.

"Too late."

Then Kael did something unexpected: he slammed his fist against the side of his head.

"Get out. Get out. Get out."

She took a step back, surprised. "Are you... trying to exorcise yourself by force?"

"Shut up."

She laughed. A real laugh this time — no seduction, no artifice. A hoarse, almost deadly sound. "You're really not going to give in."

Kael took a deep breath. "I've never given in to anything. You're not going to be the one to start it."

Finally, she stopped. Her eyes glowed less brightly. The air in the hall seemed to relax, as if even the house had given up on bending him.

"You're annoying." Her countenance changed completely, her face dark, her aura dangerous.

"You're annoying," she repeated, but now her voice carried no charm. It carried an echo. Weight. A note of something old, buried, and refusing to die.

Kael kept his gaze fixed on her. A muscle throbbed in his jaw. His hand still held the hilt of his sword, but he did not attack. Not yet. He did not like being threatened. But even less did he like wasting time.

"You're not the best afternoon tea I've ever had either," he said casually. "But come on. You want to fight? Fight. You want to send me away? Send me away. Let's go, I have business to attend to with the Queen of the Elves."

Her eyes flashed. A thin crack appeared between her fingers—as if the air itself were splitting—and from within it, a black and scarlet energy began to leak out. Pure condensed emotion. Anger, rejection, frustrated desire.

"Do you think this is a game?" she growled.

Kael shrugged. "No. This is Tuesday."

The answer was so blunt, so irritatingly honest, that for a moment she stood still. An abyss separated them, but not of space — of intention. She, a creature molded by centuries of worship, enchantment, and control. He, a man so emotionally armored that he would face Death itself with a bored look and a bad joke.

"You deny me... and still tease me?" she said, more surprised than angry now.

"Denying you isn't personal," Kael replied, with a slight tilt of his head. "It's just that you seem like the possessive type of woman who would kill her husband if he cheated on her. And I already have a few women to take care of, so it's not going to happen."

Silence fell like a heavy cloak. And then she... sighed.

Not a sigh of defeat, but of something more complex. A woman—or whatever she was—who for the first time found herself forced to look at someone she couldn't manipulate, seduce, control, or corrupt.

She turned away.

The house creaked, and the mirror in the background began to flicker again. The liquid surface reformed, like a lake after a stone is thrown into it. She stopped in front of the reflection, without turning to Kael.

"If it can't be mine, it won't be anyone's." She said as the world around her shattered like a mirror into a thousand pieces...

Kael blinked, and everything solid fell apart.

The forest.

The fog.

The moisture returned to his lungs like an icy slap. The sounds of the forest—muffled, distorted—were like choked whispers. Twisted trunks wrapped in moss rose around him, bent as if listening to a bad story they refused to accept.

Kael frowned. He looked at his hands. They were there. The sword, strapped to his back. The smell of wet earth. The sound of something alive, and rotten, moving nearby.

"Shit..." he muttered. "I'm back. But it wasn't her choice. This smells like a trap... or passive-aggressive magical revenge."

He took a step—and that's when he heard it.

Snap.

Dry. Loud. Very close.

Instinct spoke faster than thought. Kael threw himself to the side, rolling through the damp earth, as something whizzed through the air where his head had been a second before.

THUMP.

A thick branch flew through the air and embedded itself in a tree trunk with enough force to crack the wood. But it wasn't a branch. It was... a bone.

Kael rose into a fighting stance, his eyes scanning the fog. The sword slid out of his back with a muffled metallic sound, and he planted his feet firmly on the ground, breathing steadily.

Silence.

And then—movement.

A shape emerged from the fog. Stumbling, unbalanced... but fast.

It was a creature that should never have existed. Almost human, but as if it had been molded by impatient hands and eyes that did not understand beauty—or logic.

Four arms. A face that looked like it had been crushed and then randomly remade. Bones exposed in places, but glowing with putrid energy. The skin—if you could call it that—looked like melted wax and soaked leather.

When it opened its mouth, it seemed to tear the entire face at an impossible angle.

"She sent you," Kael said with a weary sigh. 'Of course she did.'

The creature screamed. It was a sound that was neither pain nor rage, but a primitive, ancestral hunger.

And then it attacked.

Kael stepped back and dodged the first blow. The second arm came from above — he blocked it with his blade. The impact reverberated through his arm, nearly knocking the sword from his grasp. The monster was strong.

"Okay, brute force. No brains," Kael said, spinning his body, cutting in an arc. The blade scraped the creature's flank, sending sparks flying from a metal-covered bone.

It screamed again—now with fury.

Kael spun on his heels and kicked an exposed root, which broke and wrapped itself around the monster's ankle.

"I know you're kind of broken, but I need you," he thought, looking at the ice sword.

The sword flashed. Not with light—but with silence.

When the next blow came, Kael spun the blade and buried it directly between the monster's twisted ribs. A hollow sound, like glass breaking underwater, echoed through the forest.

The monster stopped. It trembled. The putrid energy around it seemed to hesitate. Blink.

"Say goodbye to mommy," Kael whispered — and pulled the blade aside.

The creature exploded into a dense cloud of black mist and disconnected bones. The forest seemed to hold its breath.

Kael stood still for a moment, watching the remains of the being melt into the ground.

Then he looked up at the invisible sky, still covered in mist.

"If that's the kind of 'won't be anyone's' you offer, lady, maybe invading my mind would have been less childish."

A wind blew. And with it, a whisper.

"That was just the first."

Kael narrowed his eyes.

"Oh, great. The whole package. Drama, possessiveness, and now monster stalking."

He spun the blade, cleaning it with a quick motion, and looked at the forest ahead.

"Okay. Let's see how many ex-boyfriends she still has stashed away in her dimensional closets."