For the first time in his life, the Convergence blessed Acacia.

  Years of street fighting, years of poverty, hardship, and strife in Ocarina—against the pain of hot iron, against the hate of sadists, and against the odds of people far stronger than himself. Years, years, and years of fighting. That was how he managed to survive. Nothing ever came easy for him. Fate was a cruel mistress, and he loathed the very concept. But in this one, specific moment, he had managed to survive his death. He felt something. Not fear nor sadness, anger or hatred, but rather pain, that familiarity. That aching throb of a headache that surged throughout his body allowed him to move.

  Without a single thought, the puppet avoided certain death.

  "To dodge my shot!" Malleus' amused cry rang throughout the alleyway as Acacia fell onto his side, panting and gasping. Gritting his teeth, he pushed up off the ground, staggering. Time bore no interval to rest. He turned around, feeling something trickle down the back of his neck. Touching it with his index, he brought his bloody fingers back into view.

  His temple bled and singed, though it was practically a superficial wound. From that, he surmised what she shot was extremely narrow, perhaps even so as a fraction of an inch off or to the side—and it would have gone past his head completely. There was no doubt about it.

  If he was a second too late, he would have been killed.

  "Oops, excuse me, sorry, that might've been just a bit more than you could handle," the assassin said with a deranged gleam, almost sounding bashful. "But seriously! I really was surprised! The mission details said that you were an Irregular, so living right now should be impossible, right? A Perception Birthright? Maybe just quick reflexes? Perhaps I made a mistake in my Aria? No, no, let's forget about all that for a moment and talk. It's rude to not respond to someone who talked to you, after all!"

  She talks too much. Am I fated to cross paths with professional yappers? He pondered idly as he stumbled, regaining his footing. Focusing on his heartbeat, his sight blurred, stabilizing as his breathing calmed. The air is starting to chill. My breathing is returning. Headache could be worse. I need to get her to keep talking. Talking means being distracted.

  "Blood and marks of flesh under your fingernails, incongruent wounds, and a route that made no sense based on the layout of the city…all of the wounds you claimed that your 'dad' gave to you, you gave to yourself while in that disguise." Acacia glared at the auburn witch, dusting off the alleyway dirt that lapped onto his shirt and pants. "Some way or another, you wanted to drag me out to somewhere isolated. I knew all of that the moment I saw you, but I couldn't do anything because if I just ran away or acted suspiciously about it, I would have been killed." His breathing fully stabilized. "You wanted to attack me, and you would attack the moment you think I left my guard completely down. So it gave me enough time to prepare myself to move."

  Acacia countered his death, and he would counter her as many times as she demanded it from him. It was this natural instinct to fight for survival, born to his blood, that dragged his battered body up once again.

  "How splendid! So you were playing along the entire time?" Malleus noted. "I've always prided myself in my ability to detect potential hostiles and neutralize them swiftly, so you got me good." With a gesture like she just dealt with trivial talk over something as delectable and delicate as the finest of teas, the witch pouted.

  Then her apricot eyes darkened.

  "Was it bad luck on my part? Or did the great High Inquisitor Kircheisen—" Her auburn figure transfigured for a moment.

  Then she reappeared, right behind him, her foot embedded in his spine.

  "Expect this?!"

  It was a masterful roundhouse kick that swept even the air in its wake. A gurgled sound was all Acacia could spit out before hitting the pavement like a pile of garbage. All of the wind escaped his lungs like a needle excavating a balloon's helium. The auburn witch stared at the sacrifice to her ritual with her devilish eyes, turquoise circuit-like markings embellishing her kicking leg. From the trail of spit and blood, he judged that she sent him flying about ten meters through the force of that blow. Collapsing and wheezing, he scrambled to his hands and feet.

  Switching from [Flux], a movement spell, to [Flie?en], a spell that strengthens the body…Even if they're both basic spells, she had no time to calculate between the transitions. Unless—

  "Flash Analysis," she smirked. Malleus had completely read Acacia's mind, answering the connection he made instantly. It was to be expected. One of the most infamous criminals from the Bloodhounds should be able to use Flash Analysis—training one's brain to compute Integration Sequences quickly—if even secondary schoolers could do so. It wasn't that she didn't calculate the spells, but that rather, her calculation speed was just that monstrous.

  This is bad, really bad. I have to hold out a little longer and buy time. But how? Think. Think.

  The auburn witch approached.

  Think!

  "Look, it doesn't have to end up this way! Pandora and I can pay you better than whatever Cagliostro is giving you guys. Just hear me out.” He was desperate, but something inside the back of his mind, something almost precognitive, compelled him to act upon his thoughts of staying alive. If he could buy time, better yet, possibly convince her and the Bloodhounds to betray Cagliostro and assist him—he could live. He had to live.

  Her pace slowed down, and then she stopped.

  "Yeah, please listen to what I have to say. We can talk this out like adults. Nobody has to get hurt.” If he kept babbling like a fool, something would turn in his favor. It had to. His intuition was his shield and sword.

  "[Fiamma.]"

  So why was it that it failed him now?

  Malleus swung her hand, and the very atmosphere caught on fire as if the air was laced with gunpowder. Torrents of wild embers raced from her fingers before combusting into a circular inferno. One of the most basic fire spells known to Thaumaturgy was equivalent to a bomb in the hands of the auburn witch. Heat waves and orange light swallowed the alleyway. The circumference of the conflagration made it so that sidestepping it was impossible. He couldn't run away either; the flames were just too fast. Jumping over or blocking it could have been a possibility if he actually had Thaumaturgy.

  So he made a run for it and crouched behind the steel crate on his right.

  The crate melted underneath the heat, the metal puddling into sludge by the end of the flame's onslaught. The Irregular made sure to squat a few inches behind the steel box, the temperature of the air scorching his fingers on the flanks of his cover. Even the asphalt quaked, shaking uncontrollably in the face of extreme heat. He raised his hands in protection from the hellish scorch, feeling it bite a fair bit into his skin and burn his defenses in its primordial attempt to bathe him in nothing, but it was manageable considering that he was on the edge of the fire and that the steel protected him to a degree. He read that steel up north had a melting point 20% higher than the average steel one would find in the south, so about 3000°F. Since that was the case, the protection proved worthwhile. Considering how easily the woman's flames burned through the crate, her flames had at least that level of temperature. Gio constantly bragged about his flames reaching 500°F. Essentially, a simple fire spell coming from her was six times more potent than Gio's strongest spell, Acacia deduced.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The massive fireball extinguished itself after almost a quarter of a minute, but its devastation proved its usefulness. Gone was the rest of the crate, the pungent scent of freshly melted metals intermingling with the charred concrete formed spread out into smoke.

  He ran out of the darkness, using the smoke as cover and a means to conceal his profile. There were five meters dividing him and the assassin. He flung himself at her, cocking his arm back like a spring trap ready to fire a poison dart and much faster than the punch she was about to send at him. But before his punch could connect, Acacia realized.

  A feint?!

  Again, fate had another way of tormenting his life.

  This time, the merciless goddess laughed heartily, hysterically, sadistically, gleefully, and callously. Like his agony, his fall to suffering was hilarious, all in the darkest of ways.

  Her closed fist turned into a knifehand strike in the blink of an eye, crossing against his jugular mercilessly. Eliminating any form of recovery, she kicked his own legs at the same time he overextended, causing him to trip over her own leg and crash onto her like a felled log. His heart hammered and his senses shattered.

  He choked for a second while her black boot buried itself into his stomach, sending him spiraling up in the air. The boy gasped for breath, the wind knocked clean out of his lungs and his throat malfunctioned. Everything was going at hundreds of miles per hour, and all he could do was desperately feel for the earth below him. And like that, he was on the ground, his face smashing into the grime and heaving air, facing the perilous sky.

  Spinning...the world is spinning…

  Malleus, leaning over him, merely cast a small shadow. Golden organs of sight, disinterested in lifeless demeanor, stared coldly down at him.

  "Your eyes move in two opposing directions, and you're uncoordinated. Your movements are sloppy and inconsistent. Even if you're an average close quarters combatant, that last move was horribly telegraphed, and that opening right there was such an easy punch for me to dodge." Her words hit as hard as her fist. Then, she rolled her eyes. "Oh, right, you're an Irregular! I shouldn't expect you to put up a fight."

  "Shut up!" Acacia rose again. His forearms planted themselves firmly on the asphalt, and, using their traction—catapulted his body to the assassin. His leg swung, not at the woman, but at something else.

  The very ground itself.

  His sole hit the pavement like a jackhammer. He grit his teeth, enduring the overwhelming throb that radiated from his foot. It hurt tremendously—pain, like molten knives, tormented his entire leg—and it took much effort to resist screaming it all out, but the fact that the asphalt fragmented and caved in just from the initial of his kick showed that it had an effect. He drove it in further. Dirt plastered in dried blood was uprooted and sent flying at Malleus without delay. Regardless of experience, even the auburn witch couldn't anticipate a counterattack such as that coming from an Irregular. No, it was exactly because he was an Irregular that she couldn't fully predict him. Acacia exploited her minor lapse in foresight, seizing it with his very body and using it against her with every step, every move, and every expression. Fractals, fragments, and shards of manmade stone and reinforced asphalt, a simple, broken weapon, his last resort, rained down upon her stunned figure.

  However, Acacia made a fatal miscalculation.

  Just because she was caught off guard, didn't mean that she couldn't recover in time.

  "[Claustra.]”

  Before the blast of dirt and debris could touch her, prana particles originating from the atmosphere rushed from the witch's very figure, coalescing into a wall of blue in front of her. It happened so fast that Acacia couldn't stop his momentum. Malleus canceled her [Claustra] before slamming her fist into his chest. She wouldn't let him react; she continued, latching onto his tattered jacket and throwing him on her side. Once he hit the ground, his body bounced up, hovering through the air helplessly.

  Turquoise circuits flowed through the assassin's leg.

  Another Flie?en?!

  Time resumed.

  She smashed him midair, breaking his guard with a thundering strike that marked the end of her macabre. She drilled through his stomach and cracked bone, the weight of her kick in the same league as an oncoming freight train. A slipstream of agony spiked throughout his ribs as he spun like a soccer ball along the air. After dozens of revolutions, his body slammed against the wall on the other side.

  Acacia slowly slid down the wall. His ears rang like bells ringing, and his vision was drenched in incandescent, abyssal red that clumped into strange shapes and forms.

  There was a threshold to the amount of pain a person could accommodate before it would eventually fall on deaf ears; Acacia's brain couldn't properly filter the information transmitted through his nervous system anymore. A throbbing, merciless headache spread across his head. His senses were in disarray, and Malleus' image doubled, then tripled, until he couldn't discern her presence from his amok vision. At first, he imagined her tilting her head in confusion before his double, triple, and quadruple figures shifted so that all eight of her heads were now smirking sadistically.

  She said something. He couldn't hear. Yet despite that, Malleus had tilted her head in confusion, causing his imaginary conniving images of her smirk to shatter.

  The auburn witch strutted around him with her luminescent skin, standing over his battered, singed, bruised, and bleeding body. She grabbed his throat, easily able to wrap her slender, nimble fingers around his jugular. Her grip was like an electric shock, quickly shifting his vision back to a level of normalcy.

  The excruciating pain returned to Acacia's frail body. He endured without vocalizing his pain, straining his vocals like he was coughing blood and phlegm. Even with everything written on his pained, enervated face, he gritted his teeth against his tormentors. His vision narrowed as if to defy Malleus' presence, completely avoiding the existence of the monster above him, his body an anvil of hurt and his throat completely captive to her whims.

  "What creativity! To use the ground in such a way with no training whatsoever and yet you manage to pull it off, quite the accomplishment," Malleus sang her praise, but there wasn't even an ounce of sincerity behind her voice; her monotonous delivery spoke volumes. The cold smile on her chiseled features spoke volumes. However, her fingers on his chin pushed away his head such that they could see eye-to-eye. "Truth be told, you didn't even scratch me with that attack. Which, you know, I thought was really hilarious." She giggled. "Who knows? If you weren't an Irregular, maybe things could have turned out differently."

  Acacia huffed, blood cascading over his lips. He didn't need a murderer like her to tell him something so obvious.

  "We were ordered to fetch your head, but catching you alive would have been an excellent bonus as well. Honestly, I was even considering that if you put up a better fight, I would capture you alive and leave you to Client Narma. Buuuut...considering how the boss talked about his mental state, it'd probably be a blessing to kill you off now." Malleus cocked a blood-stained grin, caressing his cheek softly as if he were a toy. "Now then, any last words?"

  Silence engulfed the alleyway. Acacia slowly turned his head, his hazy eyes finally focusing clearly on the fiery witch that had been hunting him. He saw her cold gold eyes, and for a moment the two locked each other's gaze. That's how it's going to end for him, a useless, wretched existence struggling, suffering, being cut down like fodder. Was everything just going to end? Just like that? A simple end brought by the hands of someone more powerful, not deserving, only because he was unfortunate enough to be born without the power to protect himself?

  Silence washed upon the lifeless alleyway again, the sound of the windmills acting as the one and only witness to the young boy's fate.

  He knew that he should have died long ago. Acacia Belmont lived on borrowed time. He shouldn't relent. He shouldn't fret. He shouldn't mourn, for he was merely fate's slave.

  He closed his eyes.

  "How about this: get out of my city, you psychopath."

  For an ephemeral point in the thousands of millennia where the Convergence wove predetermined stories to all concepts born within its construct, it changed its course, once again. Tables turned, threads taut, and the fates were reforged at this one moment, into that which will become the catalyst of change, forever and evermore.

  The second rejection of this ghetto of repetition revealed itself in a sudden gust of wind that careened the bloodstained assassin across the entire asphalt length, dust and gravel crunching under her weight. The gust was so precise that despite the two being nearly on top of each other, only Malleus was blasted backward to the point where she flew six meters, but she managed to land on her feet just like a cat.

  Taking in the gazes from everyone present, without being shaken one bit, stood an absolute sense of will. With mint-green eyes shining with a pure sense of justice yet ire, the young man faced the Maw of the Bloodhounds, dauntlessly.

  "Sorry I'm late, Acacia." The human gust spoke remorsefully.

  Acacia couldn't help but smile, even in his battered state.

  "Well, better late than never, Elias."

  "Another one that wants to die? Just who the hell are you?" Malleus sneered.

  The brunette grinned, his shirt and jade pendant billowing in the sudden updraft.

  "Elias Scryer, your judge, jury, and executioner."

  Acacia's confrontation with Malleus represents a turning point not just in his physical struggle but in the story’s core theme: Can a powerless person outwit fate in a world governed by strength?

  wild from here.