Zula cracked her head. Her swollen cheek did not mean anything to her. Amadan, he didn’t flinch, he didn’t take a step back.

“The Medicine man is strong,” Zula said. “So now I hear you work for the Arias. What a joke, was all the will you showed a joke as well?”

“It is not,” he told her. “I became a servant of Aria because I owed her. I’d be trash if I don’t repay her kindly. Don’t you think?”

“Is that so?”

She lunges at him with her bare fist. He took a step back, weaved through her fists, and elbowed her right in the rib. She took a step back and whipped her right leg at his face. Amadan blocked with a back-handed slap. He reached in his her guard, jabbed, and swiveled his entire body for a punch in the chin.

She shook madly. She staggered and found herself getting thrown into the ground. Arrows came behind his back. Amadan turned, caught the arrows in mid-flight and threw them like darts back at the enemy's knees. He started running on the walls and evading the rest of the spells coming at him.

“Why do you run, Medicine man!” She stood up despite the blood on her face. The swelling of her face did not hide the rage on her face.

“I can’t change what you think of me. I don’t even know why you bother to attack me.”

“It doesn’t hurt to try, Medicine Man.”

“I don’t do medicine any longer. At least until I get my answer. Anyway, I don’t like the way you want me in your group. If you want a manservant or a slave. Go look for other than me.”

“Not if I detain you here.”

“I’ve no sins against you.”

“That’s where you are wrong.”

“Will you hear reasons?”

“No.”

“Then why we are talking?”

She smiled.

Amadan caught the silent blade coming at his shoulder. He grabbed the attacker and whip him around like a rag before kicking him on the ground. The attacker falling screaming. Amadan did not like those who were unreasonable. Somehow, the sight of this woman had made him uncaring.

“I just want to be left alone. Will you comply?”

“No-”

Amadan lunged himself like a spear towards Zula. She couldn’t react in time and had her ribs crushed by her tackle. Amadan didn’t relate. He did not think twice. But Zula glared at her, a smile on her face, as she forces her body, wrapping her legs around his arm, intending to twist it.

Amadan lifted his arm and smashed her back on the ground. The instinct that the memories held inside his heart roared. Arrows made of light were coming to him. He cocked his head, weaved around the arrows, and retreated. He saw Zula standing up.

“I know it, Medicine Man! You were stronger than you think of yourself! You are not a weakling! Not at all! I was right!” Zula guffawed like a madwoman. Amadan couldn’t hide his shock at this woman’s strange laughing.

“The memories you are looking for isn’t clear,” he thought. “I don’t even know if I am the person you are looking for. I am who I am. I know that I am a fragment, but if I were to doubt myself here. I would lose the will. I do not want that. I just need to focus on.”

Amadan drew cold air with certainty. His eyes became glazed and focused. Dilated eyes and a silence that made Zula flinch at the sight off.

“I was wrong,” Zula shook her head. “You were a killer from the beginning, Medicine Man.”

She snaps her finger. Multiple arrows came at him again.

Amadan remembered the face of the man who dwells under the sunless skies. Under the tyranny of a woman’s whims. The pain, the suffering, and the whole of it came to him. He tried to invoke obsidian from his body. He was unable to. He hated it. He hated the feeling that he scraped for the runes that he could remember.

He pushed a strong wind towards the arrows. Then pulled the rest to the ground. Amadan roared like a beast maddened. His eyes brew bloodshot red and when he met people’s gaze. They fell on the ground as if they had seen the horrors of the world. It flowed through him. The painful branding that every memory inside his head had felt. The branding almost left him in shivers and nearly collapsed. He stopped himself from falling over.

He closed his eyes and opened it. Two sigils were branded on his eyes.

“The Dove of thorns seeks freedom from the thorns; to find meaning in its pain.”

He said, the dove of thorns burning in his right eye.

“The Snake of Woes, seeks a path through the misery, to find a way to through the woes.”

It came to Amadan who he was. However, he felt empty, desolate, as if he couldn’t explain the emptiness that wrought his heart.

“Am I just a fragment? An imitation that held no purpose other than the lingering regrets? Or am I what I am? A person named Amadan? I don’t know anymore. Or just the remnants of a person who fought to the very end and was finally sent back home?”

The sigil on his eyes brought pain and emptiness. The rivers of determination that flowed through him were emptied and left without anything. He couldn’t think of anything other than what was in front of him. The curse of the Bleak Walkers, he remembered. The curse of those who walked the bleak path. It never left the fragments and was always with him. It was never cured nor would it ever be gone.

“Once a bleak walker,” he said wearily. “You will never become anything else.”

The colors of the world were gone. The screams of the fallen millions shouted at his ears. The deafening silence followed by the screams who died were maddening. He saw the millions of comrades that he fought with. They all looked at him with stares of pity and anger.

“What do you all want from me?” He asked them.