Hands impatient and rough, The man that had shot him, rummaged through his belongings. When he pulled out a brown satchel, he lifted it, scrutinizing it.
"What is this?" Despite not knowing what it was, he slipped it into his pocket. "It might still fetch some cash."
While others stood around watching, the man took a few more items. Then a sizzle cracked the air, snatching their attention.
Leo's skin crawled towards each other, the cells of his body knitting together at an unnatural speed. And then he gasped as his eyes snapped open.
"What the hell!" One of the men said
The gruff man instinctively raised the gun and pressed it against Leo's forehead. "Oh, oh, oh, looks like we have a healer on our hands." He shouted, before narrowing his gaze.
Leo's heart pounded in his once-wounded chest. Sure, he'd scraped his knees as a kid and watched those cuts disappear in minutes. But this was different. There was a gaping hole in his chest. He had felt the cold hands of death. Yet, somehow he was still among the living. Still before these pieces of shit.
"How many bullets do I need to put in ya before ya run out of mana?" He pushed the barrel further into Leo's head, his voice still as menacing as ever.
Panic surged through Leo, he was no longer thinking, he was just acting.
Lightning burst through his body. White. Hot. Deadly. Its cracks split the air, its threads brightening the alley, reaching for the sky. It flung the man holding the gun backward. His body spasmed before he hit the ground.
The air froze for a fleeting second before all hell broke loose.
"BREACHER!" A guttural scream tore from one of the men's throats as he stumbled backward.
Leo pushed himself off the floor. Too healthy for a man who was just shot minutes ago. The threads of lightning still clinging onto him like a protective coat.
Some were too terrified to move. So, they remained, feet planted to the ground, eyes tore open, like sentinels in their gods temple.
Another man shouted it again from further down the alley. "The Breacher is here."
'Shit, I've messed up.'
He'd used both powers. Lightening and healing. Two pathways. Two gods. Elemental god and goddess of healing.
His mother had warned him, once he stepped into the Domain he should never mix them. He should never breach. The world was unforgiving to Breachers, so was the heavens.
Each person in a domain was bound to one god and his pathway. They were to be loyal to one and only one. Using another pathway was touching a power that was never theirs to have. Betraying your god and in return their god would abandon them, leaving their soul untendered. Unstable.
Leo wasn't aware of the cost of being breached, but he did know they were hunted.
Then they came. Men in black uniforms emerged from the edge of the alley like harbingers of death.
Maybe they were—of his death.
Their face was hidden behind black masks with Y-shaped lines.
A mutter from one of them was all it took. The ground vibrated, and then big black chains cloaked in a green aura burst from below, clamping around his neck and wrist, slamming him down, knees to the ground.
He writhed, a vein bulging on his neck. But he was powerless beneath the iron's grip.
Unlike the rest, one figure stepped out clad in an all-white uniform and mask.
"I will now render your soul," with a solemn voice he said.
Leo's heart ceased.
Soul render.
His mother had told him stories about this. When two conflicting pathway parasites occupied a single soul with no god to soothe them. Soul renders would trap those parasites inside the body.
The soul would be locked inside of the unable to leave, unable to die, and the parasites would feed on it for eternity, while the body withered into a hollow husk.
For the gods it was a perfect punishment—a perfect hell—for a sin as greive as breaching.
The man in white began to chant.
His breath stilled in his lungs, and his vocals chord to wrung out from the chains to scream.
Seconds passed, and nothing happened.
The alley froze, and the soul renderer began again but the result remained the same.
"What's happening?" One of the black masked agent questioned, "What's the delay?"
"His soul…it can't be rendered."
"What do you mean it can't be rendered? He's a breacher."
"Well, I…I," the soul rendered stuttered.
This was the first time this had happened to him in his seventeen years of service.
The black agent cut him off. "We don't have time for this. Dose him and let's take him back to the base."
Before Leo knew it, A dart whistled through the air before slamming into his neck. And once again darkness gulped him.
***********
The first thing he noticed as his eyes opened was the heavy cuffs clamped around his wrist, also binding him to the table.
The second were two men sitting across from him. The one on the left, red-haired, green eyes, overgrown beard. He looked more like a thief than an enforcer.
The one on the right, his black hair all slicked back, his face completely shaved, he looked more like a princess. The kind of princess his mother used to read about to his sisters.
'No wonder they wore a mask, or else I won't be scared.' Leo thought, yet he swallowed hard.
"You're a breacher, right?" The red-haired questioned, his gaze hard.
Although he was terrified, Leo couldn't help but find the question funny.
'Was I supposed to say: Yes, officer, I've been breaching since I was five. Touched all six pathways before I hit puberty. I might as well be the devil.'
But he kept silent. Silence was the best answer. It was the only answer he could give.
The other said with a voice too croaky for his pretty features. Like the princess had swallowed the frog instead of kissing it.
"Those men said you're breached. You use two pathways."
Leo had always prioritized honesty. Or he was taught to do so. His mother had said his father was a liar, and Leo wasn't allowed to be anything like his father.
But he knew the truth wouldn't set him free, rather would have him trapped with parasites.
"Those men lied." He tightened his fist. "I'm not a breacher. Those guys robbed me and I was beating their ass. They got scared and of course, they had to call the bigger guys to handle their shit," Leo said his tongue too bold for his fiddling fingers.
Both men's gaze remained on him, drenching in disbelief.
Letting out an exasperated sigh, he rolled his eyes. "If I were breacher, my soul would have been rendered."
He didn't know why that didn't work, but he was going to use that as his last card.
"Except that guy was just horrible at his job." His lips curved into a smile. An act too bold for the churns in his stomach.
For Leo, mockery was fuel whenever fear crept in. If he felt small, he just had to make his opponent feel smaller.
The door burst open, and a figure stepped in. Both men stiffened and rose to their feet, snapping into soldiers salute. Their right hand to their chest, their palm facing down.
The man didn't salute. Just nodded, his eyes already locked on the Leo.
"I'll take it from here," The man said, dropping into the seat the red-haired had occupied.
The two soldiers hesitated like this wasn't supposed to happen. But they left either way, shutting the door behind them, trapping Leo with the beast of a man.
The man was huge, and so was the scar running down his eyes and his right hand. Despite being human, his face and body seemed like he was made of stones instead of flesh.
His eyes were pale. Dead. Like he had used all the life in them to hunt Breachers.
His sharp gaze scanned Leo. "Judging from your rags, I'd say you're one of those rats sneaking into the domain. And those rats either enter to steal or run away from something. Whichever they are not wanted here." He scowled.
Leo knew this man was different from the others. No matter the confidence he conjured, this man could see through the fonts.
Yet his whimsical remark slipped out before he could stop it. "Aha, you caught me." He raised his hand in a mock surrender. "So what now? You're going to throw me in jail for making rags look this good."
Leo should have smiled like he always did, yet his lips refused to curve.
Unfazed, the man said, "Sneaking into domains is punishable by forty years."
The silence and fear in the air was lucid.
"You're what—twenty? Twenty-two, tops?" The man continued, leering over Leo. "Add forty to that. You come out at sixty. Life would have passed you by. And behind those prison walls, there are no gods. No soothing. Just time to run mad." He drawled, making sure Leo felt every weight of his words.
Leo's stomach twisted. But then just as quickly, he narrowed his gaze. "Seeing you're not throwing me in prison right now, I assume you want something from me."
He earned a small smile from the man.
"You're not as dumb as you look. The man paused for a while before he continued. "I want you to join the Pathwardens."
The words hung heavy, sucking the air out of the room, and Leo's thoughts ran wild.
'A breacher joining the people who hunt Breachers to catch Breachers.'
It was like a chicken, stepping into a restaurant and putting on Chef's hat. Like a deer applying to be a Hunter.
It was suicidal.