"You'll know if we lie? I don't believe you!"

A moment of silence followed.

Then the voice answered, slower this time. It was dangerously patient.

"… You hear me speak to you from somewhere you still cannot detect."

"You saw me block your cameras."

"You saw me turn the dungeon gate into a solid wall of red."

"And yet the thing you find unbelievable… is lie detection?"

Signa's face twisted as if she'd been slapped.

Destro coughed, releasing a wet and ugly sound. Blood splattered across the stone.

"You won't let us go even if we talk," he rasped.

"You will have to take a leap of faith, yes," the voice agreed.

"Either through torture or the peaceful manner, I do not care. I will get my answers. The method is your choice. The outcome is not."

Destro bowed his head for a moment.

Silent.

Thinking.

Then his shoulders straightened. His spine stiffened. His hands clenched.

He looked up with a steady, deadened resolve.

"You're wrong, Kaiden Grey. I am the one who gets to decide the outcome."

Before anyone could move, Destro turned toward Signa.

Her eyes widened.

"Wait!"

His fist ignited with violent, fiery force, and he drove it into her.

She didn't just die.

She ceased, her body erased in a burst of blistering heat and force that blew her limbs apart and hurled the remains against the stone. What hit the wall wasn't even a body anymore, just chunks of scorched matter sliding down in wet streaks.

"HOLD HIM DOWN!" the voice thundered.

The minions lunged as one, but it was already too late.

Destro laughed.

A broken, delirious, triumphant sound.

"Glory to the Queen of Night… long may she reign."

His skin began glowing from beneath, turning white-hot as light began leaking out through the flesh.

Monsters clawed at him, grabbed his arms, piled onto him.

"[The Great Sacrifice]."

A heartbeat passed.

Then he exploded.

A violent, contained blast tore through the hall. It was bright enough to blind, hot enough to scorch, strong enough to hurl monsters across the hall. Limbs flew. Bodies hit the walls. The closest creatures were vaporized on the spot.

And then came silence.

Smoke drifted.

Ash settled.

Where Destro once stood, there was nothing but a blackened crater and the shattered remains of several minions.

Destro was gone.

Signa was gone.

Every invader was gone.

…

Death Row, Maximum Security Facility

In a small, dimly lit cell, Maximilian Vice lay on a narrow cot. The walls were concrete, stained, and cold. The single-barred window offered a sliver of gray light, enough to remind him what the sky looked like, but not enough to give him hope.

He pushed himself up onto one elbow and began spitting out curse after curse under his breath as he stared at the ceiling.

"They think they've won…" he muttered, voice raw.

"The arrogant Kaiden Grey, the slut Nyx, that bitch Alexandra, the fucking President with his smug grin… They'll pay. They'll all pay!"

His hands clawed at the rough blankets, balling them up in his fists. "I'll take my revenge. They can't hide from my wrath forever."

He lay back flat, closing his eyes for a moment. His breathing rattled softly.

Then the door clanged.

"Vice," a guard called through the bars. "It's shower time."

Maximilian dragged himself to his feet. He followed the guards out, shackled at the wrists. As he walked down the concrete corridor to the shower area, he grumbled, muttering the names that had haunted him.

He passed other inmate cells quietly. The guard unlocked the door to the shower.

The heavy door clanked open, and Vice stepped into the narrow concrete alcove that served as the death row shower block.

This was no communal space, no open room with steam and noise. Just a row of individual steel cages barely large enough to lift one's arms in. The showers were taken one at a time, always under watch. Privacy or companionship was not something these inmates were afforded.

A guard gestured with his chin. "Stall three. Move."

Vice shuffled forward, chains rattling with each step. The stall's grated metal door hissed open, revealing a square space with a floor drain, a rusty showerhead, and nothing else. No privacy wall. No curtain. Just cold, exposed concrete.

The guards would watch the entire time, a procedure for maximum-risk inmates.

Vice stepped inside.

Only then did the guard reach through the slot and remove his cuffs.

As the water sputtered on, lukewarm and metallic, Vice leaned his forehead against the wall. The streams trickled down his back, doing little to wash away the bitterness curdling in his gut.

He gritted his teeth.

His voice was barely audible under the hiss of water.

"That little bastard and his ugly bitches… think this is over? Think they won?"

A low, hateful chuckle scraped out of him.

"They'll see. One day… one damn day… I'll torture every last one of them…" he clenched his fist as he decreed, "I'll rape all his women before his very eyes and then slit their throats one after the other!"

He stomped his feet on the wet floor and huffed, dead set on doing just that, should he be given the choice.

But out of nowhere, a voice rumbled behind him. It was deep and heavy.

"Is that so?"

Maximilian froze.

His eyes snapped open.

He spun around.

And his breath stopped.

Someone was standing inside the stall with him.

A man who should've never been able to get this close without the guards raising hell.

He towered over Vice by nearly a head and a half, a wall of dark skin and brutal muscle packed onto a frame built for war - or crime, in his case. His shoulders were wide enough to block the flickering light from behind. His chest and arms looked carved from iron. His entire body was covered in violent tattoos reminiscent of a criminal organization Maximilian knew all too well.

They used to terrorize New York for years, even before the Mana Apocalypse. But with the rise of the supernatural, they became relics of the past. The Radiant Order, led by Raziel, known as the 'Conviction Manifestation' and Evangeline, the 'Judicator's Scales', managed to catch the boss, Dante. The methods they used were highly debatable as their methods were unorthodox in their extremity, but no one tried to fight for Dante in court, and the judge didn't seem intent on angering such a guild.

After all, Radiant Order was in the big three, alongside the Ashborn family's New Dawn and Lazarus Crane's Crimson Dominion.

The Radiant Order was known to be heavily involved in politics and the justice system, while the Crimson Dominion was thought to be barbaric battle maniacs and musclebrains. The former scouted for awakened with fitting classes, while the latter basically accepted anyone with the right credentials - one of which was to more or less be a battle junkie, progression fanatic who laughed in the face of death if the possible payoff was worth it.

New Dawn, meanwhile, was in the middle, just a normal high-tier guild doing their own thing, not too radical in anything.

And now, Dante, arrested and prosecuted by the Radiant Order, was standing before Maximilian.

Completely naked.

The guards who'd been watching Maximilian seconds ago so intently were gone.

"Maximilian Vice, was it? Sounds like your mama took one look at her son and put the whole police report in his name."

The man took a step forward. "Anyhow. You were talkin' about my boy and his gals."

"Run it back for me."

The soap fell from Maximilian's hands.

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