Clouds shrouded the sky like a pall over a casket and neither starlight nor moonlight shone through the shroud. Zander and Kenneth raced against the sunrise, hoping to use the darkness to defeat whoever stood in their path. They sprinted across the Mirrevar plains toward the Goddess and the silhouette of Covademara's trunk. The torchlight and bonfires of the Sapphire outpost atop Goddess Hill gave them a target to focus on as the thick clouds left them in a world of blacks and whites with nothing in between. Even the colorful Covademara was shrouded by the darkness and all the flowers in the fields were dark and colorless. Perhaps they would have been that way even if sunlight shone down on them. Zander's vision had narrowed. This was a world with no beauty and no nuance. This was a land of death and decay. When he looked forward, he only saw rescuing Asa and killing Aldius. And he would slaughter the entire Sapphire outpost to reach his goal.

Zander's heart was full of hate, his mind thought of nothing but the kill, his body raged with energy. Hatred fueled him, as well as the draughts of fortitude that Asa had given him and Kenneth to use in emergencies where their own exhaustion was the enemy. Thus, Zander felt like a force of death when they arrived at the foot of the Goddess.

When Zander reached the place where he had chased Alexia all those days ago, he thought not of the way their hearts connected nor did he reach for his locket and the memory of love. Only the hatred remained to him. Everything else was gone.

A set of four watchmen lounged at a fire at the bottom of the hillside. Dozens of fires lit the top of the hill above, despite it being the middle of the night. Gordan had warned him that they would be prepared and Zander didn't doubt that this would end with Aldius holding a sword to Asa and a hundred soldiers surrounding them.

He simply didn't care about his chances of success. Rage made him feel invincible and apathetic toward his own life. He was a tool with but a few purposes: kill Aldius, free Asa. Nothing else mattered.

Yet, the four watchers were not vigilant. Their bonfire burned on as their lives flickered out.

Hatred left no space for remorse. Zander didn't care as their eyes went dark, never to see again. Hate doesn't care about what is destroyed along the way, only about hurting the one at the end of the line. These men protected Aldius. They held Asa captive. They didn't deserve a second thought. They weren't people. Zander didn't even see them as living things. The Sapphires between him and his goal were tools, equipment, and he would take those weapons away just as Vernon, Gabor, Emeric, and Erina had been taken from him.

Reading the arrangement of light atop the hill, they deemed that the Sapphire were more fortified at the center of the hill and along the western front. Zander overflowed with hatred, but he wasn't a complete fool. He was prepared to kill every man and woman that got between him and either Aldius or Asa, but he knew that the less he battled before he reached his targets, the greater chance of success he had.

They climbed the eastern edge of the hill, the rushing of the mighty Eagle to their left. Zander crawled through the flower beds on the hill. Obscured by beauty he couldn't see, he blended in with the darkness. Twice he had to stop as a patrol neared.

Twice he charged, throwing them to the ground and covering their mouths as he strangled the life out of them. They thrashed and clawed hopelessly against his ungodly wrath. When Zander stared down at their dying faces in the dim light, all he saw was Aldius. Everyone on this hill was an extension of Aldius. He clenched his teeth and must have struck a sight of horror in their last moments, neither feeling a shard of mercy or showing anything but a venomous desire to hurt. He squeezed every drop of life out of them before discarding them into deep flowerbeds.

They crested the hill, hips pressed against the ground, and heads just above the brush. Torchlight lit the ruins of the Citadel of Dreams. Zander only saw structures and what they might hide, not the history of the stones nor the miracle that was Covademara. He studied the Sapphire defenses and listened to the chatter of the encampment. There was a general merriment and the mirth among the night watchers made him angrier and even more hateful. That they could share laughter and smoke while they had done such a horrid thing made him want to rip their still-beating hearts out of their chests and shove them down their throats.

At this angle of the moon, most of the Sapphires were asleep and even the watchers would be drowsy and lax. They were arrayed in small groups at fires, overlooking the outpost atop ruined walls, or patrolling the hilltop in pairs. The outpost had no palisade nor did it make use of watchtowers. The ruins of the ancient castle were the watchtowers and would create a labyrinth that hid their leadership. They were well-equipped to detect large threats coming up the hill, but not the stealth of two harbingers of death in the darkness. Zander and Kenneth would murder them like fish in a barrel. Still, with this many fish, and all the fish equipped with teeth, Zander wanted to do whatever it took to reach Asa and Aldius before the fish swarmed them.

He motioned for Kenneth to come closer. Zander pointed to a heavily guarded area leading into the ruins of the old castle. "They will have her in there. We're going to find a way in and get Asa before they even know we're here."

Kenneth's voice was hollow and ghastly. Until now, he hadn't spoken more than one word at a time since Zander throttled him awake from his stupor. "Then we kill Aldius and anyone else in our way."

"Bring justice to the evil," Zander agreed. "Follow my lead. Stay close. If I stop, you stop. If I get low, you drop. If I draw my sword, you pull yours. Strike like lightning and keep your eyes open. We cover each other and we can take down this entire hill, assuming they don't have a few meladonite knights and we don't let them surround us."

"Understood."

Zander waited in the silence for the right moment. A heavy burst of laughter issued from the guards. He checked his surroundings, deemed them clear, saw the guard atop the ruins looking toward the other side of the hill, and dashed across the space between the hillcrest and the first set of ruins. He waited, counting to thirteen, and when no alarm was issued, Zander decided that none had seen him or Kenneth. He crouched, then peered around the first corner. There was an opening in the ruined building where the citadel had deteriorated and left a gaping hole. Four more soldiers sat there, sitting around a fire.

Zander scanned the area. He would have to work a long way around other ruins where men might be on vigil or even just resting. This way was a sure entrance and these men were unprepared. Better to be the one wielding the element of surprise.

They were nothing but obstacles in his path. Gesturing the plan to Kenneth, they skulked toward the fire. Zander finished two before they had even set down their mugs. Kenneth flanked the third and the fourth was quickly bested but not before crying out.

Zander muttered a curse to Zamael. There was no time to think. His priority was Asa and then Aldius. They would be inside. Divines damn the consequences of pushing into the heart of the enemy's power. Aldius would die. Asa would return to him. That was all. The risk to himself was irrelevant.

When the nearest Sapphire answered the call, they were slow to draw their weapons against dark forms. Kenneth was quicker of wit. His sword was sheathed. He picked up a mug from the fireside and opened his arms. "Divinedamned fly in my drink," he told three soldiers. "Damn near swallowed it."

They shrugged sleepily, sheathed their blades, and laughed. "Not the only thing you been swallowing tonight, crying like that, eh?" one of them said.

Kenneth forced a laugh while Zander rushed toward them, blade flashing. In three heartbeats he claimed three more lives. Drawing the blade out of the third Sapphire's neck, he nodded to Kenneth. "Good work."

They listened for approaching soldiers. They didn't wait long before a horn blew several times, frenetic in its urgency, from the direction of the last four men they'd killed.

Zander felt only the briefest sensation of fear, like being startled by a fly buzzing in front of you, before hatred and rage reclaimed command.

Good, he thought, glad to be done with all the skulking. "We fight through," he said, pointing his blade toward the passage through the ruins the last three soldiers came from.

Zander didn't spare any thoughts for peace, for love, or even out of any notion of justice. These soldiers were detritus, not humans, and he killed them with the same callousness that a boy removed a stick off his path.

As the bodies fell, the fear in the eyes of the living amplified. Zander cared not. He impaled one through the back as he tried to flee. He severed two heads in one stroke. If they went down, pleading and begging for mercy, he ended them. These weren't people, they weren't even numbers worth counting though they piled up in his wake like trash discarded by one who didn't care about the mess he'd made.

When footsteps came from multiple directions, he and Kenneth stepped into the shadows and struck from the back. Their enemies were half-awake, hastily equipped, sometimes intoxicated, but never remarkably talented or organized. Zander decorated the walls of the ancient kings and queens and painted over the flowers that had grown within the decay with blood and death. Tonight, he was the Red Devil and this was his Citadel of Nightmares.

Sapphires called out in confusion as screams filled the night. Zander's hatred fed off their fear and his fiftieth kill was more gratifying than his first. He followed the flow of the Sapphires, deeming that they would be coming from wherever Aldius and Asa would be.

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He came upon the ancient throne room, where a tall stone chair, overgrown by years of abandonment leaned against the trunk of Covademara. The locket glimmered blue, but Zander couldn't see love despite being in the exact spot where Philladon the Godseer was visited in his dreams by Leverith or where Queen Alexia Leveria presided over the greatest era of peace the world had ever seen. Nor did he see the place where his mother and father had fallen in love. Despite being in Leverith's bastion, Zamael's hatred coursed through him. Dark laughter resounded in his mind as he fed souls to the reaper and blood to the flowers blessed by Leverith.

The high ceiling had decayed. No light shone through the wreckage of dreams. Tents lined the sides of the ancient chamber as he found the heart of their outpost. At the end of the expansive chamber, a group of Sapphires cowered behind a portly man with a wine stain birthmark on his face. Zander didn't deign to count them. Aldius was not with them and they were many.

Their leader, the portly knight, offered words as Zander strode toward them and the throne. "We surrender. No more fighting is needed tonight."

Zander brandished his bastard blade. He held his Bearbreaker escutcheon loosely in his left hand. He was a ghastly sight, towering over the Sapphires, built of stone when they were flimsy as paper, covered in blood while some of them were covered in their own piss. They murmured his name. Red Devil.

"Where is she!" Zander demanded.

The Sapphire leader lowered his blade and lifted his hands high. "Tell me who you are looking for."

"Do not play ignorant with me!" Zander roared. "Give her up!"

The man's calming voice filled with panic. "I don't know who you speak of!" He tried to regain his composure as Zander resumed his stride, Kenneth at his heels. The Sapphire pleaded, "Please, sir, we can resolve this peacefully!"

Kenneth laughed with enough bitterness to shrivel all the world's flowers. "Peacefully," he spat toward the knight. "Your man should've thought of that before he betrayed us, killed our friends, and took her away!"

Lightning came suddenly from the darkness. It slammed into the stones and the flowers of Goddess Hill, lighting the darkness with vengeful luminosity. Flowers wept from the sky as lightning drove them from the great tree. A blast flashed in the space between Zander and the Sapphires. They screamed and cried, muttering prayers to Leverith and to Alexia Bluerose. The locket shone blue, lighting Zander's features. In the back of his mind, he could hear, no feel, a woman crying. His mother.

Zander didn't reach for her nor did he reach for the locket as Goddess Hill was lit brighter than any day by the sudden storm.

The Sapphire leader shook his head. "Honest to Leverith! I do not know what you are talking about. We took no one. All of us are pledged to peace. We swore oaths to Alexia Bluerose. We don't want to fight you."

"I have heard that before!" Zander bellowed, his voice crashing into the fear of the Sapphire soldiers, amplified by the boom of the thunder that ravaged the citadel. Zander stepped toward his prey. "Right before you killed Vernon, Gabor, Emeric, and Erina. Before you battered Edrea and left Theo and Gordan in a tower to burn. Before you took my sister!"

The Sapphires cowered, it not mattering that they outnumbered Zander and Kenneth. The knight got down on his knees. "Please, sir, you have every right to be furious with the person who betrayed you. But none of us took part in that. We follow Leverith's Chosen, and she told us to end the cycle of vengeance." He laid down his blade. "My name is Sir Hammond. What can I call you?"

Zander shook his head. Aldius had spewed the same. He wasn't going to be the innocent dreamer again. That wasn't how the world worked. People said what you wanted to hear, then killed your friends and stole your sister. He clutched the hilt of his sword, the blade covered in blood, dripping onto the ancient stone tiles.

"Where is Aldius?" he bellowed, taking a step toward the Sapphires.

Hammond looked struck stupid as another blast of lightning lit the chamber. "Al-Al-Aldius? Is h-h-he the one that betrayed you?"

"Where is Asa?" Kenneth screamed, charging forth.

"He is not here!" Hammond cried, shielding his face with his hands, still on his knees.

"Liar!" Zander roared.

Zander became a whirling dervish of death. Kenneth joined him and the blood of Leverians dripped once more into the roots of Covademara. The Sapphires did not attempt resistance. Some froze. Others ran, scurrying like ants beneath the foot of a god. Sir Hammond was the only one that retrieved his blade and tried to defend them.

Zander disarmed him, broke his nose with a shield bash, then kicked him to the ground. When the slaughter was done, a couple Sapphire were nearing the exit. Kenneth roared at the dark clouds. Balbaraq and the storm answered. A streak of lightning tore through the ruin, blasted the fleeing Sapphires into the sky. They tumbled to the ground alongside a grand doorway that had withstood over seven centuries of abandonment.

"Alexia guide me," Sir Hammond cried, clutching his bleeding face.

Zander tossed his shield aside, then sheathed his blade. He seized Hammond by the throat and slammed him into the trunk of Covademara holding the heavily armored two-hundred-fifty-pound man off the ground in one hand with ease, feeling more powerful than ever in his life. His fist was cocked, ready to lead the interrogation.

"Where is Aldius?"

He didn't allow Hammond to speak, his hatred closing the fingers around the man's neck. The locket shone blue light on his face, lightning flashed, and thunder boomed. He held tight until the man had almost died then tossed him to the ground.

Hammond reached for his throat, gasping for air. "Not here," he wheezed.

Zander grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him through a tent. The tent collapsed, Hammond tangled within it. Zander stalked toward him as he struggled to rise.

"Where! Is! He!"

Fighting for gasps of air, the knight answered, "The bridge encampment."

Zander grabbed Hammond by the arm and slammed him headlong into Covademara. "Tell the truth!"

"Where is Asa?" Kenneth boomed, lightning sparking, smashing into a branch of the world's greatest marvel, sundering thousands of years of life as it crashed through ancient stone, spilling flower petals into the air. "What have you done with Shiny!"

"Not here," Hammond bawled.

Zander didn't believe him. He would never believe another word that dribbled out a Sapphire's deceiving mouth. He pummeled, slammed, choked, slashed, and tormented Hammond, beating the answers to the questions needed to assault the Sapphire camp out of him. Compared to the lies of Aldius, Hammond's story suggested that Aldius had massively overstated the resources the Sapphire had in Mirrevar. They had one witch who struggled to conjure the simplest spell and a combined Sentinel and Horned Ape force that couldn't match the Peacewatch in either skill or number. The Peacewatch could take them in a frontal assault, especially if they cut off their resupply and reinforcements from the Eagle. The only part of the story that Hammond and Aldius had agreed on was that Alexia had left Mirrevar to speak to King Gideon about ending the war and they expected her to return soon.

"I have told you everything," Hammond whined. His face was as ruined as the dreams of peace Zander had carried angles ago. "You can have the hill," he stammered. "Please! Let me go back to protect Alexia and her peace."

Zander had played the fool to that story enough times today. He dragged the crying man through the ruins.

Hammond pleaded with Sapphire survivors to flee. Those that complied often became victims of the storm, massive blasts of white streaking down in divine judgment. Others tried to free Hammond. Kenneth cut them down, a blademaster emerging from the grief, moving swifter than ever before. Of those that reached Zander, the last thing they ever saw was the Red Devil glaring at their waning lives as the Dark Brother reaped soul from body, their blood coating Zander's blade.

Sunrise pierced the darkness, emerging on the eastern horizon as Zander dragged the ruined knight across the hilltop. The black sky turned purple, the red-orange glow of the sun's crown shining through. Not even the rising sun could cast away the hatred Zander carried.

"Please," Hammond begged, as Zander dragged him through the flowers toward the cliff's edge. "Aldius is a warmonger. I'm not like him!"

Zander stopped five feet from the cliff, eyes on the eastern horizon. "Did Aldius sleep with Alexia?"

Hammond looked bewildered. "No! Not for lack of trying on his part either. She ignored his advances."

The rushing of the two rivers merging below assailed Zander's ears. It did not bring him peace nor did Hammond's answer. He couldn't trust this man who told him everything he wanted to hear. Aldius had given him all the answers that his loving ears had wanted to hear and then he smeared Alexia's name with his broken promises.

Zander could not let this man do the same.

Yet, a part of him hesitated as the sunrise stretched into view. For the first time since the killings, he touched the locket and felt a wave of sadness competing with the waning anger. He knew that Alexia wouldn't want him to kill this man and perpetuate war.

"Please," Hammond kept repeating.

Zander gazed across the dawning Mirrevar, remembering watching her ride away, her last words that they'd be enemies when next they met. In the vast distance, he saw the Sapphire's bridge encampment. Asa was trapped there, terrified and alone, possibly being... he couldn't think about that. Aldius slept in his bed, sleeping sweet dreams, smiling at the rifts he had cracked into Zander's soul. Vernon was dead and no spell would ever return him to life. Alexia was gone from Mirrevar and who knew if she ever really loved him at all or if she just told him what he wanted to hear.

"Please let me serve the dream of peace," Hammond cried.

Zander glanced back toward the ruins where he and Kenneth had killed so many. This place was supposed to be the heart of peace and yet it had known nothing but war for centuries. This was where armies fought, where lovers separated, where love died. The cycle of vengeance would go on.

Guard your witch, boy.

Iceheart was right. He had been right about everything. Zander had been a young fool with naïve beliefs. How many people would be set to vengeance after the killing tonight? Thinking back on it, his stomach threatening to return its contents, he and Kenneth must've killed at least a hundred Sapphires. But that didn't even make him want to stop. His vengeance wouldn't be sated until Asa was safe and everyone who put her life in danger was dead.

Hammond reached up his hand. "Please. For Alexia."

For Alexia.

He looked down at this man with all the right words and only saw Aldius. Those same words that he'd used to manipulate Zander. For Alexia.

Zander was done hearing them.

Hatred seized Zander in the heart of love, beneath the tree that bloomed with every flower ever known. Zander threw Hammond over the cliff, down into the Grand Confluence as the first rays of sunlight touched the flowers of Goddess Hill. Sorrow poured out of the locket, echoes of a woman who put Leveria in his hands, but Zander couldn't feel it. Not anymore.

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