Stood, spear in hand, in the shadow of the valley of death, Bethany feared no evil. Yet all the same, it had gathered to crush her—an army of cultists poised to bear down.

There were dozens of them, maybe over a hundred, each dressed in robes unyielding to light. Servants bulked their ranks, but Soldier's moved among them, enough to tip the scales against her weary host. And high above the battlegrounds hovered someone greater still: a witch upon a broom, who made numbers mere jest.

Bethany knew her by sight, though they had never met. Octavia Le'Buteur, better known as Boneyard's Witch.

Tight against her skin, the witch wore a dainty dress, blood red, lips black as glossed tar. Her legs swam the air in gentle kicks, seated sideways upon her broom. Unbothered. Playful. Above it all. Bethany swore she would drag her down into the dirt.

She advanced before her forces. Havoc matched her stride, his glare fixed skyward, lion-like, hunting deer. The doe looked back, yet in her eyes lurked the tigress, a smile sharpened like claws curling at her lips.

She reached the centre of the chamber and halted, sweeping her gaze across the forces arrayed against her before fixing on Octavia. Chin raised, shoulders squared, spine straight, she stood exposed yet guarded by a seething rage aimed at the fiends who had brought death to so many innocents.

'Cultic forces of the Bleeding Hand, you stand accused of…' Her voice caught for the briefest moment, as if the words could not contain the thing within her. Then, with the sound of unbound fury, she howled, 'Of everything. Every depraved depth you have plumbed. You have made mockery of decency, of law, of life. Surrender yourselves to my custody at once. One and all, you will face the headsman. No compromise, no mercy, no trial; none is needed.'

A moment's silence gripped the chamber, then let slip, laugher rising to the crystal stars that burned above.

Bethany smiled a frantic grin, menacing—unhinged—was the feel of it. She should have been afraid. She was not. She should have counted the costs, yet the losses overwhelmed her. Justice was all she craved, vengeance for the trials that had dragged her by the tuft through grating torment.

She glanced at Havoc and forced down her pride.

'Can you do it?'

He gave a single nod. It was all she needed. She raised Lumen's Bane, and with a cry that pierced the stone-bound heavens, hurled a beam of light through the witch's black heart.

Oh, how the laughter curled up and died in their throats. Octavia teetered. She toppled. She fell, striking the ground like a palm to the thigh—Bethany's laughing retort made flesh. Blood pooled beneath her like bile beneath a dying beast.

A crack split the air. An ebony sarcophagus rose above the ground, its door yawning wide. Impenetrable darkness lay within. Then, with a shriek that spoiled the blood, a phantom lurched forth from the lightless depths, soaring to the ceiling before bursting into flame. Dusted in its ashes, Octavia rose. The wound seared through her chest had closed, and only the blackened fabric between her breasts showed she had ever been struck at all.

'Curious,' Octavia hummed. She slicked her finger across the viscous scarlet on her chest, and dabbed it against her tongue, her lips flicking open and shut in delicate rhythm as though recalling a taste. 'This one screamed a bit too long. She shan't be missed, but you will replace her all the same.'

Fear pressed itself against Bethany's ribs, but even as the witch drew near, the fear could not reach her heart. Yet as the fleshless dead rose behind Octavia, and giant skeletal arms tore through stone to flank her, that fear broke though—driving from her pounding heart into her spine.

'Stand back,' Havoc said, his tone dispassionate, and all the more dangerous for it.

He lifted his sword, levelling the tip at the encroaching nightmares. Black fire crept along the blade, whirling like a tempest as he drew his arm back. Yet before he could unleash his unholy might, rivers of fire surged from one side, and from the other came lashing tendrils of smoke.

By Rexford.

By Caspian.

They had been betrayed.

****

'Crush his skull,' Atticus commanded with all the guilt of a god.

Fenton moved as directed, drawing a war-hammer from the shimmering air. The blunt head struck the derelict skull. If the impact had been insufficient, the iron tomb that rose in the instant after, encasing the deserter, finished the work—entombing the man completely, twisting, turning, contorting, crushing bone to bonemeal. The warped figure rose toward the closed sky, blood gushed from the mangled base, staining the boots of all who might desire to flee.

'You're insane!' some woman howled.

A pitiable, pretty, petite thing, her fragrance stung his eyes; his branding burned beneath her wrist. She was noble, an Inheritor, her Dungeon‑born gift eclipsing his own. Yet with dark lies whispering at her lithe ears, Atticus had brought her to ruin, into the palm of his hand.

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'Shatter her bones.'

Fenton obeyed. He swung the war‑hammer before she could raise her wand; the blow crushed wrist, then shin. Bone splintered with a wet, sharp crack. She collapsed to her knees, wailing.

He loomed over her, taking her chin in his hand, angling her wet gaze up to his.

'Look at you. Atticus sneered. 'Face caked in exorbitant shit, cheeks flushed, lips paint to kiss.'

He struck her across the face. She slumped, a heaving mass on the stone.

'Whose lips did you imagine you would taste down here?' he hissed. 'It was never mine. To you, to all of you—' he roared at the captives, who cowered before him, necks whipping side to side, hemmed in by cultists like wolves penning fowl. 'I was a joke when I wasn't convenient.'

He howled grim laughter, lifting the woman by her hair to strike her again. Spittle and blood sprayed from her lips, scarlet wet no longer from paint.

'Line your pockets, save your skin.' He struck once, then again, then a third time in ritual rhythm. 'How quickly you clung to my heels, trailing like a pup, only thoughts on the bone.' He leaned in, inhaled her ruin, tightening his grip on her bundled strands. 'What do you think of where I've led you? Fitting, would you not say? Away from the fight, as I promised. Down to the grave, as I promised myself.'

The irony. The fools had actually believed they would take part in the battle. From a distance, perhaps—but they were resolved to have their share of it. Something to parade around the gossip tables, tales of their great deeds, credits to their fading lines.

It had taken Rexford's serpent tongue to lure them here. Tactical repositioning, he had called it. The thought filled Atticus with mirth. Now that the battle had begun. Not fodder at all—they were sacrifices. Yet they could still observe their 'lessers' heroic deeds, striving against the inevitable and dying all the same.

Atticus stepped toward the veil's border and peered through the shimmering haze beyond. It unfolded exactly as he had intended: a burning sea surging forth, a storm of lashes pressing in. And between them, there was Havoc—his greatest threat soon to be no more.

He turned away; there was little left to watch. With a smile, he began to chant, his meagre Core attuning to the roots above, below, and within, preparing his soul to reap the harvest of Undoing.

****

It came as no surprise to Havoc that they had been betrayed. He had never doubted it would come, only wondered by whose hand and when. So when a river of burning red surged forth and whips of smoke crackled like a storm from the other side, his heart remained steady, as did his breath.

He turned toward the blaze, knowing the whips would never reach him, and drove the rivers of fire back with flames of his own.

'Harper!' Bethany cried in surprise, her voice signalling that she had arrived as Havoc had planned.

He looked over his shoulder and saw the tendrils of smoke rebound against a barrier wrought from golden mist.

That was their chance, the only one they would find—their single opening for ambush, squandered. Now it was his turn.

'Naereah, now,' he commanded, and at his word she brought the sky to bear—lightning crashing down to strike the enemy's Champion, the one he had stripped of the Dungeon's favour.

The witch's shriek tore through the air like a mourning wail. She collapsed, and another cry resounded as a phantom burst from the weightless sarcophagus, raining ash upon its own immolation. The lightning struck again, but the witch rolled clear of its path. And when the third bolt came down, the skeletal hands at her side intercepted it. Bone splintered from the impact, yet they held, enduring the storm as the witch rose to her feet.

The lightning ceased. Stillness held the moment—then came a cry. A hulking woman soared from behind, landing between Havoc and the Enforcer with her spear levelled at the enemy ranks.

'I'm tired of waiting,' she boomed. Her barbarian furs hardened to steel, coating her frame like a gleaming second skin.

In the next instant, Anton descended in his beastly form. A flaming whip tore from a demon's grasp and coiled into his own, gripped tight in burning paws.

All eyes turned to Bethany. She looked to Havoc.

'The sentence is death,' she said, sneering as she thrust a finger toward the witch. 'See it through without mercy.'

Then she faced her army and commanded: 'Bring them to heel!'

The Enforcers' forces marched like a drumbeat. The cultist army advanced in kind. Some sank into the shadows, emerging moments later with monstrous beasts drawn from their depths. Others summoned lanterns into being, yet they gave no light; instead, ink-black tentacles burst from the lamps and writhed across the ground. Still more raised swords, knives, bows, and staves, forming into tight, deliberate ranks.

Chimes rang. Fingers plucked strings. Lips pressed to flutes, their music climbing into the air. The song was discordant, but each played their part well. Havoc felt the surge of power that followed—the swell of augmenting Remnants answering the call to war.

To war… Was that all he was meant for? Perhaps he would find the answer in the enemy's guts.

He advanced. The witch clapped her hands, and her skeletal horde surged from behind her like the tide of hell.

He met the horde head-on, his blade sweeping down. Lightless flames tore through their ranks, scorching a trail that burned to the heart of their formation. He gave no thought as the fire drew in; he pressed forward to carry out his charge—his, not the Enforcer's. A monster stood before him, and the directive was kill.

A second sweep burned through to the end of the formation. He surged along the searing line, ignoring the strikes and blows that glanced off his black-plate armour as he went.

The witch stood idle, blowing on a nail. Yet as he neared, she turned to him, grinned, and fluttered her hand in a soft farewell. Then, clutching her broom, she vanished—revealing behind her a tendrilled mass pressed into the mockery of human form.

'Brother Havoc,' the creature wailed, its voice uncanny, like man and woman speaking as one. 'So good to see you in the flesh.'

It spoke no more. Instead it spooled outward, swelling to swallow the sky. Fleshy tendrils writhed, closing in, a world of fangs jutting from every strand like knives.

At its pulsing core above, two hearts threaded together thrashed without rhythm, matted into a single mass of flesh. From that mound, the tendrils hung like vines around him. Even as they whipped toward him, even as he caught each strike upon his blade, Havoc did not know how the thing remained aloft. Neither did he care. He would see it fall.

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