Silver chains spiralled tight about Bethany, their rattle and clink slithering through the ragged cadence of her breath and the pounding tumult of her heart. Respite—if only for a fleeting instant—but the swarming horde offered no pause. Where one fell, two crept from the shadows, jagged teeth bared, ravenous eyes betraying no hint of fear or hesitation.

Lacking mercy.

Lacking qualm.

Lacking the slightest glint of human goodness behind their bloodshot gaze. Whatever the fiends had once been, they were monsters now.

Yet she was an Enforcer Prime—slaying monsters was what she did.

She arced her arm through the air, sending a chain soaring toward a fiend. As the creature hurled itself at her, the silver links wrapped themselves around its neck and thrashed it into a wooden table, splintered pine bursting across the tavern.

Yet there was no end to them.

They came from the gloom pooled in every shadow, from the ceiling and the walls—from beneath the counters, from cracks in the stonework—as the candlelight toppled into darkness, their numbers only grew.

'We need to get outside!' the slave girl barked.

As the Selenarian chained lightning from one fiend to the next, the stench of scorched flesh and ozone flooded the air, driving out the homely scent of roasted meats and ale.

Naereah did not match the official reports: timid, wretched, weak—this was not the woman fighting by her side. She wielded her lightning like a living extension of her limbs, tongues of azure plasma sparking from her palms, holding the fiends aloft in an effulgent prison of anguished snarls and blistering flesh.

Anton was no less ferocious. Blood matted the grizzled fur of his beastly form as he seized a fiend, wrenched it apart with a wet, gristling tear, and hurled each sundered half into the gathering swarm.

Though her skin crawled at fighting alongside such villainous cut-throats, she could admit they were formidable. When the time came for them to pay for their crimes, she would hold nothing back. But for now, they were useful...

Useful, but not enough.

'Can you make an opening?' Bethany snapped, her elbow pressed hard to Naereah's side.

'Cover me!' Naereah shot back.

Whirling toward the entrance, the Selenarian thrust out her palms toward the snarling mass, prying them apart with a current of shimmering force.

'Go!' Bethany barked.

She did not linger.

She ran.

Crouching beneath the lightning, she rushed into the street—her silver chains wrapped around the innkeepers, dragging them into the night without resistance. Sedrick soon followed, Anton at his heel. Only Naereah remained inside, holding the horde at bay.

Teeth digging into her lower lip, Bethany flung her chains toward the slave girl. They coiled around Naereah's torso, pulling taut—towing the wretch from the narrowing exit.

What the hell is happening in this city?

They had escaped the inn, but nowhere was safe. Whether from their doors, windows, or rooftops, civilians poured from the nearby homes into the street, gnashing teeth and razored claws haunting their shadows. Blood drained from Bethany's face as a mother leapt from a high window, clutching her child in her arms. With a blood-crunching, splattering fall, she struck the street below, crimson seeping into the cracks of the paving stones.

Her sacrifice was in vain. Even as the child wailed, clinging to her limp body, the fiends were upon him—his cries silenced between their maws.

Yet the dead would not still. Their blood-drained corpses had barely fallen limp before they rose again. As though dragged upright by unseen strings, their backs wrenched into unnatural angles. Splintered bones shifted back into torn flesh; twisted limbs and shattered necks crunched back into place, and the dead took their place among the horde.

'Your orders, Captain!' a man yelled, his pleading tone drawing Bethany's attention from the waking nightmare.

She parted her lips, but only faint stammering slipped free. She was not a stranger to carnage—the Vanguard territories were not so kind. But in the worst of times, she had always had higher-ranking Enforcers and Wardens' orders to depend on; now there was only her.

The thought surprised her, but she knew it was true. Yes, the Enforcers held a force within the city, a local barracks bearing the immolating flame of their Lady's will. Yet she felt no hint of Daylight's Song's presence—no animating touch of her regal might, no heartening warmth of being under her care.

She did not know when her Lord had retreated, but her absence could not be denied. Whatever local forces remained, if any, they would have to rally to her.

'What's our status?' Bethany finally said, her voice rising to smother a faint waver. She was in command; she did not have the luxury of doubt.

'Nine confirmed killed in action—' the Enforcer barked, his report cut off by the frenzied lunge of a newly raised fiend.

The creature hung an inch from her subordinate, thrashing against its argent binds. Bethany clenched her hand, and the chains tightened, tearing flesh and crushing bone between the constricting silver.

'Give me that report, Enforcer!' she snapped.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

'Ma'am!' the Enforcer barked before resuming his account.

It was no isolated attack—the city was infested. No, this was no incursion; it was an occupation. Heureux was already lost.

Three hundred thousand defenceless souls, scrambling for survival—their panicked steps echoed by the voracious gait of their loved ones' corpses. Some had made it out of the city. Others had found fleeting refuge, but the situation was growing ever more dire, and there would be no reinforcements.

'We do not know what it is, but since it lit up in the sky, everyone who tries to leave the city just crumbles to dust,' the Enforcer said—

—flinching back as Anton barrelled past him, splattering swaths of fiends against the brick wall of a nearby house with a brutal sweep of his bulging arm.

'I'm more than partial to the old chin-wag, but there's a time and a place—and holding an untenable position is neither, I assure you,' Sedrick chimed, driving his rapier into a fiend's shoulder. Its flesh bulged, then burst, spraying shredded meat and fractured bone across the street.

Short-sighted fool, Bethany silently griped as she sidestepped flashing claws. She snapped her fingers toward the pivoting fiend, and the bladed tips of her chains plunged into its side, tearing the monster apart as it writhed and twisted in its own mangled flesh.

Knowledge was power—against such overwhelming odds, they needed all the information they could gather.

The infestation was everywhere; the local Enforcers were in disarray, if any of them survived at all. But she still had most of her men, and now she knew where to find the rest.

'We will make for the noble quarters,' she commanded, her tone unfaltering.

If the Enforcers had fallen, the nobles were the only power left in the city. They did not hold their vaulted positions for nothing—even on the Settled Floors, there would be Servants and Soldiers, perhaps even Champions. The noble quarters were where they would build their resistance. She would reclaim the city—no matter the cost.

The acrid taste of iron hung in the air like a ghoulish haze. Blood pooled through the street—countless Bereft citizens hunted down like wild prey and devoured, their desecration unceasing as their lifeless bodies rose again.

Yet as Bethany marched through the city—her two subordinates and the outlaws lockstep with her—their numbers swelled.

Most who joined were Bereft, desperately clinging to any hope of salvation. With mortal arms, they did what they could to aid: swinging bats and blades, hurling rocks, thrusting sharpened sticks. Their meagre contributions were outweighed by the burden of their safety, but it was her duty to safeguard them; they would not be turned away.

Though fewer in number, some Inheritors gathered to their cause, unleashing their power with reckless abandon. They were neither well-trained nor especially powerful—likely hailing from minor guilds and lesser factions, caught up in a nightmare they could scarcely comprehend. Still, the support they provided would not be refused.

But it was not enough.

The fevered horror would not break.

It only seethed.

Arms splayed, claws dug deep into brick, the undead skulked across each wall. Their wet snarls carried through the air as they threw themselves at the resistance.

The losses...

They were appalling.

How did this happen?

It should not have been possible. Daylight's Song was a Lord—no less than equal to the likes of the Black Dragon, Devourer of Lies, or the Forgotten One. A Sequence on the scale needed for this assault should have been impeded by her authority. Even if her emblem had been erased, there had been more than enough time for her to notice the intrusion and take direct action.

Unless—

Of course she had heard the rumours, but they were laughable. There were many who wanted to see Daylight's Song dead, but few who had the power to act against her. Yet for such an incursion to persist upon the Settled Floors, it could not be denied.

The city was not under siege...

Her Lord was.

If the rumours were true, she had been for a long time now.

Keep it together! she commanded herself, blood spraying through the air as her chains twisted necks from shoulders; pierced through eyes; cleaved flesh from shoulder to hip.

The resistance battled fiercely. Lightning scorched through rows of fiends; scores more were rent apart by beastly claws—Anton barrelling onward like a tornado of tooth and claw. Even Sedrick had surprised her. Beneath his wanton demeanour, she could not deny his prowess. He danced across the bloodied street, slipping past pounces and swipes, detonating flesh with each thrust of his blade.

Bolts of searing fire and blades of jagged ice tore through the horde; creatures of rock and mud crashed into their ranks; chimes of concussive force burst through snarling throats. Yet their numbers only grew.

Soon, they were surrounded.

'Naereah, listen!' Anton growled, the lacerations cutting down his chest and back seeming to split wider with every heaving breath. 'Find my wife. If I don't make it through this, please—'

'Don't speak!' Naereah spat, unleashing a torrent of lightning at the horde. 'He's coming!'

If Bethany had breath to spare, she would have burst into laughter. Even as she gasped, a faint chuckle escaped her lips.

She could admit the villains had proven more than she had expected, yet still they were overrun. It was not in her to surrender, but she knew a lost cause when she saw one. She would battle until the bitter end—that was her training. Upon her shoulders rested the pride of the Guild.

But the hope of surviving the monstrous surge...

Impossible.

Havoc Gray may have been a Soldier, and loathed as she was to admit it, she would not refuse even his aid. But he was only one man.

He could not reverse this inevitable tide.

Screams cut through the sky.

The fiends poured from the walls; they hurled themselves from the rooftops; they flooded every street.

Death had come to Heureux to reap a harvest of souls.

None would be spared.

Beset on every side, even the gods seemed to turn away—a white mist blanketing the street like a mournful veil.

Above the mist soared a raven. Its golden eyes peered down as though sizing the feast.

The buzzards will eat well this night, Bethany chuckled, even as she winced when a fiend gouged her arm.

The raven dived into the mist. It circled below, stirring the haze—and then it was gone.

In its place crouched a hooded man, an ivory sword glinting in the pale light.

Then, in an instant, the battle stilled.

Wet, gurgling cries saturated the air, the figure's pale blade zigzagging in every direction like a razored maze, even though he remained crouched in place.

Despite the chaos of the strike, only the fiends were pierced: throats slashed, limbs carved, hearts skewered.

Then the blade retracted, and the mist stirred. It pooled around the stranger and condensed.

Countless alabaster claws shaped from the mist, and as he straightened his back, they were unleashed into the swarm.

Tearing the monsters limb from limb.

Alone, he cleared a path through the endless horde.

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