Focused. Ready. Almost eager.

Like a frozen sea beneath a storm-lit sky, Havoc's blood surged—cold, electric. His body burned in preparation. He felt everything. The frigid draft sweeping across the vast basement floor raised the hairs on his neck. Every dimple and crack in the stone reverberated up through his feet, coursing through his legs, rattling his chest. He could taste the blood in the air. Not just that already spilled—the barb-bound Enforcers' red sputtering to the ground—but the blood yet to come.

The Truecourse in his grip, he walked forward—careful steps, measured and calm. All the while, white mist swirled about his heels.

He was already a killer, and he did not regret what he had done to the man who hurt his sister. Yet now and then, the question still surfaced—was the man beyond redemption?

A good man who had done wrong… or rotten to the core?

It did not matter. Havoc would have killed him either way. One was defined by their actions—some things could never be undone.

But the devils before him—grinning their cruel, wicked smiles as they broke formation, beginning to circle—offered no such ambiguity. They were irremediable. No different from monsters.

It was better that way.

'Do you not think it would be better if we sat and talked?' drawled the well-dressed man. 'We could be friends, you and I. I see no cause for any… unpleasantness.'

Bethany stepped forward. Unarmed and unguarded—her silver chains lost to the sacrifice of her Sequence—she walked shoulders squared, head high, eyes blazing. Dauntless. She pointed toward the man, her finger steady as she spoke.

'Your unconditional surrender and the release of my men,' Bethany said, her voice sharp and low—like a whispered blade. 'Immediate detainment. Summary execution. That is my compromise.'

Havoc cast her a glance. He was not used to being spoken for, but he found no fault in her terms.

'What she said,' he muttered, his blade levelled at the well-dressed man.

The man sighed and shook his head.

'I must say, I am disappointed,' purred a voice—not from the scimitar-wielding woman's lips, but from the blade itself.

Silken. Seductive. All the more unsettling for its source.

The jagged metal maw at the blade's centre twitched and shifted, crunching as it formed words no breathless steel was ever meant to speak.

'Word of your exploits reached even us—locked away as we were.'

The woman slipped a finger past her lips, suckling it slow and tender. Then, with languid grace, she traced it across the blade's edge. Blood bloomed black. It dripped. Froze on contact—spiking from the stone like razored grass.

And it spread.

'Infamous Havoc,' the blade hummed, its bloated purple tongue slithering across dead lips.

'Disgraceful Havoc,' it whispered, as the black spires crept outward like a frozen plague.

'Villainous Havoc. Murderer. Plunderer. Slayer of man and bride—stealing away their slave to corrupt her in your boundless depravity.'

A pause. Then, with relish:

'How romantic.'

Sharp panic lanced through Havoc's veins. A heartbeat later, the obsidian spikes erupted—razor-sharp, twisting in every direction. Havoc summoned the mist and shaped it into an ivory wall. The needles struck—shattering against the white.

The prelude was over.

The battle had begun.

Blade forward, he darted toward the woman. She did not run. Neither did she recoil. She stood smiling and unmoved.

As the jagged-toothed brute leapt ahead of her, Havoc learned why.

The shrunken heads around the man's neck flared blue, and a concussive pulse slammed into Havoc's chest, forcing him back. They shifted green, and he was pulled forward—dragged toward the man's waiting grasp. When they turned red, the brute swelled with grotesque muscle, his skin tearing like an overstuffed toy. Finally, the colours muddied brown, and claws burst through flesh now far too tight to contain him.

Before Havoc could fall into the beast's embrace, lightning struck. The creature reeled, body convulsing as arcs of light seared through its flesh.

Havoc struck next—his blade lashing across its chest with all his strength.

But the heads turned blue again. And it was Havoc who went flying, hurled backward by the pulse.

It came from the side. The worm. Its needle-like teeth spiralled in its maw as it surged from the stone.

Twisting mid-flight, Havoc caught the gnashing fangs with his sword. He survived the impact—but he was still falling. Then the ground swallowed him. Muscles burning, blade locked with the worm's maw, he sank beneath the floor as it dragged him down.

No air. No light. Only depth and struggle. He had died. This was hell—that was what his instincts screamed. The worm was a devil, dragging him deeper into perdition.

Calm down!

His fear was proof—testament to his being, even where breath had forsaken him. His heart still beat, spectral and faint.

Alive.

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Still alive.

Only falling.

This was not the mist of the spiritual void, but the feeling was similar. Like a meld. An in-between. A slip beyond the physical, yet scarcely removed from the truly incorporeal.

He could work with that.

Orienting himself by motion alone, he summoned the mist from his Anchor, shaping it into tendrils that coiled around the invertebrate like a leash. It thrashed against the bind, but he held fast, towing the creature upward. He rode it to the surface.

He gulped the stale air like a desert-baked traveller at an oasis. But there was no time to savour it—onyx spines surged from the earth, driving him to his feet, forcing him to flee.

'Intoxicated by your own fumes—you have overestimated yourself.'

The voice came from nowhere.

And then he saw him. A man, standing still at the far edge of the chamber. Yet the moment Havoc looked away, the voice was behind him again—impossible to track.

'Arrogant runt. What were you thinking?'

Claws and teeth bared, the beast with the shrunken heads charged. It swung wide—Havoc dipped low, blade flashing upward in reply.

No mark.

The eyes turned blue once more, and Havoc was hurled backward through the air.

Madness piled atop madness in the chamber. Lightning flashed. Teeth, claws, chitin, and tar-black spikes assailed from every direction. Even submerged in the mania, Havoc could not renounce lucidity—there was too much to protect.

Bethany fought to free her comrades, her hands raw and bleeding as she tore at their binds. Naereah raced across the room, streams of lightning spilling from her hands as she dove and weaved through stalking death. Where she slipped, Havoc was there—a wall of white rising in her defence.

Restraint? Now? his Captive Spirit hissed within. This is the call to indulge.

Havoc ignored it. There was always a call to indulge, at least for such a creature.

He raised his sword to meet the scimitar's downward chop. Its swollen tongue jutted from the side and lashed his cheek as he turned his head aside. His blood boiled where it struck. Searing pain spread from the wound across his jaw and down his neck like fire set to skin.

Poison.

He copied Naereah's healing touch and stopped the spread, just in time to parry the woman's next swipe at his gut.

Like a bladed ballet, they danced across the chamber. He cut low. She leapt high. His blade rose. Hers fell to meet it. Even when the Truecourse bent past her guard, slipping forward to pierce her, he could not reach her—not through the tongue and the tar-black bile it discharged.

She was skilled. Each lash aimed for his hands. Every opening in his guard, she pressed. Worse still, every drop of blood he drew froze on the stone, spiking upward to strike him. She moved like an unassailable storm, a fusion of blade and lethal intent.

But Havoc was learning.

He shifted between aggressive strikes and fluid deflections, weaving savage counters and graceful evasions into their choreography. Slowly, he began to drive her back—his mist extending beyond their duel, shaping the wider battlefield to his will.

Even as he focused on the woman—slipping past blood-born spines and sweeping blades—his Captive Spirit commanded the mist.

He could feel its glee pulsing through his Core. And though it fought for his cause, he strained to suppress its excess. He had granted it more freedom than at any time since the Dungeon-Cell. But he was not reckless. He had endured its whispered provocations for weeks. He knew its appetite—suffering, ruin, the delight of unrestrained destruction.

The Spirit brought destruction.

Ivory claws and tendrilled mist lashed across the chamber. They coiled around the shattered-toothed brute, clamping down with crushing force. They scored deep gouges into the stone as they surged toward the well-dressed man. Even the one who could not be tracked—the man without a name or face—was not spared the Spirit's assault.

All the while, Havoc drove the scimitar-wielding woman into a corner.

'Wait!' her blade cried.

Havoc did not heed the plea. He struck without remorse, and her head rolled clean from her shoulders.

From there, the Devil's Smile fell.

Not one survived.

They fought fiercely—almost gallantly. The brute cycled through attraction, repulsion, muscle, and claw. He withstood lightning, lashing, gouging.

But in the end, he was not monster enough for the devil Havoc had loosed upon the battlefield. A demon of mist and horns pinned his limbs and tore his head free between alabaster jaws.

The unknowable man vanished ahead, emerged behind. He fought with daggers. Havoc bled.

But he came too close—and he was caged.

Snared in a web of contracting steel spun from the Truecourse, he fell in bloodied chunks. Only then did Havoc see how small he truly was.

That left only the well-dressed man. He had run. Slipping into the ground, he thought himself safe.

He was not.

Where he had dived, the mist had followed. Only blood seeped up to the surface.

Blood dripped from Havoc's blade. He stood still, absently watching as the Enforcers were freed from their binds. He had thought he would feel something. He did not.

The night had been one of unrestrained slaughter. Every dark impulse that had ever squirmed within his soul had surfaced—and still, he felt nothing. Not the guilt he had once expected from taking human lives. Not the thrill of victory. Not even the hollow relief of having purged evil. There were more just like them. The city alone had no shortage.

He had not avenged his past, though it had felt that way, briefly. He had only added to the blood.

And he did not care.

Cheer up, my boy, the Spirit hummed as it slipped back into the Midnight Urn. Look at what we have already achieved.

Violence. Nothing else.

Consider what we will become. Let me taste it again—that fusion—the nectar beyond the gods. Let me feel Catharsia.

He sighed, brushing aside its enticements as he approached the freed Enforcers.

They were pale. All of them—shrunken and bloodied, curled on the ground with heads tucked like infants. Some shivered. Others wept in silence. A few lay motionless, as still as corpses. But others still stole glances at him with ravenous eyes. For a moment—less—he swore one's gaze flashed red, bloodied veins cutting into the white. But when he looked again, it was only hazel staring back.

'I have not misjudged you,' Bethany said, her voice stern, even as a heavy weight seemed to slip from her shoulders. 'You are every inch the savage the reports claimed.'

She paused. Her fists clenched. Her lips tightened as if holding back bile.

'But… thank you.'

He answered with a nod, then stepped away.

The hours that followed were spent retrieving the survivors from the upper levels and bringing them below for Naereah to tend. Most were Bereft. They mended quickly—her healing touch unchallenged by the Dungeon's will. The Inheritors took longer. Though their wounds were grave, they were not like Iris. They would live, given rest.

All the while, Bethany repeated her thanks. Havoc dismissed it.

How could he not?

He knew what she did not. What she would learn soon enough.

Her subordinates were already dead. All they had rescued were corpses. And like the gifted horse of old-Aarth myth, Bethany would deliver slaughter through her own gates.

Havoc knew this.

And he did not care.

He would protect what was his.

That was all.

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