When Harper Cartwright had stepped toward the platform, lending her voice to the Enforcer's cause, she had not expected what was to follow. Now, as the slum-dwelling migrants marched in two camps—one led by the Lord-Mayor, and the other the camp she had found herself in—she felt the weight of it. That was foreseen—her position was not.

She now stood as a captain on the field, entrusted with command of twelve men. She had tried to refuse. The request was denied. The Enforcer needed people she could trust, and when the list was drawn, Harper's name stood near the top of a very short page.

She was not a leader.

She did not want to lead.

But no one had ever cared what she wanted—chance would be a fine thing, indeed, for them to start caring now.

The so-called twin-slum assault force numbered about two hundred and sixty-five fighters. Most, like Harper, were slum refugees. But each of the five guild leaders brought ten of their own, and while they officially reported to the Enforcer, in truth they acted as they pleased—charging ahead, breaking ranks, throwing themselves into swarms of dark guildsmen, ghouls, or whatever else crossed their path.

Of all the groups, none were as unruly as the band led by that brute—Eudora, if Harper recalled her name. Brawn without balance, whatever she met ended at her spear. The weapon smashed through armour and flesh alike, bodies splitting open with the graceless spectacle of a butcher hacking through swine.

Harper could admit, grudgingly, that Eudora's raw force was effective. She had seen it the second night—when the night-sun burned scarlet and the dead clawed free of their graves. Eudora was there, her spear whirling in savage sweeps overhead, crashing down with bone-shaking weight to drive the horde back.

Even still, it was galling to march beneath the banner of such unmanageable brutes. But when weighed against the alternative—against the eighty-nine who trailed at the Lord-Mayor's heel—she bit back her complaint. The Lord-Mayor's troops were lazy, ineffectual, unwilling to lift a hand. They fancied themselves a rearguard, but all that meant was that by the time they finally caught up, the fight was already over.

To suppress the city's violence, they needed an overwhelming force. To strike beneath the ground, they needed every soul who could fight. But all the Lord-Mayor's men brought was grief; for all the good they were, they might as well have been left behind.

'Hold!' came a distant voice, barely heard at first—then the word caught, echoing down the fighting lines.

The twin forces were divided into twenty-two bands. With the lone exception of the Lord-Mayor's lot, each was led by a Soldier. There were not many of those to go around, and Harper supposed that shortage was no small part of why she had been press-ganged into command.

To keep their march coherent across the vast cityscape, two bands moved in tight rows, each pair fifty paces from the next. Harper's band took the centre—neither at the brunt of first contact, nor so far removed they could not be thrown in at once.

Sparks surged her veins whenever orders came down. The first time, it had been cultists—spread across the width of a company. The Enforcer's front line barely caught sight of them before violence burst loose, tentacles, tendrils, and tongues tearing up from the earth. Harper thought herself enduring, but the memory still clung: flesh coiled about her waist, slick buds lapping at her face. It left its mark, not in the taste of defeat, but in the shame of knowing it had tasted her back.

After a night of hard fighting, their army had triumphed. The cultists were routed, but victory cost them precious time. The wounded had to be tended, and with that Selenarian healer left behind to join them later, the lesser healers worked through until dawn to fill the gap.

Heureux was sprawling, and they needed mounts. Infernal Steeds, Stampeding Horns, Foot-lizards—seven bells for seven hells, she would have settled for a horse. Before the fall, the city's communal transport had been robust. The army had hoped to scavenge mounts as they marched, but that hope was dashed across the city's shattered paving. If any beasts remained, they could not be found—only their grease-fried remains, still warm in discarded pans.

The march across the city had been long enough. Harper sighed in relief as the word passed down the fighting lines: they had arrived.

'So remind me how it works,' asked one of her men, groaning as the weight of supplies slipped from his shoulder. 'Each chime gets its own hell, and if we ring them all, we leave the Dungeon and return to Aarth?'

Harper crouched to unpack the bag, rummaging through spare clothing and thin sheets. Her fingers clasped around a cylindrical shape. She drew out a tin, its label gone, its tab missing. Shaking the rusted thing, she thought it sounded like meat. Opening it would not be hard. She was a Soldier; the contents would squeeze free with little effort.

'It's seven bells for seven hells, not the other way round,' Harper replied flatly. 'But yeah, Cornelius, that's what I believe.'

Cornelius sagged onto the grass, exhaling loudly as he settled into place. His gaze drifted to the sky, one arm slumped across the sack as he lazily felt through the supplies.

'It's wild to me—believing in something. I guess I've never really given it much thought,' he said, whipping his hand back as Rosella pinched the back of it to rummage in the bag herself.

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'If you want wild, how about this?' Rosella muttered. 'I've lived in this city my whole life, and I never knew the nobles kept a bloody jungle to themselves. What even is this place?'

A garden, not a jungle—but Harper could forgive the mistake. Deep in the noble quarters, someone had sown it long ago. Folk said it was the work of a Lord, though which one, nobody knew. From the outside it was no more than a patch of ground, a space you could walk around in minutes. Step inside, though, and the place stretched for miles—trees, flowers, and great mushroom stalks crowding the air with colour and scent.

Harper was not a noble, but she had been here once before. Long ago, by invitation. A childhood friend, braggart that she was, had thought Harper would rot green with envy. She did not. She was glad enough for the experience, and left it there.

'So you don't believe in nothing?' Rosella asked, already aloof to the wonders around her.

'Not a thing,' Cornelius shrugged. 'Definitely not some magic bells to take us back to a world that doesn't exist.'

Harper glanced at him, then shrugged herself. Everyone had their faith. She was content enough knowing hers was true. In the Vanguard Floors of the Dungeon lay the gate to the first hell. She had seen it herself, a decade earlier. That was where her parents were held. She could not forget their cries. They gripped her at night, never loosening, never letting her sleep.

Try as she did, she could not cross into that hell—she was not allowed. In the years that followed, she had nearly lost hope. Nearly resigned to her parents' loss.

But then there was Havoc.

For most, his transformation against Wolf's Requiem was astounding enough. A Soldier slaying a Champion was all but unseen. For her, it was salvific. She had seen it before. Not with her eyes, but in a vision—the man of power and mist laying siege upon that hell.

In the days that followed, she was not the only one to seek where he slept. Believing the boy only lightly attached, she went ready to offer herself in marriage. He was striking enough, though young. Soldiers lived for centuries; in time, the gap would close to nothing.

But when she rapped on his door, it was the Selenarian who answered. Her dark gaze swept Harper head to toe. The door slammed shut before Harper had the chance to speak a word.

It was vexing, yet only the beginning. She would find a way into his favour. Marriage was not required, though she could think of no better path. Should a chance present itself, she would seize it—whatever it took to set her parents free.

'Captain,' another of her men called. 'The Field Marshal has requested your summons.'

With a sigh, Harper wiped her mouth, tossing the battered tin onto the growing heap of waste. Without a word, she moved deeper into the garden, sharp, earthy scents rising from the crushed grass beneath her tread.

The Enforcer waited at the foot of a tree, the other band captains drifting toward her in ones and twos. With a terse nod, the Enforcer acknowledged Harper's approach. Harper offered a clumsy salute as she came to stand at her post.

'The entrance is ahead,' the Enforcer intoned, her voice formal—to the point. That much Harper could respect.

She directed Harper's gaze toward a mausoleum. Vines coiled its pillars from base to peak, yet by Harper's reckoning the design seemed deliberate. The monument bore a scattering of fractures, but was otherwise well kept. Its white stone showed little tarnish of age. No block was missing, no edge crumbling away. Even the cracks it did bear seemed ornamental, placed with care to lend an archaic charm.

'So what are we waitin' for?' Eudora grunted, her palm pressed flat to the trunk as she leaned against it with casual ease.

Harper knew, but knew better than to speak. The last time she had, she had been saddled with twelve men. She was nothing if not adaptive—learning from her mistakes, never to repeat them.

Had she been less wise, she might have explained: within the mausoleum lay the city's underground. Unsettled depths beneath the settled floors. Heureux was not unique in that regard—where such structures were found, Dungeon trials followed. Some Lords had even built their cities atop them for that very reason. She knew of another such city on this Floor: Stone Garden, whose underground had been shaped into a Chamber of Inheritance.

'Not even one thing you just told us takes my fancy,' the other Enforcer drawled, his ivory tailcoat fluttering softly in the breeze.

The silver-haired man was close to Havoc, and Harper was resigned to keep him on side. It was a challenge, for one simple reason—the man was a buffoon.

She could admit he had a way with the sword: sweeping in with piercing strikes, his targets' flesh rupturing like wineskins overfilled. But even in his most valiant moments, he found a way to spoil them with some ill-timed quip.

'If we all work together, I see no cause for concern,' Rexford chimed in, standing the very image of stalwart refinement.

His scarlet armour caught the light in splendid ways, reflecting across the garden's green like embers struck from flint. He was handsome—breathtakingly so—but his allure went deeper than skin. In that regard, if pressed, Harper would begrudgingly admit the Enforcer-clown was the finer-looking man. Yet Rexford carried regality in every step, and the potency of his Remnants was second to none.

'Yes, but we're not all working together, are we?' said Aurelia Bell—a woman so noxious Harper could scarcely stomach food in her presence. 'Some of us aren't pulling their weight, so to speak. That's not what you promised when you begged at my door.'

'For most of the dead, there's no reason to fear. But for you, Mistress Bell—you should be very alarmed.'

The speaker, clad in cloth of shifting colours, was unnerving to behold. His eccentric garb had Harper braced for absurdity; what she found instead was a man with a prophetic mien. His visions were never of happy futures.

If one was spared death, their loved ones were doomed. If no loved one was lost, grievous maiming followed. And if neither death nor loss lay in his foresight, the man of clashing colours simply did not speak.

'Oh, really? Of the two of us, it seems you're the one with far more to dread,' Aurelia said with a dangerous lilt.

'None of this is helpful,' the Enforcer snapped, drawing every eye back to her. 'When we descend, the trial will trigger. It's like a Dungeon Cell—suffused with Its will, arranged to be cleared only by us working as one. Any shortfall, any holding back, and our efforts will mean nothing. We will all die.'

Harper glanced over her shoulder, watching as the Lord-Mayor's men straggled in. The thought was clear enough—send the competent bands ahead and leave his deadweight behind. She did not want to say it. She did not like it one bit. But perhaps, once again, it was time to weigh in.

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