The fighting didn’t slow when the towering abomination appeared. If anything, the room seemed to shrink around it. It came barreling forward with a wet, grinding gait, crushing the undying underfoot without even noticing. Bodies popped beneath its steps like rotten fruit, yet even broken, they still clawed and twitched around its ankles, reaching for anything warm.

  It swiped at the group with one of its arms, the motion sending a gust of foul air and dust across the hall. The blow would’ve caved in a chest if it connected. Edmund and Damien dove apart, boots scraping on glass and splintered wood. Gualter stumbled back behind a table. Marc and Jules threw themselves sideways as a fist came down where they’d been standing, the impact rattling the entire hall and shaking loose powdery dust from the beams overhead.

  Around them, the undying didn’t stop either. They kept coming in relentless bursts, shoulders slamming into crates, hands grabbing at sleeves, mouths opening with those sharp, bloody teeth. Now scattered, the group fought in pockets. The abomination turned its attention toward Marc and Jules, both closest to its path. It lumbered forward, then slammed down at them, two fists at once, the monster trying to flatten them into the floor.

  Both jumped out of the way just in time, breath tearing out of them. Jules ducked behind a stack of crates, then snapped a canister from beneath his coat and threw it. It clanged off the creature’s shoulder and burst in a lick of fire that crawled up its ragged sleeve.

  The abomination barely reacted. It didn’t recoil like the smaller ones did. It only tilted one head in irritation. Jules threw another, a brief flare that lit the stitched seams along its torso and the uneven patchwork of its extra limbs. Still, nothing but annoyance.

  “Damn it!” Jules hissed.

  He didn’t get another throw. Two of the undying broke away from the mass and charged him, fast and wild. Jules swore and bolted, weaving between tables while their feet slapped wetly behind him.

  Elsewhere, Edmund kept cutting, the rhythm of it becoming brutal and efficient. Each swing landed with a different resistance than normal flesh, followed by the sickening scrape of bone or the thud of bodies hitting wood.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Some of the ones he dropped kept trying to rise. His eyes flicked across the floor, and the answer hit him in a sharp, ugly realization. Those whose heads were severed or destroyed weren’t rising again. “Their heads,” Edmund muttered under his breath. “We have to cut their heads off.”

  He adjusted instantly. The next attacker rushed him with its mouth wide. Edmund stepped into it and took its head cleanly. The body fell, and just as he suspected, it stayed down. Another lunged, and once again, he aimed for the head.

  “Aim for the neck!” Edmund barked.

  Gualter, pale-faced and sweating, nodded hard and obeyed. He shifted his stance, forced his breathing to steady, and began striking higher in shorter, sharper movements, conserving energy and targeting what mattered.

  Damien, meanwhile, summoned more power to his sword. He drew ether into his blade, and heat bloomed along the steel. It glowed, then transformed, stretching into a great sword of blazing energy that hummed in the air like a furnace given shape. The light cast hard shadows across the hall, turning drifting dust into glittering sparks.

  He swung at the approaching enemies, the first cleave cut through two of the undying at once, severing heads and shoulders in a single motion. The second swing carved another down the middle. Despite the weapon’s size, he wielded it with frightening ease, like he was slicing vegetables instead of bodies, the burning edge leaving seared, smoking cuts where it passed. The floor began to look like a butcher’s nightmare. Severed heads, limbs and torsos littered the floor, and disturbingly, some were still twitching.

  Nearby, the abomination was still there, still giving chase to anyone in sight. It turned away from Jules’ fleeing path and locked onto Marc and Noel instead after they drew its attention. It slammed one fist down, missing the two by inches. The blow shattered a chair into fragments and left a crater in the floorboards. Noel scrambled up onto a crate, then leapt from there to another, using the clutter like a ladder. His eyes were wide, breathing fast, but he didn’t hesitate. He launched himself straight at the monster’s nearest head.

  He landed a punch that would’ve dropped a man, and the head snapped to the side with a wet jerk. For a heartbeat Noel’s expression lit with triumph, then one of the abomination’s arms whipped up. A backhand caught Noel midair, sending him crashing down. His body hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of him, even cracking the wooden floor beneath.

  Marc tried to take advantage of the opening. He darted in low and slashed at the creature’s leg, but his knife didn’t bite deep enough. The abomination responded with a casual kick, and Marc went sprawling, landing into the floor with a grunt. Pain flashed across his face before he could hide it. As if that wasn’t bad enough, two of the undying immediately swarmed him.

  Gualter surged forward despite the fear in his eyes, blade snapping down in short, brutal cuts aimed at their necks, dropping them before their teeth could find Marc’s throat. Gualter helped him up as the towering vulgarity lumbered toward them. Noel, coughing and furious, grabbed a crate with both hands and heaved it at the abomination. It struck the creature’s back and splintered, raining wood fragments down like hail.

  The abomination turned, its two heads angled toward Noel at slightly different speeds. It began to advance on him, heavy steps making the floor tremble. Just before he could reach Noel, lightning snapped across the room. A lightning bolt struck the abomination’s upper torso with a crack that made the air itself recoil. Noel blinked through the afterimage. Edmund had arrived beside him, breathing hard, sword sparking as he dragged power into it again.

  “Did you just—”

  “Move!” Edmund cut it sharply, eyes locked on the stitched giant.

  Noel didn’t argue this time and backed away fast. Edmund fired again, stronger this time with Noel finally clear of the line. The bolt cracked across the hall and struck the abomination square in the chest. For an instant the stitched giant lit up from within, every wet seam and uneven limb outlined by blue-white light. The force shoved it back a step, then another, its feet grinding over glass and splinters. A charred crater smoked in its torso. The smell that rose was nauseating. Burnt rot, scorched cloth, something old and wrong set on fire.

  A lightning strike would have brought a beast this large down. The abomination, however, was no mere beast. It only straightened again, two heads tilting as if the pain hadn’t registered. Then it lowered its bulk and charged Edmund, floorboards groaning under the weight. Edmund braced, and a blade struck from the side.

  Damien was already there. He drove in with his great ether-forged sword, the blazing edge humming like a furnace, and cleaved through one thick neck in a single ruthless arc. The first head toppled away, hitting the floor with a wet thud. The abomination staggered, but it still moved. Its second head snapped toward Damien, mouth opening, but he didn’t give it time. He pivoted, stepped in, and cut again. The second head fell, and the giant fell to its knees.

  “That should do it,” Damien breathed.

  Victory only lasted a heartbeat. Proving it wasn’t like the minor undying, the threads connecting its head to the body moved and reached for the head. Edmund, of course, refused to let it stand again. He ordered Damien to move aside and fired another lightning bolt, refusing to stop until the creature’s body was engulfed in flames. At last, its towering frame swayed, limbs twitching, then collapsed with a crash that shook dust from the rafters and sent bottles skittering across the floor. The stitched giant had truly died.

  No one celebrated yet, because the hall still wasn’t done with them. Around Edmund, the others were still fighting the undying that remained. The prince kept to the rule now, aiming only for the neck, cutting clean where he could. Constant use of magic though began taking its toll on him. Lightning still snapped from his blade, but only whenever a cluster threatened to swallow them, the flashes turning the room into a stuttering storm.

  Throughout, his companions kept fighting. Damien was already cutting through dead bodies, leaving smoking halves collapsing in piles. Gualter forced himself into a grim rhythm, targeting heads and throats like Edmund ordered, breath ragged but movements disciplined. With the big one gone, Jules could focus on concentrating fire to stagger the swarming mass, buying space, forcing openings, keeping teeth away from everyone. Noel fought like a man trying to punch a nightmare into obeying reality. Marc fought with the desperation of someone who couldn’t afford to lose.

  Little by little, the horde thinned. When the last few finally stumbled forward, Edmund gathered what power remained in his limbs and sent one final bolt into the nearest cluster. They caught fire, dropped, and finally stayed down. Real silence followed, not the ominous quiet from earlier, but the exhausted aftermath of violence. Only their breathing remained, harsh and uneven, the sound of bodies settling, and the faint crackle of dying flames.

  At last, they could breathe. They stood amid wreckage and smoke. Edmund glanced over them quickly, his eyes tallying injuries the way a commander counted survivors. He and his men had taken hits. Scratches across skin, claw marks along forearms, torn fabric, the sting of shallow cuts. Jules, quick on his feet, had mostly escaped with the same. Shredded clothing where hands had grabbed and missed. Noel and Marc hadn’t been so lucky.

  Noel was hunched, face pale, one arm held awkwardly against his ribs. The abomination’s backhand had left swelling bruises blooming along his jaw and collarbone, and his breathing had the shallow edge of something cracked. Marc was worse. He had bruising across his torso where he’d been kicked, and his sleeve was dark with blood. On his arm, near the bite, the flesh looked torn, with blood pouring out. Edmund’s stomach tightened.

  “Gualter!” he said sharply, “we need Serena, now! Hurry!”

  Gualter didn’t argue. He bolted out of the hall, boots thudding away into the corridor beyond. Jules pulled out a cloth and tried to slow the bleeding. While they waited, Edmund forced himself to move. Standing still in a place like this invited the mind to catch up. He stepped toward the far end of the room where the shadows were thickest, where the smell grew worse with every step. Damien followed immediately, falling in at his shoulder.

  “Help is coming soon. Don’t worry,” Damien murmured to Jules as they passed after noticing the grim look on the boy’s face and the slight trembling on his arms. The latter nodded without saying a word.

  Damien hurried after Edmund, joining the prince as he entered the room. It was darker than the rest of the hall, with only a few torches keeping the place lit. Their flames were weak, throwing flickering light across the walls. The air was strangely warmer, stale, and heavy, saturated with the stench of blood and old decay. Edmund’s gaze eventually fell on the floor, and were it not for their earlier encounter, his stomach would have turned.

  Bodies littered the floor, or rather, pieces of them. Limbs, torso, ribs exposed where something had torn them open, and across the room, dark stains that had soaked into wood and stone. Surrounding him wasn’t the kind of mess that came from a fight.

  It came from butchery.

  Edmund’s throat tightened. He forced his breathing steady and kept walking. Ahead, a different glow flickered, torchlight arranged with intention. Two standing ones flanked an open space at the end of the hall, and between them was something raised. An altar.

  Damien’s voice dropped into a warning. “Careful. We don’t know what’s in here.”

  Edmund nodded once and approached anyway. The closer he got, the more his skin crawled. He didn’t let his guard down, keeping his sword raised. He approached the altar, looking around, and after his gaze turned upwards, he saw something hanging on the wall. He couldn’t make it out at first, its shape strange, but once he did, it made him take a step back.

  It was a man, or what was left of one. His arms were spread wide and chained to the wall, wrists fixed in iron, shoulders dislocated by the weight. His lower half was missing, torn away, not cleanly removed. On his face sat a white mask, plain and featureless except for simple carved contours. Edmund frowned, his breath becoming ragged.

  Damien stepped closer, eyes hardening. “By the gods,” he breathed. “Who could have done something like this?”

  Edmund fought the urge to turn around. His eyes narrowed and caught on something hanging at the corpse’s neck. A bronze disk, circular, heavy-looking. He couldn’t make out the image, but its surface was carved with a symbol, lines and shapes that seemed almost too precise.

  He stepped closer, drawn despite himself. “Could that be—”

  The moment he stepped closer, the seal pulsed, and a strange, invisible throb rippled outward from the bronze disk, passing through Edmund’s chest like a distant drumbeat felt through bone. The torches flickered in response, the flames bending away from the corpse. Damien stiffened beside the prince. A sickly red glow seeped from the hanging corpse. Blood-colored smoke emanated from the body, drifting downward in slow coils, clinging to the air.

  Edmund’s skin prickled. The bronze seal at the dead man’s neck pulsed again, one slow, singular beat, then another, like a heart returning to life. The floor began to rattle after. At first it sounded like distant thunder. A low tremor that crawled up through Edmund’s boots and into his knees. Dust loosened from the rafters and fell in thin sheets. Bottles on the far side of the hall shivered and rolled, but it wasn’t the building that was moving. It was the bodies.

  The remains scattered across the room—torsos, limbs, fragments that had once been people— began to move, but not like the undying outside. This was different. They were being pulled. Severed arms scraped across the floor. Ribcages twisted and slid, bone clacking softly against stone. A head rolled, leaving a dark smear behind it. Something had taken hold of every loose piece in the room. The pull intensified, and the remains began to lift. Edmund’s throat tightened.

  A leg rose into the air, slamming into the hanging corpse’s side. Another followed, then another. Bits of flesh and bone, some too ruined to name, flew toward the corpse in violent bursts, converging around it like iron filings rushing to a magnet. The crimson smoke thickened, swirling faster, devouring the view of the chained body as more and more remains slammed into it and stuck. The sound became grotesque. Wet impacts, bones snapping into place, sinew stretching, something squelching as the remains kneaded into a new shape.

  Edmund and Damien stumbled back instinctively as the air grew warmer and fouler, saturated with the metallic stink of blood. Within the smoke, shapes began to form. An arm emerged first, long, wrong, slick with dark fluid, fingers flexing. Another arm pushed out from a different angle, clawing through the red haze. More followed, some appearing beneath others, some above, limbs layered on limbs. Hands twitched independently, and something inside the smoke shifted, heavy enough to make the floor groan.

  Damien grabbed Edmund’s sleeve and yanked hard. “Highness! We have to go!”

  Edmund’s feet moved before his mind caught up. They backed away fast, weapons raised, eyes fixed on the billowing crimson mass that now filled the altar space like a storm. They turned for the hall and nearly collided with Gualter as he came rushing in, after hearing the commotion. Just behind him were the three boys, Leif and Serena. The building shook again, harder this time, like something inside had shifted its weight.

  Edmund’s voice cut through them, sharp and absolute. “Back! Quickly!”

  The smoke surged outward. The air pressure changed. The crimson haze bulged, then split, like a membrane tearing, and a shape pushed through. It wasn’t fully formed yet, perhaps it wasn’t supposed to look as such, but a huge mass of braided flesh and muscle, studded with too many limbs and bones.

  “Move!” Damien snarled.

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  They ran, boots pounding against wood. They shoved through the doorway in a tight cluster, spilling out into the wider hall. Behind them, the wall exploded outward. Wood and plaster burst into the floor in a shower of debris as the creature finished forming and forced its way through, emerging in full. A towering, stitched abomination crowned by a mask, arms layered and reaching, a coiled trunk of fused bodies beneath it, hands skittering against the ground like legs. The floor shook as its mass fell on the ground.

  “Gualter, any idea what that is?!” asked Leif.

  “Some—something that shouldn’t exist!” he shouted.

  The terror didn’t waste time. The moment it cleared the shattered wall, its many hands slammed down in a frantic barrage, palms and fists striking the street like hammers, cracking stone and wood, sending dust and splinters leaping into the air. The impacts came so fast they blurred together into one continuous thunder, each strike close enough to kill.

  “Down!” Leif barked.

  He grabbed Serena by the waist and hauled her low. They ducked under the first sweep as a hand the size of a table slapped past where their heads had been, the air it displaced hot and foul, like a furnace breathing out rot. Behind them, Noel and Marc threw themselves aside, boots skidding on loose rubble. Jules stumbled, caught himself, and scrambled back as another palm crashed down and pulverized a broken crate into shards.

  Edmund didn’t hesitate. He planted his feet, drew power into his blade until lightning crackled along the steel, and fired. A bolt tore through the air and struck the creature square in the torso. For a heartbeat, its stitched form lit up, flesh and limbs outlined in harsh blue and white. The smell of scorched rot surged, yet it barely flinched.

  Its masked head turned toward Edmund, then through the mouth of its mask, it breathed fire. A harsh, roaring gout that came out in a violent rush, orange and red edged with sickly darkness. Heat slapped Edmund’s face. The stone beneath him warmed instantly. He dove aside, rolling hard over rubble as the flame washed over where he’d been standing. It licked across the ground and up the side of a leaning beam, setting it smoking in an instant.

  While the terror’s attention stayed on Edmund, Damien moved. He sprinted in from the flank and brought his blade down in a brutal cleave. The strike bit into the creature’s side, opening a long, smoking gash through stitched flesh. The monster shrieked, high and warped, a sound made of too many throats layered together. It answered Damien’s cut by slamming a fist into the ground, followed by another, then more. Multiple hands fell in a stuttering rhythm right where Damien stood, turning the street into a killing field of crushing impacts.

  The knight threw himself back, then sideways, forced fully on the defensive as palms hit around him hard enough to shatter stone and throw pebbles like shrapnel.

  “Damien!” Edmund shouted, scrambling up.

  Serena stepped out from cover and raised her hands, eyes narrowing with focus. Ether gathered at her palms in a bright, concentrated pulse. She fired, and the blast struck the creature’s chest, sending a ripple through its mass, pushing it back a fraction. The stitched giant recoiled, just slightly, then steadied again, hardly injured. Its heads shifted, hands flexing. With a sudden violent swipe, it struck the stacked crates beside it. The crates exploded apart and went flying. Wooden slabs, broken boards, splinters, all hurtling straight toward Serena and Leif.

  Leif grabbed Serena’s wrist and yanked her into a sprint. They threw themselves behind another cluster of crates just as debris slammed into the spot they’d been standing, wood cracking and splintering loud enough to drown out their breathing. Behind their cover, Serena’s breath came fast, face tight with disbelief. Leif peered over the edge, eyes wide as the terror’s many limbs shifted and scraped forward.

  “This thing’s powerful,” he hissed.

  Jules finally threw himself back into the fight with a snarl, hurling everything he had—literally. A smoke canister clanged off the creature’s ribs and burst into a choking cloud. Another followed, and a firebomb bloomed in a harsh orange flare, licking across stitched flesh and dripping seams. He tossed an explosive after that, the blast kicking up debris and rattling the floor. For a moment, it looked impressive, it should have worked, but the monster didn’t even stagger.

  It turned its masked head toward Jules as if mildly inconvenienced, answering his barrage by its own fire breath. Jules’s eyes widened. He dove behind a broken section of wall just as the flame roared across his position, scorching the air so hot it made his skin sting even from cover. The blast left the stone blackened and smoking, and Jules came up coughing, blinking hard as heat shimmered in front of him. He reached into his coat again, but he got nothing. He’d emptied himself dry.

  Not too far away, Noel and Marc stayed low behind their cover, both of them breathing like they’d swallowed nails. Despite having been healed by Serena, their bodies still ached from exhaustion. They weren’t useless, though. They were watching, leaning out just enough to track the monster’s movements. Where it shifted, where it opened, where it revealed something beneath the gore and braided flesh.

  And then they saw it, embedded in the creature’s chest like a nail hammered into living rot.

  A bronze disk.

  Even from a distance, it caught the light wrong, gleaming through the soot and grime with a stubborn clarity. Marc grabbed Noel’s sleeve. “There,” he rasped, voice shaking. “Look, at its chest.”

  Noel followed his gaze, and his expression snapped from fear to recognition.

  “That’s it,” Noel breathed. “The seal.”

  Out in the open, Edmund kept pressing the monster, refusing to grant it space. He charged in close, lightning cracking along his sword, and carved charred lines across the creature’s torso, burning wounds that smoked but refused to stay open. Each swing landed with a wet resistance that made Edmund’s stomach twist, like cutting through layered meat and rope. Damien moved with him, sword blazing in his hands, leaving gaping cuts and severed limbs behind. An arm fell, twitching on the ground. Another came off at the shoulder, flinging dark fluid as it hit the floor.

  The monster retaliated by shifting its mass. It slammed its weight down toward Damien with a crushing drop, like a collapsing tower. Damien threw himself aside at the last moment, boots skidding, dust bursting outward as the creature’s bulk hit where he’d been standing. The monster’s attention snapped back to Edmund. It spat fire, violent and sudden. Edmund had to leap away, landing on a fallen beam that rocked under his weight. He used the height without thinking, raising his blade and firing a lightning bolt straight at the creature’s head.

  The bolt struck, and the head shattered, flesh and mask fragments bursting apart in a crackling flash. For a heartbeat, its body went limp. It looked like a victory, only for the ruin to begin to move. The flesh littering the floor followed, pulled toward the body. Something knitted itself together with obscene speed. A new head rose from the destroyed stump, not human, far from it. Not even properly symmetrical. A mouth split vertically down the front like a wound forced into speech. A single, blank eye opened in its right socket.

  When it breathed fire, it was more intense, its range wider. Edmund’s eyes widened. He wasn’t prepared for the attack, there was no time for him to evade. When it seemed too late, Serena slammed in beside him, hands raised, ether flaring. A wall of light bloomed between them and the flame. The fire struck it and hissed, heat pressing like a physical weight against the invisible wall. Serena’s teeth clenched as she held it.

  Leif moved without hesitation. He snapped his vine whip forward and struck the creature’s newly formed head, each lash cracking like a wet branch breaking. It didn’t hurt the monster, not really, but it made it turn. It made that singular eye swivel toward him. That was the opening Damien needed. The knight surged forward and launched himself upward, using a broken crate as a step. He landed on the monster’s back, ether sword blazing, and drove the blade down into its spine with a force that made the creature shriek.

  Damien didn’t stop there. He dragged his great sword through it as he slid down, carving a long, smoking trench through stitched flesh. He kicked away at the end, landing hard and rolling clear as the terror thrashed and convulsed. Even as it reeled, the thing began to feed, absorbing more remains, and the massive wound began to close, regenerating with horrifying stubbornness.

  Noel and Marc chose that moment. They broke from cover and sprinted to Edmund, dodging debris and stray flame, breath tearing in and out.

  “It’s on its chest!” Noel shouted over the chaos. “The bronze disk, that’s our seal!”

  Edmund’s eyes locked onto the creature again, onto the center of its chest, onto that bronze disk embedded there like an anchor. And in that instant, the fight shifted.

  It continued to regenerate. Flesh slapped wetly against flesh. Bones clicked into place. Limbs fused where they shouldn’t, layering over its body like armor made of people. The creature swelled, its silhouette growing uglier by the second, more hands sprouting, more joints bending the wrong way, jagged ribs jutting through its skin like barbs.

  Gualter acted before its attention could fully swing back to Edmund. He hurled his sword with a shout in desperation. The blade spun end over end and buried itself in the creature’s head. The monster jerked, its head tilting. The fire blast halted.

  Serena didn’t waste that heartbeat. She dispersed the barrier, thrust her hands forward and fired an ether blast, pure light and heat compressed into a single brutal strike. It slammed into the monster’s chest and forced it back, smoke and ash peeling off its stitched surface. Edmund gathered more power than he’d dared since the cavern, dragging it up through burning limbs and a chest that felt too tight to hold it. Lightning surged along his sword until the air around him snapped and hissed.

  Then he released it, not a single bolt, but an unbroken torrent, crackling in violent streams that chained from steel to flesh and held the monster in place. The hall lit up in harsh flashes, shadows jumping across broken walls. The stench of scorched rot thickened until it coated the back of the throat. The terror convulsed, flesh smoking and tearing, yet even as it was being ripped apart, it healed. Charred wounds bubbled and closed. Severed tissue knotted together. Its body churned under the lightning like something boiling, but it didn’t die. It simply endured.

  When Serena’s blast faded and Edmund’s lightning finally sputtered out, the creature stood there, burnt, steaming, half-melted, and already mending. That was when Damien appeared at its flank again. He didn’t hesitate and drove in with his blazing sword and brought it down through the torso with a decisive, brutal arc, splitting the creature at the waist. Its upper body severed clean from the coiled mass beneath. The lower half collapsed with a wet, heavy slump that shook dust from the nearby walls. The upper half, however, still moved.

  It planted its hands on the ground and shoved itself upright, dragging itself like a predator that had lost its legs but not its hunger. It shrieked, high and warped, and its mouth began to open, heat gathering in its throat. It was about to spit fire.

  Before it could, Serena fired again, drawing on her remaining energy. A blast hammered the creature’s chest and snapped its head back. Edmund followed instantly, forcing lightning out of his sword in harsh, punishing bursts. The two of them poured everything they had left into it until the upper torso was driven backward and skidded across the ground, leaving a smear of burned fluid behind.

  It stopped moving for two breaths, then, of course, it began to regenerate. The severed lower mass twitched. The thick coil of fused bodies started to crawl toward the upper torso, dragging itself with dozens of hands, pulling like a tide returning to shore. The upper half twitched in response, fingers flexing, trying to meet it halfway. The group tightened formation. Weapons rose, preparing to hack the lower half away before it could reconnect.

  “Noel—!” Marc started, reaching out instinctively.

  Noel broke from them and sprinted straight for the upper torso, pain be damned, eyes locked on the one thing that mattered. He reached the creature as it twitched and smoked and tried to knit itself back together.

  The seal.

  Noel grabbed it with both hands. It was stuck fast, hammered into flesh like an anchor, edges slick with blood and blackened rot. Noel gritted his teeth and pulled anyway, muscles shaking, breath coming out in raw bursts. It didn’t come. He dug his fingers under the rim and yanked again, hard enough that his shoulders screamed in protest. The seal finally ripped free with a wet tearing sound, and a strange pulse rippled once more.

  The crawling lower half stopped mid-lurch. The many hands froze, its fingers still curled against the ground. Then, slowly, it began to crumble. Flesh sagged. Bones lost their tension. The stitched seams that had held it in shape loosened like rotten thread. Pieces sloughed off, collapsing into a heap that no longer knew what it was supposed to be.

  The upper torso followed. Its twitching slowed, then stilled. The mask-mouth hung open for a moment, empty of flame. The single eye clouded and dulled. The arms that had been pushing it forward went slack. It began to fall apart the same way and stopped regenerating. In seconds, the terror became nothing but a pile of ruined flesh and bone. Noel stumbled back, clutching the bronze disk, and ran back to join the rest.

  The hall was littered with scorched debris and splintered wood. The air still tasted of smoke and bitter ash, and every breath carried the lingering stench of burned rot. Behind them, the creature’s remains lay in a collapsed heap. Edmund and Serena were both down on one knee near the crates, shoulders sagging, heads bowed. The last exchange had wrung them dry, every bolt, every barrier, every blast dragged out until nothing remained but shaking limbs and harsh breath.

  Leif crouched beside them, steady hands offering a waterskin first to Edmund, then to Serena. The water sloshed softly as it poured, sounding almost out of place after all that violence. Damien stood a few paces away, chest rising and falling in measured control. The blazing great sword in his hands flickered, then dispersed into nothing, heat fading from the air with it. His gaze, however, remained locked on the creature. Gualter, wincing, went to retrieve his own blade, still buried in the monster’s ruined head. He planted a boot, yanked hard, and the sword came free with a wet scrape.

  Marc and Jules hovered close, both battered, staring at the heap.

  “Is it dead?” Jules asked finally, voice hoarse. “I mean… dead dead? It won’t get up again?”

  Marc swallowed, eyes fixed on the unmoving mass. “No,” he said, the certainty in his tone more hopeful than proven. “I think Edmund and Serena finally burned off its stubbornness.”

  Noel reached them then, breath tearing out of him, face flushed from exertion. He held the bronze disk out like an offering. “We got it,” he said, voice shaking with relief.

  Edmund pushed himself upright slowly, legs unsteady for a moment before he found his balance. He stepped toward Noel, eyes dropping to the seal.

  “So that bronze disk on the monster…” Edmund said, voice rough, “that was the seal?”

  Noel nodded quickly. “Yes.”

  Edmund’s brow tightened. “Does it have anything to do with that thing?” He glanced over his shoulder toward the ruined heap. “I saw it hanging by a corpse’s neck, on the altar, before it became… this.”

  The three boys exchanged a look. “It shouldn’t,” Marc said, frowning at the seal. “It’s just… a seal. That’s all it is. It doesn’t—” He swallowed. “It doesn’t bring people back.”

  Damien’s voice cut in, low and hard, eyes still fixed on the charred corpse. “I saw it too. The altar.” His jaw clenched. “Why would anyone treat a harmless seal like they’re revering it?”

  “Maybe the man outside knew,” Leif offered, his gaze flicked toward the street beyond.

  Damien’s head snapped slightly in Leif’s direction. “Gualter,” he called without looking away from the building, “bring the man here.”

  Gualter nodded and jogged off, boots crunching over debris as he disappeared around the corner.

  Serena finally managed to stand fully. She took a slow breath, shoulders rising and falling. Thankfully, the veins on her neck only glowed faintly, otherwise they risk revealing to Marc’s group what she was. She walked toward Noel, gaze drawn to the bronze disk with a quiet intensity.

  Noel’s ears went red instantly. He held it out to her with both hands, suddenly shy in a way that didn’t match the blood and smoke around them. “Here,” he murmured. “You can… look.”

  Serena didn’t tease him. She simply leaned closer, eyes narrowing as she studied the engraving. Two doves faced each other on the surface, wings raised, carved with surprising delicacy. Curious, Serena reached out and touched it.

  Marc was talking with Jules when Noel showed Serena the seal. He noticed too late. By the time he moved to stop Noel, Serena had already seen it.

  Her fingertip traced the carved lines, one wing, then the curve of the other, feeling the grooves, the tiny imperfections, the craftsmanship. The moment she finished tracing a dove—

  The world shifted.

  At first it was only sound. Voices close, overlapping, and urgent, echoing into her ears. Then her vision blurred, the hall dissolving into brightness and shadow. She blinked, and the hall was gone. She wasn’t with Edmund, or Noel, or the broken crates anymore. She was somewhere else.

  “This can’t be true,” a man said, his voice tight with strain.

  “That’s what he said,” another answered. “The rebellion’s done for.”

  Serena’s breath caught. She stood in a cramped room lit by dim torches that smoked more than they burned. Men gathered around a table shoved against the wall, their shoulders hunched. On the table itself lay a single sword.

  Serena took a step forward, confused. “Wha—what is…?”

  No one looked at her. No one reacted. The men spoke through her as if she were nothing more than a shadow cast by the torchlight.

  “Then Lord Bertrand’s truly dead?” the first man asked, disbelief sharpening into dread.

  A voice cut through the room—young, breaking. “What—what did you say?”

  Serena turned. So did the men, startled not by her, but by the boy who had appeared at the doorway. He was slim, with short black hair that sat in messy disarray, and his clothes were plain. A gray shirt and black trousers, nothing unusual or striking. His eyes were wide, wet already, and his chest rose and fell too fast.

  “Master Laurent!” a third man blurted, stepping toward him. “What are you doing here?! You should be sailing for Westrald!”

  Laurent didn’t answer. He moved closer instead, drawn toward the table and the sword.

  “Is it—” his voice trembled. “Is it true?”

  He swallowed hard, the words scraping out of him. “Is my father dead?”

  The men’s faces fell. Their gazes dropped to the floor. Not one of them could meet his eyes.

  “Yes,” one said at last. “It is.”

  Laurent’s mouth opened, then closed again. Whatever he’d been trying to say dissolved as tears spilled over. He shook his head once, small and frantic, as if denial could undo reality.

  “I—I thought he was—” he started, but the sentence broke apart in his throat.

  “He wasn’t imprisoned,” the first man said quietly. “After his party was ambushed, he was executed right there, along with our men.”

  “Rucaldia wanted to hide his death,” the second added. “They didn’t want him to become a martyr.”

  “One of the men survived long enough to come back and tell us,” the third said, voice thick with grief. “He died from his injuries not long after. I’m sorry, Laurent.”

  Laurent’s gaze lifted again, trembling as it landed on the sword.

  “Who…” His voice came out raw. “Who killed him?”

  The room went still, as if the torches themselves leaned in to listen.

  A beat passed, then the answer arrived like a blade.

  “Henri…” The man hesitated, as though speaking the name was a curse. “Henri Aurelien.”

  Serena’s breath hitched.

  Something in Laurent’s face changed. The grief didn’t vanish, but it sharpened, taking on a different shape.

  “You have to escape,” the first man urged quickly. “You’re not safe here, and without your father—”

  “No.” Laurent’s reply was so quiet it made Serena lean in.

  “But—”

  “No,” he repeated, and this time there was no tremor. Only cold resolve.

  He stepped forward to the table and reached for the sword. Instead of taking the hilt, he grabbed the blade. Serena’s stomach lurched.

  Steel bit into his hands. Blood welled instantly, slipping between his fingers and dripping onto the wood. He didn’t flinch. He only raised the sword slowly, as if lifting a promise.

  “Mark my words,” Laurent said, voice low and seething. “This rebellion isn’t over.”

  Serena followed the motion without meaning to, and as Laurent lifted the sword, her eyes caught the wall in front of him. A banner hung, half swallowed by shadow. Two doves facing each other, wings raised. The same engraving on the seal they’d just retrieved. Her attention snapped back to Laurent. Tears continued to fall, carving clean tracks down his cheeks, but his voice was no longer boyish. It was something forged.

  “I will not stop,” he said, the words breaking and holding together at once. “I will not rest… until my father is avenged—”

  Laurent’s fingers tightened around the blade.

  “—until you pay for his death in blood, Aurelien!”

  Thank you for reading.