The sunrise over Greystone was a cruel thing, a golden wash of light that sought to hide the rot beneath the marble. Lucius stood in the shadows of a colonnade, watching the sky turn from a bruised purple to a mocking, brilliant blue. Despite his decision to vanish, a hollow ache in his gut told him that his hope was a fragile lie. He knew Dale—the stubborn, incandescent fury of the man didn't lend itself to quiet escapes or careful retreats. Dale didn't have the soul of a fugitive; he had the soul of a storm, and storms didn't know how to hide.
To quiet the nagging doubt, Lucius decided to linger. He would remain as a ghost within the castle walls for a week, a silent guardian in the belly of the beast. If Dale truly made it back to the village, then Lucius would fade into the mountains. But if the darkness of Greystone caught him again, Lucius would be the hand that pulled him back from the brink.
He moved with the predatory grace of someone who had already died once that night. In a secluded courtyard, near a fountain where stone nymphs wept endlessly into a basin of crystal-clear water, Lucius stripped. He scrubbed the grey, oily residue of the well from his skin, the cold water biting at the silver scars on his temple and shoulder. The spinal fluid and the scent of decay washed away, swirling into the drains, leaving him smelling of nothing but cold stone and iron. He broke into the quarters of a low-ranking officer who had likely spent the night in a drunken stupor and emerged wearing a crisp, high-collared uniform of Greystone blue and white. With the cap pulled low over his eyes and his posture straightened into a mask of military indifference, he was no longer a monster from a well. He was a silent part of the machinery.
The morning air was crisp, carrying the scent of fresh bread and woodsmoke, a domestic peace that felt like a mockery of the carnage in the Maw. Lucius began his watch, blending into the shifts of guards as they moved through the inner court. He was looking for a sign—a whispered word of a successful escape, a frustrated captain, anything to confirm Dale was safe.
Instead, the hammer fell.
It didn't come as a whisper, but as a roar. At the center of the Great Square, the herald stepped onto the high dais, his voice amplified by the architecture of the surrounding stone. The words didn't just reach Lucius; they tore through him. The announcement was brief, clinical, and devastating. The "scoundrel" from the previous night had been found at the city's edge, broken and dragging a mechanical weight he could no longer carry. More shockingly, the officer found to be aiding his flight—a man of high rank and long service—had been stripped of his title and dragged to the dungeons in chains.
The execution was no longer two days away. It was to be held today, at noon, to satisfy the bloodlust of a Great House that had been embarrassed in its own home.
Lucius looked up at the Great Spire. The shadow it cast over the square was like a finger pointing at the sky, a countdown of hours rather than minutes. Veynar had failed. Dale had failed. And the mercy Lucius had tried to show them both had only led them to the scaffold faster. He felt the revolver in his pocket—the iron that had been red-hot in his cottage fire—and he felt the cold, familiar pull of the Void in the back of his mind. He had three hours to find where they were holding them before the sun reached its zenith, and this time, he wouldn't be leaving the trail to anyone else.
The iron tongue of the clock tower struck twelve, a heavy, tolling sound that seemed to vibrate the very stones beneath Lucius’s boots. It was a mournful vibration, a signal to the vultures and the curious alike that the blood-letting was about to begin. Around him, the commoners pressed in, a sea of unwashed wool and bated breath. They were sheep, huddled together for the cheap thrill of a public ending, blissfully unaware that a predator stood amongst them, his skin still carrying the faint, metallic tang of the well and his pockets heavy with specialized lead.
Lucius felt the weight of the new rounds—thick, copper-jacketed slugs designed to punch through plate armor and the reinforced skeletons of mechanical men. His hand, the one that had been forged in the fire of his own home and healed by a curse he didn't ask for, rested on the grip of the revolver. It wasn't just a tool anymore; it was an extension of his will, a silent promise of the violence to come. He watched the platform through the brim of his stolen cap, his eyes scanning for every guard, every repeater, and every possible line of fire with a cold, clinical precision.
Sir Hans stepped onto the dais, his blue-and-white uniform pristine, catching the noon sun with a blinding, arrogant glare that made Lucius’s eyes itch. He held the royal decree aloft, his voice amplified by the expectant silence of the square. He spoke of righteousness, of the divine right of the Great Houses, and the "heresy" of those who dared to sully the Greystone name. It was a performance of power, a thin veil for the embarrassment of the previous night’s failure. Hans looked down on the crowd not as a leader, but as a godling who had been inconvenienced by a gnat.
Then came the rattle of heavy links. A guard hauled on a set of chains, and Dale and Veynar were dragged onto the platform. The sight of them sent a surge of cold fire through Lucius’s veins. Dale looked smaller than he ever had, his face a map of fresh bruises and dried blood, the mechanical arm hanging limp and sparking fitfully. Its gears let out a pathetic, rhythmic whimper that only Lucius seemed to hear. Veynar was a ghost, his officer’s dignity stripped away, his head bowed under the weight of a betrayal that had cost him everything.
For a flickering, agonizing moment, the square of Greystone dissolved. The white marble turned into the dust of a forgotten century. Lucius didn't see Dale or Veynar; he saw Sable, Chyros, and Lanze—three silhouettes on a different platform, under a different sun. Two centuries ago, he had stood in a crowd just like this one, bound by a code of honor and a name he had desperately tried to protect. He had stayed his hand, believing in justice, believing that the truth would be enough to save them. He had watched them die while he remained a silent witness to his own destruction.
But the man who had believed in honor was buried in the well under a mountain of corpses. Lucius standing in the square today had no name to clear and no legacy to protect. His thoughts, once cloudy with the ghosts of the past, suddenly sharpened into a single, crystalline point of murderous intent. He would not just rescue them. He would not just kill the men on the stage. He would burn House Greystone until the very mountain it sat upon was nothing but a blackened skull in the wasteland. He reached into the void, pulling that cold, incandescent rage into the present, and prepared to show the Great House why some things are better left buried.
The executioner’s axe caught the high noon sun, a blinding sliver of silver descending toward Dale’s neck. The crowd held its collective breath, a thousand hearts beating in a perverse, expectant rhythm. Then, the world cracked.
A single, deafening report echoed off the marble facades of the Great Spire. The axe didn't meet flesh; it met a high-caliber slug that sent the heavy head of the weapon spinning into the stone floor with a discordant, ringing clang. The executioner stumbled back, clutching a hand numbed by the vibration of the impact. Every eye in the square shifted. The sea of commoners parted like a physical wound as Lucius stood tall, reaching up to snatch the officer’s cap from his head and hurl it into the dirt. The "sheep" had vanished, leaving only the wolf, his eyes burning with a cold, ancient light that promised nothing but the end.
Sir Hans’s face twisted from shock to a purple, vein-bulging mask of fury. "Kill him!" he shrieked, his voice cracking against the sudden silence. "Kill the heretic!"
The guards moved in a synchronized surge of blue and steel, but Lucius was already a blur of kinetic violence. He drew the revolver from his belt, and as the first hammer fell, the iron didn't just fire—it sang. With every man that fell, with every life snuffed out by the heavy lead, the metal of the gun began to change. It didn't glow with the white-hot heat of a forge this time; it began to pulse with a deep, visceral crimson. The blood of the fallen seemed to be drawn toward the weapon, staining the air with a misty red light that clung to the barrel. The gun was drinking, its iron surface turning the color of a fresh wound, glowing brighter with every soul it claimed.
Lucius advanced toward the dais, a solitary storm of gunpowder and grief. He didn't duck or weave; he walked through the volley of repeater fire, the "gift" in his veins stitching his coat and skin back together before the blood could even hit the ground. He leveled the glowing revolver at the guards surrounding the prisoners. Crack. Crack. The heavy links binding Dale’s mechanical shoulder and Veynar’s wrists didn't just break; they shattered into shrapnel under the force of the high-caliber rounds.
"Get up!" Lucius roared over the cacophony of the screaming crowd and the rhythmic bark of his gun.
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Dale didn't need a second command. The mechanical arm, sensing the surge of adrenaline in his host, let out a high-pitched, predatory whir. The gears slammed into place, the brass pistons venting a cloud of angry steam. He lunged for a fallen soldier’s baton and a repeater, his movements a jagged, terrifying hybrid of man and machine. Beside him, Veynar—his face a mask of desperate, redemptive fury—snatched a discarded sabre and a pistol from the dirt. The traitor and the experiment stood shoulder to shoulder with the immortal, a trinity of ghosts haunting the pride of Greystone.
The square became a slaughterhouse. Dale was a whirlwind of raw, mechanical power, using the stolen repeater as a club to shatter helmets and the baton to snap limbs, his new arm moving with a speed that defied the weight of its iron. Veynar fought with the clinical, lethal grace of an officer who had spent his life training the very men he was now cutting down. He knew their formations, their weaknesses, and he exploited them with a silent, mournful efficiency.
At the center of it all, Lucius stood his ground, the revolver now glowing so intensely red that it cast long, bloody shadows across the white marble of the Spire. Hans had drawn his own ornamental sword, cowering behind a line of his last remaining elites, his eyes wide with the realization that the "heretic" wasn't just a man—he was a reckoning.
"You think you can burn a Great House?" Hans yelled, his voice trembling as Lucius took another step forward.
Lucius didn't answer with words. He raised the blood-red iron, the glow reflecting in his dark, hollow eyes. Around them, the city began to scream. The fires from the perimeter, set by the chaos of the fight, began to lick at the tapestries of the Spire. Lucius glanced at Dale and Veynar, seeing the fire in their eyes, and knew the rescue was complete. Now, only the harvest remained.
The air, already thick with the iron-scent of blood and the acrid sting of gunpowder, suddenly groaned under the weight of a new terror. From the shadows of the Great Spire’s heavy oak doors, a massive, brass-ribbed machine was wheeled out—the Cinder-Bore, an experimental siege cannon powered by pressurized steam and liquid fire. It hissed like a dying dragon, its maw glowing with an unstable, orange light. Before Lucius could shout a warning, the weapon spoke.
The recoil shook the very foundations of the square. A concentrated slug of superheated iron tore through the air, screaming with a high-pitched whistle. It didn't hit Lucius, and it didn't hit Veynar. It found Dale. The projectile slammed directly into the mechanical shoulder, and for a heartbeat, time seemed to fracture. The complex network of brass gears, steel pistons, and delicate copper wiring didn't just break; it detonated. Shrapnel whistled through the air like jagged glass, and the force of the explosion sent Dale spinning through the dirt. His mechanical arm was gone, reduced to a smoking ruin of twisted metal and shredded meat. Dale hit the stones with a sickening thud, his eyes rolling back as consciousness abandoned him, his body limp amidst the debris of his own strength.
Through the curtain of steam and smoke, a squad of Hans’s elite guards swarmed. They moved with a predatory, silent efficiency, seizing Dale’s unconscious form and dragging him toward the high dais where Hans stood. Lucius and Veynar were a whirlwind of desperate defense, their weapons carving a path through a never-ending tide of blue-and-white uniforms. Lucius’s revolver was now a vibrant, pulsing crimson, the metal seemingly wet with the souls it had consumed, humming a low, mournful note in his hand. He fired until the air around him blurred with heat, his vision narrowing down to a single point of incandescent hatred: Sir Hans.
The distance between the immortal and the noble closed in a blur of clashing steel and dying screams. Veynar was a wall of silver at his back, holding off the flanking soldiers with a grim, silent resolve, but Lucius was looking only at the man who had ordered the burning of Old Oak. He saw Hans’s sneering face, the arrogant curve of his lip, and the way he stood safely behind his wall of meat and iron.
The rage that had been simmering for two centuries finally boiled over, white-hot and uncontrollable. Lucius felt the Void screaming in his ears, a cacophony of every promise he had ever failed to keep. He leveled the blood-red revolver at Hans’s chest, his finger tightening on the trigger in a moment of absolute, blinding fury. This was the end. This was the reckoning.
The hammer fell.
In that same fraction of a second, the lead guard—a man with eyes as cold and calculating as a winter grave—seized Dale’s sagging, broken body. With a grunt of effort, he swung the unconscious man directly into the path of the bullet.
The heavy, armor-piercing round didn't find the noble’s heart. It found Dale’s temple.
The sound was a wet, final crack that seemed to silence the entire square. The impact snapped Dale’s head back, a spray of crimson painting the white marble of the dais behind them. There was no immortality to knit the bone or reconnect the nerves. He didn't gasp; he didn't struggle. His body simply went heavy, falling from the guard’s hands like a discarded coat.
The silence that followed was more violent than the cannon’s roar. Lucius stood frozen, the glowing revolver still smoking in his hand, the deep red light of the iron reflecting in eyes that had just witnessed the ultimate betrayal of his own soul. He had promised the grandmother he would bring him back. He had walked through the fire, climbed out of a well of the dead, and fought an army, only to be the one who finally put the lead in his friend’s brain.
Dale lay in the center of the platform, the blood of Old Oak pooling around his head, his face finally peaceful in a way that Lucius would never be. The Irony of it all was a jagged blade in Lucius’s gut—he was the savior who had become the executioner. Sir Hans let out a sharp, hysterical laugh from behind the cooling corpse, the sound a jagged tear in the fabric of the morning.
The screaming of the crowd and the roar of the Cinder-Bore didn't stop so much as they were hushed, muffled by a sudden, heavy blanket of silence. Lucius felt the world tilt, the white marble of the square dissolving into a sea of swaying purple. The sky turned the color of a fading bruise, and the iron-scent of the slaughterhouse was overtaken by the overwhelming, cloying sweetness of lavender.
He stood in an endless field, the stalks brushing against his knees like the ghosts of children. It was a beautiful, terrifying stillness. But as he looked down at his feet, he saw a single lavender flower that had been trampled into the dirt. Its petals weren't merely wilting; they were beginning to glow with a slow, inner fire. They curled and blackened, releasing a scent that was no longer sweet—it was the acrid, resinous smell of burnt lavender, a perfume of grief that choked the lungs and stung the eyes.
Lucius watched, paralyzed, as the char began to spread. The illusion was a fragile thing, a thin veil drawn over a mind that had seen too much. Breaking through the haze of purple and smoke came a man, his charcoal-grey duster sweeping through the field like a scythe. It was Veynar, his silhouette sharp and dark against the violet horizon. He didn't look at Lucius. He looked at the field with a weary, resigned expression, as if he had walked these rows a thousand times before.
Veynar raised his revolver, the iron cold and heavy in the dream-light. He pointed it toward a cluster of swaying lavender—a group of soldiers whose faces were nothing more than blurred petals—and pulled the trigger.
The shot didn't just echo; it ignited.
Veynar stepped through the flames, his coat untouched by the heat, and knelt beside the first fallen flower—the one that had started the fire. He reached out with a tenderness that Lucius had never seen in the real world, his fingers closing around the charred, burning stalk. He picked it up as if it were the most precious relic in Morrowind, ignoring the way the embers bit into his palm.
"We shall leave," Veynar said, his voice a low vibration that finally cracked the dream
The sweetness of the scent was the first thing to go, replaced by the choking, oily reality of a city on fire. The purple haze that had softened the world’s jagged edges pulled back like a receding tide, leaving Lucius standing in a graveyard of his own making. The "black lavender" in the center of the square was no longer a flower; it was the twisted, broken remains of Sir Hans, his pristine uniform now a tattered rag of blue and crimson, his arrogance silenced forever by the very violence he had cultivated.
Lucius looked down at what he held in his arms. The delicate, burning stalk he had taken from Veynar with such frantic care was gone. In its place was the cold, heavy weight of Dale. The boy’s head lolled against Lucius’s chest, the hole in his temple a silent, dark accusation that the sun refused to look away from. The mechanical stump of his arm, once a marvel of cursed ingenuity, was now just cold iron that bit into Lucius’s skin, a reminder of the price paid for a rescue that had arrived far too late.
The field of lavender was a lie, but the fire was real. Behind them, the Great House of Greystone was being consumed by its own sins. The Great Spire, once a symbol of unshakeable power, groaned as the heat warped its foundations. Flames licked at the white marble, turning the stone into a blackened skull that grinned at the fleeing commoners. Veynar stood at Lucius’s side, his charcoal duster whipping in the hot wind created by the inferno. He didn't look at the burning castle with regret, nor did he look at Lucius with the terror of a man facing a monster.
Veynar’s eyes held a deep, hollow empathy—the look of a man who had stood in his own version of that lavender field and watched it turn to ash long ago. He reached out, not to take the body, but to steady Lucius as they moved toward the outskirts. He knew the weight Lucius was carrying wasn't just the flesh and bone of a friend, but the suffocating gravity of a promise that had shattered in the dark.
They moved through the carnage of the outer gates, two ghosts draped in the uniform of the enemy, carrying a third who would never see the sunrise again. The commoners didn't stop them; they were too busy trying to salvage their lives from the embers of a fallen kingdom. Lucius kept his eyes on the road ahead, the path that led back to the small, scorched cottage and the grandmother who was still waiting for the fair to end. Every step was a battle against the urge to drop to his knees and let the fire catch him, but Veynar’s hand remained a constant, grounding pressure on his shoulder, a silent command to keep moving until the smell of burnt lavender was a memory.
