A week later...
Klaus's condition was worsening day by day. He was growing weaker, sometimes it felt like all his bones were breaking apart. Other times, he felt so exhausted he couldn't even move.
He stared at his reflection, wiping blood from his mouth with irritation. There was a soft purple hue mixed with gold in his blood, but it was only visible to his own eyes.
After taking a shower, he got dressed and stepped outside. Living with Cassie was good, but there were still things that needed to be done.
He vanished from the small cottage and reappeared on a ruined battlefield, where his soldiers were pulling the bodies of allies and civilians from the debris and rubble.
He let out a long sigh. It wasn't a pretty sight. People were crying as soldiers laid down the bodies of their dead relatives and friends. A mother clutched what was left of her child, just a leg, while weeping uncontrollably. Children were being evacuated, shielded by the soldiers who wouldn't let them see the corpses of their loved ones.
Shaking his head, Klaus walked toward the ruins. He used his Aspect to lift the heavy debris, making it easier for the others to retrieve the bodies.
He stared at the appalling scene, one he had grown used to long ago. The happiness he'd felt with Cassie, fleeting and dreamlike, was washed away by the harsh, brutal reality.
Kneeling, Klaus gently pulled a pair of small legs from beneath the rubble and laid them on the ground with care. Then he cleared the rest of the fallen pillars and shattered walls. All of it suspended gently in the air as he uncovered the upper half of the boy's body.
He was holding the boy by what remained: part of the torso, a shoulder, and torn intestines. Half the body was simply gone.
And this wasn't all. After the dragon's attack, many were still missing.
Klaus stared into the child's empty eyes, not knowing what to say or do.
When you sit in a position of power, you stop caring. That's how it usually goes. But for the powerless, for the helpless, war is hell. All they can do is pray to survive. Nothing more, nothing less.
And in that moment, Klaus almost wished he were like the others. The corrupt officials in their marble halls. The cold-eyed clan elders and their blood-soaked thrones. Those who saw people as numbers. As collateral.
How easy life would be if he felt the same.
But he didn't. He couldn't.
That just wasn't who he was.
Deep down, Klaus was still that boy. The same helpless child who had once stood in the ruins of his world, unsure of what to do. A boy who had needed warmth and guidance, not battlefields and the horrors of the Dream Realm.
His expression tightened, eyes growing bleak and hollow as he gently laid down the boy's upper half beside the legs.
Then he summoned the Omnitool. Liquid metal surged and shaped itself into a shovel in his hands.
Without a word, he began to dig.
Maybe that's why he liked this Memory. Because with it, at the very least, he could give the forgotten a grave.
"Let me help..."
Klaus turned, his eyes narrowing slightly as he saw the familiar figure behind him.
Undertaker stood there, wearing the same solemn expression he always did. calm, grave, and still.
"What are you doing here?" Klaus asked quietly.
For a moment, Undertaker said nothing. Then, with a deep sigh, he walked toward the rubble. His hand brushed across the shattered stone, and it dissolved into dust, swirling before solidifying into a shovel carved from rough gray stone. Without another word, he began to dig beside Klaus.
"I'm the Undertaker, am I not?" he said finally. "I think it's my duty..."
Klaus nodded in silence. He wasn't in the mood to talk and neither was the Undertaker.
So they worked, side by side, the air heavy with smoke and sorrow. Around them, two hundred soldiers toiled through the night, lifting debris, searching for survivors, and giving the dead what dignity they could still offer.
Klaus stood in silence, staring at the endless rows of freshly dug graves stretching across the scarred land. The soldiers had started calling it the Valley of Death. Maybe it was a fitting name... but something about it unsettled him. His brow furrowed.
"Undertaker… did you hear that?"
The man turned, confused, and shook his head. "No. What is it?"
But Klaus was already gone.
He reappeared a moment later with Fenrir at his side.
The black wolf tilted his head curiously, his brilliant blue eyes wide and alert. He had grown taller and much stronger but the wounds of battle still marked his body. His left eye was clouded from an old injury, and deep bite marks lined his flanks from vicious fights with nightmare creatures.
Suddenly, Fenrir's ears perked up. He lowered his head and began growling low, nose to the ground, before taking off into the ruins with urgency.
Klaus followed closely behind, his heart quickening as he watched the wolf weave between shattered stones and broken beams.
Fenrir stopped and began circling a collapsed structure, whining anxiously. That's when Klaus heard it. A faint, broken voice beneath the rubble which unmistakably was a child's cry.
His eyes widened.
Without hesitation, he raised his hand.
The debris and wreckage of the destroyed building lifted gently into the air, revealing a small boy trapped beneath the ruins. The child was crying, bleeding, his tiny frame trembling with fear and exhaustion.
Klaus rushed forward, pulling him out carefully. The boy clung to his arm, sobbing.
"Healers!" Klaus shouted, his voice cutting through the air.
A team of healers sprinted toward them. Klaus handed the boy over gently, watching as they started closing boy's injuries.
A few hours later, Klaus sat atop a mound of broken stone, cigarette loosely held between his fingers, his head bowed. The smoke curled lazily into the darkening sky. Below him, standing amidst the ruins, the Undertaker looked up.
"What now?" he asked quietly.
Klaus didn't respond at first. His face was expressionless, distant, like carved marble.
"We leave a unit here to secure the dead and protect settlements," he finally said, voice low and even. "Then we move to Antarctica."
He paused, eyes narrowing, smoke trailing from his lips.
"And then…"
His voice trailed off, but the silence was louder than words. His eyes darkened, full of cold malice and resentment.
"Undertaker," Klaus said, his tone deceptively calm, "what do you think? Does evil… need enmity?"
The Undertaker blinked, caught off guard by the question.
"Uh... well, yes, I suppose," he muttered, uncertain.
Klaus smiled faintly, shaking his head as he took another drag.
"Why? Good is always surrounded by enemies. Always under siege. So tell me, my friend…" His eyes flicked toward the horizon, unblinking. "Should I show mercy?"
The Undertaker hesitated. He had no idea what Klaus was really talking about or what storm was building behind those pale eyes. But he could see the blood still dripping faintly from Klaus's nose and the corners of his eyes. He needed rest, treatment… But not now when this moment felt so important.
So he took a breath and gave the best answer he could.
"Mercy is necessary," he said softly. "Without it… we're just monsters."
Klaus blinked, then let out a soft chuckle.
But that chuckle twisted, warping into something grotesque. His voice began to distort, growing wrong and unnatural. It became a sound so vile, so alien, that Undertaker instinctively covered his ears. It was like metal scraping against metal, like a thousand panes of glass shattering all at once.
But it wasn't the sound that paralyzed him.
It was the silhouette.
Before him stood a towering monstrosity, its flesh a chaotic mass of writhing, deformed tissue. It pulsed and quivered like a jellyfish caught in the throes of some unnatural current. Its body seemed made of liquid blackness. Bubbling, bulging, as if it were alive and festering.
Its form… was wrong.
So profoundly, fundamentally wrong that Undertaker's mind recoiled in instinctive horror. His breath caught in his throat, his limbs locked by the sheer weight of dread.
Then came the eyes.
Thousands of them.
Small, unblinking, scattered across the creature's body like malignant stars. Each one turned toward him with perfect synchronization, silent and still.
And then… the voice returned.
It no longer resembled Klaus. It resonated from somewhere far deeper, layered with pitch-black malice. The air vibrated with its presence, as if air itself strained to contain the sound.
"Mercy to the guilty… is cruelty to the innocent."
A long silence followed, the weight of those words hanging heavy in the air.
"I'm done. If they want war… Then I'll show them one with all its… glorious horror."
Undertaker closed his eyes, trying to calm the wild thundering of his heart. The suffocating pressure that had gripped the air just moments ago vanished like a broken fever.
When he opened his eyes again, Klaus was no longer a towering monstrosity, no longer speaking with a voice that rattled the soul.
He was just a man now.
Collapsed and unconscious, his body slumped against the rubble. Blood trickled from his eyes, ears, and nose, painting a harrowing picture of the cost of his power.
Undertaker rushed to him, calling his name, but Klaus couldn't hear him.