The graveyard was working overtime.
It had been a slow decade for the dead—plagues were out of fashion, wars had been replaced by polite diplomatic insults, and the occasional dueling aristocrat barely filled a single coffin. So when the ground split open and hundreds of skeletons clawed their way out in the same night, the cemetery keepers assumed it was just another necromancer convention.
They were wrong.
Because necromancers didn't usually march in neat rows like cigarette soldiers, or polish their skulls until they shone like ivory trophies, or light their own master's cigarette with trembling skeletal fingers. That was new. That was terrifying. That was her.
Ms. Cigarette.
The woman leaned against a cracked tombstone as if she owned the world, exhaling smoke like a dragon too glamorous to breathe fire. Her coat flapped in the wind, long and black, stitched from leather that might've once belonged to something alive. Skeletons scrambled at her heels, jostling for the privilege of carrying her satchel of enchanted matches.
"Rise," she said. Not shouted. Not commanded. Just said. And the necromancers who had once laughed at her, fought beside her, or tried to kill her now groaned in unison, their wills chained to hers. They stood stiff, like puppets dangling from invisible strings, their undead minions clattering behind them.
The Queen of the Dead had found her crown.
Meanwhile, several miles south, in a tavern called The Last Swig Before the Grave, a man struck a match against the sole of his boot. The flame caught the tip of his cigar, glowing orange against the stubble of his jaw.
Mr. Cigar.
To some, he was a mercenary. To others, a killer. To himself, he was just a man who'd quit one kind of smoke for another.
"Your tab's overdue," grunted the bartender, who looked like he'd already died once and been resurrected poorly.
Mr. Cigar slid a silver coin across the counter. "Put it on my tombstone."
The bartender spat into a cup. "That tombstone'll be sooner than you think. Word is, the Queen of the Dead's building herself an army."
Cigar puffed once, exhaled, and the smoke rose in lazy spirals. "Queen of the Dead…" He chuckled low. "She always did like crowns. And corpses."
The bartender leaned in. "You know her?"
"Intimately," Cigar said, holstering his revolvers. "She once promised me she'd smoke the world. I thought it was foreplay. Guess I was wrong."
He left the tavern, the door creaking behind him, the smoke still hanging in the air like a ghost that refused to pay rent.
By the time he reached the edge of the cemetery, the moon was high and pale, and the dead had formed a parade. Skeletons clicked their bones in rhythm like a macabre marching band, zombies lurched in step like drunkards with military discipline, and necromancers—once feared masters of their own armies—now shuffled like bored bureaucrats with no will of their own.
And at the center of it all, perched on a throne made from welded gravestones, was Ms. Cigarette herself. She didn't need to raise her voice to address an army. She just inhaled, exhaled, and the smoke carried her will across the night.
"Darling," she said without looking, "you're late."
Cigar stepped out of the shadows, his revolvers gleaming in the moonlight. "Traffic," he said, puffing on his cigar. "Too many skeletons on the road."
She smirked. "Still charming. Still predictable."
"And you," he said, gesturing at the army. "Still overcompensating."
A chorus of skeletal laughter rattled through the night. They laughed because she willed them to laugh, because nothing pleased her more than mocking her ex-lover in stereo.
But Mr. Cigar didn't flinch. He knew her games. He had played them once, and he had lost, and he had loved every second of losing.
Now, though, the stakes were different.
"Tell me, darling," he said, his cigar ember glowing like a demon's eye, "what happens when the Queen of the Dead runs out of graves?"
Her smirk widened. "Then I'll dig deeper."
The first shot split the night.
Cigar's revolver roared, spitting a bullet wrapped in holy ash—the kind that burned through necromantic bindings like acid through silk. The bullet tore through a skeleton captain, shattering bone, scattering ribcages, and silencing the puppet necromancer who controlled it.
The army howled in unison. Ms. Cigarette flicked her cigarette, and with that flick, a hundred corpses surged forward.
The battlefield was lit by gunfire and moonlight. Skeletons lunged, zombies clawed, phantoms swooped like drunken bats. Cigar moved through them with the precision of a man who'd killed too many to bother counting. Each shot was a sermon, each puff of smoke a prayer, each kill a love letter written in gunpowder.
And through it all, Ms. Cigarette watched. Calm. Patient. Like a queen watching her pawns die to test the king.
"You can't kill the dead, darling," she called.
"No," Cigar muttered, lighting another cigar off the barrel of his gun, "but I can sure as hell kill you."
The dead pressed closer. Cigar's revolvers clicked empty. He drew his knife, its blade glowing faintly with ember runes. He slashed through a skeleton's skull, stabbed through a zombie's eye, ducked under a phantom's screeching swipe.
And then he was in front of her.
Ms. Cigarette didn't flinch. She leaned forward, lips curling around her cigarette. Smoke framed her like a halo.
"Still think you're the hero?" she asked.
Cigar raised his blade, close enough that the glow lit her cheek. "Heroes don't smoke."
She smirked. "Then neither of us are heroes."
Their eyes locked. Their smoke mingled.
The world held its breath.
And then the graveyard exploded.