In the desecrated throne room of Naboth's palace, where the very air hung heavy with the fetor of blood and brimstone, and the stones themselves seemed to writhe under the weight of cosmic malediction, Anabel hovered like a specter torn from the fabric of nightmare. The portal behind her flickered—a jagged wound in reality, its edges pulsing with viridian light that whispered of hungers older than the stars. Her body, once a canvas of seductive malice, now convulsed in partial rapture: black veins snaked beneath her pallid skin, antlered protrusions pressing outward as if the Wendigo within clawed for release. Ivory tendrils slithered from her loins, coiling about her thighs like serpents spawned from the void, while her emerald eyes burned with the fire of a god's insatiable greed.
Below, Jack knelt in abject obeisance, his charred flesh a grotesque testament to the hex's consummation. The runes etched upon him glowed faintly, a sickly green that mirrored the portal's glare, feeding on the dregs of his mortal essence. Anabel's mind extended like a lance of shadow, piercing his thoughts with the subtlety of a venomous whisper. Behold, my prince, her voice echoed in his skull, a symphony of velvet laced with venom. Your brother has fallen—crushed by the rider's hand. Luther's vaunted duty lies in ruins, as all must before the hunger that claims us.
The revelation struck Jack like a shriek from the abyss, his body arching in spasm as if pulled by invisible cords. Pain, exquisite and transformative, flooded his veins—Anabel's whispers amplifying his buried resentments, twisting his childish ambitions into a feral storm. Embrace it, she cooed, her telepathic caress a blade in his soul. The power I bestow is no gift but a revelation. No longer the shadow-child—become the beast, and seize what fate denied you.
Jack's scream rent the chamber, a guttural howl that shattered the remnants of stained glass, sending shards cascading like frozen blood. His limbs elongated with the wet snap of breaking bone, fingers sprouting claws like thorns from a poisoned briar. His face distorted—jaw unhinging, teeth lengthening into fangs that dripped viscous ichor—while his eyes ignited with feral green, pupils slitting like a predator's in the gloom. Patches of matted black fur erupted across his skin, his posture shifting to a loping crouch, every sinew humming with predatory grace. He was no lumbering brute like his brother, but a swift harbinger of greed incarnate, his movements a blur that mocked the sluggishness of mortal flesh. The throne room reacted: stones cracked under his weight, winds howled through the breaches, shadows twisting as if the space itself recoiled from the abomination birthed in its midst.
Anabel's laughter rippled through his mind, a chorus of dark delight. Yes, my vessel of avarice—feel the lure, the intoxication. Power calls, and you answer, as all weak things must.
From the shattered courtyard gates, Grimm advanced, his pale horse snorting frost into the storm-lashed air. The maelstrom's green haze clung to him like a shroud of the damned, but his senses—sharpened by G'norr's curse—detected the psychic ripple from the palace: a birth of something foul, a convergence of corruption that warped the very ether. He dismounted, the Wraith Breaker drawn, its runes flaring white against the encroaching gloom. The whispers of the void stirred in his skull, but he pressed on, knowing the queen's malediction had spawned yet another horror to bar his path.
Jack erupted from the throne room doors, a streak of shadow and fury, his claws scraping sparks from the marble as he bounded forth. Grimm braced, the storm's lightning illuminating the beast's form—a twisted parody of the prince he might have been, eyes burning with unquenchable greed. Strike now, Anabel's voice thundered in Jack's skull, take what is yours—the rider's soul, a feast for our endless want.
The clash ignited with blinding velocity. Jack lunged, a whirlwind of claws and fangs, his elongated limbs whipping through the air like scythes reaping the damned. Grimm parried with the revolver's barrel, the impact jarring his bones like the toll of some abyssal bell, but Jack was already circling, striking at flanks with predatory agility that defied natural law. A talon raked Grimm's duster, drawing blood that sizzled upon the wet stone, the wound burning with Wendigo venom. The rider countered with a sweeping kick, his boot connecting with a crunch that splintered bone, yet Jack evaded the full force, his laughter a guttural bark that echoed Anabel's amusement in his mind: See how he falters, my pet? Greed makes you swift—power is the lure that draws you ever deeper.
Grimm's blows landed like thunderclaps—slow but devastating—his fist smashing into Jack's shoulder with a wet snap that echoed through the ruins. The beast recoiled, only to strike again, his speed forcing Grimm to dodge amid the courtyard's wreckage: pillars crumbled under errant claws, gates groaned as bodies were hurled against them, the maelstrom's winds whipping debris into the fray like shrapnel from a shattered world. Anabel's telepathy wove through the combat, a constant assault upon Jack's fracturing mind: Feel the intoxication, the craving that burns within. He stands in your way, this relic of old oaths—devour him, and the throne is yours eternal.
As the battle raged, Anabel's voice deepened the psychological torment, invading Jack's thoughts with revelations of her grand design. I have waited eons, she whispered, her words like acid etching his soul, through the folly of kings like Harrod, through the slaughter of innocents whose screams built my power. You were shaped for this—your envy, your greed, mere clay in my hands. The old ways your father clung to? Chains I shattered. Embrace the lure; let it consume you, as I consume all in the name of the hunger that birthed me from shadow.
Jack's strikes grew frenzied, his mind a tempest of amplified desires—visions of thrones drenched in blood, feasts of souls unending, dominion over Zhuul's wastes—interlaced with flashes of guilt: Jarec's teary eyes pleading forgiveness, Luther's fall to her curse. The hex twisted them into fuel, his greed swelling like a tumor from the abyss. Grimm sensed the psychic barrage, a ripple in the air like G'norr's own insidious commands, but his focus remained unyielding, dodging a claw-swipe that gouged the stone like flesh under a butcher's knife.
The tide turned as Jack's mental distraction faltered—a hesitation born of Anabel's overreach—and Grimm exploited it with merciless precision. His boot smashed into Jack's knee, buckling the limb with a crack like splintering ice from some primordial glacier. Jack howled, slashing wildly, but Grimm pressed the assault, his punches landing like avalanches from forgotten mountains: a blow to the ribs crumpling furred flesh with the sound of ribs giving way, another to the jaw shattering fangs in a spray of ichor and bone. The throne room's remnants shook with each impact, Anabel's telepathic glee turning to frustration: Fight, my pet—your greed is your strength! Do not yield to this shadow of the void!
Jack collapsed, battered but unbroken, his beastly form heaving in the mud, claws scraping futilely at the stone as blood and ichor mingled with the rain. His roars faded to whimpers, the hex's illusion cracking under the weight of pain, leaving him a symbol of corruption's hollow promise—greed's vessel, empty and ruined. Anabel's whispers retreated, her amusement a distant echo in his fractured mind.
With Jack subdued, Anabel's form convulsed above the throne, her final transformation unleashing in a surge of eldritch power. The portal flared, tendrils lashing like whips from the abyss as her body erupted in full Wendigo glory: towering eight feet from antler tip to cloven hoof, her skin hardening into bone-plate armor rimed in frost, talons dripping with the chill of starless voids. Her face—mouthless, noseless, with black orbs for eyes—radiated a cosmic hunger that warped the air, her split chest revealing a frozen heart crowned by bone-shards that jutted like spears from a grave. The throne room quaked, shadows dancing as if the space itself bent to her will, the whispers of a thousand devoured souls filling the void.
Telepathically, her voice boomed through the palace, a declaration that echoed in every cracked stone: Behold the vessel fulfilled—I am the hunger incarnate, born of centuries' suffering and the greed of fools. Your ambitions, your pains—all feed me now, as they have always been meant to.
In a surge of newfound might, Anabel hurled Grimm—still advancing from the courtyard—into the portal's maw, her tendrils lashing like chains forged in the heart of madness. The rider vanished into the abyss, the portal's light swallowing him whole, leaving only the echo of his defiant roar amid the silence.
The chapter closed on a precipice of cosmic dread: Anabel's manifestation complete, Jack a shattered pawn at her feet, and Grimm's fate uncertain in the void beyond. Naboth's ruin hung silent, the maelstrom quieting, as if the world itself awaited the hunger's next, inevitable feast.