The city was bleeding itself dry when Dean walked out of the burning palace.
Calveron's streets had become rivers of black water and floating corpses. Fires reflected in the puddles like broken mirrors. Somewhere a bell tolled, slow and cracked, the sound of a dying heart.
He carried Mira in his arms.
She weighed almost nothing now.
The champion's cloak was too big for her; the blood-soaked wool dragged behind him like a bridal train made of murder. Every step left a wet print.
People saw him coming and moved.
Not out of respect.
Out of instinct.
Animals know when the apex has entered the cage.
Dean walked until he reached the central square. The great fountain had been smashed. In its place stood a wooden platform: the victory dais. King Vortigern had planned to crown himself here at dawn, beneath banners of gold wolves.
The platform was empty now.
The banners hadn't been hung yet.
Dean climbed the steps.
He laid Mira gently on the polished oak, arranging her hair with fingers that still trembled when they touched her. Then he sat beside her and waited for the city to notice what it had birthed.
It didn't take long.
First came the looters.
Then the deserters.
Then the ones who had hidden in cellars and prayed to gods that had already turned their backs.
They gathered at the edge of the square, a silent ring of shadows.
Dean stood.
His voice carried without effort, flat and calm, as if he were reading a list of groceries.
"I am Dean Johnson.
My father died on your walls.
My mother is gone.
My sister is here."
He gestured to the small body wrapped in crimson.
"King Vortigern did this.
His champion did this.
His soldiers did this.
Tonight, I begin collecting the debt."
He drew the champion's own greatsword (taken from Gorrid's corpse) and laid it across his knees.
"I will kill every wolf in this city.
Then I will walk east and kill the man who wears their skins.
If you stand with the wolves, you die tonight.
If you stand aside, you may live to see sunrise.
Choose."
No one moved.
Then an old man in a torn watchman's cloak limped forward. His left arm ended in a cauterized stump. He knelt, pressed his forehead to the blood-wet boards, and spoke in a voice like gravel.
"My daughter was in the Rose Palace.
They told me she was already dead.
I want to see the king choke on his crown."
Another stepped forward. A woman, face bruised black, holding a butcher's cleaver.
"My sons were nailed to the cathedral doors for sport.
I want his eyes."
More came.
Ten.
Fifty.
A hundred.
Soon the square was full.
Dean looked at them (broken, starved, half-mad) and felt nothing like pity. Only recognition.
He raised the greatsword.
"Then we start now."
The system stirred, hungry.
[New Faction Detected: The Bereft]
[Hidden Quest Unlocked: Night of the Red Dawn]
[Objective: Kill or convert every soldier wearing Vortigern's colors before sunrise.]
[Reward: Title – "Butcher of Calveron" + Army of the Damned (loyalty bound by blood)]
[Failure: The city burns with you inside it.]
Dean smiled.
He had four hours until dawn.
He used every minute.
They moved through the city like a plague.
Dean walked at the front, barefoot in the blood, greatsword resting on one shoulder. Behind him came the Bereft (armed with kitchen knives, chair legs, their own teeth if that was all they had).
They found the first barracks drunk and half-asleep.
Dean kicked the door off its hinges.
The slaughter lasted eleven minutes.
He took no prisoners.
He left no pieces large enough to recognize.
When the sun finally bled across the horizon, Calveron's streets were quiet for the first time in days.
Quiet except for the crows.
Dean stood atop the victory dais again.
The banners of gold wolves had been torn down and replaced with something new: strips of skin, still dripping, stitched into crude banners that fluttered wetly in the morning wind.
At his feet lay a mountain of severed heads.
Nearly eight hundred.
Every soldier who had worn the wolf that night.
On top of the pile rested King Vortigern's crown (taken from the royal vault when they burned the treasury). Dean had filled it with hearts. They glistened like dark rubies.
The Bereft stood in perfect silence behind him.
The system spoke, almost gentle.
[Quest Complete: Night of the Red Dawn]
[Title Acquired: "Butcher of Calveron"
Effect: All who witness your banner feel dread. Enemies suffer -30% morale within 100 meters.]
[Army of the Damned formed – 2,147 souls bound to your will]
[Level 9 → Level 15]
[New Skill: Lord of the Bereft – Your followers no longer feel fear or pain. They fight until their bodies fail.]
Dean looked east.
The road to Vortigern's capital stretched out like a scar across the land. Three weeks' march. Maybe less if they didn't stop to sleep.
He knelt beside Mira's body one last time.
"I'm going to bring you his head," he whispered. "Then I'll put the world back together.
Or I'll burn it until nothing's left to hurt you again."
He kissed her cold forehead, stood, and turned to his army.
They were waiting.
Thousands now (every survivor who had seen the dawn and chosen vengeance over despair).
Dean raised the greatsword.
It caught the first light of morning and blazed like a fallen star.
"East," he said.
The Bereft answered with a single roar that shook the ruined city to its bones.
Behind them, Calveron burned one final time (a funeral pyre bright enough to be seen from the royal palace three hundred miles away).
King Vortigern woke to the distant glow on the horizon and laughed, thinking it was celebration.
He would learn better soon.
Dean Johnson was coming.
And he no longer believed in mercy.