Part 1: The Bankruptcy of Faith
The bells of the Great Cathedral of Gaan were famous throughout the eight kingdoms of humanity. Cast three centuries ago from bronze mixed with a tithe of silver demanded from every noble family in the realm, they were massive, consecrated constructs designed to sing with a voice that could be heard for twenty miles. For generations, they had been the heartbeat of the capital. They rang to signal the sunrise, the changing of the guard, the birth of a royal heir, or the call to prayer. They were a song of safety, order, and divine protection that reassured the citizens that the sky was being held up by the righteous.
Tonight, the bells were silent.
The silence was not peaceful; it was heavy, suffocating, and terrifyingly absolute. It hung over the white marble city like a funeral shroud, pressing down on the rooftops and choking the narrow alleyways. The sun had set hours ago behind the jagged peaks of the World-Edge Mountains, and the usual nightly ritual of lighting the brazier towers along the outer walls had been forgotten. The city, usually a beacon of light visible from the Dolbey border—a testament to the endless oil reserves of the Church—was a dark stain on the landscape, huddled in fear under a bruised, purple sky.
The streets, normally bustling with the nightlife of a wealthy capital, were deserted. The wind blew trash and discarded market flyers down the Via Solis, but no footsteps broke the quiet. The citizens were not asleep. They were hiding in their cellars, barring their doors, and clutching their holy symbols, waiting for a dawn that felt impossibly far away.
Deep beneath the Royal Palace, however, there was activity.
In the sub-basements, far below the throne room and the guest chambers, the air was always cool and smelled of parchment, dry rot, and old dust. This was the domain of the Royal Treasury, a labyrinth of stone vaults that held the accumulated wealth of the "Oldest Kingdom."
Lord Hareth stood in the center of the main vault, sweating profusely despite the chill.
Hareth was the High Treasurer of the Council of Elders, a man whose physical silhouette resembled a ripened pear wrapped in layers of expensive purple velvet. His face was round, soft, and dusted with powder to hide the redness of his complexion, though tonight, the powder was streaked with sweat. For twenty years, Hareth had been the true architect of Gaan. King Leonus might have worn the crown, and the Pope might have held the spiritual leash, but Hareth held the abacus. He knew exactly how much grain to export to keep the peasants hungry enough to work but alive enough to pay taxes. He knew exactly how much gold to funnel into the private accounts of the Church to keep the Inquisition looking the other way regarding the Council's embezzlement.
Tonight, however, his ledger was unbalanced, and the math was terrifying.
"Faster! You incompetent mules!" Hareth shrieked, his voice echoing off the vaulted stone ceiling. He kicked a crate that a servant was struggling to lift. "That chest contains the Crown Jewels of the Second Dynasty! If you scratch the casing, I will have your skins tanned for book covers!"
The treasury was a scene of controlled chaos, bordering on madness. Dozens of servants, stripped of their royal livery to avoid identification on the road, were frantically loading heavy chests onto a line of reinforced ironwood carriages that had been brought down via the freight elevator. The air was thick with the smell of panic—a sour, acrid scent that cut through the Treasurer's heavy lavender perfume. Torches flickered in wall sconces, casting long, dancing shadows that looked like grasping claws.
Lady Elina, the Minister of Trade, stood by the heavy iron doors, wringing her hands until her knuckles were white. She was a woman who prided herself on her icy composure and her ability to negotiate trade deals with the cutthroat merchants of Kailos. But tonight, her face was ashen, her expensive makeup smeared by tears she hadn't bothered to wipe away. She wore a traveling cloak over her silk gown, and a heavy bag of personal jewelry was slung over her shoulder—a blatant violation of the "State Assets Only" rule Hareth had issued, though he pretended not to notice.
"Hareth," she whispered, her voice trembling so much it was barely audible over the clatter of the loading crews. "We... we cannot just leave. We should wait for the King. We cannot just abandon the capital."
Hareth didn't look up from the manifest he was aggressively checking. He slashed a line of red ink through an entry labeled 'Public Relief Fund - Emergency Grain' and pointed a servant toward a stack of gold bars instead.
"The King is a dead man, Elina," Hareth spat, the venom in his voice startling her. He turned to face her, his eyes bulging with a mix of terror and manic pragmatism. "Did you not hear the report from the Sanctuary? Did the messenger stutter? Vane is dead. The 'White Flame'—the most expensive, most lethal mercenary company gold could buy—was liquidated in less than five minutes. Vaporized. Eaten. And not by an army, Elina. By one thing."
He stepped closer to her, lowering his voice to a frantic hiss.
"The Shepherd has fled the farm, Elina. I saw Benedictus's personal carriage leave the North Gate three hours ago. He took his elite guards, his personal relics, and he didn't even say goodbye to Leonus. If the Pope—the man who claims to speak for the Gods, the man who supposedly holds the leash of the divine—has run away, what chance does a delusional King in ceremonial armor have?"
Elina looked at the stacks of gold being loaded. This was the wealth of a nation. It was the taxes of the farmers, the tolls of the merchants, the life savings of the commoners who believed their coin was going to maintaining the walls and the roads.
"But the people..." she stammered, looking toward the ceiling as if she could see through the stone to the city above. "The gates are open. The City Watch has deserted. If we take the treasury, who will pay for the defense? Who will buy food for the siege? We are leaving them to starve."
Hareth laughed. It was a dry, breathless sound, devoid of humor, like dry leaves skittering on stone.
"There will be no siege, you stupid woman," Hareth sneered. "A siege implies a war between nations. A siege implies negotiation, terms of surrender, ransoms. This is not a war. This is an extermination. The beast coming for us is not interested in territory. It doesn't want the castle. It wants blood. It wants to settle a debt."
He grabbed a heavy sack of gems—diamonds mined from the deep earth of the Gaan territories, meant for the dowry of the Princess—and shoved it into his personal satchel.
"The citizens are part of the ecosystem," Hareth lectured, his voice dropping to a harsh, conspiratorial whisper. "Think of them as... chaff. While the beast is busy tearing through the slums, butchering the beggars and the shopkeeps, we will be putting miles between us and this cursed city. Their lives are the final tax payment they make to the state. They are buying us time. And time, Elina, is the only currency that matters tonight."
A heavy boom echoed from somewhere above—the sound of a distant door being slammed, or perhaps a structure collapsing in the city. Dust drifted down from the cracks in the ancient stone ceiling. The servants froze, looking up with terrified eyes.
"He is here," the Minister of War, a portly man named Korman who had never held a sword in his life and wore a uniform covered in unearned medals, squealed from the lead carriage. He was already inside, hiding behind the velvet curtains. "I felt it! The ground shook! We must go now! Leave the rest!"
Hareth looked around the vast, pillared room. For decades, this room had been his temple. He had worshipped the stack, the coin, the bond. He had spent more time here than with his wife or children. Now, he was gutting it. He felt a pang of regret, not for the kingdom he was destroying, but for the sheer inconvenience of having to start over in a new land with new rules.
"Load the last cart!" Hareth commanded, snapping his fingers at the frozen servants. "Leave the silver. It's too heavy and the exchange rate in Dolbey is poor. Gold and gems only! And get the bonds for the Kailos accounts! If you leave the bonds, I will lock you in here when we leave!"
The servants scrambled, throwing the last of the priority chests into the carriages with reckless haste. Hareth climbed into his personal transport, a luxury vehicle reinforced with steel plating and lined with silk, built specifically for executive travel. He settled into the plush cushions, clutching the heavy, leather-bound ledger of the Continental Bank to his chest like a holy scripture.
"Where do we go?" Elina asked, climbing in opposite him. She looked small and fragile in the large seat. "Kailos is too far. We will never make the mountain pass before winter sets in. And the roads North are treacherous."
"Kailos is the long-term goal," Hareth corrected, wiping sweat from his bald pate with a monogrammed silk handkerchief. "For tonight, we go to Dolbey."
"Dolbey?" Elina gasped. "But... they hate us. They call us weak. The Wolf..."
"The Wolf of Dolbey honors contracts," Hareth said, tapping the ledger confidently. "Our kingdoms share a bloodline, however diluted. And more importantly, we have enough gold in this caravan to buy the loyalty of every mercenary in the West. Rougar might be a savage, but even a Wolf needs to eat. We will pay for sanctuary. We will present ourselves as the 'Government in Exile.' They will have to take us in."
He knocked on the roof of the carriage with his cane.
"Driver! Take the Service Tunnels. Do not stop for anyone. If a peasant gets in the way, run them down. If a guard tries to stop us, shoot him. Just get us to the King's Highway and don't stop whipping the horses until we see the border forts."
The convoy of twelve carriages lurched forward. The iron-rimmed wheels ground against the stone floor, a sound like gnashing teeth. They bypassed the main ramp that led to the palace courtyard—which was too exposed—and turned instead into the dark, spiraling depths of the emergency tunnels. These tunnels had been dug three hundred years ago for a King to escape a siege, a secret route known only to the Council and the Royal Family.
As the darkness swallowed them, Hareth leaned back and closed his eyes. He tried to tell himself that this was just another business transaction. A liquidation of assets. A corporate restructuring.
But deep down, in the part of his soul he hadn't sold yet, he knew the truth.
He wasn't a treasurer anymore. He was a tomb raider, stealing the fillings from the teeth of a corpse he had helped murder. He was a rat fleeing a sinking ship, bloated on the supplies meant for the crew.
The carriage rocked violently as it hit the rough, unpaved stones of the ancient tunnel. Hareth clutched his gold tighter, his knuckles white.
"Safe," he muttered to himself, a mantra against the encroaching dark. "We are safe. We have the money. We have the speed. The beast will be busy with the King. The King will die, and we will live to spend the inheritance."
He didn't know that safety was a concept that had died the moment the Blood Hag opened her eyes in the Copper Grove. He didn't know that gold was a soft metal, useless against iron and hate. And he certainly didn't know that the ledger he held was about to be audited by a creature that didn't believe in math.
Part 2: The Audit of the Darkwood
The King's Highway was a scar of pale stone cutting through the flesh of the Darkwood.
It was the only paved road connecting the central plains of Gaan to the western kingdom of Dolbey, a feat of engineering that had stood for five centuries. The stones had been laid by giants in the First Age, fitted so perfectly that not even a blade of grass could grow between them. Usually, this road was a busy artery of trade, clogged with grain wagons heading west and iron caravans heading east. It was a place of noise, commerce, and life.
Tonight, it was a vacuum.
The convoy of the Council of Elders moved at a breakneck pace, a desperate serpentine line of twelve carriages thundering through the night. The horses, massive destriers bred for endurance and strength, were whipped into a foaming frenzy. Their hooves struck sparks against the ancient cobblestones, creating fleeting flashes of light that were instantly swallowed by the gloom.
Inside the rear carriage, Lord Hareth peered out the window, his breath fogging the cold glass.
The Darkwood lived up to its name. The trees here were ancient oaks and pines, their branches interlacing overhead to form a natural tunnel that blocked out the moon and the stars. It was pitch black, a darkness so absolute it felt solid, pressing against the windows of the carriage like a physical weight. The forest was vast, stretching for fifty miles in every direction, a wilderness that had never truly been tamed.
"Why is it so quiet?" Hareth whispered, rubbing a circle in the condensation on the glass.
Usually, the Darkwood was alive with the sounds of the night—the hoot of great-horned owls, the chirp of millions of crickets, the rustle of foxes and badgers in the underbrush. Tonight, the forest was silent. It wasn't the peaceful silence of sleep; it was the terrified silence of holding one's breath. Even the wind seemed afraid to move the leaves. The animals knew something the humans didn't. They knew a predator was moving through their domain, something that didn't belong to the natural order.
"Stop worrying, Hareth," Korman, the Minister of War, shouted from the seat across, his voice shrill and too loud in the confined space. He poured himself a goblet of stolen royal wine, his hands shaking so much the red liquid splashed onto his uniform. "We have fifty mercenaries guarding us. These are the 'Black Tusks.' Veterans of the Border Wars. They don't run like the city watch. They kill for coin, and we have paid them enough to kill a dragon."
Hareth looked at the outriders galloping alongside the carriages. The mercenaries looked grim, their leather armor creaking, their hands hovering over their loaded crossbows. They were paid well, yes, but Hareth could see the tension in their shoulders. He could see the way their eyes darted toward the impenetrable wall of trees. They had heard the stories too. They knew what had happened to the White Flame. They knew that coin was useless if you were dead.
"We are exposed here," Hareth muttered, pulling his fur cloak tighter around his neck. "We are still thirty miles from the border. We are still in Gaan. We are still on His land."
"Just drink the wine," Korman laughed nervously, downing the goblet in one gulp. "Another two hours, and we will be drinking ale in a fortress protected by the Wolf's patrols. Rougar is a killer, but he protects his borders. Once we cross the bridge, we are untouchable."
The convoy rounded a sharp bend in the road, the wheels skidding on the slick stones.
Suddenly, the lead carriage—the one carrying the Captain of the Mercenaries and the advance scouts—exploded.
It wasn't a fiery explosion. There was no flash of light, no smell of black powder. It was a kinetic impact of impossible force, as if the carriage had hit an invisible mountain.
One moment, the heavy ironwood vehicle was thundering along the road. The next, a massive, dark shape stepped out from the treeline and simply walked through it.
Hareth watched in frozen horror through the front window as the carriage disintegrated. The reinforced chassis shattered into splinters. The heavy iron wheels were crumpled like paper. The horses were thrown violently to the side, their spines snapping with the sickening sound of dry branches breaking. Debris flew into the air—wood, metal, and bodies—scattering across the road.
The momentum of the convoy turned against it. The second carriage swerved to avoid the wreckage, crashing into a ditch and rolling over. The third slammed into the second, creating a pileup of screaming wood and dying horses.
Hareth's carriage, being at the rear, screeched to a halt, the driver hauling on the reins with panic-strength. The horses reared, whinnying in terror.
"Ambush!" Korman screamed, dropping his wine goblet. "Bandits! It's bandits! Tell the Tusks to kill them!"
"That wasn't a bandit," Hareth whispered, his blood turning to ice.
Outside, the silence of the forest was broken by the chaotic shouts of the mercenaries.
"Form a perimeter!"
"Light the torches!"
"What in the hells was that?!"
Magical torches flared to life, casting flickering, blue-white shadows against the wall of trees. The light revealed the wreckage of the lead carriage, a twisted heap of ruin.
And standing in the center of the debris was the Shadow.
It was seven feet tall, a humanoid shape encased in armor that looked like it had been dredged from the bottom of a swamp. It was fused, black metal, pitted and scarred from a thousand years of decay condensed into one year. Wet, red moss grew in the joints and crevices, pulsing with a bioluminescent glow that matched the rhythm of a slow, deep heartbeat. The visor was a vertical slit of absolute darkness, leaking a constant stream of crimson vapor.
The figure held the severed, iron-rimmed wheel of the lead carriage in one hand. The wheel weighed three hundred pounds. The figure held it lightly, inspecting it.
THUD.
He dropped the wheel. It landed on the crushed chest of the Mercenary Captain, silencing the man's groans forever.
The figure did not speak. It did not declare a toll. It did not laugh. It simply stood there, venting red steam into the cold air, blocking the road like a monolith of judgment.
The mercenaries, hardened killers who had fought in border skirmishes and suppressed peasant revolts, looked at the monster. They raised their heavy crossbows, but their hands were shaking.
"Fire!" a lieutenant screamed, his voice cracking. "Fill it with iron! Bring it down!"
Twenty heavy crossbows snapped in unison. Twenty bolts, tipped with armor-piercing steel, whistled through the air, aimed at the center of mass.
Ping. Ping. Crunch.
The bolts struck the blackened breastplate. Most shattered on impact, sending metal shards flying. Some embedded in the thick layers of red moss, sizzling and dissolving as if they had hit acid. None of them slowed the creature down. He didn't even flinch.
Alaric took a step.
He didn't draw a weapon. He raised his right hand, palm open, toward the middle of the convoy. The red moss on his arm flared bright crimson.
The ground beneath the road began to groan. The ancient cobblestones cracked, pushed upward by a terrible subterranean pressure.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
Three massive spikes of crystallized blood, each as thick as a tree trunk and sharp as a needle, erupted from the earth. They were jagged, obsidian-black, and radiated a cold, nauseating aura of wrongness.
The spikes impaled the fourth, fifth, and sixth carriages from below.
Hareth watched, paralyzed, as Lady Elina's carriage was skewered. The spike drove through the reinforced floorboards, through the velvet seats, through the roof, and lifted the entire vehicle ten feet into the air. He heard her scream—a high, thin sound of pure agony that was abruptly cut off as the carriage slid down the spike, crushing everything inside under its own weight. Blood began to drip from the carriage door, pooling on the road.
"Gods save us..." Korman whimpered, fumbling for the door handle, his face drained of all blood. "We have to run. We have to run into the woods."
Outside, the massacre began.
Alaric moved. He didn't run; he surged. It was the movement of a landslide, unstoppable and heavy.
A mercenary charged him with a boar-spear, screaming a war cry. Alaric didn't parry. He walked into the spear. The ash-wood shaft snapped against his pauldron. Alaric backhanded the man.
The blow was casual, almost dismissive. But the force was catastrophic. The mercenary's helmet caved in, and his head snapped back at an impossible angle. He was dead before he hit the ground, his body ragdolling into the ditch.
Another mercenary tried to flank him, swinging a sword at the gaps in the armor. Alaric grabbed the man by the throat and threw him. He didn't throw him a few feet; he threw him into a pine tree twenty yards away. The man hit the trunk with a wet crunch that echoed through the clearing, his body shattering on impact.
Alaric didn't shout. He didn't grunt with exertion. He killed in total, terrifying silence. The only sounds were the breaking of bones and the tearing of metal.
He worked his way down the line of carriages. He tore the doors off and pulled the occupants out like he was shucking oysters.
He threw a Council member—Lord Varis, the Minister of Agriculture—onto the pavement. Varis tried to crawl away, begging for mercy. Alaric stepped on him. There was no malice in the step, just the weight of inevitability. Varis popped like a grape, his stolen wealth spilling onto the road alongside his blood.
Hareth huddled in the corner of his carriage, clutching his chest of gold bars. He could hear the screams dying out, one by one, replaced by the heavy, wet sound of tearing metal. The silence was returning, but it was a different silence now. It was the silence of the grave.
The footsteps were getting closer.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Heavy iron boots on stone. Slow. Methodical.
The carriage rocked violently as something massive grabbed the rear bumper. The metal groaned in protest.
Then, the door next to Hareth was ripped away.
It wasn't opened. The heavy steel hinges sheared, the wood splintered, and the entire door was tossed into the darkness of the forest.
Hareth looked up into the void.
Alaric stood there. The red slit of his visor was level with Hareth's eyes. Red steam hissed from the vents of his helmet, smelling of copper, ozone, and old blood.
Hareth scrambled back, pressing himself against the far wall of the carriage. He held up a gold bar, his hands shaking so hard the metal rattled against the wood paneling.
"Wait!" Hareth squealed, holding the bar out like a shield. "I am the High Treasurer! This is pure gold! Royal Mint! Take it! Take all of it! There are diamonds in the bag! There are bonds for the Iron Bank! You can buy a kingdom with this!"
Alaric looked at the gold bar. The red light of his visor reflected off the shiny metal.
He reached into the carriage. His gauntlet was covered in the gore of the mercenaries. He took the gold bar from Hareth's trembling hand.
Hareth exhaled, a sob of relief escaping his lips. He thought he had made a transaction.
Alaric closed his fist.
The soft metal groaned. The gold bar deformed, folding in on itself like wet clay. Alaric squeezed until the gold oozed between his armored fingers, ruined and worthless.
He dropped the mangled lump on Hareth's lap. The heavy thud of the ruined gold felt like a gavel coming down.
Part 3: The Currency of Bone
Lord Hareth stared at the ruined lump of gold resting heavily on his lap. It was misshapen, bearing the deep, inverted imprint of the monster's armored fingers. It looked less like currency and more like a dead thing—a nugget of yellow lead that had lost all its luster.
The implication of the crushed metal shattered Hareth's mind. For sixty years, he had operated on a single, immutable law of the universe: Every man has a price. Every door has a key made of coin. Every sword can be turned if the hilt is gilded enough.
But the thing standing before him had just squeezed the value out of the gold as easily as one might squeeze water from a sponge.
"No..." Hareth whimpered, his voice high and thin, cracking under the strain of a terror so absolute it felt like physical pressure. "I... I don't understand. I have jewels... I have the codes to the vaults... I can give you the names of the spies within the Church... I can give you the King!"
Alaric reached into the shattered carriage. He didn't grab the jewels. He didn't grab the ledger. He grabbed Hareth by the ankle.
He dragged the High Treasurer out of the plush interior, pulling him roughly over the jagged splinters of the doorframe. Hareth screamed as his expensive silk robes caught on the wood and tore, the sharp splinters scraping long, bloody furrows into his soft legs. Alaric dumped him unceremoniously into the mud of the King's Road.
Hareth scrambled backward on his hands and knees, crab-walking away from the towering figure like a panicked animal. His velvet robes were ruined, caked in the freezing muck. His expensive powdered wig had fallen off during the struggle, revealing a sweating, pale scalp that shone damply in the moonlight. He gasped for air, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
He looked around desperately for help, for a guard, for anyone.
The convoy was a graveyard. The carriages were smashed kindling, their contents spilling out onto the stones—silks, goblets, paintings, the looted heritage of Gaan. The mercenaries were broken dolls scattered in the grass, their bodies twisted in unnatural angles, limbs severed or crushed. The Sanguine Spikes stood like monuments to the slaughter, towering black obelisks dripping with the thick, dark blood of his colleagues.
Lady Elina's arm hung limply from the window of her impaled carriage, high above the ground. Her diamond bracelets glinted in the moonlight, swinging gently in the wind, mocking Hareth with their useless beauty.
The silence had returned to the Darkwood. It was a heavy, oppressive silence, broken only by the rhythmic hiss-click of the red steam escaping Alaric's armor vents and Hareth's own ragged, sobbing breathing.
"Please!" Hareth begged, tears streaming down his fat cheeks, carving tracks through the dust on his face. He held his hands up in a pathetic gesture of surrender. "We are allies! You hate the King? I hate him too! I was the one who cut the funding for the Royal Guard! I was the one who left the gates open! We are on the same side!"
Alaric paused. The massive, rusted figure stood motionless in the center of the road, blotting out the stars. The red vertical slit of his visor flickered, like a dying ember catching a draft in a cold chimney.
"Side..."
It was the first word Alaric had spoken. It wasn't a question. It was a recognition of a concept that no longer applied. A low, grinding rasp that sounded like a coffin lid being dragged across granite. It was a voice that hadn't been used for conversation in a year, a voice that had forgotten the cadence of mercy.
Hareth nodded frantically, sensing a lifeline, no matter how thin. "Yes! Yes! I can help you! I know the secret tunnels into the Palace! I know where Leonus sleeps! I can get you inside without a fight! I am essential! You need me!"
Alaric didn't move. He looked down at the shivering man. The red eye of the Blood Hag, invisible to the naked eye but watching from the ether, zoomed in on the Treasurer's face. She inspected him not as a person, but as a specimen.
"Look at him, my pet," the Hag's voice hissed in Alaric's mind, audible only to him. It was a sound like dry leaves skittering on bone. "This is the fat of the land. This is the parasite who ate the grain while your mother starved in the Sunless Quarter. He thinks betrayal is a currency. He thinks he can trade the King's life for his own, just as he traded yours."
Alaric felt the Sanguine Void in his chest open. It was a physical ache, a gnawing, desperate emptiness that demanded to be filled. His armor, damaged from the earlier battle with the Platinum Suns, was crying out for repair. The hairline cracks in the black metal from the enchanted weaponry needed mortar. The red moss needed sustenance.
And the mortar was life.
"Gold..." Alaric grunted, pointing a massive, armored finger to the ruined bar lying in the mud.
Hareth flinched, his eyes darting to the metal.
"...Cold."
Alaric knelt. The movement was heavy, tectonic, the ground shaking slightly under the impact of his iron knee. He placed his hand—the hand that had crushed the gold bar—directly over Hareth's heart.
"No..." Hareth whispered, looking into the red abyss of the visor. He could smell the monster now—a scent of ozone, old blood, and damp earth. "Don't... I have so much left to spend... I haven't finished my memoirs... I haven't..."
Alaric didn't speak again. He simply triggered the Sanguine Depravity.
WUUUUMPH.
The sound was like a vacuum sealing, a sudden drop in pressure that popped Hareth's eardrums.
Alaric didn't just kill Hareth. He drank him.
He pulled at the essence of the man. He didn't target the blood in the veins; he targeted the soul in the marrow. He targeted the Greed. The Gluttony. The desperate, clawing will to survive at the cost of everyone else.
Hareth opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. His jaw locked open. His back arched off the ground, his spine cracking audibly as his body went rigid.
Visibly, streams of golden-red energy began to flow from Hareth's eyes, mouth, and nostrils. The energy swirled like liquid smoke, drawn inexorably into the vents of Alaric's gauntlet. It wasn't magic in the traditional sense; it was raw biology converted into power. It was calories, years, memories, and vitality.
Alaric absorbed it all.
He drank the decades of rich food Hareth had eaten—the roast boars, the vintage wines from the southern vineyards, the cream cakes laced with spices. He drank the comfort of the silk sheets Hareth had slept in while the city froze. He drank the vitality of a man who had never done a day's hard labor in his life, a life force that had been hoarded and preserved like wine in a cellar.
It was a rush of pure, high-calorie power. A banquet of stolen time.
Hareth's body began to wither rapidly. His skin turned grey and papery, tightening against his skull. His fat—the accumulation of twenty years of excess—melted away in seconds, leaving only sagging folds of skin draped over brittle bones. His velvet clothes, once tight, now hung loose on a frame that was shrinking by the second. His eyes dimmed, turning from terrified blue to dull, milky white glass.
Within ten seconds, the High Treasurer of Gaan was nothing but a desiccated mummy, a husk of dry skin and bone lying in a puddle of mud.
Alaric stood up.
The reaction was immediate.
The hairline cracks in his armor didn't just heal; they vanished, the metal knitting together with a wet hiss as if it were living skin. The rust on his pauldrons darkened, the oxidization reversing until the metal shone like polished obsidian. The red moss on his joints bloomed, growing thicker, stronger, pulsing with a deep, vibrant crimson light that illuminated the dark road.
Alaric flexed his hand. The servos and magical tendons in his gauntlet hummed with renewed efficiency. He felt stronger than he had ever been. The meal had been rich. The Council had been full of life they had stolen from the kingdom, and now, Alaric had reclaimed it.
He looked around the wreckage. He walked to the other bodies—Elina, Korman, Varis.
He moved from corpse to corpse, a grim harvester bringing in the crop. He didn't leave a drop.
He knelt by the Minister of War and drained the man's cowardice, turning it into fuel for his own relentless march. He knelt by the Minister of Trade and drank her ambition, turning it into focus. He drank the mercenaries, absorbing their aggression and their muscle memory.
By the time he was finished, the convoy was a collection of dried husks. The road was silent again, save for the wind whistling through the smashed carriages and the flapping of the torn velvet curtains.
Alaric stood in the center of the road, vibrating with power. The Sanguine steam venting from his helmet was now a thick, dark fog that obscured his feet, swirling around him like a personal storm.
He stood alone in the dark. There were no more voices on the road. No more pleas for mercy. No more bribes.
"The head is gone," the Blood Hag whispered in his mind. Her voice was practically vibrating with glee, a sound like a bow being drawn across a violin string until it snapped. "The snake has no eyes. No tongue. No brain. The Council is dust."
Alaric looked down at his hands. They were no longer the hands of a knight. They were the claws of a calamity.
He turned his head. First to the West, toward the border of Dolbey.
The road stretched out into the darkness, empty and silent. There was nothing there. No salvation for the Council. No heroes coming to save the day. The border was just a line on a map, and maps didn't matter to the dead.
He turned his back on the West. He turned back toward the faint, amber glow on the horizon—the glow of the Capital City.
The city was waiting. The gates were open.
"Only the Heart remains," the Hag finished. "The beat is faint, Alaric. The Lion is alone in his cage. He thinks he is safe because the walls are high. Show him that walls are just stones stacked by men who are afraid to die."
Alaric began to walk.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
The heavy, rhythmic thud of his boots echoed on the empty highway, a drumbeat of doom heading East. He moved with a new purpose, fueled by the stolen lives of the people who had sold his country. He felt lighter, faster, sharper.
He passed the wreckage of the lead carriage. He passed the piles of looted gold scattered in the mud. He passed the chest of diamonds that had spilled open, the gems glittering like fallen stars in the dirt.
He stepped on a diamond as he walked, crushing it into powder without breaking stride.
He left the wealth for the crows. He left the wreckage for the worms.
He had a date with a King.