Part 1: The Open Mouth of the Beast
The Capital City of Gaan was a lie constructed of white marble, gold leaf, and the accumulated arrogance of a thousand years of uncontested rule.
To the outside world—to the hardy, iron-clad travelers from the Kingdom of Dolbey in the west or the shrewd, magic-wielding merchants of Kailos in the north—it was known as the "Crown of the East." It was a city designed to intimidate and inspire in equal measure, a physical manifestation of the Church's doctrine that wealth was a sign of holiness and poverty a symptom of sin. Its outer walls rose seventy feet into the air, sheer cliffs of polished limestone so smooth that not even a spider could find purchase, painstakingly scrubbed daily by an army of indentured servants. The battlements were carved with intricate, high-relief friezes depicting the "First Dawn"—the mythological moment when the Gods descended to hand the first King of Gaan the sword of stewardship. Towers pierced the low-hanging clouds, tipped with massive, faceted mana-crystals that usually caught the sunlight and scattered it in blinding rainbows across the plains, a visible declaration that this land was touched—and protected—by the divine.
But walls are only as strong as the men who stand upon them. And stone, no matter how holy, how thick, or how expensive, cannot hold a gate shut if the hands turning the winch are shaking with the kind of terror that freezes the marrow.
Tonight, the Crown of the East was dark.
The sun had set hours ago, dragging the world into a gloom that felt less like night and more like the bottom of a deep, stagnant ocean. The moon was hidden behind a thick blanket of bruised, purple clouds that churned slowly over the valley, blocking out the stars and leaving the world in a grey, washed-out twilight. There were no torches lit in the guard towers. There were no braziers burning along the ramparts. The magical crystals on the spires were dormant, dead glass against a dead sky. The city was a black void cut out of the landscape, a hole in the world where a civilization used to be.
The massive main gates—the "Jaws of the Lion," a double-door structure made of bronze reinforced with spell-forged steel and etched with prayers of warding—stood wide open.
They hadn't been breached by a battering ram. There were no scorch marks from siege magic. The locking mechanisms hadn't been melted by acid. They simply gaped open, swinging slightly in the cold wind, creaking with the sound of rusted hinges that hadn't been oiled in a generation. They looked like the slack jaw of a corpse that had died screaming, abandoned by the soul that once animated it.
Alaric stood at the threshold of the Jaws.
He was a shadow detached from the night, a darker patch of blackness against the gloom. His armor, now fully repaired and reinforced with the stolen vitality of the Council, was a terrifying amalgamation of biology and metallurgy. The rust had darkened into a deep, abyssal black that seemed to absorb the faint ambient light, refusing to reflect it. The red moss that grew in the crevices of his plating—the manifestation of the Sanguine Depravity—pulsed with a slow, rhythmic bioluminescence. It didn't glow like a torch; it glowed like an infection, a sickly crimson throb that mimicked the heartbeat he no longer possessed.
He looked up at the archway of the gates. Carved into the keystone in letters filled with gold leaf was the motto of the Royal Guard: "Custos in Aeternum" — Guardians for Eternity.
A year ago, the man known as the Iron Pillar would have looked at those words and felt a swell of pride. He would have seen the open gates as a catastrophic failure of duty, an insult to the uniform he wore. He would have rallied the men, shouted orders until his throat was raw, manned the winches himself if he had to, and closed the breach to protect the sleeping citizens. He would have died on this threshold to keep the darkness out.
Now, the "Dog" simply saw it as an invitation.
"They left the door open for you, my pet," the Blood Hag whispered in his mind. Her voice was giddy, drunk on the recent slaughter of the Council, swirling through his consciousness like opium smoke. "They know who owns the house now. They know the landlord has returned to collect the rent. Look at them, Alaric. Guardians for Eternity? They didn't even last the night."
Alaric took the first step onto the pristine cobblestones of the Via Solis—the main avenue leading from the gates to the Palace.
CLANG.
The sound of his iron boot striking the stone echoed like a gunshot in a canyon. The noise traveled down the empty street, bouncing off the facades of the silent buildings, announcing his arrival with the subtlety of a falling anvil.
The city was not empty. It was holding its breath.
Behind the shuttered windows of the tall, elegant townhouses of the Outer Ring—homes owned by minor nobles, wealthy merchants, and high-ranking clergy—Alaric could hear them. Thousands of hearts beating in terrified unison. The silence of the city was a living thing, built from the collective suppression of panic. He could smell their sweat, acrid and cold. He could taste their fear in the air—it tasted like copper, old milk, and urine.
They were hiding in their cellars, clutching their holy symbols, pressing their children's faces into their chests to stifle their cries. They were praying to a King who was currently drunk in his throne room and a Pope who was already crossing the border to another country with their tithe money in his saddlebags.
Alaric walked down the center of the street.
He passed the Grand Market, a sprawling plaza where stalls were usually piled high with exotic fruits from the southern jungles, imported silks from Kailos, and polished armor from the dwarven forges. Now, the market was a ruin of panic. Stalls were overturned, trampled in the rush to escape when the news of the "White Flame's" defeat reached the city. Crates of apples had been smashed, the fruit rotting in the gutters, filling the air with a sickly-sweet scent of decay. A bolt of fine blue silk lay in a puddle of mud, ruined by footprints—a month's wages for a commoner, discarded like trash.
Alaric ignored the waste. He kept his eyes forward, fixed on the distant, looming silhouette of the Royal Palace that sat atop the High Hill in the center of the city.
As he walked, the city seemed to react to his presence. The Sanguine aura radiating from his armor withered the decorative ivy clinging to the walls of the merchant houses. The flowers in the window boxes—geraniums and roses kept alive by minor druidic charms—turned grey and crumbled to dust as he passed, their life force suffocated by his void. The streetlamps, cold and unlit, seemed to lean away from him.
He approached the Statue of the First King—a massive, thirty-foot marble monument depicting the founder of Gaan holding a shield over a cowering family. The craftsmanship was exquisite; the sculptor had captured the texture of the First King's cloak, the determination in his eyes, the protective curve of the shield. It was a masterpiece of propaganda.
Alaric stopped.
He looked up at the stone face of the First King. It was a face carved to convey benevolence, strength, and eternal protection. It was the face of the lie. It was the face of the system that had decided Alaric was fuel, not family.
"Break it," the Hag urged him, her voice a hiss of pure malice. "Topple their idols. Show them that stone cannot bleed for them. Show them that their history is just a story they tell themselves to feel safe."
Alaric looked at the base of the statue. It was piled high with fresh offerings—withered flowers, small coins, silver lockets, and handwritten notes begging for protection from the "Red Beast."
They were praying to the statue to save them from him.
Alaric felt a flicker of emotion in the void of his chest. It wasn't anger. It was disgust. Not at the people, but at the deception. They had been trained to look up, to look for salvation from stone and gold, while the real monsters walked among them in silk robes. They had been bred to be sheep, bleating for a shepherd who was currently sharpening his knife.
He reached out and touched the base of the statue.
The Sanguine corruption flowed from his hand into the marble. Black veins shot up the statue's legs, cracking the pristine white stone. The corruption spread rapidly, turning the "benevolent" King into a veined, blackened horror. The marble face cracked, the nose falling off, leaving a jagged hole. The shield turned dark, looking less like protection and more like a cage. The "cowering family" beneath the shield suddenly looked like prisoners.
Alaric didn't topple it. He corrupted it. He made the outside match the inside.
He continued walking.
A sound broke the silence. A soft, wet noise from a nearby alleyway. A rustle of garbage.
Alaric stopped. He turned his head slowly, the servos in his neck grinding with the sound of metal on bone.
A stray dog—a real dog, a mangy, starving cur with patches of missing fur and ribs showing through its skin—trotted out from the shadows of a baker's shop. It stopped in the middle of the street, freezing when it saw the massive, armored figure.
Animals usually fled from Sanguine magic. It was anti-nature, a vibration that triggered the deepest flight instincts of any living creature. Birds fell from the sky when Alaric passed. Horses died of heart attacks just from being near him. The unnatural cold he radiated was usually enough to send wolves running back to their dens.
But this dog did not run.
It lowered its head, its tail tucked between its legs, and whined. It sniffed the air, smelling the dried blood on Alaric's armor, the scent of the carnage from the King's Road.
It didn't smell a predator. It smelled a provider. It smelled the meat of the dead.
Alaric looked at the cur. He watched the way its ribs heaved with every breath, the way its eyes were wide and watery, fixed on the pouches at Alaric's belt.
He remembered being that dog.
The memory hit him with the force of a physical blow. He remembered the hunger that gnawed at his belly when he was a boy, a constant, dull ache that never went away. He remembered waiting by the back door of the "Golden Goose" tavern in the sleet, hoping the cook would throw out a burnt crust or a bone with a scrap of meat left on it. He remembered the feeling of being small, cold, and utterly dependent on the indifference of those who had more. He remembered the winter nights when the only warmth came from huddling with the other street urchins, sharing body heat and lice, dreaming of a King who would come and save them.
"Kill it," the Hag hissed, bored by the interruption. "It is vermin. Snap its neck and move on. The King waits. Why do you linger on trash?"
Alaric didn't move. He watched the dog creep closer, drawn by the smell of the jerky in his belt pouch—the rations of the dead mercenaries he had slaughtered hours ago.
"The stray is innocent," Alaric thought, his internal voice a jagged shard of what it once was. "The Master is guilty."
He reached into a pouch on his belt—not a normal leather pouch, but a cavity fused into the metal of his hip armor. He pulled out a piece of dried meat, tough and salty.
He tossed it onto the cobblestones.
The dog didn't wait. It scrambled forward, claws scrabbling on the stone, and snatched the meat. It didn't look up to thank him. It didn't wag its tail. It bolted back into the shadows, vanishing into the safety of the alley to eat its prize before something bigger could take it away.
Alaric watched the alley for a moment. He felt a strange resonance. He was the dog, but he was also the provider. And soon, he would be the storm.
"Soft," the Hag sneered, her voice dripping with disappointment. "You feed the strays while the Master waits? You are a killer, Alaric, not a saint. Do not pretend you still have a heart. That heart rotted in the grove."
Alaric did not respond to the voice. He turned his gaze back to the Palace.
He moved past the Grand Market and approached the archway that separated the Noble District from the lower city. The architecture began to change. The white marble gave way to grey granite and rotting timber. The wide, tree-lined avenues narrowed into cramping, twisting streets. The smell of jasmine and expensive perfume faded, replaced by the stench of sewage, coal smoke, and stagnant water.
He was leaving the world of the "Golden Leaf." He was leaving the city of lies.
He was entering the Sunless Quarter.
Part 2: The Ghost of the Gutters
The Sunless Quarter lived up to its name.
It was a district built in the shadow of the great outer wall, a dense, cancerous growth of tenements and shacks that huddled together as if for warmth. Because of the sheer height of the city walls and the density of the buildings, sunlight only reached the mud streets for about an hour each day, at high noon. The rest of the time, the district existed in a perpetual, grey twilight, damp and cold.
This was the part of Gaan that didn't make it onto the royal tapestries. It was the part of the city the bards didn't sing about. It was the engine room of the capital, hidden away so the nobles didn't have to smell the exhaust. It was where the servants lived. It was where the leather tanners worked the vats of urine. It was where the "sacrifices" were usually drafted from because no one would miss a rat from the gutter.
Alaric's heavy boots sank into the mud that coated the streets. The filth coated his greaves, mixing with the rust and the blood, creating a slurry of decay.
The silence here was different from the Noble District. In the upper city, the silence was born of fear—the fear of losing wealth, status, and comfort. Here, in the Sunless Quarter, the silence was born of resignation. The people here were used to monsters. They were used to guards kicking down their doors to demand extra taxes. They were used to hunger. They were used to their children disappearing in the night. To them, Alaric was just another storm passing through, another boot coming down on their necks.
He walked past a dilapidated tavern with a sign that had fallen off years ago. The windows were boarded up, but he could smell the stale ale and sawdust leaking through the cracks. He remembered being thrown out of there when he was ten for trying to steal a loaf of bread. He remembered the feeling of the innkeeper's boot in his ribs, the laughter of the patrons as he curled into a ball in the mud, clutching his empty stomach.
He walked past the "Recruitment Center"—a grim, iron-barred building where the Church tested children for "potential."
He stopped for a moment, looking at the iron bars. The memory was vivid, etched into his mind like a scar.
That was where they had found him. That was where the Priests had measured his mana, checked his teeth like he was a horse, and told his mother that her son was "Blessed." They had told her he would live in the palace. They had told her he would eat roast goose and wear silk. They had told her he would be a hero, a shield for the innocent.
They hadn't told her he was livestock. They hadn't told her that "Blessed" meant "Edible." They hadn't told her that his high mana potential just meant he would burn longer when they threw him into the furnace of the Blood Hag.
Alaric turned away from the building. The rage in his chest was a cold, solid thing. It wasn't the fiery passion of youth; it was the geological pressure of absolute betrayal.
He turned a corner, ignoring the main road that led up the hill to the Palace. He wasn't going to the Throne Room yet. He had a detour to make. A pilgrimage to the grave of his own humanity.
He navigated the twisting alleyways by memory, his massive shoulders scraping against the rotting wood of the overhanging balconies. Rats scurried away from his boots. He stopped before a small, sagging shack at the end of a dead-end street. The roof had collapsed years ago, the thatch rotted away to reveal the skeletal beams underneath. The door was hanging by a single rusty hinge, swinging gently in the wind.
This was the house where the Iron Pillar was forged.
Alaric stood before the ruin. The monster who had slaughtered the White Flame, the beast who had eaten the Council, hesitated.
He pushed the door open. It crumbled into wet wood and dust at his touch.
He stepped inside.
The darkness of the room swallowed him, a familiar, cold embrace that he remembered better than any lover's touch. The room was tiny, barely ten feet across. It smelled of mildew, wet earth, and the lingering scent of poverty—a smell of boiled cabbage and sickness. The furniture was gone, looted long ago by scavengers who would steal the nails from a coffin if they could.
But in the corner, untouched by the looters who feared the "bad luck" of the dead, stood a small, makeshift shrine.
It was an old crate covered in a ragged cloth that had once been white but was now grey with age and dust. On top of it sat a crude wooden carving of a sun, and a small, faded portrait in a cracked frame.
Alaric walked to it. His massive, armored frame filled the tiny room. The floorboards groaned under his weight, threatening to snap and drop him into the cellar.
He looked at the portrait.
It was a cheap charcoal sketch, purchased for a copper from a street artist twenty years ago. It depicted King Leonus. Not the King he was now, bloated with wine and fear, but the young, golden Prince he had been. The Prince who had ridden through the streets smiling, promising a new age of prosperity.
Beside the portrait was a small clay bowl. It was filled with dried, petrified flower petals. They were brown and brittle, preserved by the dry air.
His mother, Seraphina, had put fresh flowers in that bowl every day. She had starved herself, skipping meals to save the copper pieces needed to buy them from the flower sellers in the upper district. She would walk three miles on a bad leg just to get a single daisy to place before the picture of her King.
"He is the Sun, Alaric," her voice echoed in his memory, frail and wheezing from the fluid in her lungs. He could hear the rattle in her chest, the sound of her life slowly drowning. "We suffer in the shadows so that he can shine. It is our duty. It is our joy. When you serve him, you serve the Gods. Do not hate the dark, my son. The dark defines the light."
She had died of the "Grey Cough"—a disease that the Priests in the Healing Ward could cure with a single wave of their hand. But the Priests didn't come to the Sunless Quarter. The cure cost ten gold pieces. His mother had saved three coppers in her lifetime.
She died clutching that picture of Leonus. She died thanking the Gods for the privilege of giving her son to the Golden King. She died believing that her suffering had meaning, that her poverty was a spiritual test.
Alaric reached out with a gauntlet that had crushed the skulls of heroes. He touched the dusty portrait.
The rage that filled him now wasn't the hot, explosive fire of battle. It was cold. It was the absolute zero of a heart that had realized its entire existence was a joke.
His mother hadn't died for a god. She hadn't died for a noble cause. She had died for a battery. She had died so Leonus could wear silk and play at being a hero. She had died so the Pope could hoard gold in foreign banks. She had died so the Council could eat candied pears while the city rotted.
The Church had called his father's death a "blessing."
They had called his mother's poverty "piety."
They had called his own torture a "sacrifice."
It was all just resource management. They were livestock who had been tricked into worshipping the butcher.
"Burn it," the Hag whispered in his mind. "Burn the memory. It weakens you. It binds you to the man you were. Destroy the altar of the slave."
Alaric didn't answer. He picked up the small, crude wooden sun. The wood was brittle, dry as bone.
He squeezed his fist.
CRACK.
The wood splintered, driving into the gaps of his armored palm. He felt it. It grounded him.
He didn't burn the shrine. He didn't destroy the picture. He left it there, in the dust and the dark. The shrine was a monument to a lie, and he wanted the lie to stand until he could bring the truth crashing down on top of it. He wanted Leonus to see it.
He turned and walked out of the shack.
As he stepped back into the mud of the alley, a tremor ran through the ground.
It wasn't an earthquake. It was a distant impact. Miles away, to the West, something heavy had hit the earth.
Alaric stopped. He tilted his head.
The Red Eye of the Hag swiveled in the ether, looking back the way they had come.
"The wolves are howling," the Hag warned, her voice tight with genuine concern. "They have found the bodies on the road. But they are far. You have time, my pet. But not much."
Alaric ignored the warning. The road behind him was dead. The road ahead was alive.
He looked toward the massive, glowing structure that dominated the skyline of the upper city. The Palace. It sat there like a wedding cake made of stone, untouched by the gloom of the slums. Light spilled from its windows, indifferent to the darkness below.
Alaric began to march. The heavy, rhythmic thud of his boots picked up the pace, echoing off the walls of the slums like a war drum beating for a single soldier.
He was done with memories. He was done with the past. It was time to settle the estate
Part 3: The Steps of the Ascendant
The Plaza of the Gods sat at the base of the Palace, a sprawling expanse of polished white granite that separated the filth of the city from the sanctity of the royal grounds. It was a space designed to enforce humility. The Palace loomed overhead, a mountain of marble and gold, while the plaza itself was ringed by the statues of the Fifty Chosen—the legendary heroes of Gaan's history who had supposedly ascended to the Heavens to sit at the right hand of the Gods.
Tonight, the plaza was a kill box.
The wind howled through the open space, blowing dust and dead leaves across the granite. The statues looked down with blind, stony eyes, their expressions of eternal valor seeming mocking in the face of the city's abandonment. There were no trumpets. There were no banners waving from the parapets. The Royal Guard, the infamous "Knights of the Golden Leaf," had deserted hours ago, shedding their gilded armor in the barracks to flee like rats from a sinking ship.
But the stairs were not empty.
Drawn up in a defensive crescent formation at the base of the "Stairs of Ascension" was the last remnant of Gaan's military honor.
It was not five men. It was fifty.
They were the "Old Guard." The veterans of the Border Wars. The men who had been pushed out of the Palace duty because they had too many scars and not enough pedigree. They did not wear the polished, ceremonial gold armor of the King's favorites. They wore heavy plate mail of dull grey steel, dents hammered out but visible, cloaks faded from years of rain and sun. They stood shoulder to shoulder, shields locked, halberds lowered, creating a wall of iron and discipline.
At the center stood Captain Horgus.
Horgus was forty-five years old, a man carved from oak and scar tissue. He was in the prime of his veteran strength, a warrior who had survived goblins, hill tribes, and the political purges of the Council. He held a heavy poleaxe, his knuckles white against the leather grip. He wasn't standing there for the King. He was standing there because the alternative was running, and Horgus did not run.
Alaric walked into the plaza.
His massive form cast a long, distorted shadow in the moonlight. The red steam venting from his armor hissed in the silence, creating a fog that clung to his ankles. He stopped thirty paces from the shield wall.
The sight of him sent a ripple of primal fear through the formation. The soldiers tightened their grips. They saw the fused black metal. They saw the red moss pulsing in the joints. They saw the void of the visor where a human face should be.
Horgus stepped forward, breaking the line for a moment. He raised his voice above the wind.
"Hold!" Horgus bellowed to his men. "Steady! It bleeds, so it can die!"
He turned his gaze to Alaric.
"I told them," Horgus shouted, his voice rough with adrenaline. "I told the Council that the Iron Pillar had too much grit to stay buried. You were never good at following orders, Alaric. Especially the order to die."
Alaric stood silent. The red light of his visor pulsed, a slow, baleful rhythm. He did not speak. He did not offer a greeting. He simply existed, a force of nature waiting to break the dam.
Horgus spat on the pristine white stairs.
"We know what happened," Horgus yelled. "We know the King sold you. We know the Pope ran. But we swore an oath, Alaric. Not to the man, but to the throne. If you want to pass, you have to tear this wall down."
Alaric took a step forward. The granite cracked under his boot.
"Tear it down," the Blood Hag hissed in Alaric's mind, her voice vibrating with anticipation. "Look at them. They are standing in the way of your dinner. Break the toys."
Alaric didn't need the encouragement. These men were obstacles. Obstacles were to be removed.
He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't need one against mortal steel.
He began to run.
It wasn't a sprint; it was an acceleration of mass. A seven-foot golem of iron and hate gathering momentum like a boulder rolling down a mountain. The ground shook with each footfall. THUD. THUD. THUD.
"Brace!" Horgus roared. "Shields up! Spears out! Kill it!"
The fifty veterans locked their shields, creating a singular barrier of steel. Twenty spears thrust forward, a porcupine of death aimed at Alaric's chest.
Alaric didn't slow down. He didn't try to dodge the spears.
He crashed into the line.
CRUNCH.
The sound was sickening. It was the sound of metal buckling, wood shattering, and bones snapping all at once.
Alaric hit the center of the shield wall with the force of a siege ram. The first three men didn't just fall; they were pulverized. Their shields collapsed against their chests, their ribs shattering under the impact of Alaric's armored body. They were thrown backward, knocking down the men behind them, breaking the formation instantly.
Alaric stood in the middle of the chaotic scrum, spears protruding from the red moss of his armor.
A soldier stabbed him in the neck. The spear tip skidded off the fused gorget.
Alaric grabbed the soldier by the helmet. He squeezed. The metal helm crumpled like foil. The man screamed for a fraction of a second before his skull gave way. Alaric tossed the body aside like a rag doll.
"Circle him! Hamstring him!" Horgus shouted, swinging his poleaxe.
The veterans were good. They didn't panic. They swarmed, hacking at the back of Alaric's knees, trying to find a weak point. Axes bit into his greaves. Swords sparked against his pauldrons.
It didn't matter.
Alaric spun, his arm extending like a steel beam. He backhanded two soldiers at once. The impact lifted them off their feet and sent them flying twenty feet through the air to crash against the base of a statue. Their bodies hit the stone with a wet thud and did not move again.
He grabbed a halberd mid-swing. The soldier holding it tried to pull back. Alaric yanked the weapon—and the man holding it—toward him. He met the man with a knee to the chest. The breastplate caved in. The soldier coughed a spray of blood and went limp.
It was a slaughter. A massacre in the moonlight.
Alaric moved with a brutal, efficient economy of motion. Every time he swung his fist, a man died. Every time he kicked, a shield shattered. He tore through them, ripping armor plates off with his bare hands, snapping necks, crushing limbs. The white granite of the plaza was slick with blood, making the footing treacherous for the defenders, but Alaric's heavy boots found purchase in the gore.
Horgus watched his men die. He watched his friends, men he had drunk with, men whose children he knew, being dismantled like kindling.
"Monster!" Horgus roared, grief and rage overriding his tactical mind.
The Captain charged. He swung his heavy poleaxe with all his might, aiming for the glowing red slit of Alaric's visor.
It was a perfect strike. A hero's strike.
Alaric didn't block. He caught the axe head.
His hand closed around the blade. The Sanguine corruption flared. The steel of the axe sizzled, turning brittle in an instant.
Alaric twisted his wrist. The axe head shattered into a hundred rusty fragments.
Horgus stumbled forward, unbalanced. He looked up into the void of the visor.
Alaric didn't hesitate. He didn't pause to remember their time in the training yard. He didn't pause to offer mercy. He wound back his fist and struck.
He aimed for the head. He meant to take it off.
But Horgus, driven by the instinct of a survivor, flinched backward at the last millisecond.
The blow didn't connect flush. Instead of liquefying his skull, Alaric's massive iron fist slammed into Horgus's shoulder and chest.
The force was catastrophic.
Horgus was launched backward. He flew through the air, over the heads of his dying men, over the stone balustrade that lined the edge of the elevated plaza.
He disappeared into the darkness below.
Fifty feet down, beneath the Plaza of the Gods, lay the Royal Water Gardens. Once a place of beauty, they had been neglected for years, the drainage systems clogged, turning the ornamental ponds into a deep, stagnant bog of mud, reeds, and slime.
Horgus hit the water.
SPLASH.
He plunged deep into the muck, the thick sludge breaking his fall just enough to prevent instant death. His shoulder was shattered, his ribs broken, and he was drowning in filth, but he was alive. He sank into the darkness of the bog, the sounds of the slaughter above muffled by the water.
Up on the plaza, Alaric didn't check. He didn't care where the body landed.
He turned back to the remaining soldiers. There were ten left. They were backing away, their eyes wide with horror, their formation gone.
"Please..." one whispered, dropping his sword.
Alaric walked toward them.
The Hag demanded a spectacle.
He grabbed the man who surrendered and lifted him overhead. He tore him in half.
The remaining men broke and ran. They tried to flee to the sides, to the gardens, anywhere away from the Stairs.
Alaric didn't chase them. He stomped his foot.
THUMP.
Sanguine Spikes erupted from the plaza floor. They shot up at angles, catching the fleeing men in mid-stride.
One was skewered through the thigh. Another through the stomach. The last three were pinned against the balustrade, impaled on jagged spears of black blood-glass.
Silence returned to the plaza.
It was a wet, dripping silence.
Fifty men lay dead or dying on the white granite. The pristine approach to the Palace was now a river of red.
Alaric stood in the center of the carnage. He breathed in the steam of the fresh blood. His armor repaired the scratches from the swords. His energy topped off.
He was full.
He looked at the golden doors at the top of the stairs. They were unguarded now. The last line of defense had been erased.
Alaric began to walk up the Stairs of Ascension. His boots left bloody footprints on the white stone, marking his path like a signature.
He reached the massive doors. They were etched with the history of the Gaan dynasty—images of Kings giving bread to the poor, of knights defending the weak.
Alaric placed a blood-soaked hand on the image of the King.
The gold turned grey. The metal rotted under his touch.
With a roar that shook the foundations of the city, Alaric pushed.
The doors didn't just open; they exploded inward, the hinges failing under the corruption.
The Dog was in the house. And the Lion had nowhere left to run.