The wind whipped through Havoc's hair as he soared across the battlefield, his scarlet blade crossed diagonally at his side. In a burst of savage motion, he thrust the sword upward, the edge of his blade carving through muscle and bone without resistance, cleaving the skinless ghoul from hip to shoulder. His momentum never faltered—darting from fiend to fiend, severing heads from shoulders, limbs from torsos, each strike painting a trail of ruin.

Having mimicked Shar's acceleration, he moved like the storm, the gales ever driving him forward, his blade ever poised to reap grim desolation, a trail of broken bodies marking his wake. Where stood his foes, there flashed his blade, its sundering fury scatting viscera into the twilight as the cold stench of iron and rot lifted to the heavens.

Yet no matter how many ghouls fell to his blade, a multitude surged to take their place. There was no end in sight; the horde surged endlessly forward, their sinewy masks stretched taut over skulls, their vicious grins seeming to mock all exertion.

Keep going! he urged himself as he drove the flat of his boot into the gut of a fiend. As the creature hurtled backward, Havoc tilted his blade and unleashed a crimson wave of severing force, its arc cleaving through ribs, arms, and necks in a single stroke.

'There's no end to them!' Anton huffed, his flaming whip lashing through the swarm as embers and smoke billowed from its length, igniting the fiends as it cascaded over them. Where the smoke settled, fire raged; it spread through the horde like a blistering plague, leaving scores of bodies alight, their burning embers crumbling to dust.

Streams of lightning forked through the sky before crashing into the drove, annihilating hundreds, the charge chaining from body to body. Scorched flesh and ozone choked the air, the acrid stench clinging to every breath.

Yet even as lightning, fire, wind, and ice ravaged the horde—even as Havoc's blade parted flesh and Aaron's claws tore limbs from their joints, even as the battalion of survivors unleashed their full might upon the enemy—the swarm remained unbroken.

No—its worse than that, Havoc thought, realisation dawning like a blood-red star. They're getting stronger.

No longer did his blade slide freely through their flesh, meeting no resistance. As he kept cutting through the swarm, their muscles grew taut, clinging to his edge. Still, they came apart, spraying their fetid blood into the air, but each cut became more taxing—each strike straining Havoc's arms and chest as he forced his severing will through their hardening frames.

'You've noticed, haven't you?' Anton grunted, ramming into the horde, ignoring the claws raking his cheeks as he drove a multitude staggering backward. 'We have to retreat!' he said between heavy breaths, tearing himself free from the mound of toppled ghouls before lashing his whip downward, scorching their flesh and charring their bones.

'No retreat!' Shar howled, her voice resolute. Soaring through the eye of a vortex, she whipped through the swarm in a blur, winds carving a path before her as heads spiralled into the air.

Havoc glanced ahead as Shar leapt from shoulder to back, crouching just long enough to sever heads from necks before carving a path of carnage, using their toppling remains as footholds.

'Do you have faith in the Seer?' Shar bellowed, her voice carrying the length of the mountain passage, rising above the horde's rasping snarls.

'We have faith!' the survivors roared as they crashed into the swarm, spears, blades, and shields clashing against mangled flesh and hardened bone.

'The moment is now!' Shar howled, her tone saturated with fervent zeal. 'Let your faith rise!'

The darkening sky ignited in emerald radiance, beams of brilliant light streaming down from the clouds. They bathed the bloodstained ground in jade, its vibrant incandescence flooding the mountain path.

As though the world held its breath, all was still. Even the ghouls' scratching snarls seemed to recede. Then, the ground began to tremble, and thunder crashed in the domed heavens. The emerald light warped overhead, curving and winding into the symbol of a solitary eye of effulgent splendour—indecipherable runes etched in light enclosing its pupil.

'You have believed in me, and I shall deliver you,' Annalise said, her voice descending like falling feathers.

As she spoke, the scattered bodies carpeting the mountain path began to shine. Their disjointed remains rose and knitted together, their monstrous forms renewed.

Havoc's stomach fell as he stood surrounded by the restored ghouls, his mind racing, seeking an escape where none was to be found. But then, as the corpses continued to lift into the air, they transformed—fibrous meat hardening into crystal, light curving into beryl scimitars within their grasp.

'Children of light, go forth!' Annalise proclaimed, her voice chiming through the breeze as the emerald warriors descended, marching into the fiendish throng. Their blades sliced through with synchronised precision, trampling the fallen as they advanced.

'Praise the seer!' Havoc heard someone say, the man's voice echoed across the battlefield. No sooner had the chants began did the survivors charge behind the crystal legionaries, clashing with the horde with restored vigour.

Together with the jade warriors, the group cut through the horde, driving them back down the gravelly trail. The cold slick of blood squelched underfoot. They pressed forward, beating back the swarm until the path forked en-twain, countless fiends pouring through each pass. At the fork, the group held—their strength waning, their movements slowing. Havoc's muscles burned from the incessant strain of battle—but they had reached their mark.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

This is it, he thought, his gaze snapping to Aaron—who, even as he tore a ghoul apart with his black, scaled hands, locked eyes with him in a glare.

Havoc did not need Annalise's directives to know this was where they would part from the group—nevertheless, they came. Her thoughts crashed into his mind, tangling with his own as her instructions took shape. Hers was a silent command—take the other trail.

'The true form of the creature lays at the end of the forking path,' Annalise declared, her voice washing over the mountain pass. 'Hold the line, and have faith. With my own hand, I will slaughter progenitor, and shall return!' Her voice lifting with pious fervour, as though a celestial being were pronouncing blessed consecration.

The voices of the survivors lifted above their heavy breaths, their proclamations of faith seeming to tremble the sky.

While Annalise's command surged across the passage, her voice whispered something different in Havoc's mind. Absent her haunting aggrandisement, her tone carried a playful lilt—steeped in brazen satisfaction.

'Go have your little tussle. To the victor, the spoils.'

****

'They think you're a fool,' Annalise whispered, her palms trailing down Lucia's ribs to her waist. 'Look at how he takes what's precious to him and leaves you behind to rot with the others. It's indecent—shameful, wouldn't you agree?'

'I would,' Lucia hissed, watching from atop her wolf as Aaron bundled that wretched slave-girl into his arms, slipping from the battle down the forked path.

'I've seen how he demeans you,' Annalise purred, pouring only truth into Lucia's ears, her chin resting upon Lucia's shoulder. 'This cannot stand,' she hissed, echoing the very thoughts seething in Lucia's mind.

'No, it cannot!' Lucia repeated, her grip tightening around crimson fur.

'Hush, darling. This isn't the time for words, but for action. Go take what you are owed.'

'Only what is rightfully mine,' Lucia growled, her eyes twitching with barely contained fury.

With that, she broke from the group, trailing her love down the fork in the road.

****

Even as her skin crawled at his touch, Naereah did not resist as Aaron snatched her into his arms. This was where she was supposed to be—this was how she would seize her freedom.

As Aaron rushed down the fork in the path, she retreated into herself. These were not her fortified battlements—that place in her mind where she stood so small. No, she was beyond that now—in the future, yes. She hid within a time yet to come, where she would walk beside her hero, and together, they would shake the world. Yet she also inhabited a cherished recollection—Havoc's lips on hers while the world would not still.

She was no fool. She knew their kiss was not about her. She was used, but for the first time, she was glad for it. Whatever animosity her love held toward her captor, it paled in insignificance compared to how she despised his touch—how she longed for his leering gaze to be cast elsewhere. But there was more…

To be used by him was to be useful to him—she yearned for nothing more deeply. Yes, she would have preferred the moment to be sincere, disentangled from the webs of scandal and vainglorious pride that tainted every aspect of human nobility—not that the race that had discarded her were any better. But even taken for what it was, she had felt his passion, and it had shaken her.

If this is only a sample of what's to come, I'll take it all the same, she thought, barely noticing as Aaron's razor-edged wings bisected throngs of fiends along their path.

She knew what had to be done to grasp the future she ached for. Though panic swirled in her stomach at the thought of taking sapient life—even that of one as cruel as her mistress—she would do it.

She would stand beside her hero—free—through forever. That is what she had been promised, and she would not wait much longer.

So come follow us, you bitch! she thought, her fists clutching sharp resolve as she glimpsed Lucia's crimson wolf skulking the mountain walls, leaping from jutted edge to jutted edge as she stalked from behind. Today, I repay each one of your cruelties.

****

Franklin was no fool. The moment he saw Aaron break from the group, he knew where he should go.

Let the imbeciles dance like puppets on a string; I, for one, prefer to live, he scorned, allowing the jade warriors to march ahead into the endless horde as he slipped silently from their ranks.

He could admit, the "Seer" had acted ingeniously. She must have long planned this ending for it to unravel so flawlessly.

She seems too young to be a venerable demon, he mused. Still, in the world of Inheritors, looks could be deceiving, and he could imagine no other way she had schemed this so completely.

Of course, there were Remnants of foresight, but they revealed only what could be, not what would be, and he knew the Sequence of the Jade-Born Legion—it required absolute precision of temperament and timing, far beyond what any oracle could predict.

A regressor, perhaps? he wondered. It would make sense of it all. They were scarce beyond reason, but the Everquill Library held knowledge of such Remnants—those with dominion over time itself, allowing an Inheritor to return to their past, redeem their errors, and reshape the future. But that would make her a monarch… It couldn't be—none have ascended from any of the races.

A chill ran down his spine as his thoughts shifted from incredulity to wavering doubt—speculation to a harrowing truth.

A monarch was not a god—two steps short of divinity. Still, in this world, there was nothing closer to the divine, their power dwarfing even the might of the greatest houses. If she was one of them—the only one…

Franklin may have lacked faith, but he did not lack sense. He had believed Crest Sop would be the one to butter his bread—he was wrong. It would be the Seer. Even if she no longer wielded the full extent of her sovereign might, being in her favour was far more valuable than ingratiating himself with any noble house.

This was how Everquill's light would be reignited. He would serve her cause—be useful—and rise alongside the only wise queen.

Fervour burning within his heart, Franklin broke from the group. He did not know what his lady desired, but it would be his privilege to oblige.

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