Naereah was not about to let Havoc leave without her.

She understood their reasoning. The slums were overrun with the injured and infirm, and she was the best healer they had. Her absence would leave a gap.

But what of the captives?

That alone justified her presence here. A thinly veiled pretext, perhaps—but a valid one. They had seen what Iris had endured. If the other Enforcers had been treated even half as gravely, then this was exactly where she was needed.

She had pleaded her case—and she had won. Now, standing beside the man she loved, with Bethany just ahead, she had no regrets. Even as her heart tightened at the city's collapse.

Smoke streaked across the sky. Fires raged unchecked through the city. High structures lay blackened and broken, their windows shattered—edges rimmed in molten glass. The streets fared no better: vendor carts lay overturned and aflame, while wild, disrobed boors danced gleefully around the flames, baying their madness to the night.

It was awful—everywhere…

But Naereah would not flinch from the sight. She would not recoil from the stench of blood, fear, and human excretions. This was the path Havoc was set to walk, and she was determined to be at his side—every crooked turn. Every blood-soaked trail.

I'll prove it, she thought, determination clenching her fist. I don't need protecting, I can handle myself—only him. I only want him. The places we'll go—there's no room for softness.

'Was it really a good idea to leave Sedrick in charge?' Naereah asked. The question was more a distraction than a genuine concern. Still, she spoke in a hushed tone—not out of fear, but to avoid drawing attention amid the riotous commotion just ahead.

'Savages,' Bethany murmured beneath her breath.

But it was not the city's descent that held her gaze.

A horse-drawn cart rattled past the mouth of their alley, its wheels churning ash and broken glass. The coachman howled like a madman—four women tethered behind, dragged in his wake, their skin peeling against the rough stone as they wept.

Yet, Bethany did not blink. Her scarlet eyes were fixed upward—locked on the blackened husk of a nearby tower.

Brick stacked upon brick, the tower once reached for the heavens—a marvel of architecture, perhaps in a different age. Now it stood ruined. Smoke billowed from the upper floors. Shattered bricks spilled from gaping wounds in its flanks. A warped sign dangled from the peak, its lettering obscured by ash and damage—likely once bearing the mark of some merchant syndicate or financial house.

Whatever its purpose, it conveyed something else now.

A man hung nailed to the plate—his neck bowed beneath the weight of severed heads. The heads of a woman and a child, strung like garlands through metal barbs.

'You know it's a trap, right?' Havoc sighed, his tone heavy with exasperation.

He distrusted too easily. Naereah loved him—but she was not blind to the way mistrust soured his judgment. Even when battered beyond recognition, he had not trusted Iris.

Did he think she had injured herself? That she had clawed her own pale skin, ruptured her organs, twisted her spine and shattered her ribs—just for the chance to catch an enemy she could never have known would come?

The wards around the fortified slums deflected foresight, scrying, visions, and dreams. Even at the gates, they rejected recognition. They had remained hidden for nearly a week. Only those invited could even hope to approach.

It could not be a trap. Not through those wards. Not unless everything they had relied on had failed.

The Enforcers were ever stretched thin—but in wards, they excelled. And Bethany, from what Naereah had seen, was more studious than most.

'If you do not trust my judgment, then why did you come?' Bethany snapped. Her brows were drawn tight, her gaze wild—sharpened by strain and sleepless fury.

Havoc smiled.

He moved past her as a raven soared overhead, landing on a jutted pole overhanging the dilapidated tower.

'Because when the trap springs, I'll be close enough to cut the snare—and kill the tracker.'

Then, without warning, he snatched Naereah's hand, pulling her close to his side. Jealously flared in her chest when he repeated the motion with Bethany—swift and irrational, yet there all the same. But she had no time to linger on it. The world rushed to black—and they emerged high above.

****

The wind lashed through Havoc's raven-black hair as he crouched atop the steel pole protruding from the ruined tower. Silent and unseen, he peered through a shattered window into the vast floor below.

He counted twenty. There could be more—ivory pillars stretched from ceiling to floor, masking sight-lines and creating blind corners.

Despite the barbarity within, this was the wrong level. The captives bound to chairs—held fast with barbed wire twisted around their arms and legs—bled freely, pools forming beneath their feet as they strained against the bindings. Their injuries bore the markings of Iris's torment.

But they did not bear the Enforcer's white coat.

And the savages who brutalised them—howling madly as they shattered bone with wooden bats and iron poles—were Servants in their Inheritance. Nothing more.

'Do not grab me again unless I ask to be grabbed,' Bethany hissed from behind. 'What do you see in there? Have you sighted my men?'

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'I thought your eyes could see past obstructions,' Havoc murmured.

Silence. It lingered—sharp, deliberate.

Then came a sigh—tired, reluctant, and edged with a truth she clearly disliked.

'It's you—I am unable to see through you. When I try, all I see is endless darkness. No doubt some trick to evade rightful scrutiny,' she paused, a growl trapped in her throat. It rumbled a while before she finally snapped: 'Just tell me what you see!'

Havoc relayed the scene, his voice detached—wasting few words on judgement or warmth. He brushed past Bethany's gasps, growls, and righteous fury, delivering only the facts—unvarnished and raw.

'What have they done to my men?' Bethany sneered, her sharp tone cutting through the lashing wind.

'We'll find them,' Naereah said, her voice soft, steadfast—without equivocation.

Havoc had seen all he needed. There was nothing to gain by watching longer. Each passing second was marked not by the tick of a clock, but by the wails of the victims within.

He did not want to care—he could almost convince himself he did not. But it was false. A wall he had erected since boyhood—a final defence against the cruelty of life. It held, but it was wearing thin.

He could shut out the malice if that was all he could do—tourniquet his mind, keep the rot from his heart.

But his rage was barren no more. It had become gestating fury, giving birth to a storm. Whether it was for its own sake, or vengeance for a past long buried, he could not say.

Yet as he crouched, eerily still, watching a woman hauled by her hair, a man—her husband—thrashing against barbs as her dress was cut from her frame, Havoc knew with unquestionable certainty…

He was going to kill them all.

He leapt from the pole.

One.

His feet had not even touched the ground before he claimed his first kill—the man's head carved clean from his neck.

Five.

They had barely begun to react when he rounded the nearest pillar, his feet crunching crumbled marble as the Truecourse sliced through waist, chest, shoulder—then eye. The top half of a head spiralled into the air.

Nine.

Their resistance was futile.

Their aggression—inert.

Even as a bronze-clad woman swelled with muscle and mass, her giant frame pushing against the ceiling, she could do nothing to stop him. All she achieved was making herself a larger target. Rivers of blood gushed across the floor as Havoc's blade melted through her armour—her body rent in half, collapsing with a wet smack as each piece struck the ground.

Twelve.

He had miscalculated—there was a Soldier among them. A woman.

She wore a violet cloak that trailed to her knees. In one hand, she held a wooden staff, its head knotted and wide. In the other, she wielded dice—twelve-faced or more, though Havoc could not say.

She rolled the bones. The world tumbled.

Forward turned right, then fell to the left. Backward stepped crossways, leaped up, and crashed down. All the while, vortices of water spiralled before her stave.

The currents converged—shaping a dragon born of frothing waves. It coiled toward Havoc, swirling teeth within crushing jaws. Yet when the magic consumed him, it ruptured and burst. He emerged unscathed, wreathed in torrential white mist.

There was no second exchange. He gave her no chance.

Even as his vision spun, his blade struck true—splitting the witch's heart as it swept onward toward two of her companions.

Nineteen.

Seven more fell swiftly to his blade. Their severed parts rained viscera as they swam through the air.

Twenty.

He had saved him for last—the man who had gripped the woman by the hair. Now he crawled backward on his hands and feet, begging for mercy he would never have shown.

Were they this pitiful—the men who slaughtered my parents?

First, he took his hands—the very same he would have used to defile her. Then his feet, though there was nowhere to run. Next, his tongue. His whimpering pleas were offensive.

But when he reached for his life, a hand held him back.

'Not like this,' Naereah whispered, the warmth of her voice thawing something he had not known had frozen cold.

Gratitude twisted by pain flickered in the man's eyes—warped, pitiful, and vile.

It was short-lived.

Even as Naereah stayed Havoc's blade, she extended her hand.

Lightning surged from her palm, searing through his chest.

She moved beside Havoc, pulling his head to hers. Tender and warm—ill-suited to the monster he had chosen to be.

Or the monster she would become, in his name…

'The fak is 'appening up 'ere?' cried a voice.

He bounded the stairs, a morning-star in his grip. He only took a single step onto the floor before Naereah's lightning found his side—a dense stream of incandescent force that melted clean through his waist.

'Efficient work. No collateral,' Bethany murmured, stepping from behind. 'This will be noted in my report. Now let's go. We will return for the captives when my men are safe.'

The three worked their way down, cutting and searing their way through scores of foes who flooded the stairs. They searched floor by floor. Their progress was marked by victims spared—and victimisers split apart.

Then, finally, they found them.

Bloodied, battered, and bruised, the captive Enforcers hung from a pole stretched wall to wall—suspended by their wrists, bound with razor wire.

The room stank of blood and rust. Groans murmured faintly through broken teeth. And standing beside their catch, relishing their pain, four Soldiers turned as Havoc stepped through the door.

Scarlet paint scored one's expression like burning scars, streaking down his bare chest like cracks in damaged stone. Around his neck hung a wreath of infant heads—shrunken, leathery, each face aglow with a different coloured eye.

A jagged smile split his face, teeth like broken glass.

By his side stood a well-dressed man in an ebony suit, which accentuated his flawless, dark skin. He rested one hand lightly on the head of his cane, slowly rolling it in his palm—the tip rotating against the floor by his feet. Coiled around the stone beneath him, a many-toothed worm circled slowly—silent, patient, watching, swimming through stone as a fish does through water.

The third was a woman, a curved scimitar in her grip. A long, purple tongue jutted from the blade's side. It tasted the stagnant air, then slid along the edge—coating the weapon in a tar-black sludge.

The final Soldier defied description. He held substance and form, but resisted recollection. When Havoc looked upon him, he was there. But the moment their eyes parted, the man vanished—forgotten, unseen, erased.

'Ah recognise 'im, boss,' the jagged-tooth man grunted, his back hunched, a crooked finger pointed at Havoc. 'Dat one's 'Avoc Gray, 'e is! But wot's 'e doin' wid a white-coat? 'E should be on our side—'e's one of us.'

'Curious indeed,' the well-dressed man chimed, his tone like polished leather—smooth and refined. 'Pray tell me, Havoc. What has brought you to the hunting grounds of the Devil's Smile? Are you looking to join—have you brought us a gift?'

His gaze shifted to Bethany, then lingered on Naereah.

'In a sense,' Havoc replied, his tone soft, and all the colder for it. 'I offer only peace—imminent and everlasting.'

He stepped forward, the mist swirling at his heel.

'Delivered in full—when I carve your head from your neck.'

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