This was his fault—Havoc knew it. He had feared it. Candid with himself, he had even expected it. But what other choice was there? Let Sedrick die? He could not. He would not. Not when he had the power to save him.

They were friends—he could admit that now. They had shared tribulations only they would ever truly know. They had laughed together beneath the cruel desert sun. It had been only a dream—a nightmare—but one they had both endured. A bond slowly forged, tempered by years of joint suffering, camaraderie, yearning, and endearment.

Yet in Dracule's stolen gaze—slit crimson; tilted, tinted conceit glaring down—Havoc found nothing of his friend. None of his warmth, none of his humour, nothing of the man who would dive into a viper's nest, reach out a hand for only the chance it would be grasped. He only found malice. Another monster to be put down.

'You are no less the monster in my eyes than I am in yours,' Dracule intoned. 'What other name could be given a child who stands against salvation?'

Cut against the cerulean glow of the crystal light, his blood-red eyes seemed almost ablaze. Predatory, wild, yet bright with pitiless intellect. That serpentine gaze slid the breadth and length of Havoc's frame, as though piecing a puzzle better solved by vivisection. The weight of Dracule's scrutiny pressed through flesh to fibre, trembling muscles, grinding bone, gripping Havoc's heart to quicken its pace—heat prickling beneath his scalp.

Still he held firm. He met the monster's eye—his own unwavering—and answered its challenge with one of his own.

'Whatever it takes…' he growled, grip tightening on the hilt of his blade. 'Wherever you run, I'll follow. I'll bleed. I'll have you in the end.'

Dracule smiled. One day, Havoc would carve that smile from his lips. This latest violation was only the garnish; the true feast of that man's cruelty still lay spilt across the streets of Heureux—sickly red, reeking of rot. Havoc had seen it: men who skulked as beasts, dragging women and children by the hair. The strong preying on the weak. The weak preying on the weaker still. It was revolting.

Havoc was no hero. He would not pretend otherwise. Yet he would do what no one had done for him—kill all the monsters. Meet them at the threshold. Keep them from under the bed. No other child would suffer his nightmares.

Dracule laughed—a wicked sound, not boastful or unhinged, but steeped in self-assurance. The quiet amusement of a man indulging a child mid-outburst.

'As expected of you—I never thought you would beg, tail tucked beneath and trembling. That is not the boy I watched mature upon the sands of the nightmare desert. Yet...' Dracule held the moment, then extended a hand. Palm open, he reached toward Havoc. 'There is another way—'

'No,' Havoc replied, not waiting to hear the offer. 'There isn't.'

'Not even for a friend?' Dracule drawled, his voice a mocking bite as it shifted to mimic Sedrick's airy inflection.

'Not even for a friend,' Havoc confirmed.

'For the binding oath of his safe return... after his purpose to me is spent?'

'Hollow words to deafened ears,' Havoc resolved.

His heart sank, heavy and low, his gut twisted around it. He had condemned his friend.

'Young Havrelius, I stand disheartened,' Dracule said, tilting his head from side to side, a slow exhalation brushing his lips. 'My vassals think highly of you. I had hoped you would see sense—that together we might shape a world worth preserving.'

From Sedrick's stolen frame, a silver glow began to seep. Dracule lifted a hand to the crystal light, clenching and unclenching his fingers as though testing his vessel. Then he swept his arm through the air—a blood-red spear slid from the shadows into his grasp, its long point meeting the shaft in a gilded cross-guard.

'A half-remembered dream, but it will do,' he murmured, weighing the spear, his gaze fixed beyond Havoc. 'My dreams will reshape the cosmos—it shall never fail to serve.'

Havoc levelled his sword. Dracule's raised a brow.

'There will come one final chance—when reality cracks,' Dracule said, his venomous gaze locked on Havoc; his back straightened, his shoulders squared, as if he stood judge, jury, and destroyer. 'When I bask beneath the broken sky—restored, renewed, remade—I shall stand a being the likes of which this world has known only once before. In my full power, I will offer you a kingdom. Worship me, and this world will fall at your feet. Refuse...'

He glanced toward Anton and Harper, who stood a few steps back, then settled on Naereah, who stepped out from Havoc's side.

'I will take everything from you.'

Havoc had heard enough. He struck—the greatsword cleaving down, biting into nothing. Dracule had vanished, taking Sedrick's body with him. Havoc whipped his gaze across the arena, catching a shadow's trailing slip along the far side, a faint silver shimmer drifting above the fleeing dark. It passed into a tunnel leading back toward the catacombs' entrance.

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He moved to pursue, but Anton caught his wrist. Havoc shook him off with ease—then the priestess stepped into his path. He shifted her aside, only to find Naereah waiting behind her. She took his iron-clad hand in both of hers and met his gaze.

'If it's what you decide, I'll stay by your side. But—' Her gentle grip tightened as the sable plate of his armour melted back into his Spirit Chain. 'They need us farther in, Havoc. We have to—' Her voice faltered. 'Let's go on.'

She kissed him beneath the eye. When she drew back, a tear trailed from her lips. He touched his face; a tear slipped across his finger, hers or his, he could not tell. Yet he wiped it dry all the same and gave a nod.

He had not spoken empty words, but neither was he a fool. Dracule was a War-Master. Even with all his might—even with Catharsia surging through his Core—he was too weak. All the more now without the Spectre's Band or Dreamwalker's Mask, severed from the full extent of his power.

But that would not always be true. It was for this reason he sought power—to level the field against those who struck from higher places.

So see it done, came a whisper to his thoughts. Pride stands above it all—Havoc carves the levelling. Within your Domain, even gods may bleed.

****

Before Havoc lay a bridge. It was broad—shoulder to shoulder, two dozen men could have marched its span. Standing at the abutment, he lifted his head, his gaze sweeping from tunnel to tunnel combed high and low across the vast chamber. Then down—to the chasm below. Bottomless, lightless, inviting only death. Yet clinging to the countless columns that plunged endlessly into the dark, terror waited—creatures shifting beneath veils of shadow.

He could feel them: hunger, rage, unfathomable sadness—a waning patience yearning to be unleashed. He echoed their sentiment—or perhaps it was his own, projected. His hunger for power. His rage at a broken world that strove to break further still. His grief for a friend now bound within a monster's grasp—the breaking of which would no doubt crush the man within. His restlessness to be loosed again—to feel power surge through him, even if, in the end, it amounted to nothing.

Nothing.

If after everything he could not hold what was his, then in the end, he amounted to nothing.

'We must cross,' Anton said, stepping to Havoc's side. His eyes stayed forward, his shoulders drawn in, as though warding against Havoc's corruption. 'There is no other path farther in.'

He started toward the bridge, but Havoc caught his arm. He was not ready. Not yet.

'What are we waiting for?' Anton sneered, wrenching his arm free.

'Give him a moment,' Naereah snapped, pulling Anton a few paces back before coming to Havoc's side. Her voice softened. 'What are you waiting for?' she asked, resting a palm to his chest, her lips near his ear.

Though restrained, he could feel it—the presence among the ravenous throng. A Champion. The dense pangs of its terrible might pulled at every hair on his neck.

With Pridewrought, his greatsword, he could wield the black flames of Pandemonia—consuming foes to replenish and augment his power and reserves. Through the onyx plating of Velrath, his physical strength was near its peak. Mythic steel would shatter at his touch. Even when woven into common garb to lessen its drain upon his Core, the Remnant still gifted him great resilience and strength. Yet only when fully donned did its true purpose reveal itself: to fortify body and soul—perhaps even to pay Catharsia's toll, for a time at least.

But the change to his Anchor was the most profound. He had yet to plumb its depths, yet still he sensed how far it reached.

He was not spirited to black-tiled lands and tar-born towers, where music rose like the Kingdom of Pride. Yet even as he stood upon mortal ground, he breathed the air of another realm—his realm. His Domain. He felt it stitched into the world, pushing out and folding in, pressing against the fabric of the Dungeon—its will restrained by his own.

Perhaps there was a faint glimmer—a twisting of light at the edges of his forged kingdom. Or perhaps it was only a trick of the mind. Still, he caught it as he willed his realm to expand, power draining at a perilous pace. The shimmer returned as he drew his world inward, and when it brushed the Champion, a crack split the air. Power bled from his Core—fast, reckless, unforgiving. His vision swam; his head turned weightless. He pulled back. Such a draw could not be sustained for long.

He sighed. Drawing the greatsword from its Link upon his Spirit Chain, he ignited its blade. Lightless fire licked along its edges. He thrust the sword toward the nearest cluster of Spawn, sending down a tower of flame to devour them. Against the whispered provocations of his weapon—the cries of many voices melded into one, pleading that he should burn the world, praying that he should stand alone—he drew back the flames. When the fire returned, his Core had replenished—restored anew to recommence his appraisal.

'Not yet,' Havoc said, swiping out an arm to block Anton's advance toward the bridge.

'How many people will die waiting for the end of your play?' Anton growled, yet held back all the same.

'All of them, if you won't spare me the grief,' Havoc shot back, glancing over his shoulder at Anton's twisted sneer.

Anton's impatience was not without merit, but Havoc was working as fast as he could. The Reach had already proven more perilous than he had foreseen. That there were Champion Spawn at all went beyond expectation. Stripped of the Remnants he had practised with for years, he needed time to adjust to the new powers at his command. Remnants schooled their wielders, endowing instinctive knowledge of their most basic use—but to push them beyond required patience. Even with his Heritage of War, the process was not instantaneous.

The same was true of his Anchor. It remained the Midnight Urn, yet had expanded far beyond the Artefact's understood use. It was bound to his Core, to grow as he did—but now it also housed a second Abominable Spirit. There were none he could learn from. Only himself.

Again, he extended his Domain. But as it went out, he drew it in—narrow, condensed, strung taut like a wire. He sent it to where the Champion hid. They met. His power drained, though not as swiftly as before. His will pressed against the Dungeon's protection. He felt it waver. He felt it fall. He felt the Champion stripped—not of its strength, but of its favour: the Dungeon's desire that it should not die.

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