Havoc stood within the clouded void, his own grinning face staring back at him. The mist beneath his ghostly feet shifted backward. It carried behind like a retreating tide, its ivory currents rippling as they passed through one another. A tremor, as if to crack the world’s foundation, growled across the void as blades of mist continued to cut across the fog in retreat. The tides did not flow eternal. As the fog withdrew, it gathered. Pooling together, it formed a single gushing wall of towering vapours.
‘Well, my boy. It’s about time,’ said the spirit wearing Havoc’s face, its grin stretching unnaturally, curling beyond its eyes. ‘I, for one, am glad we had this time together. Out there, I’m such a ghastly thing, but wearing your skin... I’ll be dazzling.’ Its voice oozed mockery, the grin widening further as it continued, ‘It’s enough to make me sing! Though for you… Oh, Havoc…’
The spirit paused, its blood-red pupils stretching horizontally, sharpening within its amber eyes. Its body began to fade, dissolving like smoke into the misty void.
‘I’m going to make it sting,’ it growled, the final word rumbling through the emptiness before the spirit vanished, its twisted smile lingering a few moments longer.
What the actual fu—
Shattering Havoc’s thoughts, the void shook violently. The looming wall of mist began to fall, its flayed wisps steaming from the sides as it descended. He barely registered the sharp hiss of the impending tsunami before it enveloped him.
Up, down, left, and right blended together as he was tossed like straw in a hurricane, violently carried wherever the mist would take him. As a being of mist himself, he could not tell where the torrential flood of rolling white ended and he began. Clinging to any thought was futile, forming to be ripped away just as fast by the overwhelming disorientation.
Years could have passed without notice. If time existed at all—he was no longer sure it ever had—it certainly had no significance within the roiling storm. But then the cloud parted, a pale light shining though. Havoc plunged toward the narrow opening. Through the fissure, he saw himself; cross-legged, eyes shut, his physical body sat motionless. Soaring through the slit between churning walls of impenetrable fog, he crashed into himself without warning. In an instant, the world of mist was no more. With a sharp inhalation, his lungs burned as they expanded as if for the first time. He choked on pungent air, its sour reek gripping his stomach, and hunched over in a fit of coughing and dry heaves.
From wherever he had been, he had returned, the unfamiliar strain of mortal flesh weighing down upon him. Dim light flicked through his eyelids as they parted. Fully open, he recoiled, his elbow squelching against a soft bulge on the surface of the wall behind. He did not need to turn to know what pressed against him; the sight of its kind before him was enough to send bile stinging up his throat.
Within a chamber, Havoc sat. To his left stood a tall door rising from the chamber’s base to its ceiling. Runes lined the frame, protruding slightly like adolescent blemishes, their faint glow pulsing with an irregular rhythm against its otherwise smooth exterior. The floor, a marbled black—polished and smooth—reflected the glow of luminous moss clinging to the ceiling. The chamber, with its simple and elegant arrangement, might have been called enchanting—a magical sight, if not for the flesh embedded in its walls.
Patches of skin, muscle, and bone, interwoven with fragments of organ, crept across the walls. Thick, green veins snaked between the mangled carrion, pulsing like the heart of a grotesque organism.
In a sudden movement, Havoc threw himself from the wall, fleeing the chilled touch of oozing flesh as it seeped through the tears in the back of his waistcoat. A rancid stench of decay hung heavy in the air. As he rose to his feet, the smell grew thicker, as though he had broken through to its most pungent layer. As if targeted by a hateful conspiracy of disorientating, unfamiliar solid ground, grotesque sights, rancid smells, and squelching sounds, he swayed and stumbled, catching himself just short of falling headlong into the cold, onyx stone.
As if the scene before him were not distressing enough, his stomach sank as his mind span to process his experience within the mist.
In the clouded expanse, the mist had revealed the truth of his world—its great expectations bound to a blood-drenched destiny. The Dungeon served a singular purpose—the execution of the gods. That made Inheritors like him divine executioners.
Heretics? He thought, his mind reeling at the implications. The entity had demanded the Heretic's soul. If every Inheritor was a heretic, did that mean his task was to kill any of them?
Or all of them… His thoughts twisted violently, turning down the dark corners of his mind. More still, the beasts of his vision, they lived in a world beyond and before the Dungeon. To them, it was little more than an idea, far removed from the horrifying reality he was stood.
Nevertheless, there they were, bound to the Dungeon’s walls. Their bodies were deformed, their minds contorted into madness, but together with their world, they dwelled within the Dungeon, locked away inside a Cell.
Will I find Aarth here one day? If the Dungeon consumed dying worlds—folding it within the fabric of its being—there was every reason to believe Aarth would also be included. Even before mankind’s exile, the Aarth was known to be dying—its blue skies charred black from endless wars, its clear waters burning to the touch.
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Havoc had never witnessed his ancestral world. Only the survivors from the first generation could claim to have walked beneath its boundless skies. Yet he had still longed for home beyond the Dungeon. The thought that it might no long exist, or worse, had been perverted into a Dungeon Cell, struck a painful chord in his heart.
He had become proficient at putting aside deeper questions to prioritise survival, but the latest revelations were difficult to ignore. Yet ignore them, he must. The entity and its demands, the fate of his worlds, old and new, the arch-profanity of a noble queen being warped into the White Temptress—an Abomination he had killed with his own hands—it would all have to wait.
Feeling the weighty pressure of the Dungeon’s will, as though submerging him beneath unfathomable depths, Havoc knew what lay behind the towering door. Since Inheriting, he had been bound with chain after chain. From the binds linking him to the will of his world, to that which fettered him to the immeasurable entity beyond the confines of reality. The weight of his tightening shackles hung heavy upon him. But behind the door held the key to one of his binds.
Whether in victory of death—it hardly even mattered which—by day’s end, he would break free of Annalise’s chain, the Dungeon’s will satisfied.
As he approached the door, the Dungeon’s will thickened—practically humming with anticipation. The air grew heavier with each step, vibrating faintly, as though the Dungeon itself was breathing down his neck. Havoc could feel it desperately yearn for the confrontation. It would not be denied its spectacle.
Just the mere thought of turning away filled him with a dreadful certainty: to retreat now would mean disinheritance, cutting him off from further progression and leaving him to rot in the shadows of mediocrity. But there was something else. This was the Dungeon’s desire for him—to test his strength, his resolve, and his will to endure. If he succeeded and escaped the Cell alive, he would emerge a Soldier.
The door’s runes bloomed brilliant as Havoc stood before its towering, titan-like frame. With a hammering clank, like the strike of metal on stone, the door hung ajar. An ear-piercing screech echoed as its base scraped across the stone floor, the door widening slowly. Peeking within as the door inched further open, Havoc summoned the Stone Guardsman. He knew that once inside, the Abominable Spirit would not allow him the seconds needed for the Remnant to fully materialise.
As the Guardsman’s head took form, shimmering into existence—its shield held ready to defend—the door burst fully open, shaking the chamber and scattering shards of loose stone as it slammed into the wall with a deafening crash.
‘How do I look?’ a mocking voice called out from the centre of the vast chamber. Across the walls, clinging to the ceiling, and spread across the floor in a circle, amber eyes were melded into the stone. Thick, green, pulsating vines squirmed from between the eyes, each one lined with rows of jagged teeth.
Within the circle of shifting eyes, the vines twisted around each other, mapping a vaguely human form. Its limbs were malformed, its body a shifting mass of teeth and fleshly-green vines. Through the many mouths of its perverted mimicry, the Abominable Spirit had spoken.
‘This flesh resists me,’ the Spirit said, its voice raspy and wet. ‘There’s only so much to be done with inferior material—so much left to perfect.’
Within the circle, the creature, a tangle of twisted veins, slithered forward, its movements wet and unnatural, compelling Havoc to take a wary step back.
‘Do I repulse you, boy? Praise them—I disgust myself! This once pure Spirit now forced to worship—praise be to the only true gods! All glory to—ugh!’ From all its many mouths, the creature spat thick, dark blood onto the floor. With its tangled foot, it stepped into the scarlet puddle, smearing the blood into a jagged streak across the ebony ground.
‘With you, I’ll finally be free,’ the Spirit growled as scarlet lines slashed horizontally across the many eyes embedded across the chamber.
‘Free to do what?’ Havoc asked, his rising disgust momentarily overcome by curiosity, the words slipping loose before he could stop them.
‘That’s not right—praise them—you’re not asking the right question!’ The Spirit chastised, its voice sputtering like churning mud.
‘What’s the right question?’ Havoc asked as he flared Harmony into the Stone Guardsman, its power forging a falchion of ethereal light in his grip.
The Spirit’s many eyes shifted to Havoc’s hand, and its many mouths warped into grins—sharp and uneven—as if mocking his preparations as humorously futile.
‘You should be asking: “Why you?”’ the Spirit said through the mouths in its chest, each word oozing mockery, as a low, guttural chuckle rumbled from its many other mouths.
‘Why me?’ Havoc replied, raising the falchion across his chest.
‘Because you’re repugnant—delicious—abhorrent! A thing that should not exist! Oh, but I’m so glad you do!’ the Spirit cried, its chuckle rising into raucous laughter. ‘Touched by light and darkness—but not in equal measure—it has to be you. It has to be’
Lowering its face, the Abomination repeated its final words again and again, growing more agitated with every repetition. Its eyes swivelled erratically within the stone of the chamber, darting in every direction, the glint of madness sharpening with each revolution.
Havoc tightened his grip around his blade, his jaw clenching as the Spirit’s laughter contorted into frenzied muttering.
‘It’s insane…’ Havoc whispered without realising, the words slipping out beneath his breath.
In an instant, all eyes froze—unblinking—gazing into Havoc like a predator before its cornered prey.
‘Oh, you have to be. It’s a crazy world, don’t you think?’ The abomination growled. It reached out a mangled hand, its fleshy vines twisting from its palm and slithering into the ground.
‘You won’t go to waste, my boy. I’ll be a better you than you could have ever dreamed.’ it said as the ground rumbled, uneven stone thrusting upward in uneven peaks.
‘I’ll find us a nice girl. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? We’ll settle down a while, and pop out some young—don’t worry, I won’t devour all of them! Oh, you’ll be so proud!’ The Spirit screamed, its multiple voices clashing in the air, coalescing into a cacophony of madness as a falchion formed of vein-laden stone slipped into its slithering grip.
‘You’ll be so proud!’ It shouted once more, raising its sword high and charging toward Havoc, its frantic steps slapping the ground in its mad advance.