My fists are hammers. My bones are knives. I paint the vault in ruin.
When it’s done, I’m the only thing breathing.
I stand in the wreckage. Blood steaming from my shoulders. My eyes burn like twin eclipses. The ground at my feet is red and slick.
Behind me, my crew arrives—slow, uncertain.
They see the aftermath.
Ellex swallows. Hard. “Boss…”
I turn, covered in blood, grin carved across my face like a war god returned from exile.
“The vault’s clear,” I rasp. “Strip it. Melt it. Leave a body hanging from every damn beam.”
Bruna, her voice shaking, mutters, “They’ll talk about this for decades.”
“They better,” I say. “Or I’ll come back andremindthem.”
I don’t clean the blood from my hands.
Not tonight.
Tonight, the Reaper walks again.
And he doesn’taskfor mercy.
He teaches them what it means to bleed.
The scent of carnage clings to me.
Thick. Metallic. Saturating the air with the weight of what I’ve done.
The vault’s dead quiet now. Even the flames have stopped crackling, as if afraid to breathe the same air I do. The bones of Nar’Vosk guards litter the floor like discarded promises, and my glaive—still warm in my grip—drips with viscera that smokes when it touches the cold concrete.
I stand in the center of the slaughter, light from an emergency beacon flickering against my skin like it’s trying to decide whether I’m still a man… or something worse.
My heart’s still hammering, a drumbeat soaked in blood and fury. But beneath it, something hollow is starting to open.
She’d hate this.
I close my eyes.
Aria’s face rises behind my lids.
Not the firebrand prosecutor. Not the woman who snapped orders at me like I’d obey them. No. The Aria I saw in that medical bed. Pale. Fragile. Her voice cracking when she said she couldn’t pretend not to care anymore.
She’s the only pure thing in this universe of rot.
And I?—
I just dragged myself back into the abyss for her.
Would she understand that?
My fingers tighten around the glaive. The metal creaks beneath the strain.
She believes in law. In balance. In truth.
