Aden woke to the taste of blood.
Not his own—no, this was thicker, fouler, as if the air itself had been flayed open and left to bleed. He gasped, his lungs seizing as the scent of burning flesh filled his nostrils. His vision swam, blurred at first, then sharpened into a nightmare.
He was inside his own mind.
Or what was left of it.
The subspace—once a sanctuary, a realm of disciplined order where his thoughts had been as clear as a swordsman's strike—was now a ruin. The sky was a writhing mass of chains, each link rusted and groaning, twisting like serpents in a storm.
The ground beneath him was not earth, but a field of swords, their blades buried deep, their edges slick with something dark and glistening. When he took a step, the metal whispered, as if mourning.
And in the center of it all, the throne.
It rose like a monument to slaughter, jagged and grotesque—a seat carved from human jaws, hundreds of them, fused together in a rictus of agony. Teeth lined the armrests, still wet.
The high back was a spine, bent unnaturally, and atop it, perched like a carrion king, sat himself.
No.
Not himself.
Egmund.
The demon wore Aden's face, but it was wrong—too sharp, too hungry. His eyes were pits of smoldering crimson, his mouth stretched in a grin that split too wide. He lounged on the throne, one leg draped over the other, fingers drumming against the skull of a long-dead man embedded in the armrest.
"Look what I made us," Egmund purred.
Aden's stomach twisted. He turned—and the world beyond the throne unfolded like a wound.
A battlefield. His battlefield.
His army—his loyal soldiers, the men and women who had followed him into hell—were being butchered. Not in war, not in honorable combat, but like cattle. Shadows with too many limbs tore into them, their screams cut short as jaws of darkness clamped down.
Blood painted the air in thick, arterial sprays. Some tried to run. Their legs gave out beneath them, bones snapping like kindling. Others fought—and their swords passed through the horrors like mist before their own blades turned in their hands and plunged into their throats.
Aden's breath came in ragged bursts. "No—"
Egmund laughed—a sound like breaking glass. "Oh, yes." He rose from the throne, his form shifting, his edges bleeding into smoke. "You left them to me. And I improved them."
Aden's hands clenched. "Give me back control."
Egmund tilted his head. "Why? So you can die with them?" He stepped down, each footfall leaving a wet imprint on the swords. "You were a dog leashed to hope. I cut the chain."
Aden lunged.
Egmund moved—not with the grace of a warrior, but the liquid wrongness of a nightmare. His arm lashed out, and suddenly, Aden's chest was on fire. He looked down. A blade was buried in his ribs—not a sword, but memory. The hilt was wrapped in the leather of his father's gloves.
Zwalter's voice slithered into his ear. "A failed heir."
Aden snarled, tearing the blade free—only for another to pierce his shoulder. This one was thinner, colder. Ed Vasco's dagger. The old man's disappointment was a poison in his veins.
"You see?" Egmund whispered, now behind him, lips brushing Aden's ear. "You carry your weakness inside you."
Aden whirled, swinging—but Egmund was gone.
The air rippled.
Then the dead came.
They rose from the swords, their bodies stitched together from Aden's regrets. A soldier missing half his face. A woman with hollow eyes, her dress soaked in blood. His fiancée—her lips parted, not in a scream, but in a sigh. Molten tears streaked down her cheeks.
"You promised," she wept.
Egmund's laughter echoed, his form flickering—a demon wreathed in shadow, a knight with a hollow helm, Aden's own face but stretched into something monstrous, teeth like needles.
"We are the same," Egmund roared, his voice splitting the sky. "You wanted power. I am power."
Aden's vision darkened at the edges. The ground beneath him trembled, the swords screaming as they ripped free from the earth, levitating around him like the teeth of a great beast.
And then—
The throne moved.
The jaws unhinged. The spine arched. And from the abyss within the seat, a hand emerged—skeletal, clawed, reaching for him.
Egmund smiled. "Let's finish this."