The ground tasted like rust and spoiled meat.
Kael spat dirt as he pushed himself up, his crown-arm shrieking in protest. The fall from the Shattered Realm had left him buried alive in the Blighted Fields, a graveyard where the dead refused to stay dead.
The soil breathed beneath him.
He dug his fingers into the earth, hauling himself free just as the ground ruptured, skeletal hands clawing toward the blood-red moon. Dozens. Hundreds. An army of corpses pulling themselves from their graves, their eye sockets burning with the same sickly green as his cursed arm.
And then he saw himself.
The Other Kael
It stood at the center of the field, wreathed in black flames, its skin peeling like burned parchment.
This version of Kael had no crown.
No hesitation.
Just a sword made of bone, its edge serrated with teeth.
"Took you long enough."
Kael's arm twisted, the shard inside throbbing in recognition.
"It's you."
The arm whispered.
"The one who didn't run."
The Other Kael smiled.
"The one who embraced it."
The Other Kael moved, faster than anything living had a right to. Its bone sword sheared through the air, missing Kael's throat by a breath.
Kael rolled, his dagger flashing up and shattered against the Other's ribs.
Laughing, the Other grabbed him by the throat, slammed him into the dirt, and leaned close.
"You're weak,"
"You keep fighting what you are. But the crown? The shard? They're not tools."
"They're parts of you."
Kael spat blood in its face.
The Other sighed, then plunged its hand into Kael's chest.
Pain.
Then. . .
* * *
The memory struck like a blade between the ribs, sharp, sudden, and utterly foreign.
Kael gasped as the vision tore through him; a battlefield bathed in unnatural hues, the sky choked with smoke the color of tarnished gold, the earth blackened as if the very ground had bled.
At its center knelt the Hollow King, his once-proud armor shattered, his skeletal fingers clawing at the dirt. His voice was a rasp, a sound like wind through dead leaves.
"Please…"
But the plea wasn't for mercy. It was worse, recognition.
Kael looked down and saw his own hand gripping the hilt of a sword he'd never wielded, the Hollow King's jagged crown slithering up his arm like molten metal, fusing with his flesh. Heat seared his bones, and with it came a whisper, not in his ear, but in the marrow of him, in the spaces between heartbeats.
"This time, I'll get it right."
Then silence.
* * *
The vision snapped like a cut thread, leaving him trembling in the present, his skin buzzing with the ghost of a crown that had never been his.
But it will be, a voice inside him hissed. Or it was. Or it must be.
And the worst part? The whisper hadn't sounded like an enemy's taunt.
It had sounded like him.
As the vision split apart, Kael screamed as the Other ripped its hand free, clutching a beating mass of shadow, his fear, given form.
The Other studied it, then crushed it in its fist.
"Pathetic,"
Then it walked away, leaving Kael gasping in the dirt.
The corpses watched, silent.
Kael's chest ached, the hole where his fear had been gaping and cold.
His arm crawled up his shoulder, whispering
"You know what you have to do."
He did.
He stood.
He called the crown home.
And the Blighted Fields burned as he let the darkness in.
* * *
The storm hit as Kael crested the ridge.
Not rain. Not snow.
Thorns.
They fell from the bleeding sky in a hissing deluge, each one the length of a dagger, glistening with something darker than poison. Kael raised his crown-arm, the blackened veins writhing as they wove a shield of crackling necrotic energy. The thorns shattered against it, filling the air with the stench of burning metal and rotting flowers.
Below him, the Bloodmoon Highlands stretched, a nightmare of jagged crimson rock and rivers that flowed with thick, clotted blood. At its heart, a monolith pulsed like a diseased heart, its surface carved with the same sigils that now scarred Kael's flesh.
The Church's last weapon.
And it was awake.
They came as the thorns lessened, Inquisitorial Reapers, their bodies grafted with demonbone plating, their faces hidden behind masks of cold iron.
The lead Reaper leveled a soul cannon, its barrel glowing violet.
"Heretic,"
The voice crackled through the mask.
"Kneel."
Kael moved.
The cannon fired, a beam of condensed agony that vaporized the ground where he'd stood. He rolled, the heat searing his back, and lunged, his crown-arm elongating into a serpentine blade of bone and shadow.
The Reaper blocked with a forearm of black steel and screamed as Kael's blade phased through it, piercing the flesh beneath.
Kael twisted, the blade's edges sprouting hooked teeth that chewed through muscle and bone. The Reaper's arm hit the ground, still twitching.
The others attacked.
A Reaper came from the left, whip sword unfurling like a tongue, its edge lined with screaming faces. Kael ducked, the whip coiling around his arm, and yanked, pulling the Reaper off-balance.
His free hand plunged into the Reaper's mask, fingers crushing the wet meat beneath. The mask splintered, revealing a face half-melted, one eye replaced with a spinning silver cog.
"Blessed be."
Kael ripped his hand free, taking the spine with it.
The remaining two circled, their movements synchronized. One carried a flail of burning chain, the other a double-bladed glaive humming with cursed energy.
They struck as one.
Kael parried the glaive with his bone-blade, the impact sending sparks screaming into the air, just as the flail wrapped around his leg, the spikes burying deep.
Fire exploded in his veins.
He roared, his crown flaring, and slammed his fist into the ground.
The earth ruptured, black tendrils erupting to impale the flail-wielder, lifting him into the air as they pulled him apart.
The glaive Reaper hesitated.
A mistake.
Kael leaped, his blade splitting the Reaper from shoulder to hip in a single, brutal arc.
Silence.
Then, Laughter.
* * *
The ground shook.
The monolith split open, and it crawled out.
Seraph-7.
But not as Kael remembered.
Her body had been reforged, twice as tall, her flesh stitched with the remains of other cyborgs, her face a patchwork of stolen skin. Her spine unfurled into six mechanical limbs, each ending in a different weapon: a rotating saw, a flamethrower, a spike launcher, a crushing claw, a pulse cannon, and a whip of barbed wire.
Her voice was a chorus of screams.
"Kael Arcanis,"
"You are judged."
Kael smiled, his crown burning through his skull.
"Try me."
Seraph-7 attacked.
The spike launcher fired first, projectiles the size of spears screaming toward Kael. He twisted, one grazing his ribs, the others punching into the ground like pillars.
He ran, using the spikes as cover as the flamethrower ignited, liquid fire engulfing the battlefield. Heat seared his lungs, his skin blistering then healed, the crown forcing his flesh to knit itself back together.
The crushing claw descended.
Kael dove, the claw shattering stone where he'd stood. He rolled, his bone-blade slashing upward, severing two of the claw's fingers.
Seraph-7 howled, the barbed whip lashing out. It coiled around Kael's throat, the barbs sinking deep.
He gagged, blood filling his mouth, then grabbed the whip, his crown-arm melting into it, corrupting the machinery. The whip withered, rust spreading up Seraph's limb like a disease.
She ripped it free, sacrificing the limb to save the rest.
"You cannot win," she snarled.
Kael spat blood.
"Watch me."
The pulse cannon charged.
Kael leaped, his blade morphing into a massive scythe, and brought it down in a single, cleaving strike.
The cannon exploded.
So did Seraph-7.
The monolith screamed, its surface cracking, black ichor pouring from the wounds.
Kael stood amidst the wreckage, his body broken, his crown pulsing.
The Highlands shuddered, the blood-rivers churning.
Something was coming.
Something worse.
As the sky tore open, Kael realized.
This wasn't the end.
It was the beginning.