The group moved in a tight diamond formation, their boots clicking softly against the asphalt of the suburbs. Behind them, the massive frigate remained a silent silhouette against the red-tinted horizon. Ahead, Dredge City loomed.
As they crossed the city limits, the oppressive crimson mist began to thin, replaced by a sight that was far more unsettling: normalcy. The streetlights flickered to life, casting long, amber shadows across perfectly swept sidewalks. It looked like any other city at 2:00 AM—quiet, peaceful, and utterly devoid of life.
"It's too clean," Claire whispered, her hand white-knuckled on the hilt of her sword. "There aren't even any bugs hitting the lights."
They reached a residential intersection when Henry raised a closed fist. The group froze. In the distance, slumped against a bus stop bench, was a man.
Henry and Roderick shared a brief, tense look before moving forward. As they drew closer, the "normalcy" began to fracture. The man wasn't just sleeping. Beneath the pale skin of his neck, thick green veins pulsed with a rhythmic, sickly light.
"He's gone," Roderick muttered, his rapier leveled at the man's chest. "He doesn't look conscious."
Henry stepped within arm's reach, his eyes tracking the way the man's chest barely moved. "We're new in town," Henry said, his voice flat and conversational. "Can you point us to the nearest bar? I'm dying for a drink."
For a long beat, there was only the hum of the streetlights. Then, the man's head snapped up.
Light didn't return to his eyes; instead, glowing, wavy green lines swirled inside his pupils like drowning worms. He lunged forward, his fingers digging into the reinforced fabric of Henry's shoulders.
"Help... Help me..." the man rasped, his voice a wet, tearing sound. "She won't let me go. She's everywhere. She's inside—"
Suddenly, he stopped. His back arched with a sickening crack of bone. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he began to convulse so violently that his heels drummed against the pavement. Henry stepped back.
"I don't think this is going to end well," Henry noted, his voice dropping into a combat-ready low.
The man stopped shaking. He looked up, his lips curving into a smile that stretched too wide, tearing the skin at the corners of his mouth. When he spoke, it wasn't one voice—it was a layered, discordant chorus.
"New guests," the man said, his head tilting at an impossible angle. "Are you like the last ones they sent? The ones who screamed so beautifully?"
"Are they still alive?" Henry asked, his eyes darting to the shadows of the surrounding houses.
"Alive? Such a primitive term," the entity replied, its host's hand reaching out to touch the air. "In human terms, they are alive. But they are part of the Collective now. Just as this city is. Just as the world will be."
"So you're the one who came through the Summoning," Henry said. " Are you the puppet, or the one pulling the strings?"
The man walked toward Henry, his movements jerky, like a marionette. "I am the Summoned. And I am no one's tool. I felt a 'Presence' trying to bind me when I arrived... but it was weak. Just Like you."
The entity paused, its glowing eyes focusing on Henry with a sudden, sharp intensity. "Curious. I can read the flickering, terrified thoughts of the prince behind you. I can taste the cold discipline of the knight in the shadows. But you... you are a void. Why can't I see inside you, little human?"
Roderick shifted, his rapier glowing with a faint golden mana. "So you can just take control of anyone? Just like that?"
"Not 'just like that,'" the entity mused. "It's a painful process. But once I am inside... the collection grows."
The man took a deep, rattling breath. "But I have work to do. Let me add you to the gallery quickly."
The Metamorphosis
The host body began to scream—not a human scream, but the sound of metal being ground into dust. The man's skin began to split as thick, emerald vines erupted from his pores, acting as living stitches that held his expanding frame together.
In seconds, the four-foot-ten civilian was gone. In his place stood a four-meter-tall titan of warped muscle and pulsating thorns, its face a featureless mask of vine and bone.
Four similar shrieks echoed from the surrounding houses. The front doors of the suburban homes shattered as four more monstrosities crawled out into the street, their vine-stitched bodies glistening under the amber streetlights.
The amber streetlights overhead flickered violently as the five Viroth-Daughters shrieked in unison, a sound that bypassed the ears and vibrated directly in the marrow of their bones.
Roderick adjusted his red coat, looking at the four-meter titan of thorns now looming over them. "Well," he remarked, his voice dripping with aristocratic dry wit, "that could have gone better."
Henry let out a long, jagged sigh, his hand hovering over the empty space where his shadow pooled on the asphalt. "This was supposed to be a stealth mission, you golden-haired idiot. We had one job."
Roderick laughed, a sharp, melodic sound. "Since when has anything involving the two of us gone according to plan, Henry? It's a tradition at this point."
Henry's lips curled into a dangerous, dark smile. "You're right. To hell with the plan. I'm tired of waiting."
"A sentiment we finally agree on," Roderick replied, his golden mana beginning to flare like a second sun.
"Cass!" Henry roared over his shoulder. "The three on the left are yours. you and the girls take care of it. We'll take the big ones!"
Roderick didn't walk; he blurred. He leaped toward the lead titan, his rapier singing as it cut through the air. The blade ignited with a blinding golden radiance as he delivered a precise, lunging thrust. The tip buried itself in the creature's vine-stitched chest, and a massive, cauterized hole erupted through its back.
But the monster didn't even flinch. A second titan lunged from the shadows of a nearby garage, its arm lengthening into a serrated whip of thorns aimed at the Prince's blind spot.
Henry moved in one fluid, brutal motion. He reached into the darkness behind him, his hand sinking into his own shadow as if it were deep water. He hauled out a massive black greatsword, its blade matte and jagged, looking less like a weapon and more like a splinter of a dead star.
He intercepted the whip-arm, the impact sounding like a sledgehammer hitting an anvil. With a grunt of effort, Henry pivoted and drove the greatsword straight through the second creature's skull, pinning it to the pavement.
Roderick landed gracefully beside him. "Effective, if a bit... primitive."
"Less talking, more cutting," Henry muttered. He wrenched his sword free and began a whirlwind of steel, his heavy blade shearing through limbs and torsos, red and green ichor spraying against the white picket fences. Roderick followed suit, his rapier a needle of light, perforating the monsters until both titans collapsed into a heap of twitching meat.
"Well," Roderick said, flicking a drop of green sludge off his sleeve. "That was almost too easy."
The words had barely left his mouth when the "corpses" on the ground began to pulse. The jagged gashes Henry had carved and the holes Roderick had pierced didn't bleed out—they reacted. Thousands of tiny, emerald filaments erupted from the wounds, stitching the flesh back together with a wet, snapping sound.
The monsters rose again, but they were no longer humanoid. Their limbs elongated, their heads dissolved into gaping maws of thorns, and their Ichor signatures spiked.
Henry looked at Roderick, his eyes deadpan. "You just had to jinx it."
Roderick sighed, his playfulness vanishing. "My apologies. I'll settle the bill."
The air around Roderick's rapier began to warp and distort, the temperature rising until the asphalt beneath his boots began to bubble. The golden light turned a violent, bruised purple-red. The rapier's blade began to melt and reshape itself, the thin needle extending and widening into a heavy, curved Sabre. The steel was obsidian-black, etched with glowing red veins that pulsed like a heartbeat.
The two titans charged, their vine-limbs lashing out like cobras. Roderick didn't even bother to aim. He stepped into their range and swung the sabre in a single, lazy diagonal arc.
There was no sound of an impact—only the hiss of air being erased.
The titans froze mid-lunge. A thin, red line appeared across their massive bodies, and then, in a spray of black ash, they fell apart. The vines didn't regrow. The flesh didn't knit. They simply were in pieces, they were severed by the royal blade.
Henry let out a tired breath, sheathing his greatsword back into his shadow. "That sword is a total cheat, Roddy."
Roderick chuckled, the sabre reverting back to a golden rapier in a flash of light. "Well you gave back your sword to your family."
Suddenly, a series of heavy, thunderous impacts shook the ground from the street behind them. The sounds of shattering glass and cracking bone echoed out, followed by a sudden, eerie silence.
Henry glanced back toward the three girls and Lenore and Caspian. "Looks like they didn't need our help."