*Disclaimer*
This story contains intense violence, dark themes, and scenes that may be disturbing to some readers.
Reader discretion is strongly advised.
If you are sensitive to graphic content, please proceed with caution.
The city gates were still burning when Dean reached them, but the flames had sunk low, feeding on fat now instead of wood. The invaders had run out of corpses to pile and had started throwing the wounded on top while they still kicked. A boy no older than Mira tried to crawl off the heap with his intestines dragging behind him like a pink leash. A soldier casually pinned the boy's hand with a spear, twisted it slowly, then pissed on the screaming face before kicking the child back into the fire. Skin peeled from the boy's cheeks in wet sheets as he cooked alive.
Dean walked through the smoke without hurry. No one looked twice at the blood-soaked scarf around his neck. In this light everything was blood-soaked.
The two gate guards were raping a woman against the wall.
One held her wrists above her head with a single hand, the other arm buried elbow-deep inside her, laughing as he worked his fist deeper. The man behind her had already finished once and was hard again, rutting into the ruin he'd made. Her face was turned toward Dean; one eye had burst from pressure, the other stared through him, mouth slack, drool and blood threading down her chin in equal measure. She had stopped screaming hours ago.
Dean stopped three paces away.
The one in back noticed him first. "Wait your fucking turn, rookie."
Dean didn't speak.
He reached up, hooked two fingers into the man's open mouth from behind, and ripped downward with both hands. The jaw tore free in a spray of splintered bone and tendon. The soldier dropped, clawing at the red hole where his face had been, blood jetting in perfect arcs that painted the wall brighter.
The second guard let go of the woman and fumbled for his sword. Dean caught the descending arm, twisted until the elbow exploded outward in a wet pop of ligaments, then drove the broken sword up through the soft meat under the chin. The point punched through the palate, the brain, and burst out the top of the helmet in a geyser of grey and crimson.
The woman slid down the wall and sat there, knees splayed, a dark river pouring from between her thighs. Something that might once have been an organ slipped out with it and landed with a soft plop.
Dean crouched. He dipped his fingers into the spreading pool, brought them to his tongue, tasted iron and seed and utter despair.
[Bloodlust (Passive) – Pain/Pleasure feedback loop engaged.
Strength bonus: +40% → +90%
You are becoming what they deserve.]
He left the guards where they fell: one gurgling through the ruin of his face, the other standing upright with six inches of steel growing from the roof of his mouth like a grotesque flower.
The woman never moved.
Dean didn't offer to help her. Mercy was a lie people told themselves before the screaming started.
He walked on.
The Rose Palace had become a slaughterhouse with chandeliers.
Cages lined the old theater in tiers. Some held women. Some held what was left of them (arms nailed to the bars, faces peeled and pinned like masks, children forced to hold their own mothers' severed heads). The stench was so thick it coated the tongue.
On the stage, King Vortigern's champion, Gorrid, a mountain of scar tissue and muscle, was busy.
He had Mira bent over the orchestra rail.
She was naked, small, impossibly breakable. Her blonde hair hung in clumps crusted with dried blood, semen, and shit. A ring gag stretched her jaws until the corners of her mouth had split to the ears. Every time Gorrid thrust, her body jerked forward and something inside her tore a little more. Blood ran in steady rivulets down her thighs, pooling beneath her bare feet.
A circle of soldiers watched, drinking, laughing, placing bets on how many more strokes before she split completely.
Dean stepped into the aisle.
No one noticed him yet.
He walked forward, slow, deliberate, counting heartbeats.
Twenty paces.
Fifteen.
Ten.
Gorrid finished with a roar, hips slamming forward one final time. Something deep inside Mira ruptured with a wet sound. Her body slid sideways, legs no longer able to hold her weight. She hung over the rail by her stomach, limp as a gutted rabbit, lower half unrecognizable.
Gorrid turned, wiping himself on her hair, and saw Dean.
"Well, well. Fresh meat for the—"
Dean activated War Cry.
The sound that ripped out of him was the death rattle of every battlefield that had ever swallowed the sun. Men dropped their cups. Some clawed their own eyes out. One soldier bit through his tongue and drowned in his own blood trying to scream.
Gorrid staggered, blood pouring from ears and nose, but he was strong. He shook it off and grinned crimson teeth.
"Come on then, boy. I'll use your skull as a—"
Dean was already moving.
He went low, slid across the polished floor on his knees, and opened Gorrid's calf to the bone with the shortsword. Tendon parted like wet string. The champion howled and swung a fist the size of a ham. Dean took it full on the shoulder (felt the bone shatter) and laughed through the pain as the system drank it like wine.
Strength detonated inside him.
He came up inside Gorrid's guard and buried the dagger to the hilt in the big man's balls. Twisted. Ripped sideways. The entire sack tore free in his fist, dragging purple veins and tubes behind it like obscene roots.
Gorrid's scream pitched higher than any man's should.
Dean caught him as he fell, hugged him close like a lover, and whispered into the ruin of his ear.
"This is for Mira."
Then he started the real work.
He began with the eyes.
Thumbs pressed in until they burst like soft grapes, vitreous fluid running down the champion's cheeks like tears.
Then the tongue.
He gripped it with pliers taken from a nearby torture kit, pulled it out as far as it would go, and sawed it off at the root with the shortsword. Blood flooded the mouth, choking the screams into wet gurgles.
Then the skin.
He peeled Gorrid from sternum to groin in one long sheet, using the dagger like a butcher's knife. Muscle glistened beneath, twitching. Where the blade caught, white fat curled away like shaved parchment.
Intestines came next.
Dean pulled them out slowly, loop by steaming loop, wrapping them around Gorrid's own neck like a warm, wet scarf. Every tug tore fresh howls from the lipless mouth.
When the abdominal cavity was empty, he reached in and found the heart.
It hammered against his palm, frantic.
He squeezed.
One chamber.
Two.
Three.
Blood jetted between his fingers in dying pulses.
With a final wrench he tore it free, cords snapping like harp strings.
He held the still-beating heart up to the silent hall, then bit down.
The muscle burst between his teeth. Copper and smoke and pure, exquisite vengeance flooded his mouth.
He chewed slowly, eyes never leaving the corpse.
The system purred like a satisfied beast.
[Devourer of Hope – First Feast Complete]
[Permanent +10 to all stats]
[New Active Skill: Heart-Eater – Consume an enemy's heart to permanently steal their strongest trait]
Dean swallowed the last mouthful and turned to the soldiers still on their knees.
They didn't beg anymore.
He made them watch while he used their own belts to tie them spread-eagled to the stage.
One by one he flayed them alive, nailing the wet hides to the backdrop as curtains.
One he castrated with his teeth.
Another he forced to eat his own eyelids before opening his belly and letting the crows feast while he still breathed.
The last boy, barely seventeen, he saved for last.
He carved Mira's name into the boy's chest with a dull knife, one letter at a time, going deep enough to scrape bone. Then he poured lamp oil into the wounds and set him alight.
The boy ran screaming until his lungs cooked.
When it was over, the theater floor was ankle-deep in blood and worse. The walls dripped. The chandeliers swayed from the heat of burning bodies.
Dean climbed the steps to Mira.
She still hung over the rail, breathing in small, wet hitches.
Her eyes, once summer-sky blue, were clouded, pupils blown wide.
She didn't recognize him.
He stroked her hair with trembling fingers.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I was late."
She made a sound. Just pain.
Dean pressed the dagger into her hand, curled her blood-slick fingers around the hilt.
Then guided the blade until the point rested under her chin.
"I love you," he said.
She drove it upward herself.
The blade scraped bone and kept going until the hilt kissed skin.
Her body jerked once, then sagged.
Dean held her until she cooled.
He wrapped her small body in the champion's cloak, now stiff with blood, and carried her out into the night.
Behind him, the palace began to burn like a pyre for every innocence the world had ever lost.
He never looked back.
[Main Quest Progress: 78 / 1,000 soldiers of Vortigern slain.]
The king still waited on his stolen throne, warm and laughing and utterly unaware.
Dean smiled with too many teeth.
Soon.