Koda let the letter hang from his fingers, the corners twitching slightly as the breeze from the cracked window caught the edge. The world outside was silent, but the peace was gone now—stripped like the wax from that seal.
The words burned behind his eyes. Rot and bone… in the West?
He turned to the window. Blount stood quiet under the stars, the city unaware of what churned beyond its edges. Of what waited.
And Callestan—alone.
Koda's gaze hardened, the fingers of one hand curling into a slow fist. His other hand moved automatically, holding the letter toward the flame of the sconce. The parchment caught with a dry whisper and curled in on itself, blackening until nothing was left but ashes in the still, watching dark.
——
Koda's sleep never truly took him.
It dragged him.
Down.
Into a dark too thick to see through. Down into a silence too deep to hear. And then, with no warning, the world cracked wide—screamed open like a wound torn across reality.
He stood in a barren field of ash, under a sky like raw meat stretched thin. The earth pulsed beneath his feet—wet, soft, not earth at all, but something living, something twitching with the memory of pain. In the distance, towers of bone spiraled up like horns, hollow and weeping. Rivers ran between them—not water, but a viscous sludge of molten gold and blood, thick with hands reaching, grasping, pulling at nothing.
He tried to move.
Every step sunk him ankle-deep in twitching mouths. They hissed between his legs, lips cracked and shredded, whispering with voices he almost knew—voices too close, begging, laughing, choking. Some prayed. Some mocked.
Something else walked beside him.
A man—once, maybe. Clothed in skin too tight, stitched from others. His face was a blur of features, flickering between kings, merchants, generals, peasants, all wearing the same crooked grin. Around his neck hung hundreds of tiny limbs—fingers, toes, ears—clicking softly together like wind chimes. His eyes were black coins. When he opened his mouth, it spilled not sound but teeth, cascading like a fountain of bone.
He gestured toward the towers. "They built them," he crooned, "on backs, on graves, on broken oaths and bargains kept too long. All to keep what was never theirs."
Koda tried to speak. His mouth was sewn shut. The threads were nerves. They twitched.
The landscape twisted again.
Now he was beneath the ground—surrounded by vaults of gold, chests brimming, jeweled blades driven into skulls, thrones carved from ribcages. Statues watched him with hollow sockets, each reaching, reaching, reaching. But as he moved closer, he saw: the gold was bleeding. Melting. Screaming. The treasure groaned with faces—human, goblin, orcish, many others—pressed into the sides like wax figures half-melted. They wept molten tears.
In the center of it all stood a tree.
Gnarled and gray, its bark was flayed flesh, its leaves curled tongues. Hanging from its branches were corpses, strung up not by rope but chains of coin. Some writhed. Some grinned. All watched.
Koda turned. The stitched man was there again.
"Can you taste it?" he asked. "The forever? The promise that never ends, only rots? It's yours. It's always been yours."
His hand extended, and from the folds of his sleeve fell a crown.
No gems. Only eyes.
Still blinking.
The wind screamed through the underground tomb of treasure. It carried no cold—only hunger.
Then the corpses began to speak. Not in words—but in pleas.
Give us more.
Give us everything.
We'll never be enough.
You'll never be enough.
The stitched man leaned close. Koda could feel the heat of a thousand stolen breaths on his face.
"All it costs is what you are."
The air thickened.
Not just with rot or ash or the seeping stench of death—but with want. The ache of longing. The stitched man was gone. The treasure was gone.
Koda stood in a hall of mirrors. But none of the reflections were him.
Each pane showed a different life. A different version.
To his left—a younger Koda, laughing, not a scar on him, adorned in ceremonial robes as golden laurels were placed on his brow. The crowd screamed his name in adoration. His parents—faces he'd barely let himself remember—clapped from the front, eyes wet with pride.
Another mirror shimmered to life. This Koda sat at a grand table, surrounded by lords, kings, tacticians—all listening, hanging on his every word. Maia at his side, not weary with travel or bloodshed, but regal. Unburdened.
Another: Koda atop a mountain of slain monsters, blade of light crackling, crowds below worshiping—not honoring, worshiping!
The reflections didn't fade.
They turned.
Each mirror—each version of Koda—swiveled its head toward him, not like humans but like puppets yanked by invisible strings. Jaws slack, eyes hollow. Not admiration now, but desire. Not pride—resentment.
And then the glass shattered.
The fragments didn't fall—they peeled. Peeled back from the frames like skin torn from bone, leaving only the twisted doubles behind, crawling out onto the blackened floor of the hall.
They screamed without sound, expressions warped. One wept blood from empty sockets, dragging the laurels behind it like chains. Another's blade of light melted in his hand, congealing over his arm like molten flesh. The one with Maia clawed at his face until she tore free of his memory, dissolving in dust as she screamed his name in reverse.
"You didn't earn this," one hissed, voice distorted like it was underwater and full of knives.
"You don't deserve it," moaned another, dragging itself closer, legs broken but still moving.
One of them stood. Fully. Whole. Better. Stronger.
This Koda—taller, cleaner, perfected—had no scars. No wear in his eyes. His twin blades gleamed with untouched steel, unbent by hardship. Behind him, legions of undead knelt. And when he spoke, his voice was Koda's. Almost.
"I was always meant to be more."
Then he moved.
In an instant, the impostor was upon him, grabbing Koda by the throat, lifting him like he weighed nothing. The hands burned where they touched—ice and fire at once, the sting of jealousy made manifest. Koda's breath fled, his vision swam.
Behind the doppelgänger, the bone-stitched man returned—except now he had no mouth. No eyes. Only hands. Hands that reached from the dark, wrapping around the imposter's shoulders, his arms, his throat.
The room began to shake, a storm of shrieking envy. Whispers filled the air—
"Why him?"
"Why not me?"
"I would have done better."
"He stole it."
"He doesn't know what to do with it."
"We could have saved them."
"We should be the one."
Dozens of voices. Hundreds. A legion of unseen failures and almosts and not-yets.
The impostor's face split—cracked from the inside, not from pain but from pressure. A thousand crawling green lights pouring through his skull like veins of molten envy. The stitched man leaned close behind him, whispering wordless hunger into his empty ear.
And just before the final snap of his neck—Koda awoke.
Drenched in sweat. The walls still shivering. A single whisper echoing in the back of his skull, fading like smoke:
"You'll never be enough."
He blinked—awake again.
Or so he thought.
The walls pulsed.
Not moved. Pulsed.
Veins writhed beneath the stone like worms, beating with a slow, thick rhythm. The air was humid and sweet, cloying—like overripe fruit left in the sun too long, soft and stinking. Shadows clung to the corners of the room in a way that suggested they were watching him. Wanting him.
A voice whispered.
No words. Just breath. Just heat.
And then fingers. Dozens of them. Slender, cracked, perfect, rotting. They traced along his spine, not with love but with need. Hunger. The kind that devours without tasting.
The room opened.
Not physically, but his sense of it stretched—walls fell away, and he stood in a cathedral of flesh and silk, a temple built from writhing bodies. They moved in tandem, not with pleasure but with despair, faces blank, mouths whispering names. His name.
Each figure wore a mask.
One was Maia's smile, but it didn't reach her eyes. Another, Elise's eyes—cold, calculating—staring at him with betrayal blooming. One bore the Matron's lips, twisted into a grin too wide for any human face. Terron's laugh echoed from a body too soft, too wrong.
Every face, every mask, called him forward.
"You're desired," they moaned. "You're needed."
"Isn't this what you fought for?"
"Isn't this what they all want? What you want?"
He tried to move. His body didn't respond. Each step forward was dragged by invisible hands tugging him deeper. He tried to close his eyes—but even inside, images burned: skin stitched with names, a throne of tangled limbs, mouths without faces begging to be touched.
Then he saw her.
Maia.
Or no—something wearing Maia's skin like a prize.
It knelt before a great stone altar, nude, bathed in slick shadow. Her eyes bled black. Her smile was reverent. Devoted. Wrong. She didn't speak, just reached for him—arms open.
But her voice came from behind him.
"Koda, help me—please—I'm still in here—"
He turned.
She was chained to the wall. The real one. Eyes wide, pleading. Her voice raw. And from behind, the one at the altar stood, towering now—her face splitting open in a grin that reached ear to ear, teeth like needles. The flesh dripped from her bones in ribbons of desire turned putrid.
"I gave you what you wanted," it crooned, voice echoing from the walls. "You'll never be loved like I can love you."
Hands reached for him again—slick, hot, frantic. Pulling. Clutching. A thousand mouths kissing at once. Moaning. Screaming. Begging.
"You were made for this."
"You owe this."
"Let us worship you."
And then the chains broke.
And Maia screamed.
And Koda's own skin began to crawl off his bones toward them.
The cathedral collapsed, but not with ruin—with grandeur.
Marble surged up from the fleshy ground, polished and pure. The writhing masses fell silent as the walls solidified, reshaped into towering spires of gold-veined stone. Columns lifted into the heavens, impossibly high, carved with scenes of battle—Koda at their center. Always him. Always triumphant.
He stood not in rags or armor now, but in a robe woven from sunlight itself. A mantle dragging behind him, impossibly long, brushing across the adoring heads of those who knelt in perfect worship. Their eyes were gone—plucked from their sockets to better see with their hearts, they said.
They sang his name.
Thousands of them, tens of thousands, their voices overlapping like a tide that could not ebb.
Koda the Vanquisher.
Koda the Savior.
Koda the Final Flame.
His victories were engraved into the very stone beneath his feet—each monster he had slain, each sacrifice made, each breath taken. None omitted. None forgotten.
Before him stretched a staircase of bone and crystal, and atop it sat a throne—crafted from a single fused mass of weapons. His weapons. The sabers, now twin holy relics, hovered behind it like wings.
And standing beside the throne… was Maia.
Not weeping. Not chained. Bowing.
Wearing silver robes of her own, but a step below. A consort's garb. Her head was bowed low, hands clasped. Behind her stood the others—Seta, Elise, Terron, Eno, even the Matron and the priest of the Shield. Kneeling. Not out of fear. Not with resistance. With pride.
He didn't command them. They bent willingly.
"This is your rightful place," a voice echoed through the chamber—not a whisper, not a moan like before, but a herald's call. Noble. Clean. Beautiful. Terrible.
"This is what you have earned."
He looked down at his hands. They were no longer scarred or calloused. Perfect. Sculpted. Not human, not divine—ideal.
And the people below looked up with tears in their hollow faces.
"You are the culmination," the voice declared again. "You rose from nothing. And now—you are everything."
Statues erected themselves behind him without tools, without time, each a flawless replica. Koda in different poses: arms spread in absolution, blade raised in war, hand offered in grace. They towered over the city beyond the cathedral, looking down on every street and shadow.
And there—above the altar—his name burned in fire across the sky.
KODA.
Only Koda.
Forever Koda.
The city cheered and wailed and begged to be allowed to serve him better. Not out of control, but out of adoration. A need so deep it was religious. They would die for him. They would gladly.
And he smiled.
Just slightly.
That's when the first crack split across the marble floor beneath his feet.
Hairline at first. Barely visible. But spreading.
He looked again—his hand… was hollow. Beautiful, but empty. Like a statue. A shell.
And from beneath the throne, something began to rise.
Something wearing his own face. But smiling wider. Taller. Better.
"You were never enough," it said.
The crowd cheered harder.
And the throne split open.
The cathedral fell in silence—then ignited.
Not in fire. In fury.
The golden light turned red, molten and roiling, pouring from the cracks like blood boiling in the marrow of the world. Statues shattered. Screams—inhuman, unending—echoed from every surface as the bones of the cathedral screamed, twisted, then struck.
The altar exploded in a thousand shards of ivory and rusted iron. The duplicate-Koda, still grinning, burst like a blister, spewing smoke and shadow that raced outward like a flood tide, devouring the worshipers as they turned, still smiling, still screaming praise even as their skin melted from their skulls.
Koda was on his knees.
He didn't remember falling.
His sabers were gone.
And above him, rising like a god of vengeance forged from everything he had ever broken, towered a creature wearing his rage. It had no shape—only edges. Hooks. Chains. Faces fused into a thousand open-mouthed howls, trailing from its cloak like banners in a storm of agony.
It dragged behind it a crown of twisted metal and teeth, suspended by tendons that snapped and reknit with every breath. Its eyes were furnaces. Its voice—his voice—boomed from it like thunder beneath the earth.
"YOU HELD BACK."
Koda tried to crawl, but the ground itself hated him now. It burned his hands, peeled skin from his knees as if demanding payment for every moment of restraint.
"You had power. And you squandered it on mercy."
It raised a fist the size of a tower. In its fingers dangled chains. At the end of each—someone he knew.
Maia, choking on her own breath. Terron, broken at every joint. Seta's body convulsing, puppet-like, limbs flailing in agony as her own drones carved her open. Elise, half dissolved in salt, screaming soundlessly. The Matron, wide-eyed, muttering prayers even as blood ran from her mouth like ink.
"You forgave them. You let them live."
The chains snapped, flinging the bodies like dolls, crashing into the burning remnants of the city.
Then the creature leaned down—its face pressing close to Koda's, fire leaking from its sockets.
"That mercy?" it hissed, voice a blade in the ear. "That weakness? That's why they died."
Its breath was molten. Koda's skin cracked, blistered, peeled.
And behind the thing—rising now, endlessly rising—was the war. Endless. Blades scraping sky. Fire falling like rain. Everyone was screaming.
Not in terror.
In rage.
Infants with knives. Mothers gnashing teeth. Fathers carving through crowds in blind madness. The world ripped itself open to bleed and scream and bite and blame.
And all of it turned on Koda. Their eyes white with fury.
He was the cause.
The catalyst.
The thing behind him—his wrath—stood tall and opened its arms as if in welcome.
"Now," it said. "Show me what you've really been hiding."
The fire didn't vanish—it curdled.
Where once rage had stormed the dream like a plague, now it stagnated. Smoldered. Burned low and thick, choking the world in a haze that clung to Koda's lungs like rot. The screams didn't stop—they just grew distant, muffled, like cries from beneath deep water. The battlefield, once ablaze with movement, slowed to a crawl.
And Koda?
He didn't move.
He stood in the same position. Half-knelt, burnt hands slack at his sides, eyes blank. His body ached, but it didn't matter. His ears rang, but it didn't matter. Something deep inside him—the thing that made him fight, scream, stand—had been scooped out. Hollowed.
Before him, Maia was being dragged away.
She screamed his name. Once. Twice.
Then no more.
A figure—one of those horrors wearing the bones of the dead—was chewing into her shoulder, tearing through flesh like bread. Another pried her fingers from the cobblestone one by one, peeling her back like a flower being unmade.
Koda blinked.
He watched it happen.
He didn't lift a finger.
Around him, the others were succumbing in slow motion. Terron was beneath a fallen wall, hand stretched toward Koda. Elise screamed as something slipped tendrils beneath her skin, puppeting her toward a broken mirror where her own reflection wept. Seta's head lolled sideways, eyes meeting his with a question she would never get to ask.
Still, he didn't move.
He saw his weapons in the dust beside him. Within reach. Flickering with that same smoky silver glow from before. Waiting.
But… why?
What did it matter?
It would only happen again.
He was tired. So tired it pressed into his bones, seeped into his thoughts like mold. A weariness older than time. His breath came slow. His pulse—barely a drumbeat.
They'd die.
So would he.
And somewhere—beneath it all—something smiled.
He felt it behind him. A pressure like mold blooming in forgotten corners. It wore a cloak of tangled roots and rot, its skin the color of blood left too long in the snow. It had no eyes. No mouth. Just a slow, rattling breath that matched his own.
It whispered to him—not with words, but with weight.
Let it go.
Let the world fall.
Let the bones of the gods rot, let the cities drown, let the sun forget how to rise.
It would be easier.
So much easier.
Koda wanted to move. Somewhere deep beneath the sludge inside him, he screamed to move. But his limbs wouldn't obey. The world blurred. Colors dulled. Sounds vanished.
He became a statue, watching everything fall apart.
And for the first time in all his years—not in pain, not in fear—he wept from shame.
It began in blood and bile.
Koda was at a long wooden table—groaning beneath mountains of steaming meat, sweetened breads, jellied roots, and glistening, headless creatures that twitched even in death. Candles melted into rivers across golden platters, dripping wax like veins. He didn't remember sitting down. Didn't remember lifting the first bite to his lips.
But he was eating.
He was devouring.
The meat had no name, and the bones snapped like paper between his teeth. Grease slicked his face, his hands, his throat. His mouth moved faster than his thoughts—slurping, tearing, chewing, gulping. Each swallow came with a jolt of fire to the stomach. Each bite brought more pain than the last. And yet—
He couldn't stop.
His gut stretched, distended, skin pulled thin like leather over a bursting wineskin. Blood trickled from his lips. He coughed and chewed. His stomach tore, and he wept from the agony of it, his fingers still shoving more in, his mind screaming why—but the hunger raged louder.
A new dish appeared with every blink. Glistening flesh, ash-black fruit, bones fried in crackling fat. Somewhere in the feast he began to hear sobbing—quiet at first, then mounting. It was his own.
He looked down. His body was monstrous. Bloated. Split open, organs exposed and still digesting, still hungering. Yet his hands kept rising, tearing more from the never-ending banquet, bloodied fingers cramming food past shredded lips.
A beast's voice howled from within his ribs.
More.
But then—
Something changed.
The plates began to slow.
The dishes came less often, the bites harder to chew. The scent of sugar and rot faded. The hunger—a thing that had once ruled him like a god—shuddered. Faltered. Time itself seemed to pull away from him like breath from frost.
His arms lowered.
The feast congealed into silence.
For the first time in this long parade of nightmares, clarity pierced through. Like a bell tolling inside his chest.
He remembered a moment—not long ago—where he had stood between temptation and discipline. Where he had resisted. Where something inside him, once driven by gnawing ravenous hunger, had finally turned and said: No more.
The air shifted.
The candles blew out.
The banquet crumbled into dust.
The monstrous body was gone—only his own remained, scarred but still intact, kneeling alone in the dark of his mind.
And then—finally—Koda woke up.
He sat bolt upright in bed, breath sharp as broken glass. His shirt clung to him with sweat. Tears streamed silently down his face, cutting through the salt and grime. The faintest light of dawn leaked through the cracks in the shutters, painting the walls in pale gray.
He was no longer in the dream.
But the dream… still lingered.