I woke up to the smell of lavender and compound interest.

  The bed was soft. The sheets were silk. And the ceiling was a swirling violet galaxy that cost more than a peasant’s lifetime earnings.

  For a moment, just a single, beautiful second, I forgot that my back was flayed, my leg was crippled, and my city was a dumpster fire.

  Then, the ping.

  "Oh," I whispered into the pillow, a greedy smile stretching my cracked lips. "I love the smell of passive income in the morning. It smells like... not dying."

  I rolled over.

  "Morning, Shortstack. Did you have a nice trip to the "

  I stopped.

  Pontifex Malachia was sitting up in bed. She wasn't floating. She wasn't blinking. She was hugging her knees, rocking back and forth. Her skin was grey. Her eyes usually bright violet LEDs of chaos were dim. Terrified.

  She looked like a child who had woken up in a coffin.

  "Malachia?" I sat up, wincing as my back skin pulled tight. "Hey. You're back. Did God give you a lollipop? Or just a lecture?"

  She didn't look at me. She stared at the wall.

  "He gave me a list," she whispered. Her voice sounded thin. Like it had been stretched over too much distance.

  "A list?" I swung my legs out of bed. Click. Tap. Pain. "Like... a grocery list? 'Buy more candles'?"

  "A menu," she corrected. She shivered violently.

  "Right," I said, standing up and offering a hand. "Food first. Theology later. You look like you need sugar."

  We went downstairs.

  The Violet Lounge was already busy. Minor nobles were eating breakfast on velvet sofas, sipping our wine, laughing about the weather. They didn't know we were broke. They didn't know the granary was ash.

  I grabbed a platter from a passing servant. Roast pheasant. Eggs. Fresh bread.

  We sat in a secluded booth. I started eating.

  I wiped grease from my mouth. "Okay. I'm full. My blood is topped off. Talk to me, Pope. What did the Big Guy say?"

  Malachia picked up a fork. She bent it. Just twisted the silver into a knot with her small hands.

  "Enlil," she whispered. "Not Anu. Enlil. The Storm God. The Judge."

  She looked up at me. Tears leaked from her eyes.

  "He says we are weak, Wilhelm. He says the Kingdom is poor. He says we need... capital. Spiritual capital."

  "I agree," I nodded. "That’s why we're doing the Tournament. Entry fees. Merchandising."

  "Not gold," she shook her head. "Biomass. Experience Points."

  She leaned over the table. Her blinking started up again her image flickering like a bad signal.

  "He gave me the patch notes for the next update, Wilhelm. He told me how to fix the economy."

  She held up three fingers.

  "One," she whispered. "The Beastkin. The furries. Dr. Fenris's people. Enlil says they are... redundant code. Waste of server space. He wants us to liquidate the villages in the Moonclaw Lands. All of them."

  I froze, a piece of pheasant halfway to my mouth. "Liquidate? You mean... tax them?"

  "I mean delete them," Malachia choked out. "Slaughter. Harvest. He says their souls are worth double XP right now. A bonus event."

  I put the pheasant down. I felt sick. "Fenris sits on the Council. If we order a genocide of his species... he will skin us. Literally."

  "Two," Malachia continued, her voice shaking. "The Grotesque. The workers. He says we can't kill them yet because we need labor. But he wants... suffering."

  She gagged.

  "He wants us to torture them. Publicly. He says pain generates 'Loosh'. Negative energy. It feeds the barrier that keeps the dragons out. If we don't torture them... the barrier falls."

  "That’s..." I rubbed my face. "That’s grim. Even for this city. But we can... maybe fake it? Put on a show?"

  "Three," Malachia interrupted. She dropped the bent fork.

  She looked at me with eyes full of absolute horror.

  "The babies, Wilhelm."

  "What about the babies?"

  "The Grotesque babies," she whispered. "The mutants. The little ones."

  She tapped the table.

  "Enlil unlocked a new mechanic. [ CONSUME ]."

  I stared at her. "Consume?"

  "If you eat one," Malachia said, tears streaming down her face. "If a Highborn eats a Grotesque infant... they get 50,000 Spirit Power. Instantly. And it cures all diseases. Cancer. Rot. Poison."

  The restaurant noise seemed to fade away. The laughter of the nobles, the clinking of glasses... it all sounded distant.

  50,000 SP.

  That was a level up for most people. That was power. Instant, easy power.

  "Cannibalism," I whispered. The word tasted like bile.

  "It's not cannibalism to them," Malachia sobbed. "To Enlil... it's just resource management. Like... like popping a potion. He said if we don't do it... if we don't 'optimize our build'..."

  She looked up at the ceiling, as if she could see through the stone to the Concrete Sky.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "He showed me his power level, Wilhelm."

  I tapped my Monocle. "What is it?"

  "It’s not a number," she said. "It’s a wall of zeros. 100 Quadrillion. He said if we don't follow the guide... he will take all the food away. All of it. And he will force us to eat each other anyway."

  She grabbed my hand. Her Flickering hand felt cold.

  "He's not a god, Wilhelm. He's a player. And he's bored. He wants to see what happens when the rats start eating the mice."

  I looked at the food on my plate. The roast pheasant.

  It looked like meat. Just meat.

  I pushed the plate away.

  "We have a Small Council meeting in an hour," I said. My voice was calm. It was the calm of a man who realizes the building is burning down and he is holding a bucket of gasoline.

  "We have to tell them," Malachia whimpered. "We have to tell Brandan. And Fenris."

  "Yes," I said. I stood up. My leg hurt. My back hurt. My soul hurt.

  "We have to tell them that God wants us to eat babies and murder furries."

  I adjusted my coat. I put on my bone mask, hiding my face.

  "Come on, Pontifex," I said, offering her my arm. "Let's go to the Castle. I think today is going to be a very, very long day."

  We walked out of the violet luxury, stepping back into the grey, hungry city.

  And for the first time, the hunger terrified me more than the war.

  Because now I knew the price on the menu.

  My Gale-Force scouts materialized from the rooftops, silent shadows flanking us, their crossbows loaded.

  "Detour," I muttered, my hand instinctively checking the weight of my coin purse.

  I limped toward the Ironvine Emporium.

  "We have a meeting, Wilhelm," Malachia whispered, clutching my sleeve. She looked at the sky nervously. "The Council is waiting. The Gods are waiting."

  "The Gods can wait five minutes," I said, pushing the Emporium doors open. "If I'm going to argue against genocide, I want to be wearing better clothes."

  I walked up to the counter. The automated Golem-Clerk whirred to life.

  "I am trading in," I announced, unbuckling the Rib-Cage Plate. It clattered onto the counter, looking like a pile of dusty bones. "It’s heavy, it smells like old soup, and I’m tired of looking like a necromancer’s sidekick."

  "And I’ll take that," I pointed to the mannequin in the display case.

  The Shadow-Weave Coat. It was black, shifting like smoke in a bottle. It looked like something a high-level assassin would wear to a funeral.

  I put it on.

  It didn't feel like armor. It felt like a second skin made of fog. It was light. Silent.

  "Much better," I breathed, rolling my shoulders. No creaking. No clanking. "And while I’m here..."

  I tossed another bag of gold on the counter. My gambling addiction itched.

  "One Noble’s Coffer. Feeling lucky."

  The box appeared. I flipped the latch.

  White light. No items. Just pure, distilled potential.

  "Two points," I whispered. "Jackpot."

  I didn't hesitate. I opened my stat sheet.

  "I need to be faster," I muttered. "Alexander moves at the speed of light. I move at the speed of bureaucracy."

  I put one point into [AGILITY].

  I looked at the new skill list. [THEFT].

  "If we're going to survive this economy," I smirked, putting the second point into the new slot. "I need to learn how to steal more than just mushrooms."

  I walked out of the shop, feeling lighter, faster, and slightly more criminal.

  "Okay, Shortstack," I said, adjusting my new coat. "Let's go tell the King about the baby-eating."

  We stepped into the street.

  And then the world broke.

  It didn't start with a sound. It started with the light.

  One second, it was morning. Grey, smoggy morning. Then, CLICK. Pitch black. Night. Then, CLICK. Blinding noon sun. Then, CLICK. Night again.

  It was flashing. Rapidly. Stroboscopic terror.

  Day. Night. Day. Night. Day. Night.

  The citizens in the street screamed. They fell to their knees, covering their eyes. The shadows stretched and vanished, stretched and vanished, whipping across the ground like black lashes.

  "What is happening?" I yelled, shielding my eyes. "Is the sun broken?"

  "It’s not the sun!" Malachia shrieked, pointing up. "It’s the switch! They’re toggling the server!"

  Then came the sound.

  THRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM.

  It wasn't a roar. It was a frequency. A deep, bass vibration that resonated in the marrow of my bones. It sounded like a massive, rusted machine waking up after a thousand years.

  The Concrete Sky the grey ceiling that covered our entire world cracked.

  A hole opened.

  It was a perfect circle, miles wide, directly above the Citadel.

  But it didn't show stars. It didn't show space.

  It showed Static. White noise. A swirling vortex of grey and black pixels.

  And from the static... they emerged.

  Ships.

  But not ships of wood or iron. These were monoliths.

  They were sleek, alabaster-white shapes, smooth as bone, shaped like teardrops or cathedral spires turned on their sides. They had no sails. No engines. They hummed with a low, terrifying choir-song.

  They drifted out of the hole, hovering silently over the city. One. Two. Ten. A dozen massive, white leviathans floating in the air, casting shadows that swallowed entire districts.

  They didn't attack. They didn't fire lasers.

  They just... hung there.

  Like microscopes. Like eyes.

  The people of Moonclaw stopped screaming. They just stared. The sheer, overwhelming Armada was paralyzing. It was beautiful. It was majestic.

  It was absolute, horror.

  "We are ants," I whispered, my new Shadow-Weave Coat feeling suddenly very thin. "We are ants in a glass jar, and the kids just came home from school to watch us fight."

  Malachia was shaking. She grabbed my hand so hard her Flickering fingers burned my skin.

  "They're watching," she whimpered. "They want to see if we do it. They want to see the harvest."

  I looked at the ships. I looked at the flickering sky.

  "The Small Council," I said, my voice tight. "We need to get to the Castle. Now. Before those things decide to stop watching and start cleaning the jar."

  I grabbed Malachia.

  "Run," I commanded.

  We ran through the strobing light, under the silent, judging belly of the gods.