We emerged from the crypts into the ruins of Foxglade. The rain had turned from water to a greasy, black sleet that hissed when it hit the ground.

  Lydia Ironvine was waiting for us. She paced back and forth in the mud, her green silk dress ruined, her fingernails digging into her palms. She looked like a cornered cat vicious, beautiful, and utterly terrified.

  Vasco Vane stood beside her, holding a black umbrella over her head. He looked calm. Bored, even.

  "Father!" Lydia shrieked when she saw Dankmar. She rushed forward, grabbing his arm. "The timer! Look at the sky! The Quest Timer is at zero!"

  She pointed a trembling finger upward.

  The Global Quest: Purge of the Glade was flashing red.

  "You let them go!" Lydia hissed, her eyes wide with paranoia. "The Fox-woman! The child! You let them run! The Gods will know! They will punish us! They will take Volpert!"

  "Calm yourself, Lydia," Dankmar said. He didn't pull his arm away; he just looked at her hand on his sleeve until she let go. "You are hysterical. It is unbecoming."

  "We failed a Divine Mandate!" Lydia screamed. "Do you think the Anunnaki care about your 'lessons'? They want blood!"

  "They want death," Dankmar corrected. He looked toward the tree line, where the dark shape of the forest began. "The Beastkin have no supplies. No shelter. The rain is acidic tonight. They will die of exposure before dawn. The result is the same. The paperwork just takes longer."

  "Technically," Vasco Vane purred, tilting his head, "the Gods prefer... instant gratification."

  Vasco pointed his umbrella at the sky.

  THRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM.

  The sound was so deep it vibrated my teeth.

  The cloud layer above us swirled. The massive, white Anunnaki ships which had been passive observers suddenly lit up.

  The flagship, a monolith of white porcelain miles long, opened its ventral bay.

  "Oh no," I whispered.

  A beam of light shot down.

  It wasn't a laser. It wasn't fire. It was a solid column of Purple Erasure Magic. It moved slowly, like a spotlight searching for a rat.

  It swept across the burning village. It swept across the Ironvine army, who cowered behind their shields.

  And then, it stopped.

  It focused on a patch of mud near the edge of the woods.

  There, struggling through the muck, was Fenris.

  Coin-Biter had bolted. Fenris was on foot, dragging his bad leg, trying to shield Liora and Ember with his own coat. They were exposed. Helpless.

  The purple light locked onto them.

  "FENRIS!" I screamed, running forward.

  "Stay," Dankmar commanded. He didn't move. He watched with the cold curiosity of a scientist observing a lab culture.

  The beam descended. The mud around Fenris began to disintegrate into pixels.

  Fenris looked up. He saw the death coming. He saw the god-light.

  He didn't run. He couldn't run.

  He threw himself over his wife and daughter. He slammed his knees into the mud, spread his arms wide, and looked up at the Concrete Sky.

  "TAKE ME!" Fenris screamed. His voice broke, raw and desperate. "I am the Flaw! I am the sinner! Leave them! Please! Take me!"

  He was a doctor. He was the cynic. He was the man who mocked faith.

  And now, he was praying.

  "Anu! Enlil! Whoever is up there!" Fenris wept, the purple light turning his fur into a halo of static. "Don't kill the child! Kill me! I beg you!"

  The beam touched the ground.

  It didn't vaporize them.

  It paused.

  The purple light formed a cage around them. A perfect, humming cylinder of divine energy. Time seemed to freeze inside the circle. The rain stopped falling.

  Then, a screen appeared.

  Not just in Fenris's vision, but projected in the air for all of us to see. A holographic judgment.

  Fenris closed his eyes, hugging Ember so tight she squeaked.

  The text changed.

  The beam of light pulsed.

  A small rift opened in the mud in front of Fenris.

  Something fell out of the rift. Splat.

  It was a bundle. A crying, writhing bundle.

  A Grotesque Infant.

  It was small, maybe a month old. It had three eyes and skin that looked like melting grey wax. It wailed a high, thin sound of pure misery.

  The silence was absolute. Even the fire seemed to hold its breath.

  Fenris stared at the baby in the mud.

  He stared at the screen.

  He stared at his wife, Liora, who was looking at him with wide, terrified eyes.

  "No," Fenris whispered. "You can't... you can't ask that."

  The purple beam began to brighten. It started to burn. Ember cried out as the heat scorched her fur.

  "Fen!" Liora screamed. "It burns!"

  Fenris looked at the Grotesque baby. It was innocent. It was a life. A distorted, painful life, but a life.

  He looked at Ember. His daughter. His world.

  "Choose, Fox," Dankmar Ironvine whispered from the hill. He watched intently. "Show me your math."

  Fenris reached out. His clawed hand trembled uncontrollably.

  He grabbed the Grotesque infant.

  The baby stopped crying for a second, looking up at him with its three mismatched eyes.

  Fenris looked at me. Across the distance, our eyes locked.

  I saw something die in him.

  The sarcasm died. The doctor died. The man died.

  "I'm sorry," Fenris choked out.

  He opened his jaws.

  He bit down.

  CRUNCH.

  Liora screamed.

  The world turned white.

  The purple beam vanished.

  In the mud, Fenris sat alone. Liora had grabbed Ember and scrambled away from him, looking at her husband with pure horror.

  Fenris sat there. His mouth was covered in black blood.

  He spat. He vomited. He clawed at his own tongue.

  But as he retched... his leg the crippled leg that had pained him for years straightened. The scar vanished. The fur grew back.

  A golden aura exploded around him.

  He stood up. Perfectly straight. No cane. No limp.

  He looked at his hands. Then he looked at Liora.

  "Don't," Liora whispered, backing away into the darkness of the woods. "Don't come near us."

  "I saved you," Fenris whispered. His voice was hollow. "I saved you."

  Liora turned and ran, taking Ember with her. They disappeared into the night.

  Fenris was left standing in the mud. Healthy. Powerful. And utterly alone.

  Dankmar Ironvine watched from the hill. He nodded slowly.

  "Efficiency," Dankmar said. "He balanced the equation."

  I fell to my knees. The horror of it was too much. I had seen war. I had seen death.

  But I had never seen a soul commit suicide to save a body.

  "Gods," I whispered, looking up at the white ships. "You aren't gods. You are monsters."

  And the ships just hummed, satisfied with the show.

  The rain began to fall again. It wasn't the heavy, cleansing rain of a storm. It was a miserable, drizzling mist that clung to the skin like a cold sweat.

  Fenris Vulpine stood in the mud.

  He was standing perfectly straight. For the first time in years, his spine wasn't crooked. His leg the one that had been a mass of scar tissue and pain was whole. The fur was thick and glossy. The muscle was strong.

  But he looked like a corpse standing upright.

  His mouth was stained black. He stared at the spot in the darkness where his wife and daughter had vanished. His hands hung at his sides, open, empty.

  "Fenris," Gutrum Falken stepped forward.

  The Lord of the North the moral compass didn't offer a lecture. He didn't judge. He walked up to the Fox-man and took a rag from his belt.

  Gently, like a father cleaning a child’s face, Gutrum wiped the black blood from Fenris’s snout.

  "Look at me, Fox," Gutrum growled, his voice trembling not with disgust, but with a fierce, burning rage directed at the sky.

  He gripped Fenris’s shoulders, forcing the broken doctor to look at him.

  "This filth..." Gutrum wiped a thumb across Fenris's stained cheek, "This is not your sin. Do you hear me? This is their cruelty."

  He pointed a shaking finger at the white ships above. "They forced a father to eat his own soul to save his blood. That is not a crime you committed, Fenris. That is a crime that was done to you. Do not let them break you with guilt meant for them."

  Brandan Stomsong walked up, his heavy boots squelching in the muck. The King looked uncomfortable. He wanted to smash something, to fight an enemy he could hit. But you can't hit trauma.

  "Doctor," Brandan grunted. He put a massive hand on Fenris’s shoulder. "Listen to me. You are alive. They are alive. That is the only victory that matters in war. We drink tonight. We drink until we forget the taste."

  Fenris didn't react. He swayed.

  "He’s in shock," Bastian murmured, stepping closer with a velvet cloak. He draped it over Fenris’s shoulders, covering the bloodstained lab coat. "His mind has... disconnected. To protect itself."

  "It is a logical response," Baldur said stiffly. He was grinding his teeth so hard a vein pulsed in his temple. "He balanced the equation. But the variable... the variable was his soul."

  Malachia floated down. She looked small. Terrified.

  "I'm sorry," she whimpered, her flickering hand reaching out but afraid to touch him. "I didn't know the patch notes were this bad. I didn't know, Fenris."

  Fenris didn't hear her.

  He took a step.

  He automatically reached down for his cane. The cane that wasn't there anymore. His hand grasped at empty air.

  He stumbled. Not because his leg was weak, but because he had forgotten how to walk without pain.

  He began to fall.

  I was there.

  I caught him.

  "I got you," I whispered, grabbing his arm. "I got you, Doctor."

  He was heavy. Not physically he was light now, cured of the limp but the weight of him was unbearable. I was holding a shell. The man inside was gone, burned away by the divine light.

  "Let's go home," I said softly.

  I tried to guide him to his mechanical wolf, but the machine was broken, lying in the mud.

  "Coin-Biter," I called out.

  My grumpy, level 1 horse trotted over. It didn't try to bite me this time. It seemed to sense the mood. It lowered its head.

  "Help me," I said to Gutrum.

  Together, the Bastard and the Lord of Laws lifted the broken Fox-man onto the saddle. Fenris sat there, swaying, his eyes glassy and dead.

  I mounted behind him, wrapping one arm around his waist to keep him upright.

  "Vasco," I said, looking at the Master of Liabilities.

  Vasco Vane was watching us with a strange expression. Not his usual smirk. It was something colder. Respect? Or perhaps fear.

  "Secure the perimeter," I ordered. "Make sure no one follows us. Especially not Dankmar."

  "Consider it done," Vasco nodded, fading into the shadows. "I'll clean up the... leftovers."

  We turned our backs on Foxglade. On the burning village. On the desk where Dankmar Ironvine sat, already starting a new ledger.

  We rode back toward Kynoboros.

  The journey was silent. The only sound was the clatter of hooves on the ancient cobblestones and the rhythmic hum-hum-hum of the white Anunnaki ships hovering above us.

  I held Fenris tight.

  He was shaking. A fine, constant tremor.

  "It's okay," I lied to him, my voice cracking. "It's over."

  As we passed the city gates, under the shadow of the Gothic arches and the weeping angel statues, Fenris spoke.

  It was barely a whisper. I had to lean forward to hear it over the wind.

  "It had..." Fenris croaked, his voice breaking into a million shards.

  I leaned closer. "What is it, Fenris?"

  Fenris looked down at his own hands the hands of a healer that were now stained with an unforgivable act. He wasn't looking at me; he was looking through me, back to that moment in the mud.

  "It had a heartbeat, Wilhelm," Fenris whispered, the tears finally spilling over, washing away the dirt on his face. "It was misshapen... it was a monster... but it was scared. It was so scared."

  He curled into himself, clutching his chest as if trying to rip his own heart out.

  "I’m a doctor," he sobbed, burying his face in my coat. "I swore to do no harm. And it was so scared when I..."

  He began to weep. A silent, heaving sobbing that shook his whole body.

  I didn't answer. I couldn't. I just held him harder, looking up at the Concrete Sky, and hated the Gods with every drop of blood in my veins.

  We rode into the city of Kynoboros, a King, a Bastard, and a broken Healer, bringing the horror of the divine back home.