The door to the Tower of Silence didn’t open so much as it groaned in protest, probably tired of all the screaming that happened inside.

  Wilhelm stumbled in, looking like a man who had wrestled a hurricane and lost his wallet in the process. He was clutching his side, his coat soaked, mud caked on his boots in artistic patterns.

  "Gentlemen! And... small violent persons," Wilhelm announced, swaying slightly as he tried to lean against a doorframe that was further away than he thought. He stumbled, caught himself with a pirouette, and flashed a grin full of gold teeth and desperation. "I have returned. The prodigal Bastard. Bearing gifts."

  He reached into his deep pocket and pulled out the Cryo-Core.

  The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees instantly. His fingers were blue.

  "It's... ah... a bit nippy," Wilhelm hissed, juggling the freezing blue heart from hand to hand like a hot potato, except, well, cold. "Where's the fox? Here, Fido! Fetch!"

  Brandan was pacing the room like a caged bull, knocking over beakers with the sheer draft of his movement. "YOU TOOK YOUR TIME!" he roared, his voice shaking the dust from the rafters. "WE HAVE BEEN WAITING! I HATE WAITING! IT MAKES ME THIRSTY!"

  "I was securing the perimeter!" Wilhelm lied smoothly, tossing the Core through the air.

  A cane hooked it. Snatch.

  Dr. Fenris Vulpine didn't even look up from his microscope. He caught the legendary magical artifact with the crook of his blackwood cane, let it slide down the shaft, and grabbed it with a paw that was currently holding a half-eaten ham sandwich.

  "You handled it with your bare hands," Fenris said. His voice was gravel and sarcasm. He sniffed the Core. "Idiot. You contaminated the thermal matrix with your sweat. Typical."

  He limped over to the main table, favoring his right leg. Tap. Step. Tap. He popped a small white pill into his mouth dry and swallowed it with a grimace.

  "Is he fixed?" Malachia demanded. She was sitting on top of a bookshelf, swinging her legs. She pointed at the body on the slab. Ser Hestor. "Did you fix the melty man, Fur-Face?"

  Fenris stopped. He looked up at the Child Pontifex with blue eyes that held zero respect for divinity.

  "Fix him?" Fenris scoffed. He threw the Cryo-Core into a bubbling vat. It hissed violently. "I'm a doctor, Your Holiness, not a necromancer. The patient is..." He poked Hestor’s purple, bloated cheek with a claw. The flesh didn't bounce back. It stayed dented. "...statistically significant in his lack of being alive."

  "He's dead?" Astrid stepped forward. Her hand was on her wooden sword. She looked furious. "You said you could save him!"

  "I said I could cure the poison," Fenris corrected, turning back to his sandwich. "I did. The poison is neutralized. See? No more foaming." He gestured vaguely with the sandwich. "But the dying part? That happened twenty minutes ago. Brain death. The lights are out, and the landlord has boarded up the windows."

  Brandan slammed his fist onto a table. Glass shattered.

  "DAMN IT!" The King bellowed. "HE WAS A GOOD KNIGHT! HE KNEW HOW TO TAKE A HIT!"

  "He didn't know how to take this hit," Fenris muttered.

  He limped around the table, wiping ham grease on his white lab coat. He looked at Wilhelm.

  "You brought me the Core. Good boy. Have a biscuit." He didn't offer a biscuit. "But the Core was for the nextvictim. Hestor here... Hestor was a petri dish."

  Fenris grabbed a scalpel. He didn't ask permission. He just sliced open Hestor’s arm.

  Black blood oozed out. It didn't drip. It crawled.

  "Look," Fenris commanded.

  Wilhelm leaned in, nose wrinkling. "Smells like... old pennies. And bad choices."

  "It's not just poison," Fenris said softly. The sarcasm vanished for a second, replaced by cold, clinical fascination. "It's a biological override. I found traces of saliva in the wound. Not spider. Not snake."

  He looked at them.

  "Reptiloid."

  The room went dead silent. Even Brandan stopped breathing.

  "A Reptiloide?" Wilhelm whispered, the swaying stopping. He thought of the kid in the alley. The one Vasco saved. No. That kid was terrified. This is...

  "An assassin," Fenris corrected. He tapped the black blood with his scalpel. "But here is the kicker. Why poison a knight? Why not just stab him? Because they didn't want him dead immediately. They needed a sample."

  Fenris limped closer to Brandan, pointing the bloody scalpel at the King’s chest.

  "They took his blood, Your Majesty. Do you know how the Reptiloids work? The old breed?"

  Brandan swatted the scalpel away. "THEY HISS! THEY BITE!"

  "They copy," Fenris whispered. His ears flattened against his skull. "They drink the blood. They digest the DNA. And for a few hours... maybe a day... they become the donor. Voice. Face. Scent."

  He turned to the group. His eyes were wide, manic.

  "The killer isn't hiding in the sewers, you morons. He didn't poison Hestor to kill him. He poisoned Hestor to wear him."

  Malachia hopped down from the bookshelf. She looked small. "Wear him?"

  "Or anyone," Fenris shrugged, popping another pill. "Maybe he took a sip of the King. Maybe he nibbled on the Bastard."

  He pointed his cane at Freyda.

  "Maybe the giantess isn't a giantess. Maybe she's three lizards in a trench coat."

  Freyda growled. Low. Dangerous.

  "I am Freyda," she rumbled.

  "Are you?" Fenris smirked. "Prove it. Bleed for me."

  "Everybody lies," Fenris said, turning his back on them to check his boiling vat. "The Reptiloid consumes the appearance. Perfect mimicry. But they can't mimic the pathology. They can't mimic the broken parts."

  He looked over his shoulder, his fox face twisted in a dark grin.

  "So, if you want to survive... don't trust the face. Trust the limp. Trust the scar. Trust the pain. Because the monsters? They're too perfect. They don't know how to be broken like us."

  Wilhelm looked at Brandan.

  Brandan looked at Astrid.

  Astrid looked at Wilhelm.

  The air in the room grew heavy. Paranoia, cold and sharp, settled on their shoulders.

  "So," Wilhelm broke the silence, his voice a little too high, a little too frantic. He clapped his hands together. "Excellent. Marvelous. We have a shapeshifting, blood-drinking ninja lizard running around, possibly wearing the face of our best friends. That’s... that’s just great. Really spices up the evening."

  He backed away from the table, hand hovering near his rapier.

  "I need a drink," Wilhelm muttered. "And if any of you start hissing... I'm stabbing you. Savvy?"

  Fenris laughed. A dry, barking sound.

  "Good luck," the fox said. "You're going to need it. Now get out of my lab. You're using up all the good oxygen."

  Wilhelm didn't wait for a second invitation. He limped out into the night air, his lungs craving oxygen that didn't taste like fermented history. He never did find that drink not the kind he wanted, anyway. Instead, he spent the next thirty six hours supervising a logistical nightmare of crates, carts, and terrified porters.

  It took three bribed guards and a trail of suspicious green slime to finally bridge the gap between the city’s lower gums and the palace’s marble throat. By the time the last jar was settled, the "Royal" part of the castle felt like a distant memory.

  The move to the Royal Castle was less of a "grand procession" and more of a "hostile biological takeover."

  Wilhelm leaned against the doorframe of the newly christened Sanctum of Flesh, watching as Grotesque porters hauled crates of bubbling fluids into what used to be the Guest Solar. It was a nice room once. It had tapestries. Now it had a dissecting table and a smell that could peel the paint off a hull.

  "It's cozy," Wilhelm lied, swaying slightly as he gestured with a half-empty bottle of 'confiscated' vintage. "Has a certain... je ne sais quoi. Mostly quoi. Smells like a wet dog died inside a burning pharmacy."

  Dr. Fenris Vulpine didn't turn around. He was busy arranging a row of scalpels on a velvet cushion that had previously held the Crown Jewels. Tap. Step. Tap. His cane clicked rhythmically against the marble floor.

  "The lighting is atrocious," Fenris snapped, his ears twitching with irritation. "And the ventilation is designed for morons who like breathing their own carbon dioxide. I need an updraft. Tell the King to punch a hole in the ceiling."

  "I think Brandan is done punching architecture for the week, mate," Wilhelm took a swig. "Besides, you're a Council Member now. Master of Flesh. You got the fancy title, you got the lab. Try to look less like you're plotting to skin the entire court."

  Fenris popped a white pill, swallowed it dry, and finally turned. His blue eyes bored into Wilhelm with clinical exhaustion.

  "I am plotting to skin them, Bastard. Metaphorically. Unless they annoy me. Then, literally."

  He limped over to a massive chalkboard he had dragged in. It was covered in chaotic scribbles, chemical formulas, and diagrams that looked suspiciously like doomsday devices.

  "You want to save this rotting carcass of a city?" Fenris sneered, tapping the board with his cane. Thwack."Then stop thinking like a Bastard and start thinking like an engineer. Your city is Level 1. It’s pathetic. It’s a mud hut with a flag."

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "We have spirit!" Wilhelm protested weakly.

  "You have dysentery and hope," Fenris corrected. "Both are fatal."

  He grabbed a piece of chalk.

  "This," Fenris drew a jagged line, "is the Evolutionary Tree. I’ve mapped out the Enmagic potential of the Moonclaw. If you get me the gold, the biomass, and the peace and quiet, I can turn this slum into a god-killer."

  Fenris pointed the chalk at Wilhelm.

  "Pay attention, Stumble-Bones. This is how civilization works. It’s not magic. It’s infrastructure."

  Fenris tapped the board again, hard enough to snap the chalk. Dust floated in the air.

  "This is the menu, Bastard," Fenris growled. "Right now, we are eating dirt at the bottom of Tier 1. You want the Tesla Towers? You want the Vat-Grown Meat? Then get me materials."

  He limped closer, his fox eyes narrowing.

  "And Wilhelm? Don't think about the Tier 3 'Serum X'. That requires a Dragon Heart. And the only dragons around here belong to Queen Helga. So unless you plan on asking her nicely to rip her pet's chest open... focus on the damn mushrooms."

  Wilhelm stared at the board. The complexity was staggering. The potential was terrifying.