In the desolate vastness of Zhuul, where the very ether pulsed with the malignity of aeons uncounted, G'norr's voice—an eldritch cacophony, older than the stars—rattled through the hollowed chambers of Grimm's mind. "Slay the queen through green's grim veil, or dogs tear your kin, bound to your fail." The words writhed like worms in his psyche, a covenant of torment from a god whose will was as unyielding as the void.
The pale horse's hooves smote the frozen earth, each beat a dirge resounding through the wastes. Grimm's eyes, cold as the abyss between worlds, pierced the shrouded distance, unblinking, as if to defy the horrors that clawed at his soul. The forest before Naboth stood sparse and forsaken, its skeletal boughs twisting upward in futile supplication to a sky bereft of mercy. Beneath a shroud of snow-choked leaves and gnarled roots, the ground exhaled a miasma of decay, the stench of rot weaving through the air like a spectral lament.
As he rode, visions of a lost past assailed him, unbidden and merciless. A woman, fair of form yet harrowed by dread, stood amidst a circle of flame, her arms clutching children whose eyes mirrored the inferno's cruel light. Her screams rent the air, drowned by the guttural chants of unseen cultists, their tongue an abomination no mortal throat should utter. A boy, bruised and bloodied, clung to her robes, his hope extinguished; a girl, younger, shrieked as the fire kissed her tender flesh.
"Papa!" she cried, and the sound pierced Grimm's heart like a shard of starless night.
Then—nothingness. The vision dissolved, leaving only G'norr's warning, a blade poised over his kin's eternal fate. His jaw clenched, a guttural cry tearing from his throat as he lashed the horse's flank. "Vile deity!" he roared, voice breaking against the wind.
"Cease your threats! I know my debt!"
A searing agony clawed through his skull, the family's charred forms flashing before him—flesh blackened, bones ashen, crumbling into heaps of profane ruin. Shadows of dogs, their maws dripping ichor, tore at fleshy remnants, while the Wendigo's gaunt skull loomed, its hollow eyes a mockery of life. G'norr's rhyme echoed anew, slicing his mind:
"Slay the queen, or G'norr tears your kin."
Grimm's hands gripped his leather duster, fingers like talons, as he fought to quell the torment. He pressed the bridge of his nose, shaking free the god's malevolence.
"My former self lies buried deep," he whispered, voice a gravelly requiem, "thy wicked souls are mine to reap."
"…Good…" came G'norr's reply, a sibilant hiss that cleared the haze from his vision.
Ahead, a clearing unveiled Naboth's vineyards, now cloaked in a sickly green fog, the maelstrom's remnant from that distant surge in the North's ruined halls. The castle loomed beyond, its spires wreathed in a vortex of unholy light, the air thick with the charnel reek of death and copper—a scent Grimm knew too well. He halted his steed upon a frozen knoll, overlooking the devastation. Once-verdant vines hung blackened, shriveled husks sagging upon their wooden graves, their decay a mirror to the city's fate.
He closed his eyes, breath slowing to a cadence of grim resolve. A vision flickered—not of ruin, but of life: a girl, golden-haired, her smile radiant as Zhuul's lost sun. Her blue eyes pierced his cold heart, her small hand strong in his.
"Come, Papa," she urged, "Mama makes supper!" She pulled him toward a wooden cottage atop a green knoll, its frame fading into a setting sun's embrace.
The vision shattered. Grimm's brow hardened, Naboth's husk a stark reminder of his task.
"Zephyr…" he murmured, a crack in his voice betraying the weight of loss.
He cracked the reins, his horse surging forward, a pale specter against the death below. The green smog cloyed at his nostrils, its fetor rank with rotting flesh and blood's metallic tang.
Then, from the obscured heavens, a shriek tore through the silence—an unearthly wail that chilled the marrow. Grimm's gaze snapped upward, the sky veiled in vile mist. Lightning flashed, revealing winged silhouettes circling with predatory intent.
"Harpies," he growled, his hand drawing the Wraith Breaker, its runes flaring with a hunger of their own.
Their unearthly screeches rent the air, a cacophony of damned souls cascading upon the rider, as if the void itself had given voice to its abhorrence. Grimm's eyes, cold as the gulfs between stars, swept the shrouded landscape, where the harpies' cries wove in and out of the green miasma—a sickly veil born of the maelstrom's wrath. A shadow surged from the left, hurtling with blasphemous speed. He swerved, the creature's talons raking his back, spraying the pale horse's hide with crimson mist that hissed upon the frozen earth.
Grimm roared, a sound of primal defiance, aiming the Wraith Breaker backward, its runes flaring with unholy hunger. But the abomination vanished into the fog. Another emerged from the right, its form a grotesque parody of flesh and feather. The revolver's muzzle thundered, yet the green mist swallowed its target, mocking his aim. The horse pressed forward, hooves pounding like a dirge, as the harpies' taunts echoed through the haze.
From ahead, a third beast careened, its beak a spear of bone. Grimm seized its ankle mid-dodge, the creature's shriek a wail of despair as his iron grip thwarted its flight. The Wraith Breaker cracked, its bullet severing head from neck, and the lifeless form crumpled, ichor pooling like a profane sacrament. Yet another harpy lunged from the mist, its battle-cry betraying its path. Grimm's head snapped, meeting its gaze, and with a savage heave, he hurled the first corpse into the oncoming monster.
The impact resounded with a bone-shattering crunch, black feathers scattering like ashes across the ruined vineyards. In a flash, the Wraith Breaker roared again, its bullet piercing both writhing forms as they fell, their blood mingling with the frost-choked earth.
The smog began to thin, revealing the remaining harpies circling above, their wings blotting the moon's pallid light. Two surged from behind, claws raking the air as they wheeled for a flank assault. Grimm holstered his revolver, drawing twin stakes from his leg-straps, their edges etched with runes that pulsed with eldritch malice. His brow furrowed, leather duster creaking as his grip tightened, a predator poised in the heart of doom.
The harpies struck, converging on his flanks with preternatural ferocity. Like bolts from an unseen engine, Grimm's arms shot outward, driving the stakes into their hearts. The creatures' bodies shattered vineyard posts below, their screams fading into gurgles as ichor sprayed, staining the snow black.
The horse galloped onward, unyielding, as the final two harpies circled, their eyes glinting with the Wendigo's hunger. One dove, beak aimed like a lance at Grimm's heart. He braced, muscles taut, as the beast hurtled near. It flashed past, but Grimm's hand clamped its neck, fingers crushing bone. A serpentine head coiled from the harpy's shoulder, its fangs sinking into his shoulder, venom searing like the touch of a starless void.
Grimm's roar drowned the creature's cry. His hand seized its tongue, ripping it free in a torrent of blood that bathed his face. The harpy flapped in vain, its skull yielding as his fingers bored into its eye sockets, tearing the visage asunder with a wet, profane crack. The serpent's fangs detached, its body uncoiling, and Grimm cast the cadaver to the earth, a ruin of writhing organs and shattered bone.
The final harpy unleashed a wail that shook the heavens, hurtling toward him with wings spread wide. Grimm leapt from his steed, meeting the abomination mid-flight in a clash that defied mortal bounds. The creature's snake-head darted, striking like a lash, but Grimm's fists hammered its skull, each blow a bone-crunching requiem. With a final, cataclysmic strike, he sent the monster spiraling earthward, its form breaking upon the frost with a shriek of agony.
Grimm loomed above, a specter of wrath. Raising his boot, he crushed its skull beneath his heel, the sound a dull echo in the silence of the damned. The green mist swirled, as if the very air mourned the slaughter, and Naboth's ruin lay bare before him.
Through the shattered gates of Naboth, gaping like a wound untended in some profane cosmos, Grimm rode, his pale steed's hooves echoing a dirge across the desolate city. The maelstrom's wrath lashed the bloodied portal, its groan a lament from aeons uncounted, as if the heavens themselves recoiled from Zhuul's ruin. The air was thick with the charnel reek of decay, a miasma woven of death's coppery tang and the rot of sundered flesh.
The clatter of hooves resounded through the husk of Naboth, hollow as the city's forsaken heart. Bodies sprawled upon the cobblestones; their glistening entrails bathed in the sickly green light of the maelstrom above—an offering to the brutal queen's unholy might. Soldiers, once battle-hardened, lay as vermin crushed beneath an indifferent boot, their forms entwined with the wreckage of hollow homes, their shattered windows agape, swallowed by fire and blood's eternal stain.
Grimm's gaze, cold as the void between stars, swept the chaos, unyielding as the North's icy grasp. With a faint snap of the reins, his horse answered with a muted neigh, pressing toward the palace's shadowed spires. His resolve, a kite caught in a cosmic hurricane, held firm, yet the memory of a golden-haired girl—her eyes vibrant with life—whispered through his frozen heart. "Zephyr…" he murmured, the name a wound upon his lips.
A sound, frail and piteous, broke his reverie. From a nearby alley, a sob rose—miserable, desperate, a cry from the brink of oblivion. Grimm halted his steed, ears keen as blades, and dismounted, the Wraith Breaker drawn close, its runes pulsing with eldritch hunger. He descended into the alley's gloom, following a streak of blood that coiled like a serpent's trail into the depths.
The sob sharpened into a child's weeping. Grimm peered through the shadows, his eyes alighting upon a small form slumped against a broken crate, draped in darkness. A boy, no older than eleven summers, his flesh marred with blood—whose, none could say. His quivering hands clutched a gash at his waist, striving vainly to hold life within. His face, begrimed, bore tear-streaked paths, a testament to grief's unyielding weight.
Grimm holstered his weapon, kneeling with a gentleness alien to his nature. His eyes glowed faintly, yet the boy showed no fear. Extending a calloused hand, Grimm lifted the child forward, his whimpers softening under the touch. "Monsters…" the boy choked, eyes swelling with sorrow. "Horrible… the woman in black… she slew all." Each word trembled, drowned in tears. "Will you stay with me?"
Grimm's silence was his vow. He drew the boy close, cradling his dying form as one might a child of their own. "Yes," he whispered, pressing the boy's head to his chest.
The child's heartbeat faltered, his breaths muffled against Grimm's duster. The maelstrom roared beyond, its fury a mockery of the boy's frail survival, his body torn by a wound no mortal could endure. Grimm closed his eyes, and the past surged forth, a tide of memory as relentless as the void.
It began in his youth, a foundling cast to a warrior sect in Zhuul's merciless wastes. Forged as a weapon from tender years, he rose through blood and trial. At twelve, thrust into the wilderness with naught but a loincloth and crude spear, he was tasked to slay his former self and return a man. Days of starvation gnawed his bones, the cold slicing his flesh like shards of starless night. Then, a cave loomed, bored into the mountain's heart. He climbed, every nerve aflame, fingers tracing the ascent. At the summit, a great mountain bear awaited, its eyes gleaming with primal hunger. No fear stirred the boy—only a calm, beaten into him from birth. As the beast charged, he leapt, spear piercing its skull with a single, silent thrust. The beast fell, and he emerged clad in its hide, blood-caked, no longer a child but a warrior.
The memory shifted to midlife, a man scarred and weary, hunched over a tavern's splintered bar. His armor, dented and bullet-riddled, bore the weight of countless wars. A cigar hung from chapped lips, amber liquor soothing a soul long battered. From the din of drunken comrades, a voice called: "Another round, warrior?" His pale eyes lifted, meeting the barmaid's—blue as a forgotten sky, framed by silken brown hair. Her smile pierced his weariness, and he nodded, a spark kindling where none had burned.
The vision dissolved, replaced by a girl—golden-haired, vibrant—pulling him toward a cottage atop a verdant knoll. "Come, Papa," she urged, "Mama makes supper!" "Okay, Zephyr," he laughed, "slow down!" "But Papa, it's your favorite!" she pleaded, yanking his hand through the doorway.
His son, Maximus, clapped his back. "Sunflower fields dull compared to battle, Father?" he teased. Grimm grinned, wrestling the boy onto a bear rug. "Not if your sister saw my sneak attack!"
From the kitchen, a woman's voice purred: "My den is no arena, warriors." Her silhouette—long legs, sheer dress, belly swollen with child—stood radiant. Her blue eyes, the same from the tavern, blazed with mock anger, gold adornments glinting. She was beauty incarnate, even in wrath.
The memory darkened. The family fled through a burning village, cloaked pursuers at their heels. Maximus scouted ahead, his mother guarding Zephyr, whose terrified eyes met Grimm's. A golden-masked figure led the hunters, their chants an infernal litany. "Papa!" Zephyr screamed as flames closed in. Grimm, bound and broken, roared, only to be silenced by a rifle's butt against his skull.
He awoke adrift on a black river, bloodied and gutted, his rage a flame unquenched. Death claimed him, yet he stirred again in a blinding void, no walls, only light. Across the expanse, a black archway pulsed, its tendrils writhing with cosmic malice. It named itself G'norr, an ancient god beyond mortal ken. Its voice, a rhyme of dread, spoke: "Warrior, seek your kin through slaughter's gate, reap damned souls, or their fates I break." Their voices—wife, son, daughter—whispered from the void. Grimm nodded, hesitant yet bound. "Yield to the void, let blood forge you new, or kin shall fade where dark fates accrue." He stepped through, tendrils coiling, remaking him in pain and power.
The memories ceased. The boy slumped in his arms, a cold echo of Zephyr's loss. Grimm laid him gently against the crate, closing his eyes with a tenderness born of grief. Lightning crashed, the maelstrom's fury mirroring his own. His jaw clenched, and a single word escaped, icy and resolute: "Anabel."
His voice echoed through the alley, a beast stirring within. Rain fell in torrents, his pace deliberate as he approached his steed. Then, from atop a shadowed stair, a hulking form loomed, its presence a wound upon reality. Luther, mutated into a lion-headed demon, his antlered skull catching the lightning's cruel glare.
The beast roared, a sound to rend the heavens. Grimm's hand traced the Wraith Breaker, yet a cold calm stayed him. "No," he whispered, assuming a battle stance. "This one dies by my hand."
Lightning split the sky, the maelstrom swirling as the two surged toward collision, their clash a prelude to the abyss.