The library sector was merely a corner of the prison grid where the lighting was slightly less oppressive and a few databanks had been left functional for "rehabilitation purposes." But in the shadowed corner where Adam and his cellmates huddled, the atmosphere was heavy enough to crush bone.
The name Edward Bloodrose hung in the air like smoke from a funeral pyre.
Adam sat on a cold metal crate, his hands clasped tight to stop them from shaking not from fear, but from the sheer, overwhelming scope of the path opening before him. To escape, they had to descend. To live, they had to resurrect a monster.
"So," Adam began, his voice rasping against the silence. "Edward Bloodrose. You said he was a Sovereign. A Warmaster. What exactly did he do to earn a crucifixion in a secret level beneath hell itself?"
Tom adjusted his cracked glasses. The reflection of a distant, flickering light played across the lenses, hiding his eyes. He looked less like a prisoner and more like a professor recounting a dark history.
"It wasn't just war, Adam," Tom said softly. "War is legal. War is encouraged by the Empire. Edward was the heir to House Bloodrose, one of the three Founding Clans of the Vampire nobility. He was born with a Silver Spoon in his mouth and a Golden Core in his chest. He was a prodigy. Destined to lead the vampire legions alongside the Demon Lords."
Tom paused, leaning in closer. The shadows on his face deepened.
"But fifty years ago, on the night of the Red Moon Festival, he snapped."
"Snapped how?" Jones asked, his arms crossed over his massive chest. "Did he kill a guard? A diplomat?"
"He went home," Tom whispered. "To the Bloodrose Citadel on the moon of V'karr. The entire clan was there. Three hundred vampires of noble blood. His mother. His father, the Duke. His siblings. Cousins, aunts, infant nephews."
Harry let out a small, terrified whimper, pulling his knees to his chest.
"He barred the doors," Tom continued, his voice devoid of emotion, which made it all the more terrifying. "And he killed them. All of them. He didn't use magic. He didn't use poison. He used a sword. He moved from room to room, slaughtering his own kin with a cold, mechanical precision. By morning, the Citadel was silent. He was found sitting on his father's throne, drenched in the blood of three generations, sharpening his blade."
Adam felt a chill run down his spine. It was a visceral reaction to the description of such intimate violence. Adam had killed demons in rage, to protect. But to kill one's own family? To wipe out a bloodline? That required a darkness Adam couldn't comprehend.
"He is known as the Kinslayer," Tom said. "The official Demon records list the motive as 'unknown.' But after that night, the Yandhaq Empire declared him Excommunicate Traitoris. Even the other Vampire Clans want him dead. He is the most hated being in the galaxy."
"And yet," Panchenko mused, the usual mirth in his voice replaced by a grim fascination, "they didn't kill him. Why?"
"Because they couldn't," Tom said simply. "They tried. They sent execution squads. Edward killed them. They sent a legion of Demon Guards. He made a sculpture out of their armor. He regenerates faster than they can damage him. He is an anomaly."
Adam looked at his hands. "You said it took a High Seat Demon to bring him down. Who are they?"
Panchenko slapped his knee, letting out a sharp, dry laugh that startled Harry. "Oh, Adam. My sweet, naive demon-slayer. You really don't know, do you? You killed a Taskmaster and thought you'd toppled a pillar of the Empire."
He leaned forward, his scarred face serious for once.
"The Empire is vast, Adam. At the bottom, you have the Grunts and Overseers. Above them, the Taskmasters, like your friend Xy'lar. Above them are the Commanders and Generals. But at the very top… sitting above the laws of physics… are the Seventy-Two Demon Lords."
"And among the Seventy-Two," Tom interrupted, taking over the lecture, "are the Ten High Seats. The Council of Ten. These are not just powerful soldiers; they are calamities given flesh. They rule entire sectors of the galaxy."
"Think of them like ranks," Jones rumbled, his voice deep and gravelly. "Rank Ten is a catastrophe. Rank One is a god."
Tom nodded. "The demon who finally captured Edward Bloodrose… the only one who could match his speed and power… was Azazel. The Wings of Ruin."
"What rank?" Adam asked, feeling a cold dread settling in his gut.
"Rank Nine," Tom said.
Silence stretched in the library corner.
Rank Nine.
Adam had killed a Taskmaster, a creature so far down the totem pole it wouldn't even be allowed in the same room as a High Seat. And Edward Bloodrose had fought a Rank Nine to a standstill before being captured.
The gap in power wasn't a canyon; it was a universe.
"So," Jones said, breaking the tension with his pragmatic brutality. "To clarify. We are talking about breaking out of a prison inside a moon. To do so, we need to travel to a secret level that doesn't officially exist. There, we need to free a mass-murdering, family-slaying psychopath who fought a god of war. And we hope that, instead of eating us, he will help us kill everyone else."
Jones ran a hand through his afro, staring at the ceiling. "It sounds… insane."
"It sounds like the only chance we have," Adam said.
He looked at his cellmates. He saw the fear in Harry's eyes, the calculation in Panchenko's, the skepticism in Jones's. But he also saw desperation. They were rotting here. Slowly, surely, the prison would eat them.
"If we stay here," Adam said, his voice hardening, "we die. Maybe next week in the Woods. Maybe in a year from malnutrition. Maybe we just fade away until we're like those ghosts in the canteen. But we die."
He stood up, the movement causing his injured side to flare with pain, reminding him of his mortality.
"I'm not dying in a cage," Adam stated. "I'm going to Level Six."
Tom smiled, a small terrified, but genuine smile. "I knew the algorithm was right about you."
"But we can't do it alone," Adam continued, pacing the small space. "Tom said we need to get past the Crimson Lake, the Desert, the Hell. We need a team. A real strike force."
"We need Julian," Tom said.
"The redhead with the sword," Adam recalled. "The 'King of Level One'."
"He's the strongest," Tom confirmed. "His swordsmanship is… unnatural. He uses a style I've never seen. Flowing Water style, maybe? If anyone can cut a path through the lower levels, it's him."
Panchenko snapped his fingers. "And the others! That group we saw in the Woods. The Valkyrie woman with the hammer."
"Ylva," Adam noted. "And her crew. Lee, Pao, and the girl with the daggers, Astrid."
"Astrid," Panchenko purred the name. "She's fearless. A bit crazy, perhaps, but effective. Lee is fast. And Pao… well, Pao is a tank. A hungry, strange tank."
"They survived the Treant," Jones agreed. "They fight as a unit. That's rare in here. Most people stab each other in the back for a ration bar."
"So we have a target list," Adam said, his mind shifting into tactical mode. "Julian. Ylva's squad. We need to recruit them."
"How?" Harry asked. "Why would they listen to us? Julian ignores everyone."
"We don't ask them," Adam said, his eyes darkening. "We show them. In Kazakhar, words are wind. Power is the only language. We have to prove we're worth following."
The next morning, the horn sounded at 1200 hours.
The routine was already becoming a scar on Adam's psyche. Wake up. Eat the grey sludge. March to the elevators. Descend into the dark.
But today, the air felt different. Yesterday, they were prey trying to survive. Today, they were hunters looking for a pack.
They arrived at the Armory Gate. Adam went straight for the rack he had used the day before. He found the bastard sword, the one with the notched blade and the bloodstained leather grip. It was exactly where he had left it. It seemed to hum in his hand, welcoming him back.
"Hello, beautiful," Panchenko said, grabbing his spear. "Ready to poke some eyes out?"
"Focus," Adam said. "Today isn't just about survival. We watch. We locate Julian. We locate Ylva."
The elevator dropped them into the Darkling Woods. The fog was thicker today, swirling around the black trunks like living spirits. The distant roar of monsters echoed through the gloom.
They moved in formation. Adam on point, Jones covering the rear with his axe, Panchenko and Harry in the center.
"Contacts at three o'clock," Tom whispered. He had joined their formation today, armed with a small crossbow he had scavenged. "Heat signatures. Small, fast. Scuttle-Beasts."
"Remember the briefing," Adam ordered. "They're blind. Silence."
They moved like ghosts. From the fog, three creatures emerged. They looked like crosses between crabs and spiders, with pale, translucent skin and clicking mandibles. They stood four feet tall, their heads devoid of eyes, just massive, twitching ears.
Adam signaled a halt.
He picked up a rock and hurled it thirty feet to the left, hitting a tree trunk. Clack.
The Scuttle-Beasts shrieked, a high-pitched sonic blast and surged toward the noise.
"Now," Adam whispered.
He moved forward, his boots silent on the moss. He came up behind the lagging beast. He didn't hack, he thrust his sword precisely into the soft tissue where the carapace met the head, severing the spinal cord. The beast dropped without a sound.
Panchenko skewered the second one through the mouth before it could scream. Jones decapitated the third with a single, brutal swing of his axe.
Three kills. Ten seconds. Silence.
"We're getting better," Jones grunted, wiping green slime from his axe.
"Movement ahead," Tom warned, checking a device he had jury-rigged from prison scrap. "Large group. Fighting in progress."
Adam crept forward, pushing through the dense, black foliage. He parted the branches of a fern-like plant and looked into a clearing.
It was Ylva's group.
They were surrounded. Not by Scuttle-Beasts, but by Gloom-Hounds. A pack of twelve. These were wolf-like nightmares with chitinous plating over their fur and spines running down their backs.
Ylva was swinging her warhammer, keeping three at bay. Lee was a blur of motion, his nunchaku cracking against skulls. Astrid was riding on the back of one, stabbing it repeatedly, laughing maniacally. Pao was surprisingly holding his own, using his cleaver as a shield.
But they were being overwhelmed. The Alpha a massive hound with silver spines was circling, waiting for an opening on Ylva's flank.
"They're in trouble," Harry whispered.
"Good," Adam said.
Harry looked at him, horrified. "What?"
"It's an opportunity," Adam said. He looked at Jones and Panchenko. "We don't just help them. We impress them. Jones, take the right flank. Panchenko, left. Harry, Tom, suppressive fire on the small ones."
Adam drew his sword.
"I want the Alpha."
He stepped out of the bushes, letting out a sharp whistle.
The chaos in the clearing paused for a microsecond. The Alpha Gloom-Hound turned its massive head toward Adam, growling low in its throat. Its eyes were burning yellow orbs.
"Hey, ugly," Adam shouted.
The Alpha roared and charged. It moved faster than the Treant, a blur of teeth and claws.
Adam didn't flinch. He waited. He breathed. He watched the muscle tension in the beast's hind legs.
Leap.
The Alpha sprang into the air, aiming for Adam's throat.
Adam dropped to his knees, sliding forward on the slick moss. He brought his sword up in a vertical slash, using the beast's own momentum against it.
The blade bit into the soft underbelly, slicing from sternum to tail.
Adam slid past, covered in hot blood. The Alpha landed behind him, tried to turn, whimpered once, and collapsed, its insides spilling onto the forest floor.
The pack, sensing the instant death of their leader, faltered.
"Now!" Adam roared.
Jones and Panchenko burst from the tree line. Jones smashed a hound mid-air with the flat of his axe. Panchenko drove his spear through two hounds lined up perfectly.
Ylva saw the opening. "Push back!" she screamed, swinging her hammer with renewed vigor.
Caught between the hammer and the anvil, the remaining hounds broke and fled into the fog.
Silence returned to the clearing.
Adam stood up, shaking the blood off his blade. He turned to face Ylva.
The tall woman was breathing hard, a scratch bleeding on her cheek. She leaned on her hammer, looking from the dead Alpha to Adam.
Astrid hopped off a corpse, wiping gore from her daggers. She looked at Adam, her emerald eyes widening. "Well, well. The new guy has claws."
Lee spun his nunchaku down and holstered them. "That was… timely."
Ylva stepped forward. She towered over most men, but she looked Adam in the eye.
"You stole my kill," she said.
"I saved your life," Adam corrected calmly.
Ylva held his gaze for a long moment. Then, the corner of her mouth twitched upward. "Debatable. But effective."
"We need to talk," Adam said. "About the future. About getting out of this hole."
Ylva narrowed her eyes. "There is no out."
"There is," Adam said. "But I need soldiers. Not survivors."
Before Ylva could respond, the ground trembled. It wasn't footsteps this time. It was a shockwave.
A mile away, to the north, a massive plume of blue fire erupted into the sky, lighting up the eternal twilight. Trees shattered. A roar echoed that shook the fillings in Adam's teeth, a roar that didn't belong to a beast, but to a demon.
And then, silence.
"What was that?" Harry squeaked.
Tom checked his scanner, his face pale. "That was a Nether-Drake. A sub-boss. Rare spawn."
"It's dead," Jones said, sniffing the air. "I can smell in the air."
"Who killed it?" Panchenko asked.
Adam looked toward the fading blue fire. He saw a silhouette standing on a distant ridge, outlined against the smoke. A lone figure with red hair and a single, sleek sword.
Julian.
He had taken down a drake. Alone. While Adam's group had struggled with hounds.
Adam tightened his grip on his sword.
"That," Adam said, pointing at the distant figure, "is our next recruit."
He turned back to Ylva. "Join us. Tonight. Canteen. We're planning a revolution."
Ylva looked at the distant fire, then back at Adam's bloody sword. She nodded once.
"We'll be there."
Adam turned to walk away. The pieces were moving. The Kinslayer waited in the dark. And Adam was coming for him.