Morvan’s left eye cracked open, a sliver of irritation piercing the fog of impending sleep. Wine tax? He’d been dead, then reborn, then almost executed, then worshipped, then nearly possessed. He hadn’t even seen a bottle of wine, let alone paid tax on it. He grunted, dragging an arm free from beneath his collar, and pointed vaguely toward Yurik. “Tell them… I’m resting. And I don’t drink.”
Yurik goggled, his mouth flapping like a beached fish. “But Sovereign! They’re already here! The Ninth Legion of the Bleeding Chalice, with the Arch-Priestess Griselda and… and that tin-pot god Zophiel himself!”
A low, rumbling shudder rattled the chamber's mossy flagstones. It wasn’t Morvan. It was a rhythmic thud, growing steadily louder, accompanied by the metallic clang of armored boots and the mournful wail of war-horns echoing through the perpetual twilight. A pale, sickly light, like a weak spotlight struggling through thick stage smoke, began to bloom outside the shattered entrance.
“Oh, perfect,” Morvan mumbled, dragging his bolster over his ears. “A parade.”
Lysoria, who had been observing Yurik with an unnervingly still patience, stepped forward. The darkness around her boots thickened into corded tendrils that wound up her forearms. “A parade of fools,” she corrected, her voice a silken rasp. She tilted her chin back toward Morvan. “They will not disturb your slumber, beloved.”
Before Yurik could stutter another panicked protest, the first line of church crusaders, clad in silver plate etched with tear-drop sigils, surged past the broken threshold. Their faces twisted in ritual fury, broadswords coated in greasy, bleached light. At their head marched a creature of pale radiance—the godling Zophiel, a waist-high figure with perpetually wet cheeks and a translucent silk tunic. He clutched a gold-leafed ledger to his chest.
“Unholy blasphemer! Usurper of the Sacred Spirits! You owe us seventeen casks of fermented gloom-berry nectar and five barrels of spiced lament-wine!” Zophiel shrieked, his voice surprisingly high-pitched for a deity. “And late fees! The interest alone could drown a lesser man in sorrow!”
Morvan’s moss sack rustled. “Tell them I’ll pay in… in lint. From my pockets. Later.”
Lysoria smiled with bare fangs. Her gloom whipped outward in razor-edged ribbons that crossed the flags faster than a lunging viper. The front ranks of church steel, still mid-charge, froze. Their screams were cut short, replaced by the wet thud of falling armor and the clatter of severed limbs. Blood sprayed across the damp masonry in dark, smoking arcs. The deity shrieked again in raw panic, dropping his ledger and scrambling behind the remaining shield-bearers.
Lysoria stalked forward, her silhouette a stark, elegant predator against the backdrop of carnage. “You dare disturb his rest for such paltry sums?” Her voice dropped to a guttural growl that seemed to vibrate the very ground. “You are beneath his notice. You are less than dust.” She flicked a wrist, sending dark ribbons through the next rank of breastplates with surgical precision. The sepulcher became an abbatoir, the air reeking of wet copper and sharp sulfur.
Yurik, meanwhile, had recovered his wits. He’d found a discarded coffin lid and propped it up with a broken gargoyle wing, inscribing 'Tickets to the Divine Decimation! Limited Seating!' in charcoal. He began hawking, “Get your prime viewing spots! Witness the Sovereign’s Wrath! Only three copper coins, or a decent silver buckle!” A few fleeing beggars paused in the archway, mesmerized, and began digging through their rags for tin bits.
The weeping deity, watching his vanguard collapse into shredded tin and scarlet slush, let out an ear-splitting whistle. “You… you monstrous fiend! I shall smite thee myself!” He stretched out a trembling hand, and the weak, pale light outside intensified, coalescing into a single, blinding beam of concentrated holy luminescence. It sliced through the gloom, parting Lysoria's shroud like shears, and speared straight for Morvan’s cot.
The beam hit Morvan’s face. Specifically, it hit his left eye. It wasn’t the familiar warmth of sunshine; it was a searing, icy fire that seemed to delve deeper than flesh, right into the very core of his being. An icy spike pierced his socket, sharp and hollow, far colder than the cardiac arrest that had dropped him onto his office floorboards back in London. It was a cold, ravenous pain, as if something ancient and starving had suddenly found a morsel it craved, and was trying to swallow it whole.
Morvan sat bolt upright, a hoarse roar tearing from his throat. Not a casual grunt, but a sound of pure, unadulterated outrage. “My *face*!” he roared, clutching at his eye. The faint burn-mark on his skin was nothing compared to the phantom sensation of his very soul being nibbled. This wasn’t just physical pain; this was a fundamental violation of his peace, his rest, his entire existence.
His bloodshot gaze locked onto the miniature god, who was still channeling the ray with a slobbering, triumphant grin. “Taste the wrath of the Divines, you tax-evading fiend!”
Trembling with disgust, Morvan snatched the burlap sack from under his skull. It was a soft, lumpy thing, filled with dried moss and lint. He wound back, not bothering to aim, and flung it with all the force of his accumulated annoyance. “Go. Away!”
The moss-stuffed rag flew. It crossed the decimated chamber in an instant, propelled by an unseen, impossible momentum. It met the little deity mid-chest, snapping his spine back with the weight of an iron anchor. There was no dying wail, only the wet crack of splitting pulp, followed by a puff of gold ash that drifted across the red cobbles.
The stone hall fell dead quiet. Lysoria froze, an obsidian spike buried halfway through a temple guard's breastplate, her head tilting in rapture. Yurik’s hawking ceased, his mouth agape. Davorin, who had been quietly collecting stray bones from the floor, dropped a femur with a clatter. His shadow, which had remained strangely still throughout the chaos, now stretched impossibly, growing darker, reaching across the shattered room. His eyes, though still his cheerful, living brown, seemed to hold a cosmic depth.
His voice, rasping and dry, no longer belonged to a mere gravedigger. It was the ancient, familiar echo of the Nightbringer, a comforting chill in the air. “You felt it, didn’t you? The sun… it eats. Let me plunge the world into darkness, Morvan, or the Sun will eat you alive by morning.”