Ash Malan, Master Class of the Enchanters’ Guild, woke with a splutter, pawing the empty spot of her cot. She ran a tongue over her lips, listened for any out of place noise, and settled back with a sigh. Six years he’d been dead, and a night never passed without her reaching for him. Damn her Shard and the lovesick fool in her Shard Realm.

Her nose ached for the blissful numbness of Dust, the drug that let one relive the past, but she suppressed the urge and buried her face in a pillow. A warzone was no place for any vices save murder, and the Circle was as great a warzone as any. Even in this house a few districts away, she heard its rumble.

Just the day before they’d lost another. Henry. A good man scattered into little pieces, shredded by a twisting, centipede-like arm. The Bugs had seared a dozen scenes like that in her mind. She almost wanted to thank them. That misery distracted her from the pain of his loss.

She reached for the box tucked below her bed. Just a small sniff. That’s it.

A loud bang stopped her hand, and she looked up to see a silhouette in the doorway of her dark room. Crimson fire curled around the dark skin of her hand.

“The Spire,” Zuri said, sucking in gasps of air between words. “They need you. The Bugs have…” She gasped a few more times as if the first few hadn’t been enough, and Ash considered setting them both on fire. “The Bugs have pushed the other Rankers away from the Spire, and Scripture fled.”

Scripture. Damned cults. She rose to her feet, still dressed in her gear. “Fine.”

Always something.

---

Keira rubbed her forehead. She had too much on her plate and too little time to settle all of it. Priorities, then. She would abandon the Seventh. The Bugs could have it. They had almost claimed the Sixth as it was. Her contemporaries did not know the real strength of the enemy, and they hadn’t realized they were being positioned in such a way that the Bugs could eliminate them in one fell swoop.

She mentally scratched that matter from her mind. Next was her reputation. The move with Ryu had been foolish, and she had revealed her hand. If she had not known the Bugs were readying a move, she would have already been discovered. As it was, her spies were fending off a group that seemed intent on poisoning the others against her. Thankfully, this was a problem she had a solution for.

She read a dispatch, a smirk growing on her face. Her forces in the Fifth were taking their places, readying for the moment humanity was pushed back to Haven. The only way to avoid suspicion was to rise above it. The Lord’s Flock would welcome the masses of humanity, swaddle them in the warmth of religion, and ready them for purification. Then, they would come back and rip the Rings from the Bugs as one united army.

Salvation. She had realized long ago salvation was found in her own hands, not the gods, but thankfully, her pals in the sky had not minded her use of their name to deliver it all the same. She glanced around her study.

White marble rose on either side of her, and a clear window above allowed her to sample the day outside. Papers covered her desk, separated into nice, tidy stacks. Occasionally, one of her acolytes would rise from their tables and add another paper to her own. People really underestimated the paperwork that went into leading an organization across six Rings.

One paper caught her eye, and she reread it over. And then again. Her fingers clutched the page hard enough to pale her knuckles. She suppressed the memories that threatened to boil over.

She failed. She saw Ryu as he was twelve years ago, standing over Marshal’s body. Tears filled her eyes, and she shook and took deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. After a moment, the feelings passed, leaving her staring at a ripped paper.

He had survived. She had thought herself clever, using one monster to kill others. He had not even sensed the Charm Technique layered on the notes she sent him, compelling him to kill the men and women she had listed. A brute, no different from how he had been all those years ago. When she had convinced the Bugs to take him in return for her assistance in slipping past one of the Aristocracy’s forts, she had thought herself free of Ryu Ishida forever. Yet he survived like a damned cockroach, and worst of all, he had risen to a position she could no longer target.

Truly, the gods were not on her side, even after all the worshipping she had inspired. How was a murderer favored over her? She sighed and moved to set the torn paper aside, but one of her acolytes interrupted her.

“Lady Priestess, the Sixty-Four have arrived! All of the forts along the river have fallen, and many of them are moving on the Spire.”

Keira flicked her hand. “Call Scripture back, and initiate phase one.”

Revenge was another thing she could rise above. Purification came before all.

---

Ryu frowned. Something seemed off, yet he could not put his finger on it. Before him, Fell, Inosuke, and Emiko fought two Evolved Bugs. He watched them fight, watched Fell bring his spear high, watched Emiko go low. His frown deepened.

They fought in the ruined remains of a district square. The white stone of a fountain lay in chunks about them, and stacks of thick, gray smoke blotted out the blue sky above. Ryu fancied he saw a few weeds growing out of the cracked stone path. He sat against a chunk of stone that was all that remained of the building behind him.

What was bothering him? He scattered his aura as far as it would go. He sniffed, listened, and looked about. Nothing. Well, nothing save for the typical bloodshed. The Circle was as large as three standard districts put together, making it as large as any city Ryu had ever stood in. Unless the Sixth counted as one big city, of course. Still, perhaps it was enough to say it was nearly an island of its own. An island of bloodshed.

Emiko was close enough to taste her Master Class, and Inosuke was not far behind. Surely they would be fine with leaving now? He almost called out to them to say so, but something snuffed his aura. And then he knew.

“We’re leaving,” he shouted, knowing it was too late to let his sister and friends escape on their own. He burned a soul and cut one of the Bugs they were fighting down, letting them dispatch the others.

“What-”

Fell clapped a hand on Emiko’s shoulder. “Something is happening. Let’s listen to Ryu.”

Ryu nodded at his blonde friend and readied Solitude. Was he strong enough to face a member of the Sixty-Four? No. He knew he was not. He still lacked the Insight necessary to upgrade Soul Eater.

He could hold one off long enough for the other three to escape, however. That seemed the noble thing to do, right? They’d live much more of a life than himself. A happier one, at any rate. Death seemed less disappointing, too, but then, the problem was it would be too late by the time he found out.

Decisions, decisions. He let the others run ahead of him, while he kept his senses at the rear, waiting. After all, it was a matter of when and not if they were discovered.

The when came sooner than he would’ve liked.

They turned around a corner, and Fell slid to a stop. Ryu leaped above him, triggering Soul Eater in a puff of black smoke. Two Bugs- neither of which seemed members of the Sixty-Four to his aura- moved in turn, one leaping up to meet him with several additional arms along its back. The other grabbed a piece of stone and snapped into with its mandibles. Its shiny black chitin lost its dull luster, and it seemed to grow in size.

The Bug with multiple arms met Ryu in the air. One set of hands grabbed him, and others blasted his face, hands, and body with short, powerful blows. They hit the ground, bouncing across the stone in a rolling skid. Ryu came up on top, snarled, tilted his head to the sky, and brought his forehead down in a puff of black smoke.

Carapace cracked. His nose broke. The arms shoved Ryu off, and he rolled back to his feet, looking around to check on his friends. Emiko, Fell, and Inosuke had engaged the stone-eating Bug on their own. In truth, Fell could probably handle it on his own, but overkill and all that.

He snapped his attention back to his opponent and rolled under one punch only to be met with two others. Solitude was on the ground somewhere, leaving him barehanded. Two arms against six. Ryu never had been a gambling man.

His boot snapped the Bug back, and [Whisper Step] carried him to its side. One blow left one of its arms useless. Another rocked its head back. Two arms tried to grapple him again, but he ripped free with Soul Eater. He pulled on one of the arms, gritting his teeth and yanking as the others pummeled him.

A moment passed. Blood leaked from his nose, his body ached, and his jaw was most definitely broken. Then the pressure on his pull faded, and Ryu stumbled back, one of the Bug’s arms clutched in his hand. He allowed his mutated arm to absorb the limb and grow chitin armor.

Soul Eater bloomed back into existence. His normal arm cracked the Bug’s mandible, and his mutated one plunged into the spots where the monster’s arm had once been. Deeper. Deeper. He felt something firm and yanked on it in a spray of yellow.

The Bug dropped, and he summoned Headsman. The greataxe came up and swept down, caving in the thing’s skull with a wet thunk that left the monster in death throes. He looked around. The others had nearly killed the others, but that was unimportant. No, Ryu looked for something else.

It looked back. He cursed, his mangled jaw making it a wet gurgle. They’d found them.