8. Apostate's Gambit

The Inquisitorial outpost squatted at the smog-choked edge of the Iron Wastes, its obsidian spires clawing at the bruised sky like broken talons. Devon crouched in the shadow of a derelict smelter, his void-forged lungs filtering toxins the Monarch's engineers had designed to melt rebel flesh. Six days dead, and already he missed home cooked meals more than sunlight.

Target: 13 souls. The intel had cost him three vials of Purifier and a lock of a rebel's hair bartered from a graverat. A gamble, but the smelter's rusted pipes thrummed with the outpost's heartbeat—thud-thud-thud—rhythmic as a confession extracted under serrated pliers. Thirteen Inquisitors. Thirteen cracks in the Monarch's armor.

He pressed a palm to the ground. Void energy seeped through cracks in the concrete, mapping the compound's veins: barracks choked with loyalty incense, an interrogation chamber humming with stolen magic, a chapel where serrated hymns peeled faith from bone. In the armory, a rookie polished her censer, its sigils still bright with a convert's zeal.

Start small. Build slow.

Devon's void-touched fingers traced the smelter's corroded pipes, each vibration translating into a schematic of the outpost's defenses. He could taste the Inquisitors' routines—prayer rotations at 19:00, guard shifts synced to the warden's asthma wheeze, the faint click-click of loyalty collars resetting at midnight. Thirteen souls. He flexed his translucent hand, watching smog curl around his knuckles like a lover. The Monarch's surveillance drones patrolled overhead, their searchlights scouring the wastes for heat signatures. Devon grinned. His body no longer radiated warmth—just the hollow chill of a grave unvisited. "Let's see how you track a shadow," he murmured, dissolving into the smog itself.

Sister Veyra's hands trembled as she buffed the skull engraving on her helmet. The initiates called this ritual "kissing the Monarch's brow," but the sacred oils stung her nostrils like burnt hair. Two weeks since her promotion from census-taker, and her dreams still reeked of the Archives—the wet cough of dissidents sorted into fertilizer quotas, the click of her tally-counter as families vanished line by line.

"Your doubt is a stench, Sister."

Veyra whirled, censer flaring. The armory stood empty save for hanging chains swaying in a nonexistent breeze.

"Not doubt," murmured a voice like static sculpted into vowels. "Curiosity."

Shadows pooled beneath a rusted grinder, thickening into the silhouette of a man missing pieces—a hollow where his left eye should be, fingers translucent as smoke. His remaining eye glowed violet, pupil slit like a keyhole to some starless room.

"Agent Deva," Veyra breathed, reciting her catechism. "Traitor. Heretic. Corpse."

"Guilty." Devon stepped into the lumen-light, his form solidifying with each click of Veyra's retreating boots. "But you already knew that. Saw my file between executions, yes? 'Deviant appetites. Overfond of rebel brats.' They left out my stellar dumpling recipe."

Veyra's censer spat holy fire. The flames parted around Devon like river around stone, licks of gold dissolving into his chest.

"Clever trick," he said, plucking a dying ember from the air. "But holy magic's just fear with better branding. Watch." He crushed the spark—and Veyra's tattoos itched, the Monarch's sigils squirming beneath her skin.

"What—"

"Your oath's a noose, Sister. Let me clip the rope."

He moved—not through space, but absence, reappearing with his void-cold palm pressed to her forehead. The chapel's hymns curdled into screams.

System Override

Name: Veyra Caddel

Age: 24

Art: Unbound (Initiate)

Manifest:

Loyalty Sigils (Tier 3) - Status: [Corrupted] Censer Mastery (Tier 2) - Status: [Reconfigured] Doubt (Tier 5) - Status: [Unlocked]

Veyra convulsed as the void surged through her, acid-etched prayers boiling in her veins. The chapel's stained glass shattered in her mind—Saint Murdoch's face peeling away to reveal the census archives, the rows of numbers that had once been children.

The void didn't rewrite her—it unspooled her. Veyra's bones became chalk, her muscles unraveling into thorned vines that burst through her skin. She screamed, but her voice fractured into a chorus: the wail of Batch 37's mothers, the creak of fertilizer vat hinges, the wet snick of the Monarch's census stamps. Devon's grip tightened, his hand now a nest of serrated shadows suturing her back together. "You're not their ledger-keeper anymore," he hissed. "You're the eraser." Her censer trembled, its holy flame guttering into a swarm of moths with paper-thin wings—each etched with a name from her quotas.

"Breathe," Devon whispered, his voice now the clatter of a tally-counter. "It gets worse before it gets worse."

Her censer exploded. Instead of fire, it vomited thickets of black briars that swallowed holy symbols whole. Veyra retched, a slug-like tattoo wriggling from her lip—the Monarch's kiss, now thrashing in its death throes.

"Why?" she gasped, clawing at her unraveling uniform.

Veyra's fingers dug into her collarbone, where the census-taker's insignia once rested. The void's corruption spread like ink in water, her veins mapping constellations of guilt. She saw them again—Batch 37's children, their names reduced to smudged digits in her ledger. A boy with Georg's eyes had clutched a stuffed crow, its button gaze tracking her as she stamped his file. Fertilizer quota approved. The memory curdled, bile rising in her throat. "You think this absolves me?" she spat, thorns now budding from her tear ducts. "I chose the sigils. I wanted to forget."

Devon's blade tilted her chin upward, its edge humming with static. "Absolution's a myth sold by pyre-light. This?" He tapped her chest, where her loyalty tattoo now pulsed black. "This is accountability. Now go try to redeem your soul."

The mess hall erupted when Veyra entered. Novices froze mid-bite, broth dripping from spoons as she strode to the pulpit, thorns curling from her eye sockets.

"Sister?" The head chaplain rose, serrated mace flaring. "You're tainted!"

"Illuminated," Veyra corrected. Behind her, the shadows breathed.

Devon materialized in the chaplain's blind spot, void blade humming. "Evening, zealots. Let's discuss workplace benefits."

Chaos. A novice drew a flail, its spiked chain dissolving mid-swing into dandelion fluff. Another lunged with a dagger, only to stab his own reflection in a puddle of overturned soup. Devon danced through the panic, fingers trailing void-sigils that rewrote spells mid-incantation:

- Holy Shield became Cage of Thorns

- Purifying Flame birthed Shadowmoth Swarm

- A shouted "Eternal Life to the Monarch!" twisted into "Eternal Lies from the Moth-eaten Throne!"

"Stop resisting!" Devon barked, yanking a initiate's serrated prayer from his throat. "This is an intervention!"

The head chaplain charged, mace crackling with borrowed divinity. Devon sighed, catching the weapon bare-handed. The holy steel screamed as void rot spread up its haft.

"Fun fact," Devon said, watching the chaplain's eyes widen as his beloved mace crumbled to ash. "Your Monarch's just a squatter in heaven's basement. Rent's due."

He pressed his palm to the chaplain's chest.

System Override

Name: Orris Kant

Art: Unbound (Apostate)

Penance: [Memories of Batch 37 – 512 Souls] – [Playback Initiated]

The chaplain collapsed, howling as 512 lives unspooled in his skull—every sob, every snapped bone, every child's whisper before the fertilizer vats sealed.

"Now," Devon said, turning to the frozen initiates. "Who wants to file a grievance with management?"

By dawn, twelve Inquisitors knelt in the courtyard, their loyalty tattoos scorched away by the void's caustic baptism. Veyra stood apart, thorns now blooming into obsidian lilies that dripped liquid shadow.

"They'll hunt us," she said, watching Devon carve a void portal into the smelter wall. "The Monarch sees all."

"That is false, you are now baptized." Devon grinned, fingers smeared with the chaplain's ash. "His Class System can't compute 'Unbound.' You're glitches now. Beautiful, blasphemous glitches. Let him watch you bow—while you bite."

He tossed her a cracked lumen-stone pulsating with stolen holy magic. "Feed this to his surveillance networks. Every purge report you falsify, every rebel you 'execute'—substitute with corpses from the plague wards. Let his soul engine starve. Build kitchens in the sewers. Arm the weak. Love recklessly."

The initiates hesitated, clutching their new sigils—improvised weapons forged from censer shards and doubt.

"What if we fail?" whispered a novice, his eyes still leaking static.

Devon stepped into the portal, his form fraying into smoke. "Fail better. Every corpse swapped, every ration diverted—it's a brick pried from his throne. The Monarch dies by a thousand cuts."

He tossed a pamphlet into the ash—Black Liberation, its margins scribbled with anarchic tenets:

Mutual Aid: Share food, not oaths. Direct Action: Break chains, not bread. Praxis: Become ungovernable.

The portal sealed.

The youngest initiate, a boy barely weaned from his mother's purifier-rationed milk, clutched the lumen-stone. It pulsed faintly, its light now the soft green of spring buds pushing through concrete. "What do we do with this?"

Veyra knelt, her thorns retracting to reveal eyes like shattered stained glass. "We lie." She pressed the stone to his chest. The boy gasped as roots burrowed into his skin, threading through his ribcage. "Tomorrow, you'll file a report claiming 20 rebels executed. Tonight, you'll meet a mortician in Ward C. They'll give you bodies."

"And the real rebels?"

"Will be eating the food we steal from the Inquisitor's pantry." She stood, smoothing her robes—still black, still loyal, still perfect. "We are the State's rot. The Monarch won't see his death until it blooms in his lungs."

Above them, the smog parted— just enough to make sunlight glaze through, reminding the people that there really was light at the end of the smog.

The dandelion grows.