The Void welcomed Devon as if it was his home now, its starless expanse folding around him in ripples of static. Time here was a fickle thing—stretching, compressing, dissolving into echoes of before. He floated in the nothingness, his spectral form flickering as he replayed the last hours:The Apostate's he has converted, his seeds of rebellion, his system.
Pathetic, he thought, flexing translucent fingers. Can't even die properly.
A cold laugh echoed—not his own. The Void shimmered, and for a heartbeat, Georg's face materialized in the gloom, his features smeared like ink in rain. "You always were a stubborn bastard," his brother's voice rasped, tinged with static. "Even when we were kids, you'd dig up worms after Pa told you to quit. Look where it got you."
Devon snarled, swiping at the apparition. "Shut it. You're not real."
"Real enough." Georg's ghost dissolved into smoke, reforming as the child Devon had once been—knobby knees scraped raw, clutching a stolen purifier vial.
Devon lunged, but the vision scattered into ravens, their caws sharpening into the shriek of rusted gears. The Void shuddered, its edges fraying to reveal the world beyond—a jagged crack in reality where his corpse still swung from the gallows, limp as a marionette with cut strings. Five days. That's how long the Monarch's dogs left traitors on display. Five days of crows feasting, of smog clotting in empty eye sockets.
He pressed a phantom hand to the crack. Cold seeped into his essence, carrying the stench of rot and the metallic tang of fear. Somewhere below, the undertakers were gathering.
Time to haunt some fools.
Corpses were ritualistically displayed in the gallows for Five Days, symbolizing the Five Days that the Monarch created the world.
The gallows squatted in Duskmarket Square like a rotten tooth, its timbers groaning under the weight of six corpses. The crowd was thinner today—just a handful of starch-collared bureaucrats and a cluster of street urchins daring each other to lick the blood-crusted cobbles. The undertakers arrived at dawn, their cart squealing like a gutted pig.
"Move quick, lads," barked Garvin, a wiry man with a face like a pickled walnut. He tossed a stained tarp to his apprentice, Milo, whose hands shook as he caught it. "Wrap 'em tight. Boss says they're for the Rendering Pits."
Milo gagged as he unclasped the first noose. "Saints, they're leaking—"
"Leaking pays your wages," Garvin snapped, jabbing a thumb at the cart. "Load 'em. And don't dally—smog's rolling in thick."
Milo hesitated, staring at the youngest corpse—a girl no older than ten, her braids matted with filth. "They… they really execute kids for rebel ties?"
Garvin's laugh was a dry cough. "Ties? Girl probably stole a loaf. Monarch's Law don't care." He jerked his chin at the cart. "Move. Or you'll join 'em."
As Milo lifted the small body, something clattered to the cobbles—a wooden dolly, its paint chipped to reveal the word TAMPHON carved beneath. Garvin crushed it underboot. "No keepsakes. Orders."
The smog was different today. It clung to their coats like cobwebs, glinting faintly with a sickly iridescence. By the time they reached the landfill, Milo's breath came in shallow hitches.
"You hear that?" he whispered, staring into the gray.
Garvin spat. "Hear what?"
A caw rippled through the haze—then another, until the air thrummed with the sound of a thousand rusted hinges screaming. Ravens burst from the smog in a black wave, their wings slicing the gloom as they swarmed the cart.
"The hells—?!" Garvin stumbled back as talons scraped his face. Milo screamed, swatting at the birds until a shadow loomed ahead—a figure waltzing through the smog, its limbs too long, too fluid.
"D-did you see—?" Milo stammered.
"Shut your hole," Garvin hissed, though his knuckles whitened on his pistol.
The smog moved. Shapes coalesced—a woman with a glaive dancing with a man made of static, a diner flickering with phantom laughter, a boy's corpse twitching on a hook. Milo retched.
"It's him," he whispered. "The rebel they hung. He's—"
BANG.
Garvin's bullet tore through the haze. The vision dissolved, but laughter followed—hollow, echoing, wrong.
"Waste of ammo," Devon's voice slithered from all directions. The smog thickened, seeping into their lungs like liquid ice. "Though I'll admit, it's cute watching you try."
In the Void
Devon grinned as the undertakers' terror crackled through him, sweet as stolen honey. The Void bent to his will, its static thrumming in time with his pulse—or whatever passed for a pulse here. He'd woven the smog into a canvas, painting nightmares with the Monarch's own corruption.
The smog. It reeked of burnt hair and overripe plums, a byproduct of the soul engines that devoured the dead to fuel the Monarch's immortality. Devon's essence recoiled at the taste—ash and avarice, the screams of Batch 37—but he pushed deeper, threading his consciousness through every toxic particle.
"Not so mighty now, are you?" he whispered, sculpting the smog into a grinning replica of Murdoch. The Inquisitor's doppelgänger lunged at Garvin, dissolving as the man fired again.
"Stop shooting at nothing!" Milo wailed, clawing at his collar. "We need to leave!"
"Shut your sniveling—" Garvin froze.
The corpses were moving.
Devon's body twitched first, its mangled fingers scraping the cart's splintered wood. Then his wife's corpse shuddered, her petrified middle finger curling tighter. Milo crossed himself, lips moving in a desperate prayer as Garvin raised his revolver.
"Y-you see that too, right?" Milo whimpered.
"Shut. Up." Garvin's shot tore through Devon's corpse—a clean hole between lifeless eyes.
The laughter returned, louder.
"Try the heart," Devon's voice purred. His corpse sat up, ligaments snapping like wet twine. "Or better yet—run."
The Landfill
Every city block knew the Pits' stench—sweet decay clinging to laundered uniforms and market fruit. The Monarch's sermons called it "the sacred cycle": traitors purified into nutrients for loyal crops. But up close, Milo saw the truth. Flies blanketed rusted conveyor belts hauling corpses into grinders. Rat kings gnawed on severed hands overlooked by the bone-sorters. And the sound—a wet, crunching gurgle as the machines pulsed, like the city itself was digesting. Milo vomited bile onto his boots. Garvin didn't notice.
The Rendering Pits stank of betrayal. Acres of bone meal and rancid fat steamed under the smog, waiting to be packed into feed sacks stamped with the Monarch's crest. Fuel for the loyal, Devon thought bitterly, his spectral form hovering above his family's remains. His brother's daughter's braids were still caked with mud from the gallows.
Forgive me.
He shoved the Void's energy into his corpse, tendrils of static stitching sinew to bone. The body lurched upright, puppet-like, its hollow eyes flickering violet. Across the pit, Garvin and Milo tripped over each other, their shouts swallowed by the smog.
"Come on, you ugly bastards!" Garvin fired wildly, bullets punching into sludge. "Show yourselves!"
Devon flexed his corpse's fingers, tendons creaking. Clumsy. But it'll do. He staggered toward the men, his movements jerky, cadaverous. Milo's scream was a satisfying crescendo.
"It's him! It's him!"
The corpse's jaw unhinged, vomiting a swarm of shadowmoths that swirled into words: TELL THEM I'M COMING.
Garvin's pistol clattered to the ground. "Witchcraft. Bloody witchcraft—"
Devon's corpse lunged, and the men fled, their howls fading into the smog.
Dawn
By morning, the rumors were alive.
In the Larkspur slums, a street vendor hawked "Rebel Revival Tonics" brewed from smog and spite. "Saw it meself!" he crowed, jabbing a thumb at the gallows. "Corpse walked right outta the Pits, middle finger blazing!"
`
In the ISB barracks, Inquisitors scoffed into their sacramental wine. "Rabble tales," sneered a fresh-faced recruit. "The dead don't walk."
But in the sewers, Claire traced the words TELL THEM I'M COMING carved into a damp wall, her lips quirking. Nearby, Natalie oiled her glaive, eyes gleaming.
"Told you he'd be trouble," she muttered.
Claire pocketed a shadowmoth, its wings humming with static. "Trouble's what we do best."
Above them, the smog churned—thick, restless, alive.
Three blocks east, a sewer grate clanged shut. Lapen crouched in the filth, clutching a smuggled broadsheet: GALLOWS CORPSE RISES—REVOLT BREATHES AGAIN? His sister's purifier vial felt suddenly heavy around his neck.
"You believe it?" whispered Jyn, a stone pelter five years younger than him.
Lapen traced Devon's name smudged in cheap ink. "Dunno. But my ma used to say ghosts stick around because of unfinished business." He grinned, sharp and brittle. "Then this place would be swarming with ghosts."
Above them, a shadowmoth settled on a dripping pipe, wings beating in time with the distant grind of the Pits.