Devin turned his back on the slaughterhouse. The heavy iron loading doors of the old Ironworks loomed ahead, perfectly framed by the freezing, creeping river fog.
His breathing was finally beginning to slow down. The deafening, euphoric roar of the Cyprian venom was slowly receding, settling back into a low, satisfied hum in the base of his skull. He flexed his blood-soaked fingers, feeling the dark warmth of the Pale Hounds drying against his stolen skin.
Behind him, the cavernous factory floor was completely silent, save for the rhythmic dripping of ruptured alchemical vats and the ragged, terrified gasps of the surviving sub-humans still strapped to their wooden chairs.
Devin didn't stay to free the rest. He wasn't a savior. He wasn't a hero of the slums. He had only come for Kevin, desperate to assuage the crushing guilt of a dead prince who had failed his people. He had delivered his royal justice, and now, he needed to vanish before the city guard caught the scent of the massacre.
He pulled Zain's woven jacket tighter around his broad shoulders and kept walking.
Back at the center of the room, Kevin stood trembling by the bloody surgical chair. The filthy gag hung loosely around his neck. He watched the broad back of his neighbor disappearing into the deep shadows of the exit.
Fear had completely paralyzed the boy. He had just watched the quiet, brooding barista from across the hall brutally dismantle three massive syndicate enforcers with his bare hands. It was a terrifying, unnatural display of violence.
But as the initial adrenaline began to fade, a deep, ingrained slum-kid decency clawed its way up Kevin's throat, completely overriding his survival instincts. Zain Ricky had just slaughtered a room full of monsters to save his life. The barista had risked everything, diving into the underworld of Reignn, just for the son of a drunk landlady.
Kevin couldn't just let him walk away into the dark without a word.
"Wait!" Kevin croaked, his voice raw and bruised from the gag.
Devin didn't stop. He was actively fighting the lingering chemical euphoria, desperate to get out of the building before the monster inside him demanded more blood.
Kevin broke into a run.
His heavy boots slapped loudly against the blood-slicked concrete. He was rushing blindly, reaching his hand out, desperately wanting to grab the sleeve of his savior's jacket before he disappeared into the fog.
"Zain, wait! Thank you—"
Devin didn't hear a grateful boy.
The Cyprian venom didn't register the word 'thanks'.
What the engineered biological weapon registered was the sudden, rapid approach of heavy footsteps from its blind spot. And far worse, it registered the scent.
The intense, undeniable biological signature of the Holy Gene. A sub-human. Prey.
Devin's royal consciousness didn't even have a fraction of a millisecond to process the situation. He didn't have time to look over his shoulder. He didn't have time to realize who was running toward him.
The venom bypassed his brain entirely, violently hijacking his central nervous system.
Devin spun on his heel. The movement was a terrifying, perfect blur of lethal kinetic energy. His right hand, which still gripped the jagged gutting knife he had taken from the guard outside, whipped through the air in a devastating, horizontal arc.
He didn't aim. He didn't think. The monster simply reacted to the scent of the anomaly rushing toward its back.
SCHLICK.
The sharp, wet sound of steel easily parting flesh and cartilage echoed loudly through the vast, empty factory.
Devin froze, his arm fully extended. The sheer momentum of the venom-fueled swing carried a thick, horrific spray of hot crimson across the white tiles of the floor.
The silence that followed was absolute and deafening.
Devin blinked. The heavy, red haze of the venom instantly shattered like fragile glass, violently returning control of the vessel to the prince. His dark, borrowed eyes focused on the figure standing mere inches away from him.
Kevin stood perfectly still.
The young man's eyes were wide open. They were completely devoid of their previous terror, now filled only with a profound, uncomprehending shock. Both of his hands flew up, desperately clutching his throat.
Thick, dark blood pulsed rapidly between Kevin's fingers, spilling heavily over his knuckles and staining the front of his cheap canvas tunic. He tried to speak. He tried to finish his sentence of gratitude. But the only sound that escaped his ruined windpipe was a wet, agonizing, gurgling wheeze.
"No," Devin whispered, his eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated horror.
The jagged gutting knife slipped from Devin's numb fingers, clattering loudly against the stone.
Kevin swayed, his knees violently buckling. He didn't fall backward. He fell forward, collapsing heavily against Devin's broad chest.
Devin caught him instinctively, wrapping his arms around the boy and sliding down to the blood-soaked concrete.
"No, no, no. Kevin. Look at me," Devin pleaded. His raspy voice cracked, entirely shedding the cold, sociopathic apathy of Zain Ricky. He pressed his bare, trembling hands violently against the boy's neck, desperately trying to stem the massive arterial flow.
It was utterly useless.
The Cyprian strike was engineered for absolute, instantaneous lethality. The jagged blade had cleanly severed the carotid artery and entirely crushed the windpipe.
Kevin looked up at Devin from the floor. The boy's pale lips moved, forming a silent, agonizing word, before his amber eyes finally glazed over. They stared blankly up at the rusted metal catwalks above, seeing nothing. The heavy, desperate heaving of his chest completely stopped.
He was dead.
Devin knelt on the factory floor, completely drenched in the hot blood of the boy he had just torn the city apart to save.
He stared down at Kevin's lifeless face. The world began to spin rapidly. A violent, nauseating vertigo pulled aggressively at the fragile edges of his sanity.
I killed him.
The thought wasn't a whisper in the back of his mind; it was a deafening, agonizing roar that threatened to split his skull wide open.
I killed him. I killed Emerald. I am a monster.
Devin threw his head back and let out a raw, agonizing scream that physically tore at his vocal cords. It wasn't the roar of a Cyprian beast. It was the devastating scream of a dead prince realizing that his noble intentions meant absolutely nothing in this stolen body.
The Cyprian venom wasn't a weapon he could master. It wasn't a sharp tool he could wield righteously against Count Sapien.
It was a curse. It was a perfect, biological parasite that completely, undeniably controlled him.
He had walked into the Ironworks to dispense royal justice, to prove to himself that he was fundamentally better than the beasts that had slaughtered his family in Trangdar.
Instead, he had just proved Dr. Langstrum absolutely right.
The venom experiment was a flawless, terrifying success. When triggered by the close proximity and sudden, aggressive movement of a sub-human, the sleeper agent detonated autonomously. The weapon didn't care about the prince's morality. It only cared about blood.
Devin gently laid Kevin's lifeless body onto the cold concrete. His hands were shaking so violently he could barely reach into Zain's woven jacket. He pulled the heavy, brass-plated trail phone from his pocket.
He wiped the thick, slippery blood from his fingers onto his trousers, leaving dark, heavy smears across the fabric. He spun the rune-engraved dial, his vision completely blurring with hot, furious tears.
He didn't dial Fenrys. He couldn't.
He dialed the emergency royal frequency.
xxx-xx-x.
The brass device hummed loudly, vibrating against his bloody palm. He held it to his ear, his breathing ragged and shallow.
Click.
"Devin," Lotjed's raspy, eternally calm voice answered immediately. "Did you compromise the cover?"
Devin stared down at Kevin's glassy, unseeing eyes. The absolute, crushing weight of his monumental failure pressed him down until he felt like he couldn't physically draw breath.
"I need you," Devin choked out, a ragged, pathetic sob tearing entirely through the cold Cyprian exterior. "Lotjed. I need you right now. Please."
The line was silent for a heavy, terrifying second.
Lotjed didn't ask questions. He didn't demand a tactical explanation. He didn't chide his grandson for weakness. He was the Royal Cleaner. He only heard the shattered tone of the boy's voice, and he knew exactly what it meant.
"Where are you?" Lotjed asked. His voice hardened instantly, shifting into absolute, lethal professionalism.
"The old Ironworks. By the river in the slum district," Devin replied. His voice began hollowing out, rapidly becoming a dead, empty whisper. "I made a mistake, Grandfather. I made a terrible, unforgivable mistake."
"Stay put. Do not let anyone else see your face. I am on my way."
The line clicked dead.
Devin lowered the brass phone, letting it slip from his fingers onto the concrete. He sat completely alone in the dark, surrounded by the butchered corpses of the Pale Hounds and the tragic body of an innocent boy.
He pulled his knees tightly to his chest, burying his blood-soaked face deep in his hands.
The Prince of Trangdar was completely, utterly broken. God had demanded entertainment, and Devin had just delivered a masterpiece of tragedy.