The night air over Redwave City felt like a chokehold, thick with the scent of ozone and the metallic tang of blood. Corvin sprinted toward the Southern Mansion, his lungs burning with a mechanical wheeze that sounded like grinding rusted gears. Every step was an agony of clicking pistons and straining, artificial flesh. His puppet-body was failing, the bandages that held his false skin together unraveling in the wind.

  How did they find it? he roared internally, his panic rising like a tide. The Unwoven... they’ve stripped me bare. They’ve taken my true self.

  As he reached the manor’s rusted iron gates, a shadow detached itself from the stone pillars. It was cold, absolute, and radiated a malice so thick it felt like walking into deep water. Corvin skidded to a halt, his feet sparking against the cobblestones.

  "What’s the hurry, Corvin?" the voice was smooth, oily, and dripping with a mock-sympathy that made Corvin's skin crawl.

  "Leto," Corvin hissed. He stood hunched, his bandaged frame leaking black hydraulic fluid. "Why did you send that creature to the mansion? Why are you hunting my real body? That wasn't our deal!"

  Leto stepped into the dim, jaundiced light of a flickering streetlamp. He looked bored, fastidiously picking at a fingernail with a silver file. "Deal? Corvin, you speak of deals like a merchant. I am a god of the Crimson 10. We don't make deals; we grant permissions."

  Leto looked up, his eyes dark and empty. "I told you to be a beacon of chaos—a roaring fire in this dull city to mask my movements. Instead, you played house with those faceless clowns. You let the Unwoven move right under your nose while you sipped tea in the shadows."

  "They caused more chaos in one night than I could in a year!" Corvin retorted, his voice cracking with desperate rage. "I let you use me! I endured your 'experiments' because I needed your support to stay alive in this rotting city. Are you really going to discard me like this? After everything I’ve sacrificed for your ambition?"

  Leto let out a sharp, jagged laugh that sounded like glass breaking. "Discard you? Corvin, you were never a treasure to be kept. You were a tool that grew dull. You did what you wanted to do, and I merely tolerated your presence for the chaos I thought you could provide. Unfortunately, you didn't deliver. You’re a wasted effort. A failed investment."

  Corvin’s eyes darted toward the mansion, then back to the monster in front of him. "So... Joan is your new pet? That’s who you’ve replaced me with? A common mercenary?"

  "A pet?" Leto smiled, and for a second, his face seemed to stretch too wide, his jaw unhinging slightly. "No. I’ve gifted her my blessing. It’s a joke, really—how much more 'useful' she is than a decaying, sentimental noble like you."

  Corvin felt the last of his hope wither. He looked down at his bandaged, mechanical hands. He was a ghost in a shell, and his real body—the source of his noble Blood-Rending—was in the hands of the Unwoven.

  "Then let's see how much you enjoy the chaos I can cause right now!" Corvin roared, launching his puppet-form forward in a suicidal, high-speed charge.

  Leto didn't even flinch. He didn't even raise a hand.

  From the shadows behind Leto, the air began to warp and tear like wet fabric. Ghastly, demonic maws—dozens of them, wet with black bile and lined with rows of needle-teeth—burst forth from Leto’s back. They weren't part of his body; they were a manifestation of his hunger.

  At that moment, Medina—Corvin's last loyal soldier—leaped from a nearby roof to assist. She was a blur of motion, aiming a devastating slam attack at Leto’s head. But the mouths were faster. They intercepted her in mid-air. The sound was sickening—a wet, crunching noise as the mouths didn't feed, but simply tore.

  Corvin watched in frozen horror as his last ally was shredded limb from limb, her screams silenced by the wet grinding of Leto’s "Blessing."

  "I rest my faith in you now, Joan," Leto whispered, turning away as his mouths began to snap at Corvin’s failing frame, tearing chunks of metal and flesh away with every bite.

  Across the city, in the slums where the demon-vessels had fallen, the woman once known as Joan discarded her headgear. Her face was no longer human; it was a cluster of hungry, pulsating orifices that smelled of rot. A psychic command echoed in her skull, a voice that sounded like Leto’s, drowning out her soul: FEED.

  Her body began to transform. It was a slow, agonizing process. Her bones snapped and elongated, her spine cracking as it grew twenty feet long. Her bionic limbs fell away, discarded like trash, replaced by twitching, multi-jointed bone-protrusions.

  She became a serpent of mouths, a reptile of pure hunger. She slithered through the streets, her skin a mosaic of scales and human eyes. She began to swallow the fallen demon-vessels whole, her throat expanding to accommodate their grotesque forms. She grew with every gulp, her form becoming a serpentine abomination that towered over the buildings. The Red Empire's local garrison, usually so disciplined, broke ranks and fled in a blind, screaming panic as the Serpent of Redwave let out a roar that sounded like a thousand starving beasts.

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  Deep in the heart of the Abyss Prison, the "Code Red" sirens were a rhythmic scream that shook the dust from the ceiling. In the monitoring room, Terence stared at the data. The energy signature of the prisoner known as "Locks" was mutating, shifting from a human frequency to something ancient and predatory.

  "It was a swap," Terence whispered, his blood turning to ice. "The real Master was right under our noses the whole time. He let us capture him. He used us to get inside." He grabbed his radio. "Captain Reno, get out of—"

  BOOM.

  A concentrated blast of pressurized air shattered the reinforced, blast-proof glass of the observation deck. Terence was thrown across the room like a ragdoll. He managed to manifest his Blue Ego Katana mid-air, slicing the pressure wave to mitigate the shock, but the power was overwhelming. As he drifted into unconsciousness, he saw a silhouette with blue hair hovering in the sky outside the prison, looking down with a cold, indifferent gaze.

  They outplayed me... Terence thought as the darkness claimed him.

  Down in Cell Block 4, the illusion was finally rotting away. The woman known as "Locks" sat on the edge of the cot. Then, a low, rhythmic hum began to vibrate through the floor—the sound of a heart beating with more power than a human chest should hold. A faint, violet mist began to leak from her skin.

  CRACK.

  The reinforced walls of the cell spider-webbed as the aura expanded. The "Locks" disguise peeled away like burnt paper. Standing in the center of the ruined cell was Emmet—the real Mr. Craft.

  He was a masterpiece of Unwoven biology. His physique was slim but corded with lean, obsidian-like muscle that pulsed with violet veins. He stood tall, his black hair tied back in a sharp knot, revealing a face that was terrifyingly calm. His eyes didn't just glow; they burned with a steady, pulsating violet flame that left faint streaks of light in the air whenever he moved.

  "The seal is broken," Emmet whispered.

  He reached into the empty air, fracturing space. From the rift, he pulled Behemoth. The weapon had evolved; it was now a heavy, tactical glaive-club that hummed with a low, hungry vibration, glowing with the harvested energy of an entire city.

  He became a streak of blue-purple light. He didn't just walk; he blurred through the corridors. Guards who stood in his way didn't see him move—they only saw the violet trail he left behind as their armor shattered and they were thrown against the walls.

  Emmet reached the containment gates. With a fluid swing of Behemoth, he shattered the seals. "Wake up," he commanded. He wasn't just killing; he was releasing the crop. He let the demons out of their cells, watching them scramble in terror.

  "Run," he told them, a dark smile playing on his lips. "Run so the harvest is worth the effort."

  Then, he began to hunt. He moved among the demons like a reaper, catching them by their throats and draining their essence. The purple glow in his hands intensified with every kill, his body absorbing the Rend energy until he felt like he could tear the prison in half with his bare hands.

  Skull carved a path of ruin through the prison’s main artery. Metallic blast doors, three feet thick, were sliced as if they were wet parchment. Finally, he reached the central plaza, his bone-armor dripping with the gore of a hundred guards.

  Waiting for him was Captain Reno.

  Reno discarded his white coat, revealing a physique coiled like a black snake. His two daggers began to pulse with a terrifying Orange Ego. His skin turned obsidian, his eyes a predatory red.

  "What took you so long?" Skull growled, his jagged broadsword of marrow scraping against the floor.

  "I’ve missed this," Reno said, crossing his orange daggers. "The quiet life is for the dead. Please... don't disappoint me, little skeleton. I want to feel my heart race again."

  The Fight:

  The air between them ignited. When they met, the shockwave shattered every window in the plaza. Reno was a shadow, moving with a speed that defied the human eye. He appeared behind Skull, his orange daggers carving lines of fire across the bone-armor.

  Skull roared, slamming his blade into the ground. A forest of jagged bone-spikes erupted from the floor, forcing Reno to leap into the air. Reno flipped gracefully, his daggers humming. "Is that all?"

  Skull didn't answer. He adjusted his grip, the purple light in his eyes flaring as he tapped into Mr. Craft’s buffed Rend power. He swung the broadsword in a massive horizontal arc. The weight of the strike was so great it created a vacuum, pulling Reno toward the blade.

  Reno smirked, his Orange Ego daggers glowing brighter. He met the massive bone-blade with his two small daggers. The collision sent a shockwave that cracked the foundation of the Abyss.

  "Round two, Skull!" Reno laughed, his eerie smile widening as he began a flurry of stabs that looked like a wall of orange light.

  "The last round you'll ever have!" Skull roared, his Divine Warrior aura exploding in a pillar of crimson fire that met the orange light head-on.

  The two monsters disappeared into a whirlwind of violence, the fate of the Abyss hanging on every strike.

  High above the screaming streets, perched atop the jagged spire of the Central Clocktower, Leto stood against the crimson-stained sky. Below him, Redwave City was no longer a metropolis; it was a stage. The monstrous form of Joan, now a colossal serpent of gnashing teeth and endless hunger, tore through the skyline. With every flick of her massive, multi-jointed tail, skyscrapers groaned and collapsed into piles of glass and dust.

  The military had arrived in force—battalions of soldiers in interlocking formations, heavy cannons booming in rhythmic thunder, and elite hunters darting through the smoke with their blades drawn. But they were ants beneath the heel of an abomination. Joan didn't just fight them; she obliterated them. A single sweep of her bionic-turned-demonic limb reduced an entire armored division to scrap and bone.

  Leto watched it all with a wide, manic grin, his arms outstretched like a conductor leading a grand, macabre orchestra. As the sounds of explosions, the shattering of concrete, and the high-pitched screams of the dying rose into the air, he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

  "Oh, listen to that!" he whispered, his fingers twitching in time with a distant blast. "The percussion of the cannons... the soprano of the dying... it’s music! Pure, unfiltered music!"

  He began to laugh, a jagged, hollow sound that echoed over the burning city. "More! Give me more! Devour it all, Joan! You are the greatest instrument I’ve ever tuned! Hahahaha!"

  As the city burned and the Abyss shook beneath the weight of monsters, the symphony of Redwave’s destruction had only just begun.