The land was flat. A vast, scrub-choked plain under a sky the color of bruised flesh. The wind didn't blow here; it pushed, a constant, gritty pressure that carried the scent of dust and decay. In the center of this nothingness stood a human camp. It wasn't a community. It was a fortress, a desperate scar on the earth, built from the husks of rusted shipping containers and scavenged sheet metal. Walls of welded debris rose ten feet high, topped with jagged spirals of rebar and frayed wire.
Wolfen saw it from a mile away. A dark smudge of human fear against the tan desolation. He had been walking for days, a lone figure in a landscape of ghosts, the weight of the standard-issue rifle a pathetic, hollow sensation against his back. It was a child's toy compared to the thunder he usually carried in his hands.
As he drew closer, details resolved. Figures moved on the walls. The glint of a binocular lens. And then, he saw it.
A body.
It was strung up on the main gate, a grotesque banner announcing the camp's new allegiance. The arms were pulled taut, bound at the wrists to a crossbeam, the weight of the corpse causing the shoulders to bow at an unnatural, sickening angle. The head was slumped forward, chin to chest.
But Wolfen didn't need to see the face.
He knew the build. The set of the shoulders, even in death. He knew the faded, bloodstained fatigues. And he knew the hair, matted and dark with dried gore.
It was Leo.
Wolfen stopped. The world did not narrow. It did not fade. It became hyper-real, every detail etched in acid. The grain of the dust under his boots. The individual rust-scabs on the container walls. The lazy, circling flight of a single carrion bird a thousand feet up.
I had expected something like this, he thought, the words cold and clean in his mind. A logical probability. Leo, captured by hybrids, handed over to collaborating humans. A public execution to break the spirit of the Resistance. It was all… predictable.
Then the second thought, a silent, internal correction that felt like a bone snapping. But no. I can't be.
Because seeing it was different. The abstract of a tactical loss was one thing. The reality of Leo's body, a broken doll hanging in the wind, was another. The boy who had tried so hard. The son who had just wanted his father to see him. The friend who had stayed, even when it was stupid to stay.
His gaze drifted downward, to the foot of the wall. There, lying in the dust as if discarded as trash, was Leo's bat. The metal bat he had dragged through hell and back, the one Wolfen had reforged in secret, layering it with Umbralite until it was a shaft of condensed, light-devouring darkness, heavy enough to crack tank armor. It was a masterpiece. A brother to the slab he'd made them punch for a decade. And they had thrown it in the dirt.
A group of five humans stood near the gate, laughing. They were rough-looking, their faces hard with the casual cruelty of those who have traded their humanity for survival. They were talking to someone just inside the gate, a figure hidden in the shadows of the wall. The figure took a step forward.
It was a hybrid. Not one of the feral, mindless things. This one was sleek, purposeful. Its skin had a grey, chitinous sheen, and one of its arms ended not in a hand, but in a single, wickedly curved blade of bone that caught the dull light. It moved with a predator's grace, conversing with the humans as if they were useful pets. It was the Warden's work. The Hybrid Queen's influence.
The hybrid finished its conversation, gave a final, dismissive nod to the humans, and turned, melting back into the darkness of the camp.
The moment the hybrid was gone, Wolfen began to walk.
He did not run. He did not scream. He walked with the slow, inevitable momentum of a glacier. The humans by the gate noticed him. One pointed. Another unslung his rifle. Their laughter died, replaced by wary shouts.
Wolfen ignored them. His eyes were locked on the bat.
He reached it. He stopped. He looked down at the weapon lying in the dust. He knelt, his movements fluid and unhurried. His fingers closed around the grip. It was cold. It was familiar. It was right.
He stood, hefting the Umbralite bat. The weight was immense, a comfort. It felt like coming home.
The lead human, a man with a scarred face and a missing ear, took a step forward, his rifle now aimed at Wolfen's chest. "Hey! You! Drop that and identify yourself!"
Wolfen's head turned. His pale eyes, devoid of any emotion, fixed on the man. He saw the pores on his skin, the tremor in his trigger finger, the cheap, poorly maintained bolt on his rifle.
"That's my friend," Wolfen said, his voice quiet, yet it carried perfectly in the still air. He gestured with the bat towards Leo's body.
The man spat. "He's a lesson. Now drop the—"
Wolfen moved.
It wasn't a blur of speed. He no longer had that. This was something else. It was pure, distilled economy of motion. He took one step forward, the Umbralite bat swinging in a short, brutal arc.
It connected with the man's knee.
The sound was not a crack. It was a wet, explosive pop, like a overripe fruit being stomped. The man's leg bent backwards at a grotesque angle, the joint utterly obliterated. He didn't even have time to scream before the backswing of the bat caught him in the ribs. The impact was a dull, percussive thump. His torso visibly compressed, his sternum and ribs shattering inward, driven into his heart and lungs. He was dead before he hit the ground, his body folding into an impossible shape.
The other four humans stared, frozen for a critical second by the sudden, horrifying violence.
That second was all Wolfen needed.
He turned to the next man, who was fumbling to raise his own weapon. Wolfen didn't swing the bat. He thrust it forward like a spear, the solid, blunt end punching into the man's throat. The man's Adam's apple disintegrated. He dropped his rifle, his hands flying to his neck as he made a wet, gurgling sound, his eyes bulging in panic. Wolfen yanked the bat back and, in the same motion, brought it down in a vertical chop onto the man's skull. The head split open like a melon, bone and brain matter spraying out in a dark pink mist.
The third man had his rifle up. He fired. The shot went wide, the crack of the gunshot startlingly loud. Wolfen was already on him. He ducked under the barrel and drove the end of the bat into the man's stomach. The air left his lungs in a whoosh. He doubled over, and Wolfen brought his knee up, smashing it into the man's face. There was a crunch of cartilage and bone. As the man reeled back, blinded and choking on his own blood, Wolfen swung the bat in a horizontal sweep. It connected with the side of the man's head. His neck snapped with an audible crack, his body spinning once before collapsing in a heap.
The fourth man was backing away, screaming now, firing his rifle wildly. One bullet grazed Wolfen's arm, a hot line of pain. It was irrelevant. Wolfen closed the distance, ignoring the shots. He grabbed the man's rifle barrel, forcing it upward. The man stared into Wolfen's empty eyes, his own filled with terror. Wolfen headbutted him, a sharp, vicious movement. The man's nose broke with a sickening squelch. As he stumbled back, Wolfen swung the bat low, shattering both of his kneecaps. The man fell, shrieking. Wolfen ended the sound by stomping on his head. Once. Twice. The third stomp was followed by a wet, crunching squelch. The screaming stopped.
The fifth and final man had turned to run. He didn't get ten feet. Wolfen took two long strides and threw the Umbralite bat. It wasn't a throw meant to disarm or disable. It was a missile. The weighted, dark metal shaft spun through the air and struck the man square in the back. The force was catastrophic. His spine shattered, the vertebrae disintegrating under the impact. He was lifted off his feet and thrown forward, landing face-down, his body broken and paralyzed. He was still alive, twitching. Wolfen walked over, retrieved his bat, and with a final, contemptuous swing, crushed the back of his skull.
Silence returned to the plain, broken only by the moaning wind and the faint, wet dripping from the end of the Umbralite bat.
Wolfen stood amidst the five ruined bodies, his chest rising and falling steadily. He looked up at the walls. Alarms were finally sounding. Shouts echoed from within. They had seen. They knew.
He walked to the main gate. It was a heavy thing of welded steel. He didn't try to open it. He simply began to hit it with the bat.
THOOM. The sound was a deep, resonant gong that shook the very walls.
THOOM.A massive dent appeared in the center of the gate.
THOOM.The welds at the hinges began to scream, shedding sparks.
On the third impact, the entire gate tore free from its moorings, flying inward with a shriek of tortured metal. It landed with a crash that shook the ground.
Wolfen stepped through the smoke and dust into the heart of the camp.
What followed was not a battle. It was a reaping.
He moved through the narrow alleys between the containers, a specter of absolute violence. The Umbralite bat was an extension of his will, a tool of pure demolition. He did not discriminate. Any human who raised a weapon died. Any who ran died. Any who cowered in a corner died. They were all complicit. They had hung Leo on their wall. They had thrown his bat in the dirt. They had chosen their side.
A man fired a shotgun at him from a doorway. The buckshot peppered Wolfen's chest and arm, a constellation of searing pain. Wolfen didn't flinch. He strode forward, bathed the man's face in, and brought the bat down. The doorway was painted red.
Two men tried to rush him with machetes. He broke the first one's arm, the bone snapping with a dry crack, then reversed his grip and drove the pommel of the bat into the second's throat, crushing his windpipe. He left them both choking and writhing on the ground, finishing them with precise, brutal stomps.
He found a group of six, hiding behind a makeshift barricade of crates. They were praying. He dismantled the barricade with a single swing, sending splintered wood flying. Then he dismantled them. He shattered limbs, caved in chests, pulped heads. The bat rose and fell with a terrible, rhythmic finality. When he was done, the barricade was gone, replaced by a tangled, bloody ruin of what had once been human beings.
He was a machine. A perfect, efficient engine of death. Every movement was calculated to cause maximum damage with minimal effort. A swing to break a knee, a thrust to collapse a ribcage, a short, sharp chop to shatter a collar bone. He was painting the camp in a new color, the color of vengeance and a grief so deep it had become a physical force.
He cleared the outer courtyard. He cleared the mess hall, where a few had been eating, their last meal now mingling with their own blood on the floor. He cleared the sleeping quarters, where he found a man hiding under a bunk. He didn't even look at him as he swung the bat low, shearing the man's legs off at the shins. The screaming was short-lived.
Finally, he reached the central command container. The door was reinforced steel. He kicked it. The lock shattered, the door flying off its hinges and into the room beyond.
Inside, the camp's leader and his two remaining lieutenants were waiting. They had the hybrid with them, the one with the bone-blade arm. It hissed, its bladed arm raised.
The leader, a fat man with a pistol, fired. The bullet went wide, shattering a monitor. "You're a monster!" he screamed, his voice shrill with terror.
Wolfen's eyes, cold and empty, met his. "I am the consequence."
He threw the bat.
It spun through the air and struck the hybrid square in its chitinous chest. The impact was immense. The creature was thrown backward, its torso caving in, black ichor spraying from its mouth as it slammed into the wall and slid down, dead.
Before the bat even clattered to the floor, Wolfen was moving. He crossed the room in three strides. He grabbed the leader's pistol hand and twisted. The bones in the man's wrist snapped like dry twigs. He screamed. Wolfen took the pistol from his limp grip, turned it, and fired a single shot into the forehead of one lieutenant. He then swung the pistol, cracking the other lieutenant across the temple, stunning him.
He turned his attention back to the leader, who was on his knees, clutching his ruined wrist.
"Please…" the man begged, snot and tears streaming down his face. "We were just following orders… the hybrid… it made us…"
Wolfen looked down at him, his expression one of profound boredom. "You hung my friend on a wall."
He didn't use the gun. He dropped it. He picked up his Umbralite bat from where it lay next to the dead hybrid. He looked at the leader, then at the stunned lieutenant.
He spent the next five minutes with them.
He did not grant them the mercy of a quick death. He broke them. Systematically. He shattered every major bone in their bodies, starting with the limbs and working inward. The sounds were not screams anymore; they were raw, animalistic noises of pure agony. When he was finished, they were still alive, two heaping, broken piles of meat, their bodies unrecognizable as human, their minds shattered by pain.
He stood over them, the bat dripping. He was covered in blood from head to toe, a crimson statue in the dim light.
He walked out of the command container and back into the central yard. The camp was silent. The only sounds were the crackle of a few small fires and the moan of the wind through the broken gate. There was no one left to kill.
He walked back to the main gate. He looked up at Leo's body.
He climbed the makeshift battlements, his movements slow, deliberate. He stood before his friend. He reached out and, with a gentleness that was horrifying in contrast to the carnage he had just wrought, he cut the bonds holding Leo's wrists.
He caught the body as it fell, cradling it in his arms. He climbed back down and laid Leo gently on the ground. He closed the sightless eyes. He straightened the torn clothing as best he could.
Then, he picked up Leo's bat. He walked over to the camp's main water tank, a large, rusted cylinder. He swung the bat. Once. Twice. A third time. The metal tore, and water began to gush out, washing over the dusty ground, mingling with the blood.
Wolfen stood under the flow, letting the water clean the gore from his body and the bat. When he was done, he was pale and clean, the water pooling around his boots in a pink-tinged puddle.
He slung the rifle back over his shoulder. He hefted the clean, dark Umbralite bat. Then, he bent down and, with immense care, lifted Leo's body. He settled it over his shoulder.
And without a backwards glance at the charnel house he had created, Wolfen Welfric, the bringer of balance, walked out of the silent camp and back into the vast, empty plain, carrying the only thing that had ever truly mattered.