They knew something was wrong before Rose woke up screaming.
The Snow team had learned the difference between chaos and intention. Chaos left mess. Intention left precision.
This was precision.
The door to their Tidehaven residence wasn't shattered. It had been opened correctly. No alarms screamed. No walls were breached. The water outside flowed serenely, fish gliding past the glass like nothing in the world had shifted.
Rose lay on the floor, blood dried dark against her temple, vines brittle and brown along her arms.
"Rose," Luna cried, scrambling down from Victor's shoulders.
Voss was already kneeling, fingers hovering just above Rose's skin, careful not to startle her magic.
His expression was unreadable. That was never a good sign.
Victor didn't move.
He stood in the center of the room, hands relaxed at his sides, eyes sweeping once, twice, three times. Not searching. Recording.
Entry point. Timing. Absence.
Felicity.
Rose jerked awake with a broken sound halfway between a sob and a snarl. "They took her," she gasped. "They waited. I tried"
Victor's aura flickered.
Not fire. Not ice.
Void.
Voss looked up. "Victor."
"I know," Victor said softly.
The word softly terrified everyone.
They moved fast after that.
Voss pulled Tidehaven logs through hacked channels. Access codes. Patrol routes. Old architecture schematics that.
Pia had never bothered to change because no one had ever dared.
"They knew we were leaving," Voss said. "This wasn't opportunistic."
Rose's fists shook. "She trusted this place."
Luna clutched Frost's sleeve, eyes wet. "We were going to bring her shinies."
Victor turned toward the exit.
"We're not bringing her shinies," he said. The water outside stilled.
"We're bringing hell."
Voss dismantled Pia without ever touching her pale, manicured fingers.
He didn't need to. He cut supply routes first merchant ships mysteriously redirected, caravans ambushed.
Then communications messengers vanishing, signal towers disabled.
Then favors whispers in the right ears, promises of greater rewards.
Every mercenary captain she'd leaned on found their contracts voided or their debts called in overnight, their coffers emptied and their men deserting.
Every secret she'd buried surfaced at once, neatly packaged in sealed scrolls and delivered to the right hands.
Pia woke up to a city of hollow echoes that no longer answered her desperate commands.
When Victor walked into the command hall, Tidehaven felt it a pressure change that made ears pop and lungs strain.
Fire kissed the saltwater and didn't go out, blue white flames dancing across the surface like vengeful spirits.
Ice crawled through iridescent coralstone, splitting structures along stress lines Voss had mapped days earlier, the cracks spreading like lightning across the sky. Shields failed in cascading waves of shattered magic.
Mercenary teams broke formation as Snow team tore through streets that had once been safe, leaving nothing but broken weapons and broken men.
"This is your heaven?" Tommy laughed breathlessly, crimson blood stark against his tan cheek, his water-blades slicing through three guards at once. "Kinda sucks. Felicity would've hated the décor."
Ash moved like a shadow between buildings, his claws dripping red. "She would have found something to love here," he murmured, eyes scanning constantly for threats to eliminate before they became dangers.
They fought with intent.
Not rage.
Not panic.
Purpose.
Tidehaven's soldiers hesitated when they recognized the infamous faces of Snow team. That single heartbeat of recognition was their mistake.
Victor never raised his voice. He never roared. He walked through resistance like gravity had chosen him personally, the air around him shimmering with heat and cold.
Anyone who stood between him and Pia ceased to exist inside his space, bodies falling like puppets with cut strings.
"She saw beauty in everything," Victor said to a dying guard, voice gentle as he stepped over the body. "Even in this cesspool."
Pia met him with her trident raised, fury sharp enough to cut glass, her knuckles white around the weapon. "You would doom this city for one woman?"
Victor stopped three paces away, frost forming at his feet.
"Yes."
Voss stepped from the shadows behind her, calculations complete. "And you doomed it yourself when you took what was ours." His eyes were distant, already seeing the next ten moves. "She would have forgiven you. We won't."
Pia never saw the blade that slipped between her ribs. She fell without ceremony, crown clattering against stone.
Above them, Tidehaven burned in methodical sections. Its sanctuaries flooded with deliberate precision. Its markets collapsed under strategic pressure.
Its soldiers scattered like leaves in a hurricane. The city that had once watched Felicity with hunger learned what it felt like to be prey.
Not one of them spoke her name aloud as they surveyed their handiwork.
They didn't need to. She was in every calculated strike, every mercy withheld.
Tidehaven thought the worst had already passed. The fires were dying. The water still burned in places, steam curling like ghosts over shattered coralstone. Survivors crawled from hiding, shaking, bleeding, already beginning the lie they would tell themselves later.
That it was over. Victor stood at the edge of the causeway, Snow team gathered behind him. The city groaned beneath them, wounded but breathing. "Move out," Voss said quietly. "Trail's still warm." They turned to leave. That was when the ground began to shake. Not from collapse. From movement.
A low, wet sound rolled in from the outer districts, a chorus of dragging limbs and broken throats. Screams followed, sharp and brief, cut off one by one as figures burst from alleyways and shattered tunnels.
Zombies. Hundreds. No. Thousands.
They poured toward the gates in a heaving mass, bodies stitched together by rot and hunger, eyes burning with borrowed rage.
At their head walked Sarge.
Blood soaked his armor. His grin was feral.
Behind him, chained, herded, driven forward by calculated cruelty, was a horde.
"I figured," Sarge called up, voice echoing through the broken city, "you wouldn't want anyone chasing us."
The gates of Tidehaven slammed shut.
Too late.
The horde hit like a tidal wave. Guards screamed. Civilians ran. Mercenaries tried to regroup and were swallowed whole. The undead climbed over walls, dragged defenders down into the water, filled streets already cracked by Victor's passing.
Snow Team didn't look back. They walked away as Tidehaven drowned in its own sins.
Rose paused once, vines curling tightly around her arm, eyes hard. "She trusted this place."
Victor didn't slow. "She trusted us."
Behind them, Tidehaven became a feeding ground. No ships escaped. No messengers fled. No one followed. By the time the screams faded into wet, distant silence, the city that had called itself heaven was nothing but a grave filled with teeth. Snow Team disappeared into the ashlands. And the world learned its final lesson.
No one escapes Snow Team.