A dying city sprawled under the dark sky, the sun obscured by billowing clouds of black smoke. The great river that had once flowed through it was gone, the sediment on its bottom littered with corpses and broken weapons. The proud walls of the city were covered in fractures and deep scars, some sections so battered that they seemed ready to crumble.

The streets of the city were like a vision of hell, or perhaps a scene from a monstrous nightmare. Closer to the wall, countless buildings had burned down, with only their skeletal remains rising from the ash like blackened gravestones. Other areas were still intact, but enveloped by a suffocating atmosphere of fear and desperation.

Here and there, rotting bodies lay on the cobblestones, with no one bothering to gather and burn them anymore. Those people who still clung to life were suffering from hunger, disease, and murderous thirst. Clean water was a rarity, so many resorted to drinking whatever kind they could find, ignoring the risk of sickness and death.

The wails of people dying from the plague had become background noise, with nobody paying them attention anymore.

The bay had become a graveyard of ships, their masts protruding from the waves like twisted branches. By now, it was all but impossible to bypass the complicated maze of shipwrecks to enter the harbor... or leave it.

The soldiers who defended the city were like pale shadows of their former selves. They suffered from the lack of food and drinking water, too. Disease was just as rampant among them as it was among the civilian population.

Most of all, the majority of them had already perished in the endless onslaught of war. There were very few people left in the city who had not been called upon to become soldiers, in fact, but their number was still greatly diminished. All men had long taken up weapons to defend the wall, and when too many of them died, women took their place. Even children were conscripted, gathering arrows from below the walls and helping with menial tasks.

Worst of all... the sole Supreme of the besieged city, the Mason King, was dying. Countless months of clashing with the tyrannical Will of Azarax, the Plague of Steel, had eroded his spirit and worn out his soul. Now, the old man was slowly fading away.

And yet, the city still stood.

Its battered walls were scarred and fractured, but they refused to crumble.

Its people were being consumed by disease and despair, but they had not given up.

The soldiers, who had sacrificed countless lives to defend the city, were not ready to surrender to death yet.

But everything came to an end, sooner or later.

Looking at the nightmarish vista of the dying city, Effie knew that their days were numbered.

There was simply a limit to what people could do, no matter how deep the well of their resolve was. The city had been besieged for so long... how long had it been, actually?

She frowned, trying to remember.

‘Two years? No, not yet. But only a few months shy.'

Almost two years had passed since she and her companions had entered the Nightmare — a little less since the Steel Horde established an encirclement around the city. There had been countless assaults, myriad battles, countless losses. Being able to halt the unstoppable expansion of Azarax's bloody empire for so long was a miraculous feat, but did it matter in the end?

The city was still going to fall. Its people were still going to be slaughtered. No matter how long they had managed to hold out, their valiant defiance was still going to end up being nothing but a short line in the glorious chronicle of the King of Kings... a paragraph, at best, no different from all his previous conquests.

Worst of all, time did not stay still while they were fighting for their lives in the Nightmare. The same number of months had passed in the real world, as well.

Effie's expression darkened.

Somewhere out there... by now, the world was probably ending. The Dream Realm was devouring the last refuge of mankind. Humanity was besieged on all sides. Sunny and Nephis were desperately trying to stem the endless tide of abominations, and Cassie was probably even busier than them.

Two years...

Her son had not seen her for that long. He was about to turn nine, meeting another birthday without his mother. Was he alright? Was he well?

What about his father?

She sighed heavily.

They probably missed her just as much as she missed them. Were they counting days, both hoping to hear news about her and feeling their hearts sink every time someone knocked on the door?

‘Two years, damn it.'

Effie had known that the Fourth Nightmare might take them a long time to conquer. But she had not expected it to take years, with no end in sight.

No, actually, the end was already near... it was just not the kind of end they wanted. The Mason was dying. The old man was still keeping Azarax at bay despite his broken spirit, but the spark of his life was growing feebler with each day. Once he was gone, no amount of valor would prevent the Plague of Steel from conquering the city — Effie and her companions would not be able to stop him, either.

She gazed at the nightmarish vista of the city one more time and then looked down at her calloused hand.

In the dim torchlight, her hand was trembling uncontrollably.

Effie stared at it for a while, and then slowly made a fist, willing it to settle. Finally, the tremors subsided.

She inhaled deeply.

‘The end... let's end it, then. Little Ling's birthday is in December — I should wrap up everything quickly and return just in time to light the candles on his birthday cake.’

Effie smiled wistfully.

‘Ah, cake... I haven't had cake in a while...'

With that, she turned around and descended the wall of the Stone Castle.

In the next few days, she was going to break the Steel Horde's back, win the war, and write the final line in the chronicle of the great and horrible Azarax, the King of Kings.

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