The Unmaker

Apocia didn't remember falling backwards. There was only the sickening lurch in her stomach as her legs snapped, rain suddenly pouring sideways as if the sky itself had tilted.

Now she lay still, sprawled in the muck of a floating web island torn free from the tangle of the sky. Her legs, broken and numb, twitched as she tried to rise. Thunder rolled over the skyfaring islands. Bone-deep cracks echoed through the wailing storm around her. The sky was a mess of dark veins and sickle-light flashes, and the ground—if there even was a ground—was too far below for her to see through the mist.

She knew nothing in this place made sense. The wind rushed upward instead of down. Islands of shredded web floated where earth should be. It was why the seven of them had chosen to ambush the warband here rather than on the surface.

And that ambush didn't go well, to say the least.

She blinked the blood out of her eyes and sat up with a pained heave, just enough to spot her sisters scattered around her. Thracia was closest, motionless but breathing. Galna, still on one knee, hissing through gritted mandibles. Mava, the eldest with only two arms left, curled around the rest of her younger sisters in a defensive ball.

This wasn't how it was supposed to end.

A roar of a billion screaming bugs surged beneath the clouds, and Apocia's blood chilled. Below, just barely visible through the lightning-washed fog, an ocean of black-chitin bugs chanted in unison.

"Death to the Unsworn!" they screamed.

"Death to the Throneless, usurpers of the one true king!"

Apocia dug her fingers into the ground of flimsy webs, her entire body shaking. The chant pounded through her broken carapace and rang in her skull.

Another thunderclap split the air. The cold, swirly, storm-choked mist parted in front of all seven of them—and then the necromancer walked out.

She was a black ant, four arms and two legs, antennae twitching as if tasting the storm. But it wasn't her figure that filled Apocia with dread. It was the countless, crawling ants moving over her body like living robes. It was the swarm of black, writhing mandibles and twitching legs clinging to her frame, following her like a tide, that whispered promises of cruel suffocation and prolonged death.

The black ant tilted her head as she meandered towards the seven of them, her eyes flickering white and black.

I've got them here with me," the ant said calmly. "Does he want them dead?"

Apocia's limbs went stiff.

They'd made a mistake after all.

They'd heard about the 'warband'. Everyone had. Rumours, mostly—broken stories from slaughtered nests. It was supposed to be a new coalition of bugs marching across fronts that were once separate, ravaging old lands and slaughtering every continental god in their way. But nobody believed it. Certainly not the seven of them. Spiders were spiders, and ants were ants. Tribes don't mix and work together.

But the seven of them had been reckless. They'd thought they could finally go straight for the warband and test the stories for themselves, but they hadn't expected to be crushed underfoot before the ambush could even really begin.

The black ant raised one of her hands, and Apocia's heart stopped. Her claw hovered just inches from Thracia's unconscious face.

Without thinking, Apocia moved. So did Galna. And Mava. All of them. Every unbroken sister lunged forward with a guttural snarl, ready to protect their youngest even if it meant dying for her.

But before any of them could reach her, a voice rolled through the mist.

Deeper than thunder.

Heavier than the ground itself.

"Stand down, Regalia."

The ant lady froze. Then, immediately, she pulled her claw away and stepped back.

She didn't question the order.

Apocia's breath caught as the fog ahead of them began to shift again.

Five more figures emerged, their forms too distinct to belong to any one tribe. A crab man lumbered forward, dragging a spiral shell soaked in seafoam behind him. A boy wrapped in mosquito wings and green mist hovered nearby, barely breathing. A giant horned beetle like a walking cliff moved next, eyes like cold glass. A moth woman in silks followed, draped in crystal charms and clinking bone talismans. The final firefly man trailed behind, his chitin streaked in crimson and his eyes crackling with fire.

The Myrmarch Tribe. The Drowntide Tribe. The Plagueveil Tribe. The Winterlord Tribe. The Calamity Tribe. The Cinderborne Tribe. Apocia knew all six warlords by their names.

And all six of them knelt in front of her. Three to the left, three to the right.

Because through the parted mist, the final bug approached down the centre.

He didn't walk like the others.

Apocia trembled.

She couldn't stop it. Her limbs wouldn't obey. Her vision was a smeared blur, as if the world itself were trying to spare her the sight. And yet she saw him approach. Not a man. Not a god. There was no single shape she could place him in, no name to file him under in the catalogue of horrors of bugs they'd spent lifetimes fighting.

He wasn't a spider. He wasn't a beetle. He wasn't anything.

He was everything.

Spider limbs arched from his sides. Dragonfly wings hung folded down his back, twitching in the wind. Cerci, long and jagged, trailed behind him like the tail of some abyssal predator. His carapace shimmered with layers of alien chitin: wavy, curled, cracked, and barbed. Some of it looked burnt. Some were frozen. Some were alive. Four antennae rose like black reeds from his head, twitching slightly. Eight eyes blinked out of rhythm. And those eyes—Apocia felt it in her chest like a weight, an impossible truth sinking through her ribs.

The tomb of bugs was the king of bugs—a body built from stolen lives—and when he spoke, the sky listened.

"Stand."

The six great warlords straightened like hounds on command, obeying without hesitation, and the monstrous bug came to a stop directly in front of Apocia.

The world fell still. The storm above quieted, just enough for the thunder to crack once more, louder than anything she'd ever heard.

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Apocia looked up, her mandibles tight with pain. This was how it would end. No defiance. No glory. No escape. After decades of running and hunting and preying and being preyed on, this would be their end. Crushed like every other wild thing. Torn apart and made into trophies.

She clenched her jaw until she tasted ichor. She wanted to scream that it was unfair. That the world was broken. That nothing had ever been kind to them.

But her voice wouldn't come.

A tear slid from her swollen eye.

She wasn't ready for death.

And so he extended a hand.

Not a claw. Not a weapon. Just a hand with five black-chitin fingers, calloused and outstretched.

The air left her lungs.

Her sisters froze as well. No one moved. No one breathed.

He gave them a soft, curious smile.

"... You gave us a good fight," he said plainly. "You've all been a nuisance on this continent, haven't you? Disrupting my armies. Stirring up dead nests. Has anyone ever told you you're all a real thorn in a king's side?"

Then he chuckled quietly. The sound wasn't cruel. It was almost… fond.

"So how about it?" he offered. "Join my army. I could use soldiers like you. Competent in ambushes. Proven in battle."

Apocia blinked. Her ears rang.

He wasn't mocking them. He meant it. His voice didn't carry deception.

She looked at Thracia beside her—still breathing, still silent—and the youngest sister's lips parted.

"I… I know you," Thracia said weakly, lifting a shaky arm toward the blackened horizon behind them. "Why… why would you even want to go there? There are billions of them. Sky Gods that live in the stars. Mountain Gods that bleed rivers into valleys. The south is one thing. The northern tribes will not submit to you so easily."

He didn't blink.

"Of course not," he said easily. "I am weak, after all."

Then he thumbed his own back, and Apocia's stomach turned at the sight of the grafted bug limbs, wings, plates, talons, stingers—an entire colony stitched onto a single bug.

"But when I carry the weight of the world on my back…" He smiled again. "I am strong like no bug you have ever seen before."

And something in his voice spoke to Apocia.

Conviction. Real, unshakable belief.

She understood then. Faith was how he'd gathered them. That was why the six warlords of the south knelt to him like his servants.

Faith.

He looked skyward, at the storm clouds spinning like the lid of a vast cage, and his voice dropped lower.

"Tell me," he said. "Do you like this world?"

Apocia didn't answer.

Thracia didn't answer.

None of the spider sisters answered.

"Instinct rules and hunger decides. Bugs devour bugs. Nothing ever changes. The same blood spilled over and over again the same dirt, in the same war." His gaze swept over them. "You live. You die. You live again. But never more than that."

So he extended his hand once more, grinning from ear to ear.

"The world is a cocoon too small for a bug. The cocoon must be shed. The bug that wishes to live must first unmake the world," he said. "Will you unmake this world with me?"

…

Apocia didn't look at her sisters.

She didn't ask for their permission.

Her arm moved on its own.

Her hand found his—the hand of her one true king.

The cavern trembled as Apocia and Thracia drove their arms into the giant crystallised heart.

Pulsing veins along the walls and ceiling ignited with a sinister pinkish-purple glow, casting eerie shadows that danced across the vast chamber, but then the Spider Sisters turned their heads in unison, their faces contorted into identical, menacing grins.

"We're not done yet!" they hissed.

Dahlia's grip tightened around her warhammer, the cool metal pressing into her palms. The familiar weight was a small anchor in the storm of rumbling chaos surrounding her, but her mind raced with uncertainty.

Weren't they supposed to only drain the blood from the carcass?

What… what are they doing now—

"They're pumping a bit of their own blood back into the spider," the Fool said, his usually composed demeanor cracked as he grimaced at the pulsating heart. "They're going to make it explode."

Before any of them could respond, a deafening rumble resonated through the chamber as the ground beneath them quaked violently. Dahlia herself stumbled, her heart pounding in her chest. The walls seemed to be closing in as the pulsating veins throbbed with increasing intensity, as if the very lifeblood of the cavern was reaching a critical mass.​

The chamber collapsed around them. The fleshy walls, once pulsing with contained rhythm, began to cave in violently as veins tore open and ruptured like overpressured pipes. Chunks of calcified tissue and hardened flesh rained from the ceiling. Thick slabs of the cavern roof split away, crashing down with sickening, wet impacts. Long fissures tore across the floor, splitting open to reveal gaping chasms below. The scent of burnt essence filled the air—like scorched blood and ozone—so thick and heavy Dahlia gagged on it.

Then, with a tearing shriek, a hole opened in the ceiling high above them. A vertical shaft cracked open like a wound to the surface, and sunlight—thin, distant, and ghostly—poured through the swirling sand and dust.

Dahlia squinted against the sudden light just in time to see the Spider Sisters leap into motion. They latched onto the ragged sides of the vertical shaft, and then they began bounding up the walls with monstrous strength and perfect rhythm, ascending toward the desert sky like fleeing wraiths. Every leap sent tremors through the structure. They didn't even look back down at the Arcana Hasharana.

"The surface!" Otto choked out beside her. "They're trying to escape!"

"They've successfully overloaded the carcass as well," the Fool mused over the tremors. "Their essence is not completely compatible with their sister's. It's causing a chain reaction of biological incompatibility. If this entire carcass detonates, it'll blow the whole City of Feasts sky-high."

Dahlia's mouth opened in disbelief. The giant crystallised heart behind him continued pulsing violently, stuttering like a giant struggling to breathe.

What do we do, Kari?

If it blows—

"But not to worry. It won't blow," the Fool said, already walking towards it. "I can contain it."

A pause.

Then a flurry of shouts.

"Are you insane?"

"You'd die down here!"

"You'd be disintegrated!"

The Fool glanced back at all of them. Then, casually, he removed his glasses and slipped them into his coat.

"I'm ranked first of the Arcana Hasharana," he said, voice oddly calm. "Now go stop the Spider Sisters up there. Even if the carcass blows, I'll make sure to absorb most of the blast so you don't get vaporised aboveground."

Dahlia stared at him.

As did everyone else.

He was serious. Completely serious. She looked around at the others—at Alice, at the Sun, at the collapsing chamber—and she understood.

They had no other choice.

So, without another word, the Sun drew a flaming arrow, notched it, and fired straight up through the shaft. As it soared with a roar, Alice flung a thread around the fletchling, and then she flung another fan of threads around all of their waists.

And all eight of them, save for the Fool, were immediately jerked up the shaft after the Spider Sisters.

Wind ripped past her ears, dust and debris swirling around her. The collapsing cavern below her shrank rapidly, the crystallised heart now pulsing like a heartbeat in arrest, its veins and arteries convulsing wildly.

She twisted midair, her eyes catching one last glimpse of the Fool.

He was still walking towards the heart calmly. There was no panic in his stride. There was no looking up and back at them. He simply lifted one hand—almost in farewell—and kept walking until the walls swallowed him.

Dahlia bit down on her lip as the shaft swallowed her too.

She couldn't afford to falter now.

… Gotta get back up to the surface.

What's going on up there?