Amon carved.

  His hands, pale and veined with black tar, moved with a rhythm he hadn't known in life. Chip. Scrape. Smooth. The stone didn't fight him. It yielded, layer by layer, revealing the shape he demanded of it.

  He sat on a block of granite deep within the earth, far below the reach of the sun. The air here was cool and smelled of damp soil and ancient roots. Beside him, Arbah rolled a new boulder into place. The fox-construct had shifted again, its forelegs thickening into arms, its paws becoming nimble, three-fingered hands. It looked less like a beast now and more like a servant.?

  "Thank you, Arbah," Amon murmured. His daughter would have loved this Caregiver, she had always harbored a fondness for foxes, and dreamt of owning one as a pet

  He reached out, his fingers brushing the tar-fur on the creature’s head. It was cold, oily, and utterly foreign. Yet, the gesture was familiar. It was the same way he had petted the farm dogs. The same way he had ruffled Luke’s hair when the boy had finally stopped squirming.?

  Luke, Arbah.

  The names were jagged stones in his chest.

  He paused, the chisel hovering over the rock. Grief, heavy and suffocating, rose in his throat. He pushed it down. There was no time for tears, not when the world was ending.

  Show me.

  The command wasn't spoken, but the tar obeyed.

  His vision split. One eye remained on the stone dragon he was carving; the other soared upward, miles above, through the eyes of a raven perched on a high branch.

  The sky was burning.

  It wasn't sunset. It was fire.

  Hundreds of dragons filled the air, a swarm of crimson and gold scales that blotted out the clouds. They were magnificent, they were terrifying, and they were dying.?

  The air was thick with smoke and the screams of dying gods. The Tharnell flak-cannons, now numbering in the thousands, fired in a continuous, deafening roar. Every second a dragon fell, its body riddled with holes, its fire extinguished before it hit the ground.

  But they were not falling alone.

  The ground was a meat-grinder. The Draights, those invincible warriors of Amon’s youth, lay in heaps, their bodies broken by tank treads and machine-gun fire. Yet, for the dozens of Scales that died, a Tharnell machine burned. The dragons were losing, but they were making the invaders pay in blood and steel.

  It is not enough, Amon thought, the realization cold and absolute.

  The dragons were fighting a war of attrition against an enemy that could send endless soldiers and tanks. The dragons were trading centuries of growth for seconds of delay.

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  Amon shifted his gaze to the rift.

  The tear in reality had stabilized. It was no longer a jagged wound but a gateway, framed by massive pylons of thrumming metal. Through it, the true army marched. Not the vanguard, but the conquerors.

  Walkers the size of towers, massive tanks that severed as mobile platforms, and behind them, the Harvesters. They were stripping the land. Entire forests vanished in hours, fed into the maws of great machines that processed wood, stone, and bone into raw materials. They were building a city, a fortress.

  In a sense, it was Lavia’s city they were mimicking. Amon knew the place only from stories, a mountain hollowed out, a hive of life where thousands of subject races lived in the shadow of their tyrant.?

  Now, the Tharnells were building their own hive. But this one wasn't for living, It was for processing.

  They are eating the world.

  Amon felt a tug on his connection to Belugmah. It was faint, distracted. His lord was busy. Across the multiverse, veils were tearing. Nexuses were falling. The Garden here was just one of millions, a small candle in a hurricane.

  We are alone.

  The thought should have terrified him. Instead, it clarified him.

  Belugmah would not save them. The dragons could not save them. If this realm was to survive—if any of it was to survive—it would be because Amon saved it.

  He looked back at the stone dragon mask. It was crude, a mockery of the majestic beasts dying above. But it was enduring, stone did not bleed, stone did not burn.

  We need more.

  Not just stone. Souls.

  The Garden was starving. The trickle of animals and the occasional Tharnell soldier wasn't enough. To hold back the tide, the mist needed a flood.

  Amon’s mind turned to the villages. The ones the Tharnells hadn't reached yet. Those that still might not know what was happening, or the villagers simply cowering in their cellars, praying to dragons that were already dead.

  He wanted to be gentle; to warn, and talk with them. But panic was a slow poison, it would make people run, or fight, and the Preserverant was not interested in such delays.

  Tar-roots spread through the deep earth, following the knowledge provided by his mind. Beneath a village twenty miles to the east, the ground erupted. It wasn't an explosion, instead a blooming. Black tar surged up through the floorboards of cottages, through the cobblestones of the market square, and began to engulf it all.

  Mist rolled out, thick and sweet-smelling.

  Screams cut the air, then were silenced as the fog filled lungs, and quieted minds. Panic turned to lethargy. Fear turned to sleep.

  Men, women, children, they slumped where they stood, caught by the gentle arms of the tar. They sank into the earth, their bodies preserved, their souls embraced into a dream of safety.

  It was a mercy.

  Amon told himself that as he watched them sink. It was better than the harvesters, and it was better than the soul-engines. The visions of those devices still troubled him, Souls trapped and forcibly drained of their Mana.

  I am saving them, he repeated. I am the only one saving them.

  The tar flowed on, taking more villages, ever hungry, and then it headed for Lavia’s city.

  The mountain fortress was a prize. Thousands of souls, packed tight. Kobolds, humans, elves, all waiting for a savior who would never come. The tunnels under the mountain were already teeming. Amon could feel the vibrations of thousands of footsteps. The Kobolds there digging in, preparing for a siege they couldn't win.

  I will give them a way out, Amon thought. I will give them the only way out.

  He raised his chisel and struck the stone.

  Clink.

  The sound was small in the vast dark, but it was a start.

  The world above belonged to the eaters. But the world below... the world below belonged to Preservation.