I arrived with weapon drawn, something other than the Theranon family sword. Nor was the armor the same I had inherited from my grandfather, tucked away inside my traveling valise. In the Afterlife, I had no physical body to wear real armor or weapons. It was all in my mind—or rather, all in my souls.

A ghost village spread out before me. Not ghostlike in some poetic sense, hollow buildings left skeletal in abandonment. The village haunted the air in spectral hues, phosphorescent blues and violets lingering in transparent phantasms.

And it wasn’t abandoned.

Its residents remained, murdered right alongside their homes. All of them, village and villagers, had died together.

The village’s citizens struggled against their ties, nailed to its trellises and arbor posts, trussed up like so much livestock after the slaughter. Demonic runes painted on azhock walls with glowing human blood. I’m not sure if the people had perished from sword strike or when the cellar homes and patios had been set ablaze, but die they had, even though they screamed still. They writhed and begged for someone to cut them down, to release them from their torment.

They wouldn’t have to wait long; the demons had come to feast.

Too many demons.

I felt more than heard the first wave, a vibrato bark sending shudders of anticipation trembling over my skin. The hellhounds bayed, their pitch excited as they tracked the sacrifices left for them. They would eat most souls trapped there. They would choose a few for worse.

The demon-hound howls grew sharper as they scented me.

It’s my curse, you see. In the Afterlife, I burn hotter than everything around me. I glow from the fire I bring with me. And demons do so love heat. Few have the willpower to divert to other, easier prey once they have caught my scent.

I have wondered if I had reversed cause and effect. Was I this way because of the Hellmarch demons who found me in Lonezh? Or did those demons target Lonezh Canton because they’d been drawn to my fire?

Enough of that.

My point is they always pursue me, assuming me the hind in their hunt, a timid deer to be chased down and savaged.

I had grown content with the arrangement.

I was the trap already baited.

I smiled as I spun around, sword taking the first hellhound through the skull, splattering black ooze across the dead ground as I cleaved it in twain. The second hound leaped, bit at my armor, gnawing against the metal plate. I laughed and slammed the creature against the earth, rewarded with the sweet sound of breaking bones.

More hounds followed. And died.

These were the younglings, the newest infected, the weakest, and the least experienced. These demons were still acclimating to the torture of their new existence, cursed to hold ignoble shapes until they proved their worth. The dogs died easily.

Next came the riders.