The air stank of charred flesh and plasma residue—his flesh, his men. Erebus stood on the elevated platform of his command vehicle, the modified eight-wheeled Behemoth whose rear section had been transformed into a preacher's pulpit. Below him, the warehouse ruins smoldered under the bruised purple dawn, concrete dust still settling like grey snow on the twisted metal and shattered bodies.

  He inhaled deeply, the scent of death and destruction thick in his nostrils. His face—bald scalp and all—was a canvas of intricate, black-inked tattoos that seemed to writhe in the flickering light of emergency torches. Beneath his threadbare preacher's robes, the polished plates of his tailored exosuit gleamed with corporate precision, an unsettling fusion of sacred and profane. His skeletal fingers rested on the octagonal lectern before him, the carved wood incongruous against the brutalist metal of his vehicle.

  Before him lay the remains of Malus and his two lieutenants on a sheet of corrugated iron. The bear-pelted warrior's spine had been violently crushed into a half-dozen jagged pieces, the vertebrae protruding through shredded flesh like broken fence posts. The ex-corporate enforcer's head was simply gone—vaporized by some kind of directed energy weapon, leaving only a charred stump of neck and a spreading pool of congealing blood. And Malus himself... his chest had been torn open with inhuman strength, his heart and lungs arranged in a grotesque still life on the concrete beside him.

  Erebus's warband stood in disciplined silence around the scene—no hushed whispers, no frantic glances. These were veterans, each bearing the ritual scars of a hundred raids. To them, this was not a catastrophe but a culling. When a Hellwraith warband suffered losses, the survivors grew stronger.

  "Sixteen years I've known Malus," Erebus began, his voice a dry rasp that carried without effort across the ruined compound. He didn't look up from the bodies. "He joined me when he could barely lift a stubber. His mother sold him to a slaver to feed his siblings. I took him from that slaver... broke his legs for running from his first raid." A ghost of something that might have been respect flickered in his rust-brown eyes. "He became strong. But the prey is stronger."

  One of his legates, a hulking brute with a cybernetic left arm grafted at the shoulder, stepped forward. His voice was calm, measured. "Indeed, my Alpha. To hunt such beasts requires hunters of equal might. Malus was never meant for this quarry."

  Erebus finally lifted his gaze from the bodies, his tattooed face catching the first rays of sunlight.

  "The others?" he asked simply.

  "Scouts have been dispatched," the legate replied.

  As if summoned by the words, two figures emerged from the smoke. They moved with the fluid grace of predators, their armor bearing the insignia of Erebus's personal guard—skulls with wings, picked clean by carrion birds. These weren't unproven pups who were sent to die; these were warriors who had survived long enough to become legends in the rad-wastes.

  For normal scavenger warbands or raiding parties, scouts are often the youngest and less experienced warriors: more expandable for their significantly more dangerous role. But for Erebus’s direct regiment, even the scouts are veterans. The fact itself spoke of their savage quality.

  They dropped to one knee before the pulpit.

  "Report," Erebus commanded, his voice cutting through the dripping silence of the ruins.

  "Ares and his entire warband... gone," the first scout said, his voice tight but controlled. "Found their remains west of here. The ruins and rubbles were painted with them. Trees shattered. Vehicles melted into slag. The tracks and signs… spoke of only one opponent. Their entire warband never stood a chance."

  The second scout continued, his eyes never leaving the ground. "Vorlag's kill-team suffered the same fate in the same location… Silent takedowns, mostly. One of them were killed by plasma weapon. Vorlag himself... missing."

  The first scout added, "We believe he is dead, Lord Erebus. No one walks away from that slaughter."

  A murmur rippled through the gathered warriors—a sound of respect, not fear.

  "Two and a half warbands lost," the cyber-armed legate observed, his mechanical fingers flexing with a soft whir. "That is... unprecedented. Even if these warbands are lessor ones."

  "By three to five preys," the second legate noted. "Maximum seven, counting their vehicle."

  Erebus's tattooed face remained impassive as he calculated the numbers. He'd already analyzed the warehouse battle site—the spilled blood and viscera on the concrete, the pattern of spent autocannon casings, the precise angles of the support beams' collapse. Three combatants. One vehicle. One heavy energy weapon.

  His head tilted slightly, calculating. "Three. I can read their signature in the ruins." He stepped down from his pulpit, boots crunching on broken glass as he moved among the wreckage. He stopped before a section of wall that had been melted into glass. "This pattern... plasma weapon. New Terran design." He turned to a cluster of craters in the concrete. "And this... 3-centimeter tungsten penetrators from their infantry fighting vehicle's autocannon."

  He knelt beside a bloodstain that wasn't blood—something darker, almost iridescent. "And this," he murmured, rubbing the substance between his fingers, "is the blood of our own. They killed. They ."

  "Total count," the cyber-armed legate said, consulting a battered data-slate. "Sixty-one bodies, including Ares and Malus. Sixty-six are missing, including Vorlag. Forty-one wounded."

  "Missing?" Erebus stood, brushing the residue from his robes. "No. Digested." He looked toward the jungle, where the mutated flora seemed to pulse with a sickly violet light. "The forest takes what the New Terrans leave behind. And the wounded—" He turned to face his warband, his tattooed face a mask of cold pragmatism. "Summon the ripper-docs. Chip in the cyberware. We've looted enough corporate scraps to make them stronger than before."

  The legates nodded and moved to execute the order without question. They did not ask to hunt for the missing ones—they do not need to. Missing in action in this land means being devoured by the ferocious, radiation-mutated nature. There is no surviving alone in the sub-continent rainforest.

  In the rad-wastes, abandonment leads only to death.

  An aide, his face half-replaced with crude cybernetics that whirred and clicked with each word, craned his neck from the edge of the platform. "My lord," he asked, his voice barely above a whisper, "what do we do now?"

  Erebus climbed back onto his pulpit, the rising sun casting his shadow across the ruins like a dark baptism.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  "I will tell you later."

  And under his breath, his voice dropping to a murmur that only the wind could have carried. "The weak culled, the rest, wolves."

  Inside the climate-controlled luxury of Teodulo Leir Cade IV's personal hover-skimmer, the air smelled of sandalwood incense and aged wine. The vehicle circled above the earthquake-ravaged streets of Saint Aurora, its anti-grav engines humming with a barely perceptible vibration that rattled the crystal decanter on the mahogany side table.

  Teodulo reclined in a velvet-upholstered chair, his burgundy frock coat impeccably pressed despite the chaos outside. One wall of the cabin had been transformed into a transparent aluminum VR display feed, beyond which a line of captured escapees knelt in the mud. Their faces were hollowed by exhaustion and fear, but their collars—polished chrome rings around their necks—gleamed under the harsh noon sun.

  Teodulo's aide, Lin, stood silently to one side, his expression carefully neutral as he poured another measure of amber liquid into Teodulo's crystal glass. The current patriarch of Leir Cade dynasty watched the scene below with the detached fascination of a collector examining insects pinned to a board.

  "Ahhh," Teodulo murmured, swirling the wine. "The perpetual dance of hope and despair. They always believe they can outrun the inevitable. Priceless."

  His fingers drifted to a small remote controller resting on the arm of his chair. With a soft click, one of the kneeling figures jerked violently as his collar detonated. Blood and tissue splattered against the transparent aluminum with a wet, sticky sound that seemed almost musical to Teodulo. More began to scramble to their feet, only to be cut down one by one as he pressed the button with methodical precision.

  Lin didn't flinch at the carnage. He waited until the last body had fallen before speaking. "Sir, our forensic team has located the missing convoy of twelve human capital transports. They were destroyed by an aerial bombing run approximately thirty hours ago, the exact time we lost contact with them."

  Teodulo's hand stilled. The wine glass trembled slightly in his grip. "A bombing run?" His cultured voice tightened. "By whom? The New Terrans—no, not them, not their style."

  He set the glass down with deliberate care. "This is unacceptable. I paid the Delhi Syndicate for stability. For order. Instead, I get..." He gestured vaguely at the ruins below. "Barbarism. This is incompetence, Rajan and other so-called ‘warrior caste people’ like him. These gilded thugs cannot even maintain a stable business environment."

  Lin remained silent. It was not his place to point out that Teodulo had specifically chosen not to involve the Syndicate in his human acquisition operations.

  As Teodulo's irritation mounted, a soft chime sounded through the cabin. The holographic projection of Erebus materialized between them—a gaunt specter wreathed in the static of a poor connection. His tattooed face was even more unsettling in the blue-tinged hologram, his preacher's robes seeming to float around his armored form.

  "Ah, Erebus!" Teodulo's mood shifted instantly, the corporate mask falling back into place with practiced ease. "How goes the hunt? Do you have my New Terrans?"

  Erebus didn't waste words on pleasantries. The hologram flickered as it displayed images from the battlefield—smoking ruins, mangled bodies, brief video clips of an armored figure moving with inhuman speed and precision. The final image was of a cage, and within it, a new Terran curled in the corner. Her face was pale but composed, her ice-blue eyes staring defiantly into the lens.

  Teodulo froze. His breath caught in his throat. Only his fingers betrayed his excitement, trembling slightly against the crystal glass like a pianist before a concerto.

  "Look at her," he whispered, stepping closer to the hologram as if he could touch it. "There's still light in her eyes. That's the true light of an angel..." His voice dropped to a reverent whisper. "I will slowly, millimeter by millimeter, extinguish it, until she understands that I am the only God in the universe, and she will kneel down and kiss my boots."

  Erebus's hologram flickered again, his voice cutting through Teodulo's reverie. "Your intelligence was flawed, Lord Leir Cade. I have lost one hundred twenty-seven warriors to only three New Terrans. They are not the light reconnaissance squad you described." His tone was flat, merciless. "Because your target assessment was grossly inaccurate, our contract is void."

  "Void? Preposterous! I paid for—"

  Teodulo blinked as he registered the numbers, momentarily pulled from his fascination as he was

  by the number of dead Hellwraiths—if only in the slightest.

  "Two options," Erebus interrupted. "One: you pay double the 'fatality compensation' for my fallen warriors. Or we will take it from you. Two: a new contract. The price is triple our original agreement. I will lead the hunt personally."

  Teodulo stared at the hologram of Flora, then at Erebus. His initial shock shifted to something darker, more feverish.

  Teodulo Leir Cade is very well aware of the prowess of Hellwraiths. The realization forms: the quality of his is greater than what he’d anticipated, colossal, even.

  He threw his head back and laughed—a rich, rolling sound that held genuine delight.

  "Three times?" He set his glass down, the crystal making a soft chime against the mahogany table.

  .

  "My dear Erebus, that singular specimen represents a greater asset valuation than my entire current Saint Aurora inventory combined."

  He paused for exactly three seconds; the theatricality of the moment was not lost on him. Then his laughter returned, louder this time. "Of course! I would trade a full fiscal year of my entire revenue for just one 'Angel' if I must! That specimen in your cage—she is already mine. Deal, Erebus! Go for it!"

  Erebus's hologram nodded once.

  "Alright," the warlord stated. "You have a deal, Lord Leir Cade."

  As the transmission ended, Teodulo turned to Lin, his eyes gleaming. "Prepare my collection chamber. This one... this one will be special."

  Deep in the irradiated jungle, where the twisted flora pulsed with an unnatural violet light, the Hellwraiths mobilized.

  Erebus's warband moved with machine precision through the shattered landscape. Thirty armored vehicles formed a perfect diamond formation, their treads churning through the radioactive mud with relentless purpose. At the center rode the command vehicle—a sixteen-wheeled Behemoth modified from a pre-collapse corporate security transport, its composite armor scarred from a hundred battles but still gleaming with menace.

  Inside the red-lit command cabin, Erebus sat like a spider at the heart of his web. The air hung thick with the smell of ozone from overworked electronics and the metallic tang of blood that never quite washed from his armor. Maps covered the walls, marked with precise notations in blood-red ink. A tactical display flickered in the center of the room, showing the pursuit path they would take.

  His tattooed fingers traced the route on the holographic map. "They will head east," he calculated their patterns, murmured to no one in particular. "Toward the Avalonian front. They believe allies await them there."

  One of his legates stood rigidly at attention beside the display. "My lord, we have track signatures. Their vehicle is damaged. They cannot move faster than eight kilometers per hour through this terrain."

  Erebus nodded slowly. "And they carry wounded. The female... if my calculation is correct… she was injured in the collapse." His eyes narrowed. "They will stop to tend to her. That is when we strike."

  The legate hesitated. "With respect, Alpha, these New Terrans... they killed Ares's entire warband. Malus's too. The survivors say they move like ghosts. One of them... they call him the Machine-Guy."

  Erebus's lips twitched in something that wasn't quite a smile. "Ghosts can be exorcised. Machines can be broken." He stood, the dim red light casting long, dancing shadows across his tattooed face. "Tell the warband this: whoever brings their vehicle to stop will lead the next raid on corporate territory. Whoever captures the female New Terran alive will be given a franchise in the human capital trade."

  A flicker of greed passed through the legate's eyes. "And the third?"

  Erebus's gaze returned to the tactical display, where three heat signatures slowly moved eastward through the jungle. "The third is mine," he said softly. "I wish to speak with the man who can erase a hundred warriors in a single night. I wish to know what darkness lives inside him."

  Outside the vehicle, the convoy rumbled forward, a mechanical serpent slithering through the toxic undergrowth. The jungle seemed to part before them, as if nature itself recognized the coming storm.

  In the red gloom of his command cabin, Erebus closed his eyes and listened to the symphony of grinding metal and roaring engines. It was the sound of inevitability. The sound of wolves on the hunt.

  And somewhere ahead, three ghosts fled through the ruins of a broken world.