“Today’s the first day of the end of your l-l-lives!”

The words cracked through the Forsaken realm like corrupted code, his voice glitching between registers. Devesto hurled another Implement into the ground, the cube slamming down with a distorted thunk. The glow spread outward, a distorted field of control that penned the survivors in tighter. Panic followed — as it always did.

He thrived on it. Every round, every slaughter, he threw cubes like a kid scattering toys, blocking paths, cornering the desperate. Sometimes he killed clean, sometimes messy, but it was always the same cycle. Round after round. Kill after kill.

It should have been fun. Should have.

But unlike the other killers, his mind didn’t reset. The Spectre let him remember every second. Every scream, every win, every useless chase. And the longer it dragged on, the more it felt less like a hunt and more like a rigged script. A joke at his expense.

“Not a chance!” he barked, glitching again as his hand locked around a survivor’s neck. The body flailed, the sound cut short with a snap. He let the corpse drop like trash. Another kill, another tally. It meant nothing.

He scanned the realm — the broken houses, the burning sky, the looping architecture where stone and metal meshed like an unfinished map. And in the back of his mind, the same thought crawled up: Where’s the General?

Every round she made it different. She fought back. She commanded. A soldier from another world, one who didn’t just run and scream but countered him blow for blow. He almost respected her for it. Almost.

But tonight, she was gone. The emptiness of it dug into him worse than the survivors’ cries.

His gaze shifted, and a suspicion flickered. The cave. Survivors thought it a safe zone, a place to regroup. He knew better.

He jogged inside, boots crunching against damp stone. Shadows stretched unnaturally long, bending around him like the Spectre’s fingers curling through the environment. His cube hovered loyally at his side, pulsing like a sick heartbeat.

And then — he saw her.

The General sat against the jagged wall, rigid, her body trembling as though invisible chains yanked her into place. Blood streaked across her uniform, not fresh but soaked in enough to mark her as already broken. Her eyes locked on him, narrowed, hard. If it weren’t for the Spectre’s control, she’d already be charging him.

“T-there you are!” His grin snapped wide, too wide, and his voice cracked between high and low pitches as he lurched a step closer. “I’ve been looking for y-you…!”

The sight lit a spark in him — adrenaline and satisfaction, a cocktail that kept him from unraveling completely. The cube floated beside him, bobbing like it was eager for blood. He lifted it, ready to slam it down and end her like the others—

But his hand froze.

She wasn’t fighting. She couldn’t. Her body was stiff, her muscles twitching as if every nerve was locked by strings. The Spectre had her pinned. And Devesto, of all people, noticed.

For once, the grin wavered.

He tossed the cube lazily into the air, catching it like a bored child flipping a toy. “Can’t the General move?” he sneered, dragging out the words, mocking. His voice cut in and out, sometimes his, sometimes pitched too low, sometimes too high. But there was something different in the tone — hesitation hidden behind the trolling.

Because even here, even as a killer, even as a joke pulled by the Spectre—he still had enough humanity left to see when the game stopped being fun.