Zeke launched a punch at the first of the frozen monarchs, but the second his fist came close, it shattered on a wall of ice. A quick pulse of [Hand of Divinity] came by instinct, mending the hand before he threw another punch. However, the results were the same – a shattered hand and an untouched foe.

  He fell to the ground, his breath coming fast and furious as the walls of ice dissipated into nothingness.

  “No,” the monarchs said as one. Only then did Zeke realize that he’d walked directly into a trap. The things surrounded and towered over him, their swords of ice digging into the ground. “You stand accused of treachery.”

  The voices were all monotone, but no less powerful for the lack of variation. The sound cut through Zeke’s defenses and shattered his eardrums. They healed only a second later.

  “I have committed no treachery,” he barked as a retort. “You have no power over me!”

  It was a gamble, but after so long in Hell, he felt he had a good idea of how these things worked. It wasn’t certainty, but in that moment, it was the best he could muster.

  “Lies.”

  “Lies.”

  “Lies.”

  The words continued, hitting him from all directions. They slammed into him like physical blows, bruising his body and breaking bones. He maintained [Hand of Divinity], but if their words were so harmful, then there was no way he could stand up to their actually attacks.

  “If you accuse me of treachery, be specific,” he growled, kneeling on the ground. He didn’t even remember dropping to one knee, but it felt right. That only put some steel in his spine, and he forced himself back to his full height. “Do it, or you will be destroyed. I have killed gods. I will kill you, too.”

  And he believed he could. Not easily, and certainly not without significant pain, but he’d come to believe that very few things could truly defeat him. Maybe they could temporarily put him out of commission. And certainly, his mind was still vulnerable. But in a straight fight? He would just keep coming until they ran out of energy.

  He had done it before, and he had no problem doing it again.

  Even if the very idea made him shudder with remembered pain. After all, he’d long since found the limits of his cambion ability to ignore pain. Getting ripped in part was well past that.

  But he would do it, and gladly, if it meant he progressed through the Circle of Treachery.

  “Very well,” they said in a softer voice. One stepped closer. “I accuse you of abandonment. You lied to your friends, leaving them behind. They weep for you, and yet, you barely think of them. It is treachery of the worst sort. Familial.”

  “I didn’t –”

  One on the opposite side stepped forward, intoning, “I accuse you of an even more despicable betrayal. You left an entire world to fester in undeath. This is treachery most foul, born of cowardice. You could have saved those people and taken them to prosperity. You are guilty of desertion.”

  “There was more to it than –”

  Another of the remaining four stepped up. “I accuse you of perfidy. You have attacked simply to take from others. You are no more than a petty thief. A blight upon any civilized world.”

  Then another said, “You have committed sacrilege against multiple gods. You have set yourself upon a collision course with the one above us all. You are a self-avowed heretic.”

  “You intentionally misinterpreted you lover’s intent,” another stated. “She acted with courage, and you punished her for it.”

  “You abandoned your purpose. You set out to save people. You were a defender. Yet, you have changed. You have become a creature of destruction. A monster hellbent on bringing ruin to everything you see.”

  With that, the last one stepped forward, closing the circle tighter. Zeke felt the cold coming from their massive swords, but he was more worried about the weight of their piercing gazes. Their eyes were hollow, but malevolent judgement lurked beneath it all.

  He clutched his hands into fists.

  “Do I get to defend myself now?” he asked.

  “There is no defense, but you may speak.”

  “First of all, I left my friends behind because they would’ve died here. There is no debate. I did it for their sake.”

  “Irrelevant.”

  Zeke ground his teeth together as that monarch stepped even closer.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I never attacked anyone just to take what they had,” he said. “I did it to save people.”

  All intoned, “Lies.”

  “You crave battle. You desire victory. You needed their treasures. You are not a hero,” the accuser said, stepping forward.

  Zeke shivered as frost crept up his legs. “The sacrilege one…well, I can’t deny that. Fuck them. Fuck the Framework. And fuck whoever created it.”

  “Heresy,” came a whisper from another realm.

  “We established that, you creepy assholes!” he shouted, hoping his voice carried back to the Circle of Heresy. “I endured everything you threw at me, and I’m still here! So, send your crows. Put me on your pike. It won’t change a damn thing!”

  While Zeke shouted at the long-lost warden of the Circle of Heresy, a third frozen monarch stepped forward.

  He took a deep breath as more frost encased his legs. He tried to move, but he couldn’t even twitch. “What was the other one?” he muttered. “Purpose, right? Well, the shield wasn’t right for me. I was never meant to be a defender. I was always an attacker. I still protect people. I…I…”

  But it wasn’t true. There was an argument to be made that he had fought the Radiant Host in an effort to free the slaves, but he knew it was, at best, an exaggeration. At worst, it wasn’t even close to the main reason he’d chosen that path. As far as protecting his friends and family? That hadn’t been the case for a long time.

  As that realization crashed over him, the next monarch stepped forward, and the ice grew up to his waist.

  “You were talking about Abby before, right?”

  “You accused her of betrayal when you were just as guilty.”

  “You’re right,” he said, his shoulders sagging. “I was angry. So angry with what she did. I won’t ever say she was right, but…but I can see why she made her choice. She should have talked to me. We could have worked it out, but…”

  The ice covered his chest.

  “And abandoning the Mortal Realm. I did that. Part of it was cowardice. I see that now. I never cared about dying. Again, I guess. But the idea of being stuck there fighting an endless war against the zombies? And not getting anything out of it? I was at the peak. I needed to move on,” he admitted. “So I abandoned them even though in my heart, I knew I could help. I could have saved so many.”

  Tears fell down his cheeks, but they froze from the immense cold.

  “That’s the point of all this, isn’t it? I’m no innocent,” he said even as the ice crept up to his neck. “I acknowledge that. I embrace it. I’ve made so many mistakes. Sometimes, they’ve been the result of conscious decisions. Other times, I’ve just kept it all inside. But I’ve done everything you said I did. More, actually. I’ve killed so many people. Maybe I deserve this.”

  “Do you surrender to your judgement?”

  “I…I do.”

  Zeke knew it wasn’t the smart choice. He should have been fighting with every breath. But he was so tired. He still hadn’t fully recovered from the Circle of Fraud. Those memories were no longer fresh, but they still affected him. He still remembered how he’d felt at the betrayal leveled against him.

  Had others felt that from his actions?

  He had no idea. Probably. Almost certainly. And it broke his heart to think that of himself.

  Suddenly, Zeke realized that the ice had begun to recede. He blinked, looking up to see that the monarchs had taken a step back. The cold fell away, and he soon found that he could breathe freely.

  “W-what?”

  “There are no innocents. Admitting that to yourself is the only way forward,” they all intoned. “Go.”

  The rest of the ice fell away, and Zeke found that he could now move. On stiff legs, he staggered in the direction indicated by the monarchs. On the other side of the room, there was a gate. Though Zeke knew it wasn’t the exit from the Circle. As close as he’d come to dying, he was well aware that the challenge was too easily overcome to be the last he would face.

  He strode toward the gate, his feet shuffling against the cold ground. The whole way, he could feel the monarchs’ gazes boring into him. They hated him, he realized. They also envied him. And more than anything, they wanted to add him to the collection of frozen people he’d passed on his way down.

  But Zeke wouldn’t allow that.

  The other side of the gate was much the same as the previous tunnel. However, there was one key difference – none of the people were fully buried. Instead, they all grasped at him, trying to stop him as he drove through him. They begged and pleaded for him to help, but he ignored them.

  On and on it went for miles and miles. Zeke wasn’t immune to their pleas, but he couldn’t allow himself to be sidetracked. Doing so would end his journey, and he knew it. So, he continued to ignore them, trekking ever deeper.

  At some point, he started to feel an intermittent rumbling. The first time it happened, it was barely more than a tremble in the earth, but it soon became a full-blown earthquake that fouled his footing and threatened to bring the tunnel down around him. Yet, he staggered forward for days more until, at last, he reached the end of the tunnel.

  It ended with a gate whose outer frame was emblazoned with words.

  “Enter and be judged. Do not hesitate, or you shall forfeit your life.”

  There was another rumbling, and this time, the origin was clear. Whatever shook the earth was on the other side of the gate.

  Zeke swallowed hard, squared his shoulders, then stepped through.

  The sight that greeted him on the other side was, in a lot of ways, familiar. Thousands of people, half-buried in the ice, peppered the walls, and the black ice glowed periodically with pulsing white energy. That illumination highlighted the new addition, though.

  It was a snake, though not of a sort Zeke had ever seen. It appeared to be made entirely of clear ice, which made it very difficult to discern among the rest of the terrain. However, he couldn’t miss its cobra-like head, which was raised and staring at him with unerring fervor.

  He didn’t step forward.

  Immediately, a memory slammed into his mind. Abby looking at him with sadness as he told her they were finished. Then another replaced it, an imagined scenario of Pudge staring after him as he entered the portal. That had never happened – at least as far as he could tell – but the notion had crossed Zeke’s mind more often than he wanted to admit.

  A hundred others washed away any other thought, leaving him trembling with grief, rage, and regret.

  Remembering the engraving on the gate, Zeke stepped forward.

  The deluge of memories ceased the second he moved. That told him what he needed to do. “No hesitation,” he said to himself as he took his second step toward the enormous snake that looked like it could eat him in a single bite.

  And it wasn’t alone. There were hundreds of the snakes lining the path going forward. If he stopped even for a moment, he would be destroyed. Zeke knew that right down to his core.

  With that warning in his mind, he continued on, hoping the rules – at least as he understood them – wouldn’t change.