Their steps were out of sync, their postures uneven, but they were all headed in the same direction—toward that rift, toward the hellish void, toward the darkness that could finally end the curse of their immortality.
The old man with both arms severed clamped a wooden stick between his stumps and limped at the front of the group.
He walked very slowly, because his legs were nearly finished as well. His knees were swollen like steamed buns, and every step sent piercing pain through him.
But he did not stop, because he knew this was the final stretch.
He passed through a patch of ruins. Beneath them lay a rotting corpse—not a human corpse, but a demon's, the remains left behind by demons that had burst apart. He did not spare it another glance and continued forward.
The woman with half her face rotted away walked behind him, leaning on a branch she had snapped from a dead tree by the roadside.
Her leg still limped, but she walked faster than before. As she walked, she touched her face—touching the half that had rotted away, the exposed cheekbone and upper jaw.
Her touch was gentle, as though she were caressing something precious. She had once hated this face, but she no longer did, because it would soon be gone.
She passed through the alley filled with Kelsos's fragments. Some residue from those fragments still drifted through the air like smoke.
She did not linger and continued onward.
The head-swapper was no longer being pushed along, because he had discarded his mechanical body.
He cradled his own head in his hands—yes, he had twisted it off his mechanical neck and held it against his chest, bracing it with his chin as he walked forward step by step.
Pale red mucus still