The Darkside warlord needed a thousand souls, and a crime lord was rotting them faster than he could reach. His scythe had shattered on his first harvest. The blade cracked, and a thousand wayward souls scattered into Soahc. He had hunted each one since. Tonight he knelt by a dark-barked tree, its hanging branches weeping black pigment, and watched a soul flicker inside a branded warrior below. The mark on the man's chest was a broken ring. It glowed, and the soul inside him dimmed like a dying coal. The warlord had seen three warriors like this already. Each wore the same brand. The crime lord's lieutenants burned the mark into powered fighters, and the mark cut the soul's tether. A severed tether meant the soul rotted. A rotted soul could not be harvested. Every brand the lieutenants cut was a soul stolen from his count forever. He dropped from the tree. The branded warrior turned, snarling, body shaking under the ring's glow. Behind him, two lieutenants worked a fresh captive against the stone wall of an obsidian mosque. One pressed a glowing iron to the captive's chest. The warlord moved. Shadow pooled around his boots. He struck the first lieutenant in the throat and crushed the iron underfoot before it bit. The second lieutenant drew a blade. Then fire rolled across the courtyard and took him off his feet. A red-suited fighter landed beside the warlord, flames curling from his wrapped forearms. Warflame. The warlord had crossed his path once, chasing the same rumor of branded fighters. They did not trust each other. They had never needed to. "You want the souls," Warflame said, flat. "I want the ones doing this stopped. We take the branders together, or we both lose them." The warlord looked at the captive slumped against the mosque wall. The brand had not finished. The tether still held, thin as thread. If he moved now, he could cut the iron's work before the soul rotted. "Hold the lieutenants," the warlord said. Warflame drove the two branders back with a wall of heat. The warlord knelt over the captive. He pressed his palm to the glowing ring and poured shadow into it. The iron's light sputtered. The brand cracked. The severed tether snapped back into place, and the soul steadied inside the man's chest. One soul saved. One soul still his to claim later. But the pinned lieutenants did not run. One pulled a small horn and blew it hard. The sound carried across the courtyard, over the mosque's dark domes. From the far dark came an answer. A deep, grinding roar. Then crimson light flooded the courtyard. Two massive brawlers charged in, skin glowing red, crackling with crimson lightning, grinning with sharp teeth. The lieutenants had called their muscle. The warlord had stopped one brand. He had not stopped the crime lord. Now the lord's berserkers had his scent, and a courtyard of branded souls stood between him and the door.