Skeletor wanted the city, and tonight he meant to take it. He stood on the highest tower of the serpent castle, bone hands gripping cold stone. Below him, the city glittered in the dark. He had gathered monsters no ruler could match. He would send them down and make himself its undisputed master. Behind him, four servants waited in the cold. The sorceress leaned on her glowing staff, her purple crystal lighting the wet stones. "The city sleeps," she said. "Wake it screaming, and it kneels by dawn." She smiled like she already saw it done. The werewolf paced the wall, claws scraping grooves in the rock. His yellow eyes never left the streets below. The vampire crouched near a jagged spire, licking his gray teeth, humming to himself. The zombie stood still, red eyes burning, waiting for one word. Skeletor loved them for their hunger. He needed only to point them at the throat of the city. "Go," Skeletor said. "Take it street by street. Leave the seat of power for me." The werewolf howled and leapt from the wall. The vampire followed, laughing. The zombie shambled after. The sorceress climbed onto a muscular purple panther waiting at the gate, and the great cat carried her down the mountain road. Skeletor watched the city below him. Screams rose from the first block. Lights snapped on. A siren wailed and died. His monsters were working. Fire bloomed in three places at once. He gripped the stone and laughed, sure the throne was already his. Then the screams changed. Not fear now. Fighting. The sorceress galloped back up the road on the panther. She reined the cat hard at the gate and swung down, her staff dark. Her fine robes were torn at the shoulder. "They don't run," she said. Her voice shook. "Skeletor, they don't run." "Who?" "The people. One boy stood in the street with a broken bat. The werewolf charged him. The boy hit him in the teeth and got up when he fell." She wiped blood from her lip. "Others came out of their doors to stand beside him. Dozens of them. They are not afraid of us." Skeletor stared down at his city. The fires still burned. But now he saw shapes in the streets, gathered together, pushing his monsters back block by block. The vampire fled across a rooftop. The zombie stumbled, swarmed by a crowd. The boy stood at the center of it, small and bloody, waving others forward. Skeletor did not know his name. He knew only that this one child had turned his conquest into a war. "They chose a leader," the sorceress said quietly. "That one." Skeletor's grip cracked a chip of stone loose. His monsters could kill a thousand frightened people. They could not rule a city that fought back. To take the throne, he would first have to break the boy who refused to kneel.

By dawn Skeletor's monsters straggled back up the mountain road, beaten. The werewolf limped through the castle gate, his fur clotted with blood. The vampire followed, one arm hanging wrong. The zombie shambled last, half his shirt torn away. They had no fortress in the streets. The people had driven them from block to block, and scattered, they were easy to hunt. Skeletor watched them come and knew the truth. Without a place to gather, his monsters would be picked off one by one. He found his engineer in the lower hall, hunched over a workbench. Trap Jaw was Skeletor's oldest friend and his best builder, blue-skinned and broad, his purple helmet scarred from old fights. His yellow eyes glowed as he worked. "You want a foothold in the city," Trap Jaw said, not looking up. "A wall they can't push past." He slammed a metal fist on the bench. "Give me the abandoned warehouse near the water. I'll turn it into a keep by nightfall." "Then do it," Skeletor said. Evilin swept into the hall, her staff dark, her robes still torn at the shoulder. She was his lover, and she alone spoke to him without fear. She set her hand on his arm. "A keep is stone," she said. "Stone does not win hearts. The boy has their hearts." Her purple eyes held his. "Take that from him and the walls won't matter." "First the walls," Skeletor said. "Then the boy." Trap Jaw led the monsters down at dusk. Skeletor watched from the tower. Saber Wolf tore the warehouse doors from their hinges. The vampire drove out the few people inside. By midnight, Trap Jaw had welded steel across every window and raised a barred gate. Torches burned along the roof. His monsters no longer scattered. They held one strong point, and the people could not break it. Skeletor descended and stood inside his new keep. His monsters pressed close around him, hungry again. Trap Jaw grinned through his metal jaw. "They can't touch us here." Then a sound rose outside. Not screaming. Chanting. Skeletor climbed to the roof and looked down. The people had gathered in the dark, hundreds of them, more than the night before. At their center stood the boy, small and bloody, a broken bat raised over his head. He pointed at the keep, and the crowd roared. "They know where we are now," Evilin said beside him. She had climbed up behind him. "You gave them one place to march on." Skeletor gripped the rail. His keep would hold the walls. But every night the crowd would grow, so long as that one boy stood before them and called. Evilin was right. He had bought himself stone and lost the streets. To rule this city, he would have to break the boy who kept the people standing.

The chanting faded by dawn, but Skeletor knew it would return that night. His keep held the walls, yet his monsters were still scattered and beaten. Half had not returned from the streets. The rest slept in corners, licking wounds. A fortress meant nothing without an army to fill it. Skeletor called his monsters to the keep's main hall. He would rally them tonight or lose them for good. They came slow. Beast Man dragged himself in first, his orange fur matted, his shoulders bent. He had led charges before without fear. Now he would not meet Skeletor's eyes. "The boy's people broke us," he muttered. "They keep coming. We cannot win." Around him the others nodded. Skeletor felt the rot spreading through them. Evilin stood at his side, her staff crystal glowing faint. "They don't need swords," she said low, for him alone. "They need to believe again. Show them a victory they can taste." Her purple eyes held his. "Give them one enemy they can crush tonight, or they'll drift away by morning." He saw the plan then. The people gathered each night by the water near the keep. Skeletor turned to his two strongest. Merman, green and broad, his fish-jaw full of teeth, had come up from the harbor after the defeat. Klawfull, the crab-headed brute, cracked his claws in the dark. Neither had fought the boy's mob yet. Both were fresh. "Trap Jaw," Skeletor said. "Open a side gate at midnight. Quiet." His engineer grinned through his metal jaw and slammed a fist to his chest. Skeletor pointed at Merman and Klawfull. "You two lead. Not to hold ground. To take one prize and run. Break the crowd's edge. Show them our monsters still have teeth." At midnight the gate rose without a sound. Merman and Klawfull slipped into the dark. The crowd had gathered again, torches bright, the boy at their center on a crate. Beast Man watched from the roof, hunched, unsure. Then Klawfull's claw closed on a man at the edge and dragged him screaming into the black. Merman surged through the panic and seized the boy's raised crate, ripping it from under him. The boy fell. The crowd scattered. Beast Man roared from the roof. The sound spread. His monsters poured to the walls and roared with him, alive again. Merman and Klawfull vanished back through the gate before the people could rally. Skeletor stood in his hall as his army pressed close, hungry, loud, restored. The rot was gone. He had his army. But Evilin did not cheer. She lifted the prisoner's torn jacket that Klawfull had left on the stones. Beneath it lay a folded paper, a crude map of the keep, every gate marked. "They were scouting your walls," she said. "They know how to get in." Skeletor stared at the map. He had rallied his monsters, and shown the boy exactly where to strike.

Skeletor spread the stolen map across the war table. Every gate was marked, but one drawing stood out. A back gate near the skull's jaw had cracked hinges and thin timber. The boy's people meant to breach there. Skeletor smiled. He would turn their own plan into a trap. He posted Beast Man and Trap Jaw at the weak gate and waited for dawn to bring the attack. But the enemy did not come like scouts. They came like war. Ram Man crashed the front door first, a hammer of red armor and metal helmet. The skull's wooden mouth split under him. Behind him poured the boy's champions, and Skeletor's careful trap meant nothing. A bee-man tore through the air on humming wings. Buzz-Off dropped onto the wall and flung two monsters into the courtyard. Fisto followed, black-bearded and grinning, his iron fist smashing a guard's shield to scrap. Beside him fought a red-haired woman in white, a cobra staff spinning in her hands. Teela cracked the serpent's head across Merman's jaw and dropped him. Skeletor had planned for a raid. He faced an army. Then he saw the blond man at the center, and his blood went cold. He-Man. Skeletor had left him for dead seasons ago, buried under the old defeat. Now the barbarian stood in the broken mouth of the keep, sword glowing blue in his fist. He-Man's eyes found Skeletor across the ruin. "I came back for what you did," he said. "This ends tonight." Skeletor raised his staff and threw a bolt of fire. He-Man swung the blue sword and split the flame in two. The blast scorched the walls, not the man. Skeletor threw again and again. Each time the sword caught the fire and turned it aside. Around them his monsters fell to Fisto's fist and Teela's staff and Buzz-Off's charge. The keep was breaking from the inside. "Evilin!" Skeletor roared. She struck her staff to the stone. A wall of purple light rose between him and He-Man. The barbarian's sword bit into the barrier and sank slow, but it sank. "We cannot hold the keep," Evilin said. "Hold your life instead." Ram Man's helmet caved the inner arch. Beast Man dragged Trap Jaw toward the rear passage, both bloodied. Skeletor understood. He could die here proving his pride, or live to strike again. He backed into the dark tunnel beneath the throne he had wanted so badly. The purple wall shattered behind him. He-Man's boots pounded the stone. Skeletor ran with his lover and his two friends into the earth below the keep. The green skull fortress was lost. The boy's people flooded its halls and raised their torches high. Skeletor had built a throne room. Tonight He-Man had taken it. And now Skeletor knew the true enemy who stood between him and the dark throne of Eternia.