Three mementos sizzled in the castle fireplace.

On the outside, it looked like any old hut. A trickle of smoke made its way out the single cracked-open window, going into the air like a long tail. It was nighttime now. Pinprick stars, a deep-blue sky, and an enormous moon hovered high.

Mr. Chutney’s village hut exploded.

First the wood and earthen walls collapsed. The thatched roof threw its straw everywhere. The window splintered apart as if by a fist.

Then the castle emerged, the castle that had been waiting within all along. It roared to life like a hatching behemoth. Instead of taking a first breath, it festered all over with hellsmoke and cinders. The whole planet seemed to shake. Pillars shrieked as they shot up from thin air. Shadowstone and black marble spread out from the space where the hut once stood. The castle shattered every house in its way—a cuckoo pushing neighbors out of its nest.

If the demolished houses and their dead were unlucky, the survivors were worse—they were doomed. There was a new ruler of Red Ochre, and their time began tonight.

When the castle steadied itself and the earth no longer quaked, a figure popped out from behind the high parapets.

Lord Nyx looked over the land, hair streaming in the wind and mingling with the hellsmoke. They’d pinned most of their hair up in a ponytail, leaving the rest to dangle in messy streams. Slate clothing and dull silver armor dotted their body: sharp shoulder guards, a chestplate, and sturdy boots. Serpentskin gloves the color of muscle stretched up their arms. At their hip, alongside the vials holding enchantments and hexes, was a long sword with one serrated, sawblade edge. A mix of metals made this sword, swirls of marbled darkness and glittering light. Nyx had owned it for a long time. They liked to call it the Hellrazor.

They unsheathed the blade, took it firmly in hand, and held it forward as if sending a kingdom to war.

“I hereby declare,” said the demon lord, “that the village of Red Ochre belongs to the Lord of Nightfall Castle...to me and me only.”

...No. This wouldn’t do. They cleared their throat and straightened out the crick in their neck.

Then they twirled the Hellrazor in their palm, drove it into the stone roof like a spike, and made the speech again—but this time with feeling, with a scream that really meant it.

“This village is mine and mine only!” they growled. “Whoever would take it, let them try!”

They opened their sharp-toothed mouth and laughed deliriously. That massive, echoing laugh was what really woke the village up. They wouldn’t like what they’d see. Good. Let them have that. Give them a rude awakening.

***

Two cautious magenta eyes peeked out from the servants’ quarters. When Felicity realized what she was seeing, she wouldn’t have been happier if she were a kid on Christmas morning.

Overnight, the foyer had changed. It’d stretched, for one thing, into a long hall (with a new and sumptuous carpet to match). It also doubled as a throne room—Nyx’s throne stood at the end of it. It was a masterwork of night-dark, gleaming metal.

The third big difference in the foyer was the long, long, very long line of dejected human beings.

The humans were bringing offerings to the throne. Baskets of fruit. Bushels of wheat in sling-bags. Fine clothing (well, as fine as you could get in Red Ochre). Sheep on rope leashes. The eyes of the humans were hollow—which was, y’know, usual...but they had a new haunted quality to them. The only thing to do now, for them, was pray they didn’t fall any further.

Nyx, meanwhile, had risen. Except not literally—they refused to sit upright on their throne like a proper lord. Instead they’d set one heel on an armrest and the other heel on the floor while their elbow hung off the right side. The pose was one part busty and provocative, one part I-just-fell-like-this-and-barely-feel-like-moving. Their fist pressed into their face, and that face suggested both amusement and contempt.

Felicity darted from her quarters to behind the throne, too bewildered to speak.

A husband and wife stepped up to the throne. The wife was carrying a bundle.

“Who are you?” said Nyx.

The husband said stoically, “We are Bartl and Merdle Shoemaker, my lord.”

“What do you have to give me? Some shoes, I guess?”

“Actually,” he said, “there have been no shoes from us for...a while, my lord. See the rags that bind our feet.”

Nyx looked at their feet. Bandages wrapped around them, coming loose and tearing holes in places. Nyx couldn’t tell whether they were made brown or stained brown, or whether that big reddish-brown patch came from a swim, a fall, or a beating.

Then Nyx looked behind them at the rest of the line. They all wore rags on their feet.

“But this is a world where wood and leather exist,” said Nyx. “Hell, grab some rocks. Put some belts around them. Bam. Now you have shoes.”

“We have tried that, my lord. Six months ago. My eldest son attempted rock shoes. That same night, he tripped in the blood lake and was ripped to shreds in a serpent attack—”

“This is ridiculous. I mean, I know that magic exists and stuff, but superstition too? Come on, people.”

The Rec Ochrans turned and muttered to each other.

“I don’t want your fuckin’ foot rags,” Nyx said with a dismissive wave.

“Are we free, then?” said the wife.

“Hell no. Give me money or something.”

“We have no money,” said the husband. “We live on the charity of—”

“I don’t want any more of your fuckin’ sob stories either.”

“Then take it!” he shouted. “Just take it! This is what we have to offer you—the only thing, short of the clothes on our backs!” He wrenched the bundle away from his wife so hard that she almost fell to the ground. Then he shoved some cloth away from the bundle, revealing that it was...!

Nyx looked away and put their hand on their forehead. “Oh, lord. Theatrics. Take it away. I don’t want that shit either.”

“Take it! Drink its blood before our very eyes, for all I care!”

“I don’t need your fuckin’ baby’s blood!” roared Nyx. “God! Can’t you give me five dollars or something?”

The wife placed a hand on her sobbing husband’s back. She said, “Are we free to go now?”

“Impudence. Can I get a ‘my lord?’”

“No.”

The wife’s words were simple and tough. Nyx could deal with that more easily than drama.

“Alright, suit yourself,” they trilled. With a wave of their hand and a near-imperceptible movement of their shadow, they made Merdle fall to her knees. Her jaws clenched together, her face bent to the sky, and a ghastly moan filled the long foyer.

“Enjoy living with half a shadow,” said Nyx as the moaning continued, “and sir, you enjoy living with half a wife.”

They released Mrs. Shoemaker. She collapsed onto her forearms and knees, covered in sweat. Her husband took her by one arm, but she seemed to have lost half her wits and had trouble walking with him.

The other Red Ochrans watched them struggle out the door. They didn’t try to help.

Behind the throne, Felicity looked on in silence as the Shoemakers’ shabby feet disappeared from view. What a beautiful future!