The dusty tomes piled high in the Palace library offered no insight that Gregor did not already possess. The cycle would continue until the cancer was cut from this world. Halloween night must end.
Gregor's wounds slowed the pace, but rest could not be afforded. Out there in the darkness, the architects of fear were marshaling their forces once more. The window to break the cycle grew shorter with each passing night.
Donning a heavy cloak, Gregor slipped past the revelers in a costume while music still pulsed through palace halls. Few noticed the hunched figure make for a servant's door into the sprawling grounds. The true fight was yet to come.
Mist rose thick from the mulch of leaves and fetid soil as Gregor picked through the forest beyond the manicured lawns. Things skittered and cackled in the distance, keeping parallel to his measured steps. For now.
The raven masks in the high tower windows tracked his progress through the mist. Their master's destruction had been noticed, and they hungered for vengeance. None broke the cycles of fear and survived unscarred.
Ahead, just visible through the gnarled branches, a pulsing orange light beckoned. Gregor tightened his grip on the consecrated iron dagger sheathed at his belt. Its bite was anathema to the denizens of the dark.
The trail ended at a ramshackle hut ringed with strange fetishes and offerings of glistening organs on spikes. Gregor crouched; blade ready as he took stock of the ritual site. Foul witchery festered here.
A wet chuckling sound carried to Gregor's ears. From the swaying trees skeleton-thin figures approached, clad in tattered black robes. They sang a disjointed melody that wormed ice into his spine. The coven had come.
Thirteen women, features hidden by hooded robes and stringy hair, formed a loose circle around Gregor, swaying gently to their peculiar harmony. They regarded him as a curiosity, a daring interloper on their demesne.
The lead crone hissed sibilantly from the darkness of her cowl. "A fool to seek death before its season. Or do you wish to join the legions of night eternally, Son of Throne?" The coven cackled in a sinister chorus.
Gregor rose, blade ready. "Your deathless prince now knows the purge of ordained steel. The cycles end tonight by my hand." He leveled the blade at the crone, though they were beyond its reach. "Surrender the planet to The Emperors Light!"
The crone traced a jagged sigil in the air, humming discordantly. "Arrogant mortal. You but delay the feasting. The Treaty persists through your frail ages." She flashed iron teeth. "But you may serve the tide in other ways..."
Before Gregor could speak, the forest seemed to come alive around him. Skeletal branches clawed at his limbs and thorns tore at exposed flesh. Gregor slashed desperately as the living wood closed in.
From the binding briars stared back distorted faces of holy martyrs long-dead. Their wooded forms wept sap as they reluctantly tightened under the coven's crooning spells. Even the dead answered Halloween's call.
Gasping against the woody crush, Gregor croaked out a verse of exorcism, calling on the Emperor's Light to break foul bindings. The branch-faces shrieked and steamed as divine fires erupted in their cores.
Toppling back as the branches fell into smoldering piles, Gregor clutched his charred limbs and rolled clear of the still-grabbing bramble. His knife rose again, ready against the next assault.
The High Crone scowled at the ruined grove, then sniffed the air. She turned her grin back to Gregor. "But you cannot banish that which flows within your own blood now, fool." She cackled with high malice.
Gregor recoiled as icy fire lanced through his chest, dropping him to his knees. He ripped back the cloak and tunic. Blackened veins visibly forked under his skin, surging outward with every heartbeat. Poison!
Vision blurred as the deathly virus coursed through arteries toward his heart and mind. Gregor tried to recall purging rites, but mist filled his thoughts. Soon heart and soul would both succumb.
Through the encroaching darkness, Gregor perceived the coven swaying closer, shrieking gleefully as they prepared to harvest his corrupted shell for the shadow's legions. Their crooked claws reached to tear out his tainted heart.
With the last of his strength, Gregor dragged forth his consecrated dagger and drove it to the hilt into his own chest, lancing the blackened aorta. The coven howled with cheated fury as his heart's blood poured forth onto purifying sigils.
Gregor could not stop the screaming as vile acid coursed through his veins. The coven's curse seemed crafted by orbital torturers, cleansing through only excruciating, prolonged death. To the hags' delight.
Black foam frothed from Gregor's lips as he choked on liquified organs. The ceremonial dagger fell from a hand lacking the strength to clasp it. Its consecrated bite was now beyond reach to end his unmaking.
The High Crone glided closer, talons twitching in anticipation. "The pact binds all mortal flesh, even its mightiest champions. But we shall sculpt you into something glorious for the Night Parade..."
Gregor's bulging eyes reflected the icy flames dancing along blackened nerve pathways as his heart stuttered arrhythmically. The stygian virion was proving adaptive, resisting his charms of warding and excision.
His tongue was bloated and useless now, denying him words to shape a cleansing ritual. Psychic calls for aid went unanswered if any still lived to hear them. He would join the silent ranks of the taken.
With a long needle tipped in hoarfrost, the Crone began tracing profane sigils along Gregor's slit veins to open the channels further to corruption. The other hags swayed around him, weaving the dark metamorphosis.
Gregor's spasming hand overturned an iron brazier as he thrashed, sending smoldering coals across the cursed earth. The crone shrieked with rage as purifying embers broke her needle and marred her tracing symbols.
"Fool! Your pain shall now grow exponentially!" She grasped Gregor's head, jaw elongating impossibly as she prepared a different venom. Centipede's fangs gleamed wetly as she dove for his jugular.
But Gregor shoved a smoldering coal deep into her yawning maw mid-lunge. Otherworldly shrieks echoed as she clawed at the sizzling hole blackening her throat. The hags wailed at their matron's demise.
Gregor crawled agonizingly towards the fallen dagger, grabbing a second searing ember. As the coven bore down on him, he rammed the scalding brand into his own chest over his slowing heart. Then, with a last heave, skewered the muscle on consecrated steel.
The coven screeched with thwarted malice as Gregor's heart pumped out purifying blood to counter the virion's spread. Their meticulous cruelty was denied its coveted prize – for now at least.
Through darkness rising, Gregor savored the crone's disbelieving howls that the pact had been shaken. Perhaps not broken fully yet, but hope remained as dawn light began to banish the writhing shadows keeping watch from the distant forest edge.
The Emperor's light would come again to this haven of horrors. And Gregor's own would join in shielding humanity from the grasping night. The Planet of Perpetual Shadows would one day know true release. But not while a single witch's heart still pulsed with deathless malignance.
He could not cleanse them all before his flame was extinguished. But in time, others would take up the crusade. The Inquisition's will spanned millennia, not just mortal ages. They too would learn that fear could not reign eternally. Not even on Halloween.
As the Autumn earth welcomed his lifeblood, Gregor's last sight was the coven retreating into the gnarled trees, their noxious efforts forestalled for this cycle. But their hatred simmered at the denied ascension. They would remember the pain he had inflicted upon their dark sisterhood.
With a final sigh, Gregor's consciousness dissolved into the waiting gloom, his scarred flesh left to feed the soil. Another had fallen, but not before wounding the primordial evils that ruled this planet of shadows. By the Emperor's Grace, the Night could yet be overcome.
