Midnight hung over the Atlantic like a velvet canopy stitched with diamond dust.
On the highest outside terrace of the Federal Apex Spire, eighty-five floors above the sleeping metropolis of Mega-City 01, a small fire burned quietly inside a salvaged cast-iron fire bowl.
The fragrant scent of dried pine cones, sweet mountain birch, and roasted cedar smoke drifted into the crisp night air, carried away on the gentle offshore thermals. Around the low golden flames, there were no politicians, no reporters, and no military staff officers.
There was only Arthur Wright. The five companions who had walked with him through the gates of hell.
Arthur sat cross-legged on a folded canvas tarp beside the fire bowl, wearing his worn, grease-stained combat jacket over an old woolen sweater. Across his knees rested a stainless steel beast-doctor stitch tray. It held a fresh jar of pine-tar antiseptic, clean linen bandages, and five roasted beef marrow bones wrapped in salted parchment.
Resting his massive six-hundred-two-pound bulk across both of Arthur’s boots was Grimm.
The Stygian direhound had his heavy black glass jowls pressed flat against Arthur’s shins, his single intact ear swiveled toward the crackling embers. Every few moments, Grimm would let out a long, shuddering sigh of deep canine contentment, his amber eyes blinking lazily in the firelight. When Arthur reached down to scratch the thick, scarred muscle behind his missing ear, Grimm’s heavy black tail gave three slow, rhythmic thuds against the stone—a steady, unbending metronome of total devotion.
