Across the northern ridges, within the Commander’s quarters of the Great Cathedral of Althea, the air hung heavy with the scent of consecrated myrrh.
Yet no prayer could cleanse what was coming for them.
Lucas stood rigid before the ten-foot gothic window. His gilded plate armor rested upon a carved oak stand, leaving him clad only in a tunic of white linen embroidered with the golden crest of the phoenix.
The fabric hung loose, exposing the taut cords of his neck and the veins bulging along his temples.
His hands—hands that had wielded the blade of divine justice with practiced, crowd pleasing poise trembled uncontrollably.
Scattered across the marble desk, nestled between maps of the confederation and marriage edicts stamped with imperial wax, lay the blackened fragments of the communication crystal from Watchpost Four.
The shards held no light.
They were coated in a greasy black soot, still releasing a trace scent that no paladin of the light could stomach: sepulchral frost, volcanic sulfur, and the sweet, venomous musk of a mystic fox.
“I am the guest you forgot to invite to your wedding... Prepare the feast, false hero... for in four days, the bride will wear mourning, and you shall keep her company.”
Those words reverberated against the inside of Lucas’s skull with the cadence of a siege hammer.
"It can't be him," he muttered under his breath, grinding his knuckles into his eye sockets until his vision sparked red. "I saw him fall with my own eyes.
His ribs shattered against the northern shelf. He crawled like a worm in the dirt. Nobody... nobody survives the Weeping Peak Rift."
His fists clenched so hard his fingernails dug into his palms.
The voice that had emerged from the crystal was not Alan’s.
Alan had the voice of an exhausted scout a naive peasant boy who spoke with humble, docile deference, grateful for every scrap of glory the holy vanguard tossed down from the high table.
The voice that had just shattered the sacred frequency was a venomous velvet melody. A feminine, terrifying cadence that sounded as though it had chewed on carrion before uttering his name.
It radiated pure malice.
Absolute, unadulterated contempt.
Lucas could not comprehend it.
He had stood at the edge of the precipice himself, watching the body tumble into the fathomless depths while wiping the blood from his blade against the snow.
The sudden groan of the heavy oak and mithril door made him spin around with the frantic speed of a cornered beast.
His right hand dropped to the hilt of his service shortsword, clearing four inches of consecrated steel before his eyes registered the figure crossing the threshold.
"Sheathe that ridiculous steel, Lucas. You look like a cur frightened by thunder."
The voice was melodious, gentle, worthy of a goddess.
Elena stepped into the chamber, drawing the door shut behind her with a dull click of the deadbolt.
She wore a nightgown of pearl silk edged with fine lace that draped over her graceful frame the very silhouette the capital’s chroniclers praised in broadsheets as the Holy Maiden of the Valleys.
Chestnut hair cascaded in pristine waves over her shoulders, and honey-hued eyes gleamed with practiced purity.
Yet the instant the deadbolt slid into place, the pious docility melted from her features like rotting paint.
Elena did not cross the room to comfort him.
She strode forward with sharp, imperious strides, tossing a bundle of military dispatches with broken church seals onto the desk.
"Care to explain why you gave orders to double the patrols in the Lower District without consulting the Grand Chancellor?" she demanded, folding her arms as her gaze bored into the paladin.
"Balthazar is furious that you reassigned two hundred of his legionnaires to the North Wall, and the Archbishop has already sent word asking if the Holy See should prepare for bad news before the Solstice banquet.
Have you lost your mind three days before our coronation?"
Lucas swallowed hard, cold sweat trickling down the nape of his neck.
"Watchpost Four went dark," he stammered, pointing a stiff finger toward the blackened crystal shards.
"Captain Varek is dead. Every patrol gryphon in the sector was slaughtered along the slopes."
Elena didn't even blink. A chestnut brow arched in cold exasperation.
"A mountain beast. Or a raiding party of border barbarians. It happens every winter when the blizzards set in, you idiot.
Dispatch a purge squad at dawn and have them mount the savages' heads along the crags. You do not disrupt the capital's garrison over a handful of butchered guards."
"It wasn't a beast, Elena!" Lucas snapped, his composure crumbling as he slammed both fists onto the marble desk, scattering papers into the air.
"It spoke through the crystal! It intercepted the sacred squadron's command frequency!"
Elena froze. For the first time, a flicker of caution tightened the corners of her thin lips.
"Who spoke, then?"
"I don't know... It was a woman's voice, but... she knew everything, Elena," Lucas wheezed, breathing like a man suffocating in an iron cell.
"She said the seal is broken. She said she's coming to our wedding. And she called me by my name... exactly the way he used to."
A suffocating silence descended upon the chamber, heavy as molten wax.
Elena did not retreat.
Walking measuredly to the desk, she pinched one of the charred shards between two pristine fingers and brought it to her nose.
She inhaled the mana residue with sharp, calculated focus. Her honeyed pupils contracted.
"Progenitor frost. Primordial dragonfire. And a fractured soul signature," Elena murmured with chilling detachment. "Fascinating. The Abyssal Seal truly gave way." Find the original chapter at NovelPing.
"Fascinating?!" Lucas shrieked, seizing her forearms with frantic force. "Elena, if that thing crawls out of the pit if the Central Inquisition discovers the ancient Calamities weren't slain by the founders, but sealed beneath our sector the imperial court will feed us to the lions! And if Alan is somehow still alive!"
Crack!
The slap cracked through the room like a bullwhip.
Lucas stumbled backward, clutching his stinging, reddened cheek in disbelief.
The force of the strike was not that of a frail maiden; Elena had channeled a pulse of reinforced mana through her open palm with the cold precision of an executioner.
P
"Get a grip on yourself, you worthless coward," she said, wiping her palm against the silk of her gown with sheer revulsion.
"Is this why I chose you? Is this why I draped the hero’s mantle over your shoulders, rather than rotting as the betrothed of a starving peasant in a southern shack?"
Elena stepped toward him, backing him against the stone frame of the window. Her face, inches from his, radiated icy, venomous malice.
"Alan was a sentimental fool," she hissed, her words like daggers dipped in poison. "A mediocre scout who believed love and loyalty would buy him a place in the annals of history.
He spent five years breaking his hands in dungeon crawls to pay for my tuition at the theological academy. And when he had nothing left to offer... we pushed him into the pit. We did what had to be done.
This world belongs to those with the stomach to sacrifice pawns."
"B-but the voice"
"Alan is dead!" Elena snarled, her tone brooking no argument.
"His flesh was devoured by the shadows of the rift three weeks ago.
And even if something survived down there—if some abyssal aberration fed upon his corpse and absorbed his memories before crawling out to hunt..."
She paused, a ruthless smirk curling her lips.
"...then it is not a ghost. It is flesh. And flesh burns."
Elena turned back toward the vanity, picked up a crystal flask of lavender oil, and dabbed it onto her wrists with regal grace.
"You will speak to Balthazar first thing tomorrow morning," she commanded without looking back.
"You will not breathe a word about the voice.
You will tell him a cell of heretics attempted to sabotage the papal blessing.
Have him seal the gates of the Lower District and execute any vagrant or refugee caught without an Order writ.
If the beast tries to slip through the slums, Balthazar will crush it before it ever crosses the Artisans' Bridge."
She turned back to Lucas, pinning him with a glare that brooked no defiance.
"And you will put on that gilded armor tomorrow, stand tall, and smile for the imperial envoys.
This wedding will proceed.
The Archbishop will anoint me Matron of the Temple, and he will crown you Lord Protector of Althea.
We have climbed far too high to let the ghost of a dead man rob me of my throne.
Do you understand me?"
Lucas swallowed hard, bowing his head in humiliating submission.
"Yes, Elena."
"Good."
She offered him that practiced, radiant smile that had fooled kings, turned on her heel, and swept from the room without another glance.
Left alone in the dim expanse of the grand chamber, Lucas stared back down at the blackened fragments on the desk.
Despite Elena’s absolute certainty, despite the hundred foot stone walls and the ten thousand holy paladins encamped outside the gates, a chill seeped into the marrow of his bones.
Deep down, he knew no gilded armor in the world would be enough to shield his neck.
Ten leagues from the capital, inside the cabin tucked beneath the snow laden pines, a faint creak against the timber floor disturbed the silence.
I opened my golden eyes.
The white flame in the hearth had dwindled to glowing coals.
At my back, Ignis slept with steady, rhythmic breaths, her armored arm locked firmly over my hip and her scaled tail coiled tight around my ankles, sheltering me from the drafts with fierce, unyielding protectiveness.
Across the room, the shadows in the eastern corner began to stir.
From between the weathered floorboards, a column of pitch black mist condensed upward.
The temperature plummeted ten degrees in a heartbeat, thick with the metallic tang of fresh beast blood and the fragrance of withered roses.
Carmilla coalesced from the gloom.
Her gown of black silk remained uncreased, though her lace sleeves were drenched in dark gore to the elbows.
Across her pale marble cheek were two splatters of blood she hadn't bothered to wipe away, and her crimson eyes burned with the satiated gleam of an apex predator freshly fed after a long famine.
Ignis’s slit pupils snapped open instantly. She growled in a low rasp without loosening her grip around my waist:
"You smell like a dead dog, damn mummy."
The Progenitor sank to her knees before the pallet.
Her crimson eyes raked over my features, taking in the restored color in my cheeks and the steady rhythm of my chest.
Reaching out with exquisite care, she traced the base of my left fox ear.
A soft, involuntary shiver escaped my lips, drawing a smug, triumphant smirk from the vampire.
"The color has returned to your cheeks, my beautiful Sovereign," she purred, trailing cold fingertips down my jawline until they brushed the faint mark Ignis had pressed into my neck.
"The fever has broken."
"What did you find in the woods?" I asked, pushing myself up onto my elbows.
At the base of my spine, the root of my fourth tail pulsed with a steady, dull throb. It no longer burned; it coiled like fresh muscle waiting for the exact moment to split the skin.
Carmilla reached into the folds of her bloodstained gown and tossed two items onto the dry straw between us.
The first was a shattered mithril pendant, its centerpiece a silver canine tooth torn from a Hound of San Gabriel, snapped cleanly in two.
The second was a reinforced leather scroll case stamped with gold wax and the heraldry of a warhammer crossed over a broadsword: the personal crest of General Balthazar.
"Seven hounds," Carmilla reported, amusement lacing her tone.
"Quite fast, perfectly obedient to their handlers' whistles... yet their necks snap just as easily as glass.
Their handlers attempted to flee on the surviving gryphons.
I brought down three in midair before they cleared the pines.
The last was an imperial courier riding from the capital's vanguard. I tore him to ribbons."
With a flick of a black nail, the vampire sliced the wax seal open and unrolled a tactical map across the floor.
Ignis leaned over my shoulder, resting her heavy chin atop my head as her fiery gaze tracked the crimson ink notations across the vellum.
The map outlined Althea's garrison deployments for the days leading up to the Winter Solstice.
The capital was divided into three concentric rings, but the vital detail lay circled in heavy black ink along the southwestern sector: The Anvil Bastion.
"Balthazar isn't encamped at the cathedral with the lovers," Carmilla noted, tapping the bastion with a blood-dipped nail.
"The coward has entrenched himself within the lower armory fortress, guarding the river sluice gates that supply the city.
He holds four hundred veterans of the Iron Legion and three runic siege cannons procured from the dwarven frontier."
"That bastard Balthazar..." Ignis growled against my hair, a spark flaring between her fangs.
"I remember that name from your fevered ramblings about Loop Three, vixen. He's the one who shattered your legs with his warhammer before Lucas pushed you over the edge, wasn't he?"
A wave of glacial memory washed over me.
Loop #3.
Blood steaming on fresh snow.
Balthazar’s booming laughter muffled beneath his braided blond beard as he brought his iron maul down onto my human knees, ensuring I could never drag myself back onto the trail.
“Nothing personal, kid. Lucas needs a corpse that won’t walk so the beast report sounds convincing.
Be glad we’re letting you die with a view of the sky.”
My porcelain fingertips dug into the vellum. Talons sheared through the thick leather directly over the rendering of the Anvil Bastion, tearing the ink with a sharp rip.
"The river carries snowmelt straight into the armory's sewer grates," I said, my voice so deep, so devoid of hesitation that Carmilla’s smile widened, revealing the pristine gleam of her fangs.
"The fortress appears impregnable from the outer bridge... but the water sluice gates are secured by nothing more than wrought iron bars."
"Wrought iron turns to tallow before my breath," Ignis rumbled, her claws tightening against my hip with savage possessiveness.
"Tomorrow night, I'll turn that bastion into a smelting furnace."
"No," I countered, looking between them. "No open infernos yet. Elina will not announce her arrival with fireworks. We infiltrate through the water before the midnight watch rotates.
Carmilla will harvest the sentries along the battlements under the cover of mist. Ignis will seal the foundry exits so no runner can ride for the cathedral."
I rose from the straw pallet.
My two silver tails unfurled with lethal grace, catching the dim room in ribbons of pure spectral flame that illuminated the cabin's timber rafters.
At the base of my lower back, the scar of the unborn fourth tail throbbed violently, answering the call of the blood waiting to be spilled.
I stepped before the two Calamities.
Carmilla rose, bowing her head in a gesture where carnal devotion and military fealty blurred into one.
Ignis stood tall at my flank, planting her halberd into the timber floor with a thud that shook the small cabin an unspoken blood oath of total annihilation.
"Balthazar believes stone walls will keep him safe from ghosts," I said, my golden eyes locked onto the torn map.
"Tomorrow, he will learn that no iron in this world can bar our path... and that his hammer will serve only to dig his own grave."
Beyond the timber walls, the first pale light of dawn began to bleed over the jagged peaks.
Day Two of the countdown had begun, and the first head on Alan’s list had already been claimed.