The clearing remained unnaturally quiet after the last scream disappeared into the forest.
Smoke drifted through the trees surrounding Ashfall, carrying the acrid scent of scorched grass.
Seven members of the Sacred Dawn lay scattered across the clearing, their once-pristine white-and-gold uniforms stained by dirt, blood, and the remnants of Seraphina’s corrupted divine fire.
At the center of it all stood the woman responsible.
The shattered black-gold halo behind Seraphina’s head slowly fractured into fading motes of mana, while the corrupted radiance flowing through the inscriptions of her Aurelian longsword receded until the weapon looked almost ordinary again.
The oppressive pressure that had forced grown men to their knees vanished with it.
Seraphina stared at what remained of Brother Cassian for several seconds before turning away. She offered no explanation, made none of her usual irritated remarks, and didn’t acknowledge the demons watching her from Ashfall’s entrance as she cleaned the blood from her sword and sheathed it.
That silence bothered me far more than another insult would have.
I forced my attention toward Ashfall’s residents. Nearly everyone had gathered around the damaged entrance, but none seemed eager to approach us. Some stared at Seraphina with open fear, while others watched with the stunned fascination of people trying to reconcile the crippled human prisoner they’d known with the woman who had just annihilated seven members of a holy order.
"Is everyone alright?" I called as I approached.
Lyra was the first to separate from the others. Her thin fingers gathered the sides of her gray dress as she hurried toward me, although even she glanced past my shoulder toward Seraphina.
"We’re unharmed, my Lady."
The tension I’d been carrying since the Core’s warning finally loosened enough for me to breathe properly. "What happened before we got here?"
"We saw them approaching through the forest and brought everyone inside. They remained outside for several minutes, examining the entrance and preparing their equipment."
"So they hadn’t entered yet?"
"No, my Lady."
I slowly looked back at the seven dead humans.
Seven armed members of a human holy order hadn’t traveled this far into the Demon Frontier to admire the fucking architecture, and I doubted they would’ve politely knocked before entering a dungeon populated entirely by demons.
Still, that wasn’t why Seraphina had killed them.
The moment she’d learned who they were, everything else had ceased to matter.
I glanced toward her and found Seraphina already looking at us. She had undoubtedly heard the entire conversation, yet her expression didn’t change.
"Where are the children?"
"Deeper inside with Mara. We moved them as soon as we spotted the humans."
"Good. Keep them there until we’ve cleaned this up."
Lyra nodded, but her attention shifted past me as Seraphina started toward the dungeon.
A path opened through them before she reached the entrance, several demons moving aside so quickly there was no pretending they were simply being courteous. Seraphina’s footsteps slowed when she realized what was happening.
A small horned girl peeked around the leg of one of the older residents, her curious eyes meeting Seraphina’s for only a moment before she immediately hid.
Seraphina stopped.
Something disturbed the composure she’d maintained since killing Cassian. Her fingers flexed once beside the hilt of her sword as she stared at the spot where the little girl had disappeared, but whatever she felt remained hidden as she continued into Ashfall without saying anything.
I watched her disappear into the darkness.
"Mistress?"
I glanced toward Lyra. "What?"
She hesitated before apparently reconsidering whatever question had almost escaped her mouth. "Nothing, my Lady."
"Probably for the best."
I had enough questions of my own.
Unfortunately, I also had seven corpses lying outside my dungeon, and being emotionally responsible could wait until after I made sure nobody left several thousand coins’ worth of equipment rotting in the grass.
My attention settled on the nearest fallen knight. His sword remained beside him, while polished armor covered most of his body and an enchanted holy symbol hung from his neck.
I slowly surveyed the rest of the clearing.
Seven dead members of a well-funded religious order looked considerably different through the eyes of a Dungeon Mistress with thirteen silver to her fucking name.
"Nobody touch anything yet."
Lyra blinked. "My Lady?"
"We’re fucking broke."
Her confusion lasted until I gestured toward the battlefield.
Then she understood.
The next hour was considerably less dramatic than Seraphina’s massacre, but arguably more important to Ashfall’s continued survival.
We recovered everything useful or valuable enough to carry. Weapons and enchanted armor were separated for eventual sale, while preserved food, traveling supplies, healing potions, and mundane equipment immediately went to Ashfall.
Several residents helped once Lyra assured them the holy equipment wouldn’t spontaneously incinerate anyone who touched it.
At least, I hoped it wouldn’t.
Then we found money.
"Twenty-eight silver and sixteen copper," I counted as another purse emptied onto the cloth we’d spread across the ground.
Lyra carefully added the coins to the growing pile.
It wasn’t a fortune, but watching Ashfall’s treasury increase without needing to sell one of my internal organs felt fucking fantastic.
The real value surrounded it. Between the Sacred Dawn’s enchanted equipment and the ancient coins, gemstones, and medallions we’d carried from the Sepulcher, Ashfall finally possessed something resembling wealth.
For thirty glorious seconds, I felt rich.
Then reality returned. "Fuck."
Lyra paused while folding one of the recovered cloaks. "Is something wrong, my Lady?"
"I have absolutely no fucking idea whom to sell any of this to."
Before I could embarrass myself further, I reached for another leather pack and searched through it. Several sheets of parchment had been tucked beneath a prayer book, most filled with names and terminology that meant absolutely nothing to me.
The third document contained a word I recognized immediately.
Ashfall.
My amusement disappeared as I unfolded the parchment.
The Sacred Dawn hadn’t stumbled across us by accident. Their expedition had entered this section of the Demon Frontier while investigating the disappearance of an adventuring party whose last known route brought them through the territory surrounding Ashfall.
The same adventurers whose attack had killed eleven residents, destroyed most of Ashfall’s defenses, and eventually resulted in Velessa’s death.
Someone had noticed they never came back.
And now the people sent to investigate their disappearance weren’t coming back either.
"That’s probably going to bite me in the ass."
Lyra looked up. "What did you find?"
I handed her the document and watched her expression tighten as she read.
"The Order will search for them."
"Probably." I sighed.
"When?" Lyra asked hopefully.
"That’s the fun part. I have no fucking idea."
Maybe it would take weeks. Maybe months. Either way, I wasn’t going to waste today panicking over an attack that hadn’t happened yet when Roland already had a fucking countdown hanging over my head.
As though thinking about the System had personally offended it, a familiar crimson glow appeared across my vision.
[MAJOR FATE DEVIATION DETECTED.]
[Order of the Sacred Dawn Expedition — Destroyed.]
[Seven Canonical Lives Terminated Before Scheduled Fate.]
[CANONICAL PRESSURE INCREASED.]
"Oh, fuck you."
Lyra immediately looked up from the parchment; her cheeks started to blush.
"Not you."
The System wasn’t finished.
[THE BEGINNING OF THE ORIGINAL STORY]
[Hero Roland will enter the Demon Frontier in:]
[767 Days, 19 Hours, 42 Minutes.]
I stared at the number as irritation crawled steadily up the back of my neck.
Almost six more days had disappeared.
Restoring Seraphina had changed canon. Giving her the Tear had changed it further. Now seven people who were supposed to remain alive had died hundreds of days before their scheduled fate.
Every success made us stronger while simultaneously dragging Roland closer.
I dismissed the notifications before the System could find another way to ruin my afternoon.
"Lyra, how did Ashfall normally sell things?"
"Before the attack?"
"Preferably. I don’t imagine business has been booming recently."
Her mouth twitched faintly. "Traveling merchants occasionally visited the outer territories, but Mistress Velessa also sent residents to nearby settlements whenever Ashfall had something valuable enough to justify the journey."
"How close?"
"The closest proper settlement is less than a day’s travel."
That changed things.
My knowledge of this world was simultaneously invaluable and completely fucking useless. I knew where legendary weapons would eventually surface, which kingdoms would collapse, and which women would become walking calamities, but ask me the current price of an enchanted Sacred Dawn breastplate. I might as well have been selling shit on the side of a highway.
Between the Sepulcher treasure, holy equipment, and broken Spatial Satchel, Ashfall finally had wealth.
What we didn’t have was a buyer.
"Tomorrow," I decided. "We’ll figure out where we can sell this stuff and what it’s actually worth. Until then, nobody trades anything."
"Of course, my Lady."
I nodded before instinctively looking around for the sarcastic remark I expected from Seraphina.
Only then did I remember she wasn’t there.
The image of her walking silently into Ashfall returned immediately, followed by that little girl hiding behind someone’s legs.
"How long has Seraphina been inside?"
Lyra glanced toward the entrance. "Nearly the entire time we’ve been sorting, my Lady."
I sighed.
There went my attempt to avoid emotional responsibility.
"Finish organizing everything. Put the food and mundane supplies wherever they’re needed, but don’t let anyone experiment with the enchanted equipment until we know what it does."
Lyra nodded, and I left her with the others.
Ashfall felt unusually subdued as I moved through its corridors. The residents I passed greeted me respectfully, but conversations softened whenever I approached, and several demons glanced toward the deeper hallways where Seraphina had disappeared.
I couldn’t blame them for being afraid of her.
What bothered me was whether Seraphina blamed them.
I eventually found her in my bedroom.
Our bedroom?
Whatever the fuck it was becoming.
She had already washed away the blood. Her blonde hair fell loose down her back, still slightly damp near the ends, while the Consecrated Aurelian Longsword rested against the wall several feet away. Without the shattered halo and black-gold fire surrounding her, she looked like the same infuriating woman who had spent the last several days calling me a degenerate.
Except she wasn’t insulting me.
Seraphina sat quietly on the edge of the bed with her hands resting loosely in her lap, her gaze lowered toward the stone floor.
I closed the door behind me and watched her for several seconds, trying to decide how the fuck someone was supposed to start this conversation.
I’d watched her kill seven people. Some had fought her, others had run, and Cassian had begged for his life before Seraphina deliberately chose to end it.
But I’d also watched the Sacred Dawn destroy fifteen years of her loyalty without hesitation. They’d crippled her, branded her an abomination, and discarded her into the Demon Frontier because something inside her didn’t fit their precious definition of holy.
Today, for the first time, she’d been powerful enough to make them afraid of her instead.
I didn’t know whether Seraphina regretted what she’d done.
More importantly, I wasn’t sure she knew either.
I crossed the room and sat beside her, leaving enough space that she could decide whether she wanted me there. The mattress dipped beneath my weight, but Seraphina still didn’t look at me.
Normally I couldn’t exist beside this woman for thirty seconds without receiving some variation of degenerate, pervert, or I still fucking hate you.
Her silence was starting to worry me.
"Seraphina, I—"
She moved before I could finish.
Seraphina rose from the bed and stepped directly in front of me, forcing me to straighten as I looked up at her. I expected anger, or perhaps the beginning of whatever she’d been refusing to say since leaving the clearing.
Instead, she held my gaze for several long seconds before slowly lowering herself onto her knees between my legs.
Every coherent thought in my head vanished.
There was nothing hesitant about the movement. She hadn’t stumbled, weakened, or been forced down; the woman who had brought members of the Sacred Dawn to their knees with little more than her presence had deliberately chosen to kneel in front of me.
Her hands settled against my thighs as she lifted her face. Those blue eyes were no longer distant but half-lidded and intensely focused on me, carrying an unmistakable heat that made the conversation I’d spent the entire walk here preparing suddenly feel very fucking irrelevant.
I swallowed and opened my mouth.
"Seraphina—"
Her fingers tightened against my thighs as she held my gaze.
"Don’t speak."