Ash fell like snow.
Not in great clouds, not in choking storms—just a quiet, steady drift that caught the dying light and turned it silver. It clung to rooftops, to scorched grass, to the broken weapons left leaning against the blackstone walls. The air held no wind, no birdsong—only the soft scrape of shovels and the rustle of cloth as villagers gathered what was left of the shattered mistspawn.
Angela moved among them, silent and small. Her hands were clean, untouched by ash, but her eyes saw too much. She paused by a twisted heap of blackened bone and mist-burnt skin. Where its face had once been, there was only a hollow — and something in her stomach twisted.
"They shouldn't still feel wrong," she whispered to no one.
But they did.
Her fingers closed around the pendant at her throat. Not prayer—never that—but memory of when the elf had saved her.
This wasn't over.
Near the gate, Kaela sat on a stone bench, the curve of her spine sharp in the fading light. Her daggers rested across her lap, one blade already gleaming, the other still streaked with something that had once been alive. She ran the whetstone across it in slow, rhythmic pulls—shhk, shhk—her eyes never straying from the edge.
Beneath her wrappings at her waist, the mark pulsed faintly—too dim to glow, but still there. A brand that no water or wind could erase.
She'd wrapped it tightly, covered it well. But she could feel it burning still. Watching still.
A child lingered near the gate—a boy, no older than ten. Dirt smeared across his cheeks, bare feet pressed into scorched earth. He said nothing, just stared. Kaela didn't look at him, but she let her voice carry soft and low.
"It's over for now."
The boy didn't reply. He just turned and ran—whether from fear or relief, she didn't know. She didn't chase the answer.
From the treeline, the shadows shifted.
Lilith walked slowly, her cloak dragging just above the ash. Her daughters followed like whispers, drifting between torchlight and dark. They did not speak until they passed the first line of wards, still humming faintly with post-battle energy.
One daughter paused. Her eyes, red as cut garnet, turned toward the forest.
"There are no more eyes in the trees."
The other answered without looking. "Not theirs. Ours."
Lilith did not smile. She hadn't since before the mist broke.
By nightfall, the village had quieted. The ash still drifted, but minds turned from mourning to war. And within the longhouse, the hum of strategy began.
The Longhouse breathed with low torchlight, the air thick with smoke and unspoken weight.
Maps spread across the heavy table, edges curled and smudged with ash. Markers of carved bone and stone rested over Valaris, over the forest line, over paths not yet taken.
Lilith stood at the head of the table, one hand resting lightly on the map, her crimson eyes cold fire in the dim. Her daughters flanked her — one silent, one whispering a litany only she could hear.
"They fracture," Lilith said, her voice smooth as glass drawn over a blade. "The Cathedral Ward stirs with unrest. The Prexies circle one another like wolves. And the people… they whisper of betrayal."
She tapped a pale fingertip against the edge of Valaris's carved walls."The cracks are not only in their stones," she murmured, "but in their prayers."
Across from her, Valtor loomed, arms crossed, eyes glinting like coals under hooded lids. His tail flicked once, sharp against the floor.
"Then we strike deeper," he rumbled. "We build a forward post. Stone, iron, teeth — let them feel us press against their throat."
Kaela leaned forward, elbows on the table, her golden eyes restless, flicking between the lines of the map and the window beyond. The mark pulsed faintly beneath her cloak, an ache, a whisper.
"The mist is gone," she said softly. "But the air still listens."
Silence fell.
Lysanthir stood at the far end, half-shadowed, half-lit — as if the torches refused to claim him fully. He hadn't spoken once, not since the meeting began. His eyes traced the map, not seeing wood or stone or ink, but something older. Something beneath it all.
When he finally moved, it was only to lower his gaze, his voice a thread of steel through the hush.
"Then," he said, "let them believe they still have time."
The words landed like a blade laid carefully at the throat of the world.
When the last word faded and the torches hissed in their brackets, Lysanthir moved.No command passed his lips, no glance sought approval. He simply turned — and the hush bent around him like the air around a drawn blade.Stone swallowed sound.
And below, where the light of the world could not follow, something waited still.
The steps into the crypt swallowed sound.
Lysanthir's footfalls stirred no echo, his cloak brushing the cold stone as if the air itself bent away from him. The torches lining the narrow stair guttered low, reluctant to light his path.
Below, the circle waited.
The demon crouched within the binding — shadow and flesh braided tight, eyes like smoldering coals in a hollowed face. It did not lift its head at his approach. It did not need to.
"You come alone," it rasped, voice soft as rot spreading beneath floorboards. "Good."
Lysanthir said nothing.
The demon's grin peeled slow, sharp teeth flashing through the dark."She rushes now," it murmured, twisting one claw lazily through the air. "Even the careful begin to stumble. She feels you at her door."
For a heartbeat, its gaze flickered upward, not to the village — but beyond."You burned the herald," it hissed, voice silked with something like amusement, something like warning. "But its ashes will seed something worse."
Lysanthir knelt, fingers brushing across the edge of the circle. Slowly, he drew a line — and then another, and another — shaping a symbol no eyes had seen in centuries, no tongue had spoken since the old gods fell quiet.
The stone drank the shape.
The demon froze.
For the first time since it had been bound, its form jerked back — not from the circle's edge, but from something older, deeper, humming through the carved lines. Its grin faltered, eyes narrowing to slits of coal.
A low hiss curled between its teeth."So," it whispered. "You remember more."
Lysanthir rose in a single, unhurried motion, the shadow of the new mark stretching long across the crypt floor.
He did not speak. He did not need to.
As he turned, the air behind him shivered — and the demon watched, silent at last, as the heavy door groaned shut on the flicker of torchlight. And when the door closed on the last word of the crypt the sky was already lightening, ash turning pale in the first reach of dawn.And high above the village, where wind scraped blackstone and the clouds bruised toward morning, she gathered to watch the world hold its breath.
Lilith stood alone atop the highest spire of the blackstone wall, her cloak still, her hands folded before her. Below her, the village stirred only faintly — quiet breath after a long-held silence.
Her daughters flanked her like statues, their white hoods pale ghosts in the morning dim. None of them spoke. The wind carried no birdsong. Only ash drifted still — faint motes from the last battle that refused to settle.
Lilith's voice broke the hush, low and deliberate."They will scream," she said, her eyes fixed on the far-off shimmer of Valaris, where clouds swelled like bruises on the horizon. "Louder than they pray."
Behind her, soft steps creaked on the stone. Kaela approached, her silhouette lean, blades crossed at her back, the mark hidden beneath layers of cloth. She said nothing.
She stood beside Lilith — not as a soldier to a commander, not as prey to predator — but as one witness to another.
They watched. Together.
The clouds above Valaris swirled darker.
And then, behind them, a third figure emerged — silent as ever.
Lysanthir's voice cut through the morning like frost over steel."We begin," he said, "when they believe it has ended."