The summons came at dawn.
A servant of the Ducal Council rapped urgently on the door of the quarters Markos had been lent in the Citadel. "You're to report to the High Hall immediately," the boy announced breathlessly. "The Council has... a matter of urgency." Markos, still wiping sleep from his eyes, dressed swiftly and departed with purpose, his sword slung over his shoulder and armor half-buckled.
The Citadel's council chamber was unusually crowded. Behind the great table of oak and bronze sat not only scribes and advisors but three of the Duke's generals and a Marshal whose scowl looked carved from iron. "Markos," said Councilor Virelli, the thin-lipped man who had first received his report on the Pazzonian incursion. "We've decided to entrust you with a direct command."
"A command?" Markos raised a brow. "You would give that to a foreigner?"
"You held your ground at Scolatii. You survived an ambush, brought us intelligence, and won over some of our soldiers. That speaks louder than bloodlines," Marshal Intraglio growled. "You'll lead a manipulus — sixty men. Infantry, mostly light spearmen with some arbalests and skirmishers."
Markos's orders were simple on parchment: Confront the Pazzonian forces assembling near the village of Sepultana and deliver an ultimatum. If they do not withdraw, reinforce the garrison and prepare for siege. But between the lines lay suspicion. Why send a foreigner to negotiate? Unless...
He departed by midday with the manipulus marching behind him. The road to Sepultana curled southward through craggy hills and pine forests, the air damp and wind-chilled. The locals they passed gave Markos odd glances. To them, he was a knight from nowhere — a stranger leading sons of Scolacium into unknown danger.
They reached Sepultana by dusk on the third day. Its castle stood atop a shale ridge, weather-beaten but stern, and the village below stirred with unease. Smoke rose in thin spirals from hearths. Chickens ran loose. The militia captain, an old man with missing teeth, greeted them nervously.
"They're camped just beyond the ridge. Fifty men at least. But there's something wrong about it," he muttered. "No fires. No patrols. It's like they're... waiting."
Markos' instincts screamed. Still, bound by duty, he took a small contingent and approached the Pazzonian camp under a flag of truce.
The moment they crested the ridge, arrows flew.
Markos dropped to the ground with a curse as one shaft slammed into his shield. "Ambush!" he shouted, voice cutting through the chaos. The enemy had waited for a magistrate — but instead found him. From the trees, Pazzonian crossbowmen emerged, their helmets crowned with spikes like iron halos. Behind them, halberdiers rushed forward in a wedge formation.
"Back! Form ranks!" Markos ordered, drawing his blade as his men scrambled. Arrows fell like rain. A soldier beside him took a bolt through the throat and dropped like a sack.
Markos' line bent, almost broke — especially on the left flank, where the enemy performed a flanking maneuver, circling through a dry streambed. "They're turning us!" one of the sergeants cried. Markos rallied his reserve, rushing to reinforce the flank with grim speed. He met the enemy wedge himself, steel clanging as he parried a halberd and rammed his sword through the attacker's gut.
"Fall back to the ridge! Form a crescent!" Markos barked. The manipulus fell back in a staggered withdrawal, shields up, dragging the wounded. Skirmishers loosed quarrels into the trees, slowing the advance, but it wasn't enough.
The village bells rang — a signal.
From the gates of Sepultana's castle, a second force surged forth, armored riders and pikemen, the garrison's full strength. The Pazzonian ambushers were caught between Markos' retreating force and the castle reinforcements. In a clatter of hooves and war cries, the tide turned.
Markos, bloodied and breathless, found himself face to face with a Pazzonian captain. The man spat in broken Scolacian. "Not who we wanted. But you'll still die here."
"I doubt it," Markos muttered — and knocked him unconscious with the hilt of his sword.
By twilight, the enemy had retreated into the woods, leaving the field to the defenders. Fires were lit, wounded tended, and barricades reinforced. Markos stood beside the village well, wiping blood from his face. The garrison commander clasped his arm.
"You weren't the magistrate they wanted," he said. "But perhaps you were the one we needed."
Unbeknownst to them all, a shadow loomed at the forest edge. Helena, cloaked and unseen, had watched the battle unfold. Her hand never raised. Not once. But her eyes, glowing faintly under her hood, followed only one man. When the enemy flanked him, she nearly intervened.
Nearly.
But Markos had survived on his own. That thrilled her more than it should have.
The prisoner sat shackled to a pillar in Sepultana's dungeon, lit only by a hanging brazier. Blood stained his cloak — not from battle, but the bruising welcome he received upon capture. Markos stood before him, arms folded, flanked by the castle's executioner, a brute of a man named Eroldo, whose tools glimmered with dreadful promise in the firelight.
"You've lost," Markos said plainly. "But if you speak sense, you may not lose your tongue."
The Pazzonian captain spat a tooth onto the floor. "I will not betray my brothers."
Eroldo stepped forward without a word, grabbing the man's fingers and twisting until one snapped. A scream echoed through the chamber.
"I'm not asking for your brother's favorite color," Markos said coldly. "Why are you here? Why now? You didn't expect us — you expected someone else. Who?"
"Magistrate Corelio," the captain hissed. "We were to seize him. Use him to break the Sepultana garrison." His voice trembled, not from pain — but from a deeper dread. "Because Scolacium and Nafonia are fractured. Your dukes whisper war. No emperor sits the throne in Florentine."
Markos stepped back, the weight of those words settling in his chest like lead. The Pazzonians were watching. Waiting. And now, they struck, knowing no one could unite Astonicum against them.
"The Reich doesn't need to burn every village," the captain continued bitterly. "It only needs to push... and your own pride will do the rest."
Before Markos could reply, a guard burst into the chamber. "A courier from Tarsinium — urgent!"
Outside, a messenger wheezed with exhaustion. "A second Pazzonian force has crossed the border — they've razed two farms and surrounded Tarsinium village. The Magistrate begs for aid."
Markos had no time for ceremony. By sunset, he led a battered force of eighty — spearmen, militia, and a handful of cavalry. They marched west through pinewood and field, the village of Tarsinium still smoldering on the horizon. Smoke curled into the twilight sky.
The ambush came swift.
Crossbow bolts rained from hilltop ridges as Markos' men entered the valley road. He shouted for cover, but cries of pain echoed around him. "Shields up! Form wedge formation!"
They advanced into Tarsinium under fire, entering a ring of half-collapsed homes. Pazzonian troops flooded the square — more disciplined this time, armored in blackened steel. Markos rallied what little structure he could. "Hold the square! Anchor on the well!"
But the enemy had numbers. One flank folded under a hammering charge. Arbalests were running low on bolts. Markos found himself at the center, clashing with an officer wielding a morning star. The impact threw him to the ground — his helmet cracked, blood streaking his vision.
Through the ringing in his ears, he saw death approaching.
Then a voice thundered.
"For Scyelletium!"
A knight — cloaked in obsidian plate, helm crowned with a silver crest — rode through the enemy like a storm. The figure's banner bore no sigil known to any present. With a downward slash of her halberd, three Pazzonians fell. "Rally to me!" the knight bellowed.
Markos blinked in confusion. That voice...
The tide shifted with her arrival. Her strikes were precise, almost unnatural. She led the countercharge, flanking the enemy and pinning them against a ruined granary. "Strike left! Break their morale!" the knight commanded, and Markos obeyed, barely on his feet.
By the time dusk gave way to stars, the square was theirs.
Bodies lay strewn, and the enemy retreated westward into the woods. Markos, bruised and bleeding, staggered toward the knight as she removed her helm — but not entirely. Just enough for him to see eyes he knew.
Helena.
"I told you I had business in these lands," she said softly. "I didn't say what kind."
"You're no knight of Scyelletium," Markos murmured, breathless. "But you saved us."
"I serve in my own way." She touched the side of his face, healed a gash with a whisper. "You still think you walk alone, Markos. But I've been beside you from the start. Even if I must wear a hundred masks."
As she turned to leave, melting into the fog of night, Markos stood silently — a man who had bled for this land, now unsure whether his greatest ally was a protector or a looming storm.
Beneath the crust of the world, beyond the roots of mountains and the songs of stars, there was a realm untouched by time: The Abyss. It pulsed with ancient magic, not of order or nature — but of raw, bleeding chaos. Here, the sky cracked like glass, and rivers flowed backwards, whispering secrets to the dead. At its center stood the Obsidian Spire, jagged and veined with fire, rising like a fang into an endless night.
She stood upon its peak.
No longer Helena the mage, nor the Black Knight, or the Knight of Scyelletium. She had shed those skins like old clothes.
Now, Scelestus, crowned in burning horns and draped in robes spun from sorrow and gold, had returned to her true throne. Her voice could shatter minds. Her gaze could unmake stars. And yet, her heart — that fractured, ancient heart — still beat with a name.
"Markos…"
She sat upon her throne, claws tapping against the stone, watching him through her scrying mirror. In the mortal world, he led soldiers and swayed councils, never knowing the depth of the game he had stepped into. Around her, lesser demons bowed, afraid to speak unless summoned. But she was not in the mood for reverence. Her jealousy roiled like a storm.
Twice now she had seen him smile at other women. Innocent acts, she knew. But innocence could turn to affection. And affection? That was betrayal.
"Why do you deny me?" she murmured. "You came from a world long dead. I gave you purpose. I watched over you when no god did. And yet you look at them — as if they could ever match me."
She waved a hand. The abyss responded.
Flames shaped into figures — the herbalist, the alchemist, the little girl in Nafonia — each ignited and crumbled to ash before her. Not out of hatred, but fear. Fear that someone else would claim the heart she had once lost.
In the far chamber, her High Council of the Abyss convened. Demonlords with fangs like pikes, scholars of torment, former gods broken into servitude. They knelt in silence as Scelestus entered the obsidian amphitheater, her shadow stretching over them like a judgment.
"Speak," she commanded.
A skeletal archdemon, named Vuldros, stepped forward. "The mortal realms tremble, my Empress. The Florentine throne is vacant. The Pazzonians advance. The humans are fractured."
Scelestus nodded. "Perfect. Let the scent of war spread."
Another, horned and hunched, rasped, "Shall we unleash the Gate of Katharion? Let the flame-horde march?"
"Not yet," she said coolly. "The time will come. First... I must see if he chooses me willingly."
A silence fell, uneasy.
"But Empress," Vuldros dared speak, "what if he never does? What if he—"
His skull exploded in a silent flash of purple fire. The rest bowed deeper, quaking.
Scelestus turned her back to them and looked once more into the mirror. Markos was tending to wounded men, speaking kindly to villagers. So... noble. So much like him, long ago — the man she once loved, before the heavens turned on her.
"Let the mortals scheme," she whispered. "Let them summon councils. Let them vote, debate, and crown false kings."
She turned, eyes blazing.
"In the end, they will all kneel to me. And so will he — either as my consort... or as my conquest."
The Abyss howled in approval.
The firelight flickered along the walls of the Infernal Senate, deep within the lower sanctum of the Abyss. Here, beneath Scelestus' throne room, the ancient demons convened when they dared not speak within her presence. Only the most cunning and oldest among them sat at this obsidian table — archlords of war, torment, lust, and decay. They had watched empires rise and fall, but none expected to tremble beneath the will of their own queen.
"Her mind falters," rasped Elenzrak, Lord of Withering Time. His flesh hung like molted bark, his voice like a funeral bell. "She consults no one. She burns allies for questions. She gazes upon that mortal like a fevered shade."
"Her power grows with obsession," murmured Baeralth, the Pale Hoarder. "And that power twists. Even the Abyss bends around her moods."
Around the table, low murmurs echoed — the first stirrings of rebellion, or at least fear. Scelestus had once been revered for her clarity, her ruthless sense of justice and balance — the ancient goddess of night, secrets, and inevitable endings. But since her return... she had become unpredictable.
"She slaughters visions of women she sees in his dreams," whispered Nolgreth, the Archivist of Sins. "She conjures versions of him that never love her. Then she devours them."
A long pause followed.
"She weeps afterward."
None spoke for a moment.
A hooded figure, wrapped in celestial chains, finally raised his voice. Vorcal, once a fallen seraph, now her vizier of judgement.
"She was betrayed once," he said. "By gods. By lovers. By the people she tried to save. This obsession with Markos? It's not simple lust. It is recognition. He is the echo of the one who did not choose her."
"Then why does she not just take him?" barked Baeralth. "She is flame incarnate. She could break him into love."
"Because," Vorcal said darkly, "she wants him to choose her freely. That is what drives her mad. And if he doesn't?"
"Then she may tear the veil between realms," said Elenzrak grimly. "And plunge Astonicum into the true war we long feared."
A younger demonlord — Zethra, Mistress of Chains — leaned forward. "Then perhaps... we must act. Whisper to him. Warn him of what he walks toward. If he rejects her, and she shatters, we all burn."
"You would betray her?" Vorcal's voice sharpened.
"I would save her," Zethra growled. "Or save us all from what she is becoming."
The room cracked with silent tension. Treason, even spoken as fear, was deadly here. Above them, Scelestus' power rippled through the stone. She was not listening now — but the Abyss itself was always awake.
They knew they had little time.
Zethra left the chamber first, vanishing into mist and steel. She would not strike yet — but she would prepare. If the goddess of endings forgot her own limits, then someone had to remind her.
Because even gods could fall to madness.