Brother Mikhal’s first awareness was agony.

  It did not come as a single pain but as a chorus—skull-splitting thunder behind his eyes, a white-hot spike through his shoulder, the grinding ache of ribs that had known mailed boots. His tongue felt swollen, thick with copper and ash. One eye would not open at all. The other fluttered weakly, catching nothing.

  There was no light.

  Not shadow.

  Not flicker.

  Not even the dim gray of moon through shutters.

  Only absolute, suffocating black.

  For a moment, Mikhal wondered if he had died.

  He tried to breathe deeply and found that even the air felt heavy, damp, and close. He inhaled again and caught the smell of spilled wine, oil, old wood—and beneath it, blood.

  Memory returned in fragments.

  Dusk.

  Boots on the stone steps.

  Lord Chronos entering the monastery courtyard with Templars not clad in the usual silver plate of the Order, but in black leather and darkened mail. Their armor had seemed… muted. Concealing.

  The demand.

  The scroll.

  The name Draumbean spoken with a curl of contempt.

  The screams.

  The doors splintering.

  The sound of Brother Alvren pleading before steel answered him.

  Mikhal tried to move.

  His wrists burned.

  Rope.

  His ankles strained uselessly.

  He was bound.

  And cold.

  He became acutely aware that his skin touched bare air. No robes. No cloth. No dignity.

  Naked.

  Humiliated.

  Helpless.

  A tremor passed through him—not of weakness, but of rage.

  He had sworn vows beneath these very stones.

  He had copied sacred texts by candlelight.

  He had guarded knowledge entrusted to only a handful of monks.

  He had seen the scroll long ago brought under escort from the far east, sealed with wax bearing their gods sigil.

  Vrorn.

  He did not fully understand its contents.

  But he knew this: it was not meant for men like Chronos.

  A heavy iron door groaned somewhere nearby.

  Light exploded into the darkness.

  Mikhal flinched violently, a strangled cry ripping from his throat. His working eye burned as if stabbed. Tears welled instantly.

  Silhouettes filled the doorway.

  Boots scraped across stone.

  Someone seized his hair and wrenched his head back.

  Pain flashed bright enough to rival the light.

  When his vision steadied, candle flames flickered along damp stone walls.

  He was in the cellar of the monastery.

  Wine casks stood stacked along one side. Oil barrels along another. The tools of sustenance and study.

  Now—

  Defiled.

  And then he saw them.

  His brothers.

  Hung by rope from the ceiling beams.

  Robes stained dark.

  Feet dangling inches above the floor.

  Brother Alvren.

  Brother Kest.

  Old Tomas, who had never once raised his voice.

  They swayed gently in the candle draft like broken pendulums.

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  A sound escaped Mikhal—raw, animal, torn from his core.

  “Why?” he croaked. His throat scraped with every word. “Why have you done this? Betrayed your Church… your Empire… your soul—”

  His voice fractured on the last word.

  A shape stepped forward.

  Tall.

  Composed.

  Candlelight etched the lines of his face into something almost statuesque.

  Lord Chronos

  “My soul,” Chronos said softly, “is perfectly intact, brother.”

  He wore black leather over darkened chain. No gleam. No heraldry. Only purpose.

  “As for why…” Chronos continued, pacing slowly. “Because the Empire is diseased. It rots from the inside while men like you whisper prayers over parchment.”

  Mikhal struggled against his bonds until rope bit into flesh.

  “You align with darkness,” he hissed. “With murder. With desecration. For power?”

  Chronos smiled thinly.

  “It is a means,” he said. “Nothing more.”

  Footsteps sounded behind him.

  Another figure emerged into the candlelight.

  Robes dark blue, embroidered with silver sigils that seemed to writhe in the shifting flame. A staff capped with a crystal the color of bruised twilight rested in his hand.

  His face was pale and narrow. Eyes calculating.

  Malcurr

  Malcurr inclined his head slightly toward Chronos.

  “The wards are broken,” he said calmly. “Whatever protections were layered upon the scroll are fading.”

  Chronos nodded without turning. “As expected,.”

  Mikhal’s heart seized.

  “You… you consort with sorcery?” he whispered.

  Malcurr’s lips curved faintly.

  “Consort?” he repeated. “No. I refine it.”

  Chronos gestured lazily toward Mikhal.

  “He believes evil is a tide one cannot ride,” Chronos said.

  Malcurr stepped closer, studying the monk with detached interest.

  “Faith,” he murmured, “is a brittle shield.”

  Mikhal spat blood at his feet.

  “You will choke on what you awaken,” he said.

  Chronos’ expression hardened slightly.

  “While the realm trembles at the rumor of Malekith’s return,” he said, voice lowering, “I will claim what is rightfully mine.”

  Mikhal’s breath caught.

  “You’re insane,” he rasped. “You cannot wield darkness as a tool.”

  “I will worry about the tool,” Chronos replied, “after I build the throne.”

  Malcurr’s eyes flicked toward Chronos.

  “The scroll thief?” he asked quietly.

  Chronos smiled faintly.

  “Recovered,” he said. “Dead.”

  “And the fools he gave the scroll to?”

  “Being gathered.”

  Malcurr nodded once.

  “There are references within the correspondences I deciphered,” he said. “It speaks of a shards location. One Draumbean intends to reclaim, no doubt.”

  Chronos’ gaze sharpened.

  “We will beat him to it.”

  Mikhal’s heart pounded so violently he feared it would rupture.

  “You cannot control what was forged in divine war,” he whispered.

  Malcurr’s staff tapped once against stone.

  “You assume control is the goal,” he said.

  Chronos turned at last, stepping away from Mikhal.

  “Hrulk,” he called.

  A massive silhouette shifted from the shadows.

  Hrulk’s shoulders nearly brushed the cellar beams. His hands were the size of mallets. His eyes held neither doubt nor curiosity.

  He grasped a wooden barrel and tore the lid free with a crack of splintering wood.

  Mikhal’s pulse spiked.

  “What are you".....

  The barrel tipped.

  Warm liquid cascaded across his chest and face.

  Thick.

  Sticky.

  Sweet.

  Honey.

  It ran into his mouth and nostrils. He gagged, choking, sputtering.

  Confusion tangled with terror.

  Chronos’ voice floated above him.

  “It is not for you, brother.”

  Malcurr extinguished two candles with a whisper of breath.

  Darkness thickened.

  “It is for the others.”

  The iron door slammed.

  Bolts slid home.

  Light vanished.

  The cellar plunged back into absolute black.

  Mikhal’s breathing came ragged and panicked.

  For a heartbeat...

  Nothing.

  Then....

  Scuttle.

  Tiny claws on stone.

  Another.

  And another.

  The scent of honey thickened the air.

  The first rat touched his foot.

  He screamed.

  They came in dozens.

  Drawn by sweetness.

  Desperate.

  Hungry.

  Teeth pierced skin.

  Tiny bodies scrambled across his chest and face.

  He thrashed uselessly, rope cutting deeper.

  He tried to pray.

  Tried to focus on the face of the Silent Saint carved above the chapel doors.

  But all he knew was darkness.

  And pain.

  And the slick warmth of honey becoming blood.

  Before unconsciousness claimed him once more, one thought crystallized with terrible clarity:

  The realms would burn once more.

  Chronos would answer.

  For every rope.

  Every scream.

  Every bite.

  The Pyre

  Lord Chronos stepped from the monastery cellar into the night air as though emerging from a chapel service.

  The courtyard was awash in flickering torchlight. Blood-streaked marble steps. Broken bodies lay where they had fallen hours earlier.

  Behind him, Hrulk followed in silence.

  Malcurr emerged last, staff glowing faintly at its crystal tip.

  Chronos paused beneath the archway and inhaled deeply.

  “Do you smell that, Hrulk?”

  The giant sniffed once.

  “Ash and blood, my lord.”

  Chronos closed his eyes briefly.

  “A blend I find particularly… cleansing.”

  The monastery roof crackled.

  Flame had begun its slow climb along the beams.

  Malcurr gestured lightly with his staff. A shimmer rippled along the structure.

  “The fire will take evenly now,” he said. “No sections spared.”

  “Good,” Chronos replied.

  Hrulk shifted his weight.

  “Brother Mikhal,” he said. “He was devout.”

  Chronos turned toward the blaze beginning to consume stained glass windows.

  “One of the many shortcomings of piety,” he said. “It demands so little, and gives even less.”

  Malcurr stepped closer.

  “Draumbean believes knowledge should be hidden,” he said thoughtfully. “Preserved.”

  “He believes he can command ancient magic,” Chronos replied. “Not realizing that it commands him.”

  Flames burst through the roofline.

  The monastery’s bell tower cracked with a sound like bone snapping.

  Chronos watched without blinking.

  “This Order kept secrets for centuries,” he said. “Scrolls. Maps. Fragments of prophecy. They hid them behind vows and candlelight.”

  “And now?” Hrulk asked.

  “Now,” Chronos said, “we claim them.”

  Malcurr reached into his robes and withdrew a fragment of parchment—charred but legible.

  “I salvaged what I could before the wards collapsed,” he said. “The Crown was shattered intentionally. The pieces are not inert.”

  Chronos’ eyes gleamed.

  “They are keys.”

  “To what?” Hrulk rumbled.

  Malcurr’s expression did not change.

  “To remaking the realm.”

  The monastery roof collapsed inward with a roar.

  Red-orange light bathed the courtyard in infernal glow.

  Chronos stepped toward the waiting carriage.

  “For tonight,” he said, “we continue.”

  The coachman cracked the reins.

  Wheels rolled.

  The door shut.

  Through the carriage window, the monastery became an inferno.

  Hrulk sat opposite Chronos, massive hands resting on his knees.

  “Orders?” he asked.

  Chronos removed a decent sized pouch of coin from inside his robes.

  “Collect the scroll and the ones who harbor it. Do not let them escape the city. I must return to Struttsburg. I am summoned," he said with annoyance.

  Malcurr’s gaze sharpened slightly.

  “They do not know what they carry.”

  “They will,” Chronos replied. “Soon enough. We must have them in custudy before that happens. Go to the local bounty hunters guild and hire some back up."

  Malcurr nodded as the carriage came to a stop.

  As he was exiting the carriage Chronos called over his shoulder.

  "And Malcurr," he said.

  "Yes Lord?"

  "Do not fail me."

  And with that the carriage rolled on again into the city's darker streets.

  Behind them, stone cracked.

  Beams fell.

  Centuries of quiet devotion turned to smoke.

  Chronos leaned back and closed his eyes.

  “Let the Empire burn,” he whispered. “And be remade.”

  Hrulk watched him carefully in the flickering light.

  “We should be careful with the wizard. He seems to have plans of his own," he said.

  Chronos’ lips curved.

  “I intend to.” Chonos answered.

  The carriage disappeared into the night.

  And in its wake...

  Ash fell like black snow.

  Secrets burned.

  And the first true sparks of civil war glowed beneath the Empire’s skin.