Their ascent through the catacombs beneath the city was arduous but unhindered by any further traps or enemies. As they emerged to the roads in silence, breathless and worn, they struggled to shake off the echoes of their experience in the Vault. The storm that had provided cover and help to shield their infiltration had broken sometime during their ascent, its howling winds and crashing thunder now reduced to a light scattered drizzle. The black night sky had lightened significantly, giving way to a pale bruised horizon. Dawn approached now, cold and unwelcoming harsh light. The streets of Ironhaven were beginning to stir with its usual early movements: patrols were regrouping, watchtowers changing rotations as the new shift blinked to life.
Guided by Lythara through the crumbling alleys and forgotten passageways, the small group slipped deeper into the city’s underbelly, heading into shadows where even the guards feared to tread. It was in these depths where old smugglers refuges were found. One in particular of interest to Lythara.
In Ironhaven’s lowest tier, behind a half-collapsed wall was where she found the hidden entrance she sought. It was an old smuggler’s tunnel that had not seen use in decades, until she had found it during one of her late-night walks. Dust caked the stone floor, and the stagnant air was heavy with the scent of mildew. Lythara pressed in ahead of the group, she was silent and focused, her hand tracing over the wall searching for something only she knew about. Finally, she found what she was looking for and her fingers traced out the outline of a concealed latch mechanism, rusted but still intact and working. With a sharp twist of her hand the latch turned, and the wall creaked open. As it shifted it revealed a narrow passage that wound downward into the rock of the city. Behind her the group groaned slightly at the thought of going underground once more.
“This way,” the succubus said softly, and quickly stepped down the passage not bothering to wait for confirmation from the others.
Resolute, they followed behind her in silence, their footsteps muffled on the old stone of the floor. The tunnel walls were bereft of attached decoration or adornment and were damp to the touch. The tunnel supported by old beams that sagged under the weight of time. There was no light source within the tunnel, only the dim flicker of the torch that Ella had lit at the rear of the group. Shadows twisted back and forth across the corridor, dancing their macabre movements over long forgotten carvings and grime encrusted crates that were stacked in corners where the smugglers that used this tunnel hid their goods.
After several twists and turns, they emerged into a small chamber carved directly out of the stone. It bore the marks of rushed crafting, reinforced beams, makeshift benches carved of stone, rusted chains bolted into the walls. Along one side a semi-collapsed fireplace squatted; it still bore the stench of long burned coal. The room had once sheltered fugitives and now it would shelter their group.
Central to the chamber was something out of place, a raised slab of dark obsidian, cracked but still intact. Its polished surface swallowed the flicker of torchlight that landed upon it, black as the void of Necroth. It wasn’t a part of Ironhaven’s foundation, it didn’t even come from this region. It had been brought here, likely by Lythara, and set in this room for a purpose, waiting for what was about to take place.
The surface of the slab was barren, silently daring Xavier to move to it. Xavier could feel the weight of the infernal scroll, nestled in the special folds of his satchel, press into his side. It had not changed since they left the Vault, but his awareness of it, its very presence had grown heavier with burden.
Just inside the entrance of the chamber Lythara loitered, her gaze swept across the room with a haunted familiarity. Her eyes did not go to the others in the group, instead they settled on the slab. Her gaze pulled to it as if it were a gravestone bearing her name.
“This place once provided shelter for those who were fleeing gods, before the smugglers used and forgot it,” she murmured, her tone was quiet and distant. “I thought it seemed fitting to be a place to break the contract, doesn’t it?”
Again, she didn’t expect an answer. Her arms clutched around her middle as though she was trying to keep something from breaking loose inside her body.
Xavier slowly crossed to the slab, unslinging his satchel with deliberate motions. The leather of the bag creaked softly the sound loud in the otherwise silence of the room. Reaching in he withdrew the scroll case. With great care he broke the wax seal on it and reached in to withdraw a single roll of parchment. It was sealed in red thread and etched with infernal glyphs that throbbed with faint power. He delicately placed it on the stone slab and a low breath escaped his lips as he stepped back. The scroll didn’t move, but the air around it changed as if recoiling from the obscene object.
Ella moved closer to Xavier’s side; her torch held higher as it cast long shadows over the uneven stone. Taking a knee near the slab but deliberately avoiding touching it or the scroll she studied it. Her brow furrowed in concentration as she examined the threads, the symbols and the heat sucking aura that surrounded the parchment.
“It is clearly infernal,” she whispered. “But there is more than that here, there is divine magics as well. Something ancient, patient. Something that watches and waits behind locked doors.” She scowled. “They are not opposing forces, they are complicit. Like a slave’s collar sealed with a priest’s blessing. The magics working together to ensure the binding.”
Lythara did not respond. However, the furious twitch of her tail along with her pained inhale of breath through her nose spoke volumes. Her eyes were locked onto the scroll laying on the slab, as if seeing something that had haunted her nightmares for lifetimes in the flesh once again.
The rest of the room was silent and attentive. Lianna remained where she stood by the tunnel entrance, her bow held carefully in one hand as her gaze shifted between Xavier and the slab of obsidian. Frostclaw paced around the circumference of the chamber slowly, his body low and ears pinned back though no growl slipped from his chest. Valkra had moved to stand beside Xavier’s leg, her small body was tense, her fur standing on end with her anxiety, twin tails lashing furiously behind her as if she was just waiting for something to strike. Sihri, on the other hand, leaned against one of the crumbling pillars. The metal-studded wraps on her hands catching the torchlight and glinting like small stars. She had not spoken since they entered the room, but her posture was that of the ever-wary fighter she was. One foot bounced slowly on the ground, reminiscent of the way brawlers kept loose before a fight. However, even she ever composed, kept glancing furtive glances at the stone slab and one could see the tension she held in her jawline.
No one moved closer. Even Vaeltheris, from its spot on Xavier’s hip, had gone silent. No hum, pulse or anything coming from the blade. Xavier studied the scroll for a long time. Moments drug out as he kept his breath steady and tried to figure out what he needed to do next. As he did, the mark of the Kael’Sharyn slowly began to warm on his chest. Its faint light began to grow beneath his shirt. It was a soft steady glow, not bright in the slightest, nor with any urgency but as if it knew what was coming.
As the mark awoke, something inside Xavier stirred. It was not fear, or even confusion. Instead, he gained a quiet certainty. Though he did not know what he was supposed to do, he knew beyond a doubt that it was time for him to do it.
The silence in the chamber deepened, it pressed in from the stone walls like a second skin to those standing within. The scroll continued to rest on the obsidian slab, still and waiting, like a tether stretched almost too tight its very presence hummed against the edge of everyone’s awareness. No one dared move, no one even dared breath too loud for fear of shattering the stillness and drawing some unforeseen foe forth.
No one that is, until Xavier stepped up to the edge of the slab. He did not bother to speak to the others, to tell them what he was doing or even ask them for permission to try something. In his core he knew what the answer would be, and he knew it was in his hands alone now.
Reverently he stretched his hand out over the scroll. His fingers did not close to grip it, they didn’t try to crush it or break the multitude of seals on it. They just lightly touched it. The mark on his chest continued to pulse softly beneath his shirt, each thrum of power synchronized with a growing warmth in his palm and fingertips. He did not trace out any glowing runes of power, there were no whispers of incantations that escaped his lips. He only had the quiet resolution of knowing he stood precisely where he was destined to be.
With that knowing he closed his eyes and began to speak. The words forming in his mind drawn upon knowledge he did not realize he had access to, as if something was speaking through him instead of to him. He spoke not with power but with pure intent.
“I reject the chains forged in lies. I refuse the law written in cruelty. I sever what was never meant to bind. In this balance, I unmake this oath and contract.”
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As the words left his lips they reverberated, not aloud nor even with magical power. They reverberated in the very bones of the stone walls of the chamber itself. On the slab, something began to change. The scroll twitched, then began to tremble beneath Xavier’s fingertips. A soft crackle filled the silence left by the reverberating words. It sounded like someone stepping on frost coated grass.
One by one, the seals on the scroll began to unravel. They did not snap or even explode violently. They came apart as if deliberately picked to pieces. Red threads unraveled and curled away like ash escaping into a gentle breeze. Infernal glyphs glowed as if heated to white hot metal then vanished into oblivion. The final seal, that which Ella had identified as the divine marking branded into the parchment itself, flickered as if resisting the unbinding then it too broke and faded. The parchment of the scroll curled inwards, its edges blackening as if burning to an unseen flame and in a final whisper and gasp of dust it was gone as if it never existed.
As the dust vanished, Lythara collapsed to her knees. A choked gasp escaping her lips as her aura exploded out from her form. Involuntarily she unleashed a flare of shadow and heat, the essence laced through with silver threads like bursts of lightning. Lythara clasped her hands to her chest and curled forward trembling faintly. Her breathing came in shallow uneven gasps. For a moment the room flooded with intense desire, brimstone, and pain and then it too was gone as quickly as it had come. Its passage left the succubus pale, shivering… and free.
Ella moved quickly to her side, keeling and placing one hand on the woman’s back as she murmured quiet reassurances to her. She provided the shocked woman grounding and stability as she grappled with the sudden change in her fortune. No one else in the chamber moved, still thrown off balance from the pulse from the succubus as her contract broke.
Where Xavier stood, he had not moved his hand at all. It was still extended, the residual warmth of the powers and the scroll slowly fading from his fingertips. His heart thudded resoundingly, not from strain but from the very weight of what he had just driven from the world.
His mind grasped at what had just happened, he hadn’t channeled magic. He hadn’t even invoked some divine name. He had just what to say. Behind him, Ella’s torch flickered once and the Kael’Sharyn mark pulsed with it before going dormant once more. Something intrinsic had shifted. A path chosen as surely as if he picked a fork in the road.
Scant moments passed when a shiver passed through the chamber. Again, it was not wind, not magic, no it was something colder, something aware. Xavier looked up in fear fully expecting the Enforcer to be standing beyond the slab.
A sigh of relief had just started to leave his lips seeing the space vacant when the shadows behind the slab started to move and stir. It tore at the mind because they did not move with motion but with a presence. Ella’s torchlight flickered and faltered. Frostclaw froze mid-step and flattened his ears, teeth pulled back in a silent snarl. Valkra let out a low resonant growl as she pressed into Xavier’s leg, her hackles even more on end than before.
As Xavier watched, the air behind the slab seemed to fold into itself like a silken curtain drawn through unseen hands and a figure emerged from the disturbance.
Xavier had never seen him before but the moment he appeared Xavier knew who it was. Not from sight, but from instinct. The wrongness that bled from the form and filled the room like a sickness was telling. The man who emerged into the light of the torch was tall and his features were sharply defined. He held a chancellor’s poise with the weight and bearing of a warlord.
His frame was wrapped in a long overcoat of fine dark material, though its cut was austere and military in structure it still was fine enough for a noble. Beneath the coat, fitted armor of blackened mail and burnished leather gave a faint gleam, the visible surfaces were etched with fine infernal sigils that seemed to waver if one stared at them for too long of a time. It was the attire of one who felt at home both in the courtly halls of nobility and the councils of war on the battlefield.
When Xavier’s eyes fell on the newcomer’s face, he beheld features that were composed and bordered on handsome, clean refined angles, but they were expressionless in a way that unnerved any who beheld them.
“Well,” the figure spoke, the voice coming out like steel wrapped in soft velvet. “That was… inconvenient.”
No one in the group moved. Lythara kept her head down, she did not need to look up to know who was there. Instead, she spoke softly, “Ivarik Tharn…”
The others stared openly at the man. One they had only heard of in whispers and rumors. The one who was supposedly behind the changes to the slave laws, the foundation of the Shadow Court, the impetus behind the coming potential war.
Near the wall, Sihri tensed, her eyes narrow and focused. Lianna’s grip tightened to a white-knuckle grip on her bow as her breath froze in her throat. Frostclaw shifted slightly to place himself between the obvious threat and his mistress, his muscles pulled taught beneath his fur as he prepared to defend her with his life. Ella remained frozen next to Lythara, her fingers still lingered on the succubus’s back, but her eyes were on the stranger, hard and calculating.
Xavier, however, stepped forward to the stone slab, placing himself between his companions and the hellish presence that now filled the room like smoke from the fires of the abyss.
In turn Ivarik’s gaze shifted to him and his mouth curled up at the edges, it was not in joy, or even mockery. The cruel smile was something even darker, recognition.
“You do not recognize me,” he said calmly. “Not fully yet, but you have heard my name.” He took a slow deliberate step forward, and though the floor did not crack under his booted foot it felt as if it should have. “I am Ivarik Tharn, Chancellor of the Kingdom of Arenvalis.” His smile grew wider at his next words. “Architect of the slave accords and Lord of the Shadow Court.” He was not even bothering to hide his machinations from the group. Even so his next words were the most shocking. “Devil of Nekros.”
The last words hung like a brand burned into the very air of the chamber. Xavier did not speak, the others didn’t even breath such was the weight of the admission.
“You have a choice Kael’Sharyn,” Ivarik continued as if nothing were amiss. “You can decide to become the gods’ enemy. Danu’s last desperate gamble, one shrouded in defiance as it pretends to offer freedom.”
His eyes flicked to the huddled form of Lythara then back to Xavier. The cruel smile on his lips shifting to one more calculating “Or you could have everything, protection, power, dominion. A place at my side in ruling. I will even leave your companions untouched and give you further lands and a title here in the kingdom. Imagine adding those to your paltry little village in the woods.”
He gestured to dismissively to the slab and then motioned to Lythara. “All I ask is submission, obedience… and her return.”
The offer hung in the air, heavy with a weight of its own. Xavier stood still and quiet. Once more the mark of the Kael’Sharyn pulsed on his chest suffusing his body with warmth and certainty. He did not respond with rage, righteousness, or fear. He simply spoke the truth of his being.
“No.”
His response landed with a weight heavier that that of the offer. The weight of finality. He felt his mark flare in response to the word, not in light or heat but resonating with his choice, a silent refusal that echoed through the stone walls.
Almost imperceptibly, Ivarik recoiled at the word. His mask slipped for the barest fraction of a moment, just enough to be noticed. A tightening at the corner of his mouth, a flash of something feral in his eyes, the slip of his form showing the true shape of the devil it masked. The breaking of the contract had wounded him more than he cared to admit.
“You’ve made your choice then,” the calm certainty of his voice was gone, now laced with venom and hatred. “And the gods do not forget defiance.”
Around his form the shadows rose and wrapped, their shape like curtains rippling in a violent wind. The torchlight flashed to darkness for a single heartbeat and when it returned, he was gone. The silence lingering in the air in his absence was not that of peace and security, it was an unspoken warning.
The silence was ever-present filling the chamber like an oncoming tide. The torch did not crackle in it. Wind did not stir within it. Only the ragged sound of breaths, inhaled, held and released unevenly filled the absence.
Lythara remained kneeling on the stone floor, her shoulders curled into a hunched form as her hair cascaded around her face loosely. Her hands shook where they grasped the hem of her cloak. She could not quite grasp that her chains were well and truly gone. She was free to follow her own path for the first time in her memory. She did not sob; she could not sob. Her body instead shook with the weight of something far to expansive for simple tears.
Ella remained kneeling beside the succubus. She did not speak but simply stayed there with one hand gently on Lythara’s back, resting between her shoulder blades. Her presence an anchor for the emotionally ravaged woman and letting her know that she wasn’t alone in this moment. That this pain, this collapse, didn’t have to be done in isolation.
It was Sihri turned away first, pacing along the far wall, her jaw tight, her breath hissing through her teeth. It was not fear that knotted her stomach, not doubt either. It was an overwhelming ache of helplessness knowing that even now, even after all they’d done, he could still find them, still reach them.
Lianna lowered her bow, slowly. Her eyes hadn’t left Xavier. She didn’t speak, didn’t ask what he had done or how. Something in her gaze had changed. It was like she was seeing him clearly for the first time. He was not just the one who helped slaves escape. Not just the one who carried a strange sword and stranger allies. He was the one who had stood before a devil and said no. The growing admiration she had for him before felt a pale comparison to the new feelings that stirred within her now. Frostclaw moved and returned to her side, brushing up against her leg. Unthinking she rested a hand on his head and considered the future.
Valkra crept back to Xavier, silent, ears still low. She pressed her small body against his shin, protective and uncertain. He crouched for a moment and placed a hand gently atop back. The motion steadied them both. When he stood once again, he remained near the slab, unmoving. His hand hovered over his chest, where the Kael’Sharyn mark had begun to fade once again back to its dormant state, its glow dimming, its warmth retreating.
His mind rolled what had happened back and forth as he struggled to comprehend it all. Breaking the contract, he hadn’t spoken a spell. He also hadn’t drawn on Ella’s knowledge or Vaeltheris’s memory. It was something he’d simply… known. The words had come like breath. The action like instinct. And now, in the stillness that followed, he didn’t feel triumphant. After the appearance of Ivarik, he felt… hollow. Like something had been given, and something taken.
He looked at his hand. Then slowly at the others. No one spoke. No one asked what had happened. They all felt it as keenly as he had. Something had shifted. In the soul of the freed, in the silence of the marked, in the heart of a watching world something had shifted.
And far away, in the blessed realm of Elunara a place unseen by mortal eyes, Danu watched, silent, unseen, and unblinking.
