House of Blood

The quiet hum of the morning wind against the study window seemed to freeze as Valerian’s hand rested on Seraphina’s trembling shoulder. Her muffled sobs echoed off the dark mahogany walls, her tears soaking through the front of his silk coat as the horrific reality of Lumeria’s collapse settled over the room.

Valerian didn’t offer empty platitudes. He didn’t speak of fate or divine providence. His slitted crimson eyes simply turned dark, cold, and entirely calculating.

”Lumeria has not truly fallen,” Valerian said softly, his calm, low resonance cutting through her weeping. ”A kingdom only dies when its last sanctuary closes its gates and its people surrender their blood. You are standing here, Seraphina.”

Seraphina lifted her face, her bloodshot sapphire eyes wide with disbelief as she looked up at him.

”Valerian... the High Bishop is dead. The grand barrier was shattered by an entity from the ancient texts. It’s the Tenth Demon Lord. She wields void-fire that swallows sacred light whole. Even if the northern border mobilized its entire garrison—”

”By the time the regular army in Bergis marches all the way to Lumeria, it might have truly fallen,” Valerian interrupted smoothly. ”An army requires supply lines, siege engines, and weeks to cross the mountain passes. By the time five thousand northern soldiers reach the southern gates, the cultists will have turned your sacred spires into a permanent abyssal fortress. Besides...”

A faint, dangerous tilt touched his lips.

”...I have my own personal army.”

He gently eased Seraphina back, standing upright. He walked calmly behind his mahogany desk, his boots making quiet, measured steps against the plush carpet.

Without breaking eye contact with the distraught saintess, Valerian reached down and pulled open the heavy lower drawer of his desk.

Inside, resting upon a cushion of dark velvet, lay a porcelain mask. It was sleek, pitch-black, and completely featureless save for narrow, slitted eye openings outlined in sharp, dried crimson ink. It was the face of Ghost—the silent, shadowy assassin persona he had assumed during his covert operations in the southern underworld.

”We do not need a marching legion to reclaim a ruin,” Valerian said quietly, his hand closing around the edge of the black mask. ”We simply need to eliminate the Demon Lord.”

Seraphina blinked, her breath catching in her throat as she stared at the dark mask in his hand.

”Eliminate... a Demon Lord? Just... us?”

Before she could process his words or formulate a logical objection, Valerian moved.

He stepped around the desk in a blur of motion. His right arm swept around Seraphina’s waist, pulling her firmly against his chest. The sudden, intimate contact sent a jolt of pure shock through her frame; her heart hammered against her ribs, her hands instinctively clutching his shoulders as her cheeks flushed hot despite the cold dread in her stomach.

”Valerian—what are you—”

”Hold close,” Valerian whispered directly into her ear.

Without another word, Valerian turned toward the high glass window overlooking the mountain valley. He didn’t unlatch the frame. He didn’t slow his stride.

CRASH!

Valerian leaped straight through the glass, shattering the window into a million glittering shards that rained down into the freezing mountain air.

Seraphina let out a sharp, terrified scream as the floor disappeared beneath them. They plummeted into empty air, dropping hundreds of feet down the sheer stone cliff face of the estate, the howling northern wind whipping violently through her golden hair. The jagged rocks of the valley rushed up to meet them at terrifying speed.

”Valerian!” she shrieked, burying her face into his neck, her arms locking around his shoulders in pure self-preservation.

Valerian’s expression didn’t change.

THOOM!

A violent explosion of dark crimson mana erupted from his shoulder blades. The air hissed as two massive, draconic wings—scaled in midnight-black, veined with glowing crimson dragon-fire, and spanning nearly sixteen feet across—burst from his back, snapping open with a thunderous sonic boom.

The plunge stopped instantly. The sheer lift generated by the draconic wings caught the mountain updraft, sending them soaring upward into the clear blue sky, sweeping past the snowy peaks of Bergis at blinding, supersonic speed.

Seraphina slowly opened her eyes, gasping for air as the wind rushed past them. Below them, the grand city of Bergis shrank into a tiny collection of wooden roofs and stone walls, replaced by the vast, open horizon heading south toward Lumeria.

Back inside the ruined study, wisps of lingering shadow and icy mountain wind blew through the shattered window.

Nox’Aethel floated down from the ceiling, his shadowy form pulsing with a rhythmic, exasperated rhythm. Beside him, Wren walked over to the edge of the broken frame, holding her half-eaten chicken leg in one hand while resting her other hip against the sill, watching the crimson speck vanish into the southern clouds.

Nox clicked his tongue—a wet, shadow-bound sound that echoed off the walls.

”He just jumped out of a four-story window with a Holy Saintess.”

Wren took a slow bite of her food, shaking her head as a wry, affectionate smirk spread across her face.

”He never learns, does he?”

”He has three dragon cores and a spatial shift array in his left lung, dragon-girl,” Nox rasped, settling back into the shadow of the bookcase. ”He thinks gravity is a polite suggestion.”

”I was talking about his taste for dramatic entrances,” Wren chuckled, turning back toward the room. ”Come on. Let’s go tell his mother he took off to fight a Demon Lord before she notices the broken window.”

Seven hundred miles to the south, the sky above the Holy Kingdom of Lumeria was painted in shades of bruised violet and sickly ash.

The majestic spires, once gleaming white against the midday sun, stood like burnt, hollow teeth rising from the ruined landscape. The grand central barrier was completely gone, replaced by a thick dome of stagnant, dark arcana that hung over the entire region, blocking out the sun.

Near the eastern perimeter wall of the royal palace, a silent distortion rippled through the shadowed alleyway.

Valerian landed without making a single sound. His boots touched the ash-covered cobblestones as gently as a falling leaf, his draconic wings folding back into his spine and disappearing beneath his dark coat in faint wisps of crimson smoke. Seraphina’s feet touched the ground a second later, her hands still trembling slightly as she leaned against his shoulder to steady her balance.

She adjusted her hood, looking up at the high stone walls of the inner palace.

”The central courtyard is completely infested with Third Altar cultists. If we are spotted—”

”We won’t be,” Valerian murmured.

He slid the sleek black porcelain mask over his face. The moment the mask clicked into place, his lingering dragon-mana suppressed itself entirely. His presence dissolved, turning him into a phantom—a living ghost moving through the shadows of the ruined kingdom.

They moved quickly through the shattered outer courtyard, avoiding the main thoroughfares where massive groups of vermilion-robed cultists were burning holy scriptures and hauling away looted divine relics.

A patrol of four Third Altar guards—clad in heavy, dark iron armor and wielding spears dripping with black blood—marched down the narrow corridor leading toward the royal gardens. Their eyes burned with corrupted green light, their senses heightened by abyssal blessings.

Seraphina gasped softly, instinctively drawing her ceremonial dagger and stepping back into the alcove.

”Valerian, wait, there are four of them—”

Valerian didn’t stop. He walked straight toward the patrol.

Before the lead guard could even register the pitch-black mask approaching through the smoke, Valerian slid forward like an ink stain across the floor.

SNAP.

His bare left hand reached out, grabbing the lead guard’s chin and forehead, twisting his neck with effortless, mathematical precision. Before the body could hit the ground, Valerian caught the falling spear with his right hand, using the blunt wood end to smash the second guard’s throat into splinters.

The third and fourth guards raised their weapons to scream an alarm, but Valerian was already between them.

He drew a short, un-enchanted iron trench knife from his belt.

FLASH-FLASH.

Two clean, precise strikes—one through the eye-slit of the third guard’s helm, the second through the exposed joint of the fourth guard’s chest plate.

In less than three seconds, all four cultist guards collapsed onto the cobblestones. Valerian caught their heavy iron armor before it could clatter against the stone, smoothly lowering their bodies into the shadows of the alcove so no blood spilled into the open pathway.

He wiped the iron blade against his sleeve, his black porcelain mask turning slowly toward Seraphina, who stood frozen in the corner with her mouth slightly open, her dagger hovering uselessly in the air.

She stared at the four dead guards, then looked up at Valerian’s black-masked face, her voice dropping into a shocked, bewildered whisper.

”You... you didn’t even use magic. You just slaughtered four elite cultist vanguard units like you were clearing fallen leaves...”

Valerian tilted his head slightly behind the pitch-black mask, his slitted crimson eyes gleaming through the narrow eye openings. He gave a small, casual shrug of his shoulders.

”Don’t look at me like that, Saintess,” Valerian whispered smoothly, his voice muffled by the black porcelain. ”I only kill bad guys.”

Seraphina blinked, a strange, breathless mixture of shock and quiet relief washing over her as she tucked her dagger away.

Valerian turned back toward the dark, ruined archway leading into the heart of the royal palace, where the Tenth Demon Lord waited amidst the ashes of the Holy See.

”Stay three paces behind me,” Valarian whispered with the voice he uses as ghost stepping into the deeper shadows.

”Let’s go pay our respects to the fallen.”