The council hall's weight lingered on his shoulders long after he left it behind. By the time the city lights dimmed into the treeline, Ithan welcomed the silence. The forest took him in without question, its canopy swallowing the moonlight, its floor littered with damp leaves that muffled his steps.
He moved with practiced ease, eyes sweeping the undergrowth, ears tuned to the rhythms of the night. Crickets sang in uneven chorus. Somewhere distant, an owl cried, then fell abruptly silent.
In his left hand, he carried a jar. The glass caught stray threads of moonlight, making the liquid inside flicker faintly. It wasn't much to look at—thick and viscous, the surface quivering with every step. He kept it wrapped in cloth most of the time, but tonight he let it breathe, holding it as though it were more important than the spear strapped across his back.
Now the jar swayed in his grip, its glow muted beneath the cloth he had wrapped around it. He would need it—proof to bait the creature, or a guide if its nest proved deeper than rumor.
The path narrowed, roots twisting up like skeletal fingers. Ithan ducked beneath a low branch, his free hand resting on the hilt of his spear strapped to his back. Every step closer to the cave tightened the air. The forest seemed to thin out around him—not from lack of trees, but from a strange stillness, as though life itself had drawn back. No more crickets. No owl. Only the scrape of his boots and the faint rattle of liquid in glass.
He saw it then, between the trunks: the cave. Its mouth yawned wide, blacker than the night around it. Moss clung to the stone like old scars, and a trickle of water spilled from the entrance, pooling into a shallow stream that cut across the ground. The current carried a sheen on its surface, oil-slick and iridescent, reflecting back the faint shimmer of the liquid in his jar.
Ithan stopped just short of the waterline, his breath misting in the cold air. The liquid inside pulsed once, catching the glow of the stream, as if the two recognized each other.
He unstrapped his spear and rested it against his shoulder, eyes fixed on the darkness within the cave. The air that drifted out was heavy and wet, smelling of scales dragged across stone.
His hand lingered on the jar a moment longer. Then he whispered under his breath, more to himself than to the night:
"Let's see if you're worth the price I paid to carry you."
And with that, he rose and stepped toward the cave's mouth. The jar glimmered faintly in his hand, a pulse of light slipping across the stones and casting his shadow long and sharp behind him.
The instant he crossed the threshold, his body stiffened. The air inside was colder, damp against his skin, carrying the scent of mildew and something older, reptilian. Every instinct sharpened to a blade's edge. Five years of hard lessons whispered through his bones: danger lives here. His pulse slowed, not from fear, but from the practiced calm of a man who had stepped into death's company too many times before.
He crouched, setting down his pack, and drew out a stripped branch he had taken for this very purpose. With practiced care, he unstoppered the jar. The liquid inside caught a gleam of moonlight, shimmering strangely as he dipped the branch's head into it. The fibers soaked, glistening dark, until he coaxed a spark to life at his fingertips.
A hiss. A flare.
The branch blossomed into flame, orange-red tongues snapping upward, throwing wild shadows across the cave walls. The light revealed jagged rock, slick with veins of moisture, the surface glistening like wet scales. The torch crackled in his grip, steady, and with it came a small comfort. At least the dark no longer pressed in unchecked.
Boots crunching on grit, Ithan moved deeper, the echo of each step rolling back at him from unseen chambers. The cave widened as he went, and the walls began to change. Carvings emerged from the stone—faded but unmistakable. Murals. Figures etched in sweeping lines, their faces worn smooth by centuries.
The firelight licked over the shapes: warriors in bronze, carrying spears and shields; kings crowned in laurels; beasts slain beneath their feet. Scenes of glory from the age of heroes, when, so the old tales claimed, mortals had walked hand in hand with gods.
Ithan slowed, his torch lifting higher. His throat tightened.
He had grown up with these stories, whispered by his mother in the quiet hours before sleep. Tales of chosen champions who braved trials, slew monsters, and returned home with the gods' blessing. As a boy, he had dreamed of stepping into that same light—of being called, of having his own quest that proved his worth.
But that was before. Before Ravenstone had smothered the dream with mud and hunger. Before his mother's death left him chasing coins instead of destiny.
Now he stood beneath the shadows of heroes carved into stone, a mercenary with ash-gray hair and a jar of dangerous fire, walking into a monster's lair.
And for a moment, just a flicker, he wondered if this—of all places—was where the gods finally decided to answer him.
The torchlight licked further down the walls, illuminating more of the story etched into stone. At first, the murals seemed simple—heroes standing tall with divine weapons raised, their victories immortalized in the rock. But as Ithan traced the lines, the shapes twisted. What began as triumph grew darker, warped.
One panel showed a warrior crowned in laurel, spear thrust through the body of a serpent coiled at his feet. Yet in the next carving, that same serpent was no longer slain—it reared higher, its coils encircling the man, its fangs sunk deep into his throat. Another mural revealed the warrior's face, still crowned, but his body no longer human: his torso stretched into scales, his eyes hollow, his mouth split with fangs.
Ithan stopped, the torch trembling slightly in his grip. He stepped closer, free hand brushing over the rough grooves of the carving.
This wasn't just a shrine, he thought. It was a story.
The air pressed colder around him, as if the stone itself exhaled memory.
"Once, this was a hero's hall," he murmured under his breath. "Someone chosen. Someone remembered." His amber eyes narrowed on the final mural, where the transformed serpent-woman stretched across the wall, children clutched in her claws. "But somewhere along the way… glory rotted."
It wasn't hard to imagine: a hero who fell to hubris, cursed by gods or poisoned by their own victory. Maybe this Lamia wasn't just a beast, but the remnant of that old tale, the corruption of what had once been noble.
The thought sank its claws into him. He had grown up longing to be chosen, to stand where heroes stood. And now, here was the proof that even heroes could be forgotten, twisted into monsters in the dark.
The torch spat sparks as resin hissed down its length. Ithan steadied his grip, forcing the speculation down into silence. Whether cursed hero or simple beast, it didn't matter. It had taken children, and that was reason enough.
He shifted his spear from his back, the metal whispering as it left its harness. Then he pressed forward into the deeper dark, the murals watching him fade past, as though warning him of what became of men who mistook destiny for salvation.
The cave narrowed, forcing Ithan to duck as he moved deeper. The air grew heavier, damp stone weeping onto the floor in slow drips that echoed like distant heartbeats. His torchlight wavered against the walls, the orange glow painting jagged shadows that twisted with each step.
Then he saw them.
At first, just pale shapes half-buried in the silt, small enough to be mistaken for stones. But when the torch swung wider, the truth became clear. Bones. Dozens of them, scattered across the ground like discarded kindling.
Some were brittle, broken into shards. Others lay intact, little ribs curled like cages, tiny skulls hollow-eyed and staring back at him. The earth was carpeted with them—children's remains, plastered into the mud and pressed against the rock by the weight of years.
Ithan stopped cold. His throat tightened, his jaw working against the flood of heat rising through him. He had seen corpses before—men on battlefields, raiders torn apart by beasts—but this was different. This was no battle. This was a feast.
He crouched low, brushing his gloved fingers over one of the smaller skulls. Smooth, fragile. Barely more than a child's toy. The torchlight flared across the hollow sockets, and for a heartbeat, he saw his own face reflected in the emptiness, gray hair and amber eyes staring back at him from the abyss.
His grip tightened on the spear.
"Monsters," he muttered. "Always monsters."
The silence pressed harder now, no sound but the drip of water and the faint crackle of flame. Yet beneath it, something else stirred. A whisper, soft and slithering, too faint to be words. The air carried a scent—sweet, cloying, like flowers left to rot in stagnant water.
Ithan straightened, raising the torch higher. The murals were gone now, replaced by bare stone, the walls slick and wet as though the cave itself had begun to sweat. Shadows pooled ahead, thick and unmoving, a darkness his torchlight could not pierce.
The bones grew denser the further he walked, crunching under his boots. Each step echoed louder than the last, as though the cave were holding its breath, waiting.
And in that waiting silence, a hiss rolled from the blackness ahead.
The hiss came again, long and wet, sliding over the stone like oil poured through cracks. Ithan froze, every instinct flaring at once. His torch guttered in the draft that slithered from the dark, and in that wavering flame he caught the first shape—something vast moving just beyond sight.
A silhouette stirred against the black. The faint curve of a woman's figure, graceful, almost inviting… until the lower body rippled and shifted, scales catching the light in a shimmer of green and black. The sound of her movement was unmistakable: the scrape of coils dragging across rock, slow and deliberate.
Then came the voice.
"Ohh…" It slipped through the cave like silk, soft and melodic, yet wrong, vibrating with an undertone that made his bones itch. "Another wanderer. So brave to come where children fear to tread."
Ithan held his ground, torch raised high, spear angled forward. The voice carried sweetness, but beneath it lay hunger.
The shadows peeled back as she came into view.
Her upper body was that of a woman, pale skin gleaming under the firelight, black hair cascading in wet strands over her shoulders. Her eyes glowed faintly, yellow-green, slit-pupiled and unblinking, pinning him where he stood. The lower half of her body uncoiled behind her, an enormous serpent's tail thick as a man's chest, armored in scales that gleamed like wet stone. She slithered forward with an ease that made her bulk all the more terrifying, each movement accompanied by the rasp of scales on rock.
Around her, the cave floor was littered with the remains of her victims. Skulls stacked in niches of stone, tiny bones strung together like trophies. She passed over them without care, her coils crushing ribs into powder beneath her weight.
"You smell of fire," she whispered, head tilting in an almost curious manner, her tongue flicking out, forked and quick. "Not like the children. Not soft. Stronger. Riper." Her smile widened, sharp teeth glinting in the light. "I could savor you."
The torchlight flared, catching on the slick sheen of her fangs. Her body undulated forward another step, and the cave seemed to shrink around her.
Ithan's grip on the spear tightened until his knuckles whitened. His amber eyes met hers, unflinching, even as the stench of rot and flowers pressed against him.
"Try," he said flatly.
And the Lamia's smile stretched wider, hunger rippling through the cave like a shuddering wave.
The Lamia's smile widened, her tongue flicking as though she expected him to answer. Instead, Ithan spat on the ground.
"Daimon," he growled, the word heavy, final. A curse-being. Nothing more.
He didn't wait for her to slither closer. He lunged.
The torch swung wide in one hand, casting firelight in a sudden arc that seared across her pale face. With his other hand, Ithan drove the spear forward in a vicious thrust. The Lamia recoiled faster than he expected, coils snapping backward with a hiss that rattled the cave walls. Her tail lashed out, thick and brutal, striking the stone where he'd stood a heartbeat earlier, shattering rock into shards.
Ithan rolled, boots grinding bone fragments beneath him, and came up with his spear ready. His instincts screamed—keep moving. He ducked as her claws raked at the air, each strike fast enough to open a man from shoulder to hip. The torch's flame sputtered but held, its light jerking wildly across murals, bones, and scales.
The Lamia lunged again, her upper body twisting unnaturally, fangs snapping toward his throat. Ithan shoved the spear up between them, the iron tip scraping her jaw and forcing her head aside. Her hot breath washed over him, reeking of decay. He drove his boot against her coils, shoving himself backward, distance buying him another breath.
She shrieked, a sound that split the cave, sharp enough to sting his ears. Her coils surged, slamming against the walls, shaking dust from the ceiling. Bones clattered and broke under the violence.
Ithan's jaw set. He wouldn't outmuscle her. He couldn't afford to drag this fight.
His torch hand flicked, bringing the flame close to the jar at his belt. The liquid within shimmered faintly, alive in the fire's glow. Not yet. He had to time it right.
The Lamia came again, faster now, hunger breaking her restraint. Her tail whipped low, sweeping bones aside as it drove for his legs. Ithan vaulted over it, spear flashing down in a brutal strike. The tip bit into scale this time, tearing a shallow gash that hissed and smoked under the torch's heat. She screamed again, thrashing, her body convulsing in rage.
Dust rained. Water trickled harder from the cave walls. The air grew thick with her stench, cloying and sharp, drowning out the earth and stone.
Ithan bared his teeth, every muscle burning with the fight, and spat the word again like a curse as he braced himself:
"Daimon."
The Lamia lunged again, her coils striking like living walls, each impact cracking stone. Ithan slipped between them, his body moving with the precision honed over five long years. The spear spun in his hands, its shaft catching the torchlight as he struck low, the iron tip carving lines across the glistening scales. Shallow wounds, but wounds nonetheless.
She shrieked, tail whipping up, and Ithan ducked beneath it, torch thrust high. Fire met flesh—her pale skin blistered as the flames licked her shoulder. She recoiled violently, hissing, but he didn't pause. The spear followed in a fluid arc, the haft sweeping her reaching claws aside before the point stabbed forward, grazing just beneath her ribs.
She howled, coils surging, and struck downward with enough force to crush a horse. Ithan leapt aside, rolling through the litter of bones, the torch flaring in his grip. Dust choked the air, sharp in his lungs, but his movements never faltered. Every lesson Garrick and Lason had drilled into him echoed now—thrust, pivot, sweep, withdraw. His spear was an extension of his body, and his torch, a second blade.
The cave became their battleground of light and shadow. Fire cast her serpentine form in writhing silhouettes, his spear flashing in brutal counterpoints. She struck with speed unnatural for her size, claws raking sparks from stone, tail smashing holes in the floor. He answered with relentless precision, torch burning her flesh, spear darting for soft gaps between the armored scales.
But even as his strikes landed, her strength pressed him harder. One sweep of her tail knocked the torch from his hand—it tumbled, flames sputtering in the dirt. The cave darkened, shadows swallowing the murals, leaving only the faint glow of the jar at his belt.
Breath harsh, sweat running down his brow, Ithan tightened his grip on the spear. His chest heaved, his muscles screaming with the effort of keeping pace. Every skill he had learned—the low sweeps, the sudden thrusts, the rapid jabs Lason had called "falcon strikes"—he had unleashed here. And still the Daimon came, her hunger unbroken.
She loomed before him now, coils spread wide, her shadow filling the chamber. Her tongue flicked, savoring his exhaustion, her voice thick with triumph.
"You fight like a hero," she hissed. "But heroes fall, and their bones feed me."
Ithan spat blood to the side, amber eyes burning in the dark. He shifted his stance, spear steady though his arm trembled.
He had reached the brink. He knew it. And so did she.
His hand brushed the jar at his belt. The liquid within pulsed faintly, waiting.
The Lamia circled, coils scraping over stone, her eyes glowing like molten glass in the dark. Ithan steadied his breath, his fingers brushing the jar. The faint thrum inside seemed to answer his pulse, like something alive and waiting.
He lowered his spear tip, feigning weakness. His stance sagged, his torch gone, leaving only that subtle flicker at his belt. The Daimon's grin spread, jagged teeth catching what little light remained. She slid closer, tail curling behind her, sealing the chamber like a noose.
"Hero no more," she purred, voice a sickly melody. "Just prey."
Ithan staggered back, dragging one boot through the bones, deliberately clumsy. His heel struck the wall. Nowhere left to run. She lunged, body snapping forward, coils rushing to crush him against the stone.
That was when he moved.
In one smooth motion, Ithan yanked the jar free, tore the cloth away, and hurled its contents across her advancing bulk. The liquid fanned out in a glimmering arc, splashing over her coils, her chest, her face. For a breath, it seemed no different from oil, slick and clinging. The Lamia paused, confused, hissing in triumph.
Then Ithan's spark flared.
His fingers snapped against the spear's shaft, summoning the flame he had buried within himself. The liquid caught instantly.
The cave erupted in fire.
The Daimon shrieked as the liquid fire ignited across her body, a roaring sheet of orange and gold clinging to her like a living thing. It licked her scales, burrowed into her flesh, burning hotter than any torch. She thrashed violently, smashing herself against the walls, shattering rock, scattering bones into clouds of ash. The sound was deafening—stone splitting, fire roaring, her scream tearing through the cave.
Ithan didn't flinch. He pressed forward, spear gripped in both hands, driving the flaming tip into her chest as she writhed. The fire spread down the shaft, consuming, feeding, until the Lamia's pale flesh split open under the combined fury of steel and flame.
Her coils convulsed, tail smashing into the floor with such force that cracks split the stone beneath them. The murals shattered, fragments raining down like broken memories. Her voice, once melodic, turned into a guttural shriek, a sound not meant for human ears.
And then, at last, the thrashing slowed. The flames burned brighter, consuming her screams, until her body sagged against the stone, scales blackened, flesh charred.
Ithan stood over her, chest heaving, sweat streaking through the soot on his face. The jar lay shattered at his feet, the last of its fire licking across the ground, feeding on what was left of the Daimon.
His spear remained planted in her chest until her glow dimmed to nothing. Only then did he pull it free, the weight of silence falling heavy in the cave once more.
"Rest in peace," He whispered.
The smoke hung thick in the chamber, clinging to the stone like tar. Ithan pulled his spear free, wiping the blackened tip against the edge of his cloak. The Lamia's charred coils sagged into a heap, still glowing faintly where embers gnawed at her flesh.
He turned to leave—then stopped.
Something pulsed in the ashes.
At first, he thought it a trick of the fire, some ember refusing to die. But no ember glowed like that—violet, with veins of sickly green writhing across its surface. It quivered, humming faintly in the air, a shard of light trapped inside a warped, glassy stone.
Ithan crouched slowly, spear angled forward, and studied it. The heat of the battle still throbbed in his blood, but he recognized what it was.
A mystery.
Not whole, not pure—corrupted.
He had heard the term whispered before, usually in the hushed warnings of priests or the mutterings of wandering mystai. Mysteries were fragments of the divine design, gifts left behind by the gods in the Heroic Age. Pure mysteries were rare, carriers of power that elevated those who touched them. But when a being drowned in its own curse—when pride, hunger, or hatred rotted away the divine spark—that fragment twisted.
What should have been holy became profane. A corrupted mystery.
Such shards carried power, yes—but it was poisoned, warped by the vice that birthed it. Those who tried to claim them often lost themselves, their bodies bending to the same corruption until they too became Daimon.
Ithan reached toward it, the torchlight painting its surface in angry hues. Even without touching, he felt the pulse, like a heartbeat not his own. His instincts screamed at him to leave it, to crush it under his heel and be done.
But he didn't.
Instead, he wrapped it in the ragged cloth that once hid his jar, binding the glow away. His expression was hard, unreadable, but his mind turned with unease.
A Lamia with a corrupted mystery—that explained her strength, her cunning. If such fragments lingered still in the world, then the gods' fall had left behind more than ruins and murals. It had left seeds of rot waiting in the dark.
He tied the cloth tight and rose, spear in hand, the bundle hidden at his side.
"This changes things," he muttered.
And as he left the cave, the murals broken and the children's bones silent, the weight of that bundle felt heavier than his spear.