The stair swallowed them one by one, torches held high against the pressing dark. The air grew colder with each step, thick with the metallic tang of rust and something older—earth long undisturbed. Diana moved at the front, her spear angled low, the wind coiling about her like a silent guide.
The stone walls closed in, rough-hewn and damp. Their boots rang hollow on the steps, echoing into unseen depths. At last, the stairs leveled, opening into a wide corridor. The walls here were smoother, carved deliberately, and their torchlight revealed patterns etched into the stone.
Murals.
Diana slowed, raising her torch. Shapes took form across the wall, stretched into panels that ran the length of the corridor. Not saints, nor emperors, nor gods, but a man—tall, armored, his face stern beneath a crested helm.
The name was carved beneath in faded letters: Thucydides.
Diana frowned, her brow tightening. She had studied the rolls of the Heroic Age, knew the stories sung of Ajax, Theseus, Hector, and Phoros. But Thucydides? The name rang hollow, unfamiliar. Yet here his likeness stood, struck into stone with reverence, his deeds preserved.
Alaric moved closer, squinting at the carvings. "Not a name I know," he muttered.
"Nor I," Diana said softly. She traced the mural with her eyes.
The panels told a story. Thucydides wielded a spear longer than any legionary's, its blade wreathed in waves. In one scene, he drove it into the gaping maw of a sea Daimon, its body coiled with scales and tentacles. In another, he led men through stormy waters, striking down creatures that rose from the surf—hulking forms with fins like blades, eyes burning with abyssal fire.
Each battle was brutal, desperate, painted in hard lines of steel and foam. The final panel showed him standing alone on a black reef, surrounded by the corpses of the sea Daimons, his body broken but his spear still raised.
The guards shifted uneasily. One muttered, "We were never taught of him. Why would his name be buried here?"
Diana's fingers brushed the carved letters, her touch raising a faint trail of dust. Why indeed? she thought. Heroes of the Heroic Age were immortalized in song, worshipped in cult, their names carried across provinces. Yet this man, who fought the Daimons of the sea—the very enemies whispered of in coastal fears—was hidden in the dark belly of a ghost-village.
The wind stirred faintly around her, carrying a shiver across her skin. She could feel the threads of fate again, tugging. This discovery was no accident.
"Because someone wanted him forgotten," she said quietly.
The corridor stretched on, the torchlight clawing at the shadows as Diana and her company pressed deeper. Murals lined both walls, the stone worn smooth in places but still etched with scenes that her tutors had never spoken of. Armies marching across seas. A hero standing against tides of scaled monstrosities. Sigils of storms and waves painted in pigments long since faded.
Diana's eyes lingered as she walked, the wind in her blood stirring with a whisper of recognition she could not place. Forgotten history, she thought, buried where no songs would carry it. But though the mystery called to her, her mind kept circling back to what she had seen in her vision: people in chains, shuffling through a passage just like this one. If they had been dragged down here, then perhaps their trail had not yet gone cold.
The corridor narrowed until they reached a wall at its end, blank stone unbroken by door or carving. The guards shifted uncertainly, the sound of their boots echoing off the confines.
Diana stepped forward alone. She placed her palm against the wall, closing her eyes, and let her senses sink into the stone. The wind followed, threading through cracks unseen, brushing against something hidden within. Her skin prickled. A subtle resistance gave way, like a lock being coaxed open.
A sharp click echoed in the silence. Dust sifted down from the seams. Then the wall shuddered and began to part, stone grinding against stone until a gap yawned wide before them. Cold air washed out, sterile and sharp, carrying no scent of earth at all.
Diana pulled her hand back, eyes narrowing in surprise. "That shouldn't have been so easy," she murmured. She turned to Alaric.
He met her gaze and gave a curt nod before stepping through first, his sword raised, his shoulders tense. The others followed close, torches raised high. Diana entered last, her grip tightening on her spear.
The darkness gave way as they crossed the threshold. Light bloomed from unseen sources in the walls, white and steady, forcing their eyes to adjust. The space beyond was unlike anything they had ever seen.
The stone of the catacombs gave way to walls of smooth, pale material, seamless and cold to the touch. Along the corridor's sides, great panes of glass were set into frames, polished to clarity. They gleamed with reflections of torchlight and movement—looking-glasses, but arranged with deliberate purpose, like windows into something unseen.
Diana's pace slowed as she took in the first chamber through the glass.
Her breath caught.
Within, a narrow bed lay fixed to the floor, iron chains bolted into its frame. The chains bound figures—human, or once human. Their bodies were gaunt, shriveled to skin and bone, their mouths open in silent cries. The skin clung to them like parchment stretched over sticks, eyes sunken into shadowed sockets. Their chests rose and fell faintly, as though some thin thread of life still clung to them.
A guard muttered a prayer under his breath, his torch trembling. Alaric's jaw clenched, his knuckles white around his hilt.
Diana pressed closer to the glass, her reflection staring back at her with eyes wide, the white light bleeding across her face. Her wind stirred, restless, whispering against the pane.
"What is this place?" she whispered, the words barely carrying over the silence.
The corridor stretched onward, sterile and silent, its white walls glowing faintly as if lit from within. Diana moved first, her hand brushing the haft of her spear, every step echoed by the soft drag of chain somewhere deeper in the hall. The air smelled strange here—metallic, acrid, like a forge smothered by ash.
The next chamber came into view behind another pane of glass.
Diana slowed, her torchlight spilling across what lay within.
This time the bed was gone. Instead, a man was suspended upright, his arms outstretched and locked into a harness of iron bands. Strange coils wound around his body, glowing faintly with dull red heat. His chest rose and fell shallowly, his veins dark against his pale skin as if something inside him were being drained drop by drop. His mouth moved, but no sound carried through the glass.
One of the guards cursed and turned away, hand covering his mouth. Another spat onto the floor, muttering, "This is… blasphemy."
Diana kept her gaze fixed, though her stomach tightened. "Not blasphemy," she said softly. "A craft. A cruel one."
Alaric's face was grim as steel. He stepped closer to the glass, his reflection mingling with the figure inside. "They're not killing them. Not yet. They're… keeping them." His voice dropped lower. "Like ore in a furnace, waiting to be hammered into something else."
They pressed on.
The third chamber was worse. The walls within were marked with black soot, as though fire had raged and been sealed away. Within, two figures knelt chained to the floor, their backs split open to expose raw bone and sinew. Metal rods had been driven into their spines, fusing flesh to iron. Their heads hung low, but the twitch of a hand showed some life still flickered.
The guards recoiled, two of them backing against the wall, torches shaking in their grip. "Gods preserve us," one whispered, eyes wide with terror. "This is no cult. This is—this is something else."
Alaric turned to Diana, his jaw tight. "We shouldn't linger. Whatever did this may still be here."
Diana's gaze swept the chamber, then the corridor stretching deeper. Her wind curled around her, restless and sharp, tugging at her hair and cloak as though urging her forward. She felt the weight of fate pressing harder now, the loom tightening with every step she took.
"No," she said, her voice steady despite the bile in her throat. "We need to see it all. If we turn away now, these people suffer for nothing. The truth of what's happening to the coast lies in this place."
The guards looked to Alaric, their faces pale. He studied Diana for a long moment, then gave a slow nod. "Then forward. But every man keeps his blade bare."
The company steeled itself and pressed on, the white corridor swallowing them deeper. Each pane they passed was another wound to the spirit, each chamber revealing a new cruelty dressed as craft. Diana forced herself to look, to memorize, to bear witness—for she knew someone had buried this beneath Perithia for a reason.
And she meant to drag it back into the light.
But before she could take another step, the ceiling above the far end of the corridor split open with a hiss. Hidden panels slid back, revealing strange equipment that gleamed with polished menace—metallic tubes like cannons, each set into sockets of bronze and iron. Their mouths glowed, motes of white light gathering at the tips, swelling brighter and brighter until the whole corridor shimmered.
Diana's chest tightened. The wind inside her whispered of danger an instant before the first blast erupted.
The cannons fired.
Beams of pure light shrieked down the corridor, faster than arrows, faster than any mortal reflex could match. The first volley struck two guards before they could raise their shields—one was flung against the wall, his body smoking, the other crumpled to the floor without a sound.
"Down!" Alaric roared, raising his sword though it could not turn the storm.
Diana stepped forward, slamming her spear butt against the floor. Her voice rang out, fierce and clear, each syllable like a thunderclap:
"Mystery of Zeus: Logoi Aspída — Truth of Shield!"
The words carried power. Air roared into motion, coiling in a furious spiral around her company. A wall of wind sprang up, translucent and roaring like a storm-tide. The blasts of light struck it with crackling force, scattering sparks, but the gale bent each strike away, curling them harmlessly into the walls.
Diana's eyes burned as she seized the gale tighter, drawing upon her Theosis. With divine authority, she bent the wind further—catching the beams, twisting their trajectories, and hurling them back along their path.
The corridor exploded with flashes as the redirected blasts tore into the ceiling mounts. One by one, the cannons sputtered, cracked, and collapsed in bursts of smoke and flame. The echoes rolled down the corridor like thunder.
Then silence.
Diana dismissed the shield, and pain came with it. The dual weight of Logoi and Theosis struck her bones like hammers, vibrations tearing through her arms and chest. She gritted her teeth, willing her breath steady.
At the corridor's end, stone groaned. A gate of metal split wide, and something heavier stepped out.
The ground trembled beneath stamping feet.
They emerged from the dark in unison—towering constructs of black metal, their shoulders bristling with smaller cannons, their arms ending in blades that glowed with searing light. Their eyes burned red, inhuman and unblinking. They moved with precision, not clumsy like ordinary constructs, but with the rhythm of something alive.
The guards muttered curses. One staggered back in fear.
"More enemies," Alaric growled, his voice low, steady. He lifted his blade, his own aura rising around him like heat.
Diana's grip tightened on her spear until her knuckles whitened. Power stirred within her, rising in answer. Her eyes flared pale blue, and the wind bent eagerly to her will. She spun the spear once, and the motion summoned a crackle of lightning that snapped across the shaft, dancing along its tip. The air was charged, sharp with ozone.
She lunged.
The first Automaton raised its cannon-arm, but her spear pierced through the blast of light, the storm gathering around her weapon. The wind screamed with her strike, lightning bursting outward as the blade drove into the construct's chest. Sparks cascaded as she ripped the spear free, cleaving it in two.
Another Automaton swung down with its blazing sword-arm. Alaric was there, his own mystery flaring as he caught the strike and twisted, his blade cutting through the arm joint in a burst of sparks. He moved like a wall of steel, carving a path beside Diana.
But the guards—mere men without mysteries—could do little more than fend off stray strikes. Diana and Alaric bore the brunt, the wind and steel dancing in tandem.
Diana twirled her spear in a storm arc, wind and lightning woven into each thrust. The constructs fell one by one, their black shells sparking, their eyes dimming as their cores split. Alaric felled another with a cleaving strike that split its head in half.
The last Automaton charged. Diana's wind wrapped her spear in a storm's fury. She thrust forward with both hands, the blade piercing clean through its chest. The construct froze, its red eyes flickering, then died as the spear shattered its core. Sparks erupted, showering the corridor as the thing collapsed in a heap of twisted metal.
Silence returned, broken only by the guards' ragged breathing.
Diana stood over the wreckage, her spear lowered but her eyes sharp. The Automaton's body still crackled faintly, the smell of scorched metal stinging the air.
She knelt, brushing a hand across the black shell. The construction was impossibly intricate—gears within gears, wires fine as hair, each piece fit with precision no common smith could manage.
She swallowed hard. "Automatons," she murmured. "But nothing like the simple husks I've seen before. These… these are alive with craft beyond our age."
The words tasted bitter. Her gaze hardened.
She rose, looking down the corridor that still stretched deeper into shadow. "The Iron Guild…" Her voice was low, heavy with suspicion. "By Zeus, what in the name of the gods are they?"
The ruined gate at the far end of the hall stood ajar, split wide by the constructs' emergence. Beyond it, a cold glow pulsed faintly, unlike firelight or torch. Diana motioned silently with two fingers, and the company advanced, boots crunching on fragments of broken machinery.
They stepped through the threshold—
—and stopped.
The corridor opened into a chamber so vast it dwarfed the catacombs above. The ceiling arched impossibly high, lined with strips of glowing panels that shed a sterile white light. Along either side of the hall stretched rows upon rows of towering pods—glass cylinders filled with liquid that shimmered faintly green-blue.
Inside floated people.
Men and women, some still wearing the rough garb of fishermen and villagers, their eyes closed, their bodies suspended by a web of wires that burrowed into their skin. Bubbles rose slowly around them, every breath a mechanical rasp as fluid hissed through tubes connected to their mouths and chests. Their veins glowed faintly where the wires sank deep, a pale luminescence that pulsed in rhythm with the chamber's lights.
One of the guards dropped his torch with a clatter. "Gods…" His voice cracked. "They're alive."
Alaric caught the torch with his boot and ground it against the floor, his face pale but his eyes sharp. "Not just alive. Harnessed." He gestured at the wires, the way they fed into conduits along the floor, trailing into the center of the chamber.
Diana forced herself to move. Every step brought her closer to the heart of the hall, where the conduits converged around a raised dais of metal, black as obsidian, its surface humming faintly. Her wind pressed against her skin, as though warning her to tread carefully.
Then, without warning, the air shimmered.
A flicker of light burst above the dais—first motes, then lines, then the shape of figures cloaked in dark robes. They stood in a circle, their hoods shadowing their faces, but their voices carried clear, echoing as if the chamber itself remembered them.
"Subject groups forty through fifty show greater tolerance.""The Ash energy feeds well through their marrow. See how the veins brighten.""Affinity is uneven. Half burn out, half adapt. A crude filter, but necessary.""The Ashen Fields yield more than ash—they yield dominion. Imagine a legion, each soldier infused with its current."
The voices overlapped, clinical yet reverent, every word like a blade slicing Diana's gut.
The hologram shifted—showing the pods in miniature, light racing along the wires. A woman within one pod twitched violently, her eyes rolling back, then stilled as her glow snuffed out. One of the cloaked figures nodded, speaking with calm finality:
"Failure. Reduce the husk to fuel."
The image dissolved.
Silence fell, heavy and absolute. Only the faint hum of the machinery remained, pulsing in time with the villagers' shallow breaths inside their glass prisons.
Diana's hand tightened on her spear until her knuckles whitened. Her throat burned, but her voice came steady:
"They're using the people… to feed experiments with the Ash from the Ashen field."
Alaric's jaw clenched. His eyes raked the pods, then turned to her. "This isn't cult-work. This is war-making."
Diana felt the loom of fate pull taut again, her wind swirling faintly at her shoulders. Whatever the Iron Guild was, whatever they were forging here, it was no longer bound to mystery alone. This was something alien, something older and yet more advanced than the Imperium had ever dared dream.
And it had claimed Perithia's people as its forge fire.
****
Far from the catacombs beneath Perithia, in a chamber of black stone and polished iron, the Hierophant of the Iron Sovereign stood before a screen of shifting light. The surface rippled, resolving into images of Diana Arkanis and her companions as they battled the Automatons. Sparks burst, lightning writhed, wind howled—all of it captured in spectral clarity.
The Hierophant's gauntleted fingers tightened on the staff he carried, its head wrought into the shape of an anvil wreathed in flame. His voice was low, measured, carrying the resonance of one used to command.
"So," he murmured, watching Diana cut through one of the constructs with spear and storm, "the little eagle bares her claws. It seems the girl carries a Mystery after all."
The words had scarcely left his lips when another voice cut through the chamber, sharp and disdainful. A mote of light shimmered into being beside him, resolving into the figure of a man draped in the deep purple of the Imperium Senate. His face was proud, his hair bound with golden thread.
"Do not call her princess," the senator sneered. "She has no such title. She is nothing but the bastard of a whore."
Two more lights flared, expanding into full figures. One was another senator, his face younger, his robes cut with the crimson of the high offices. The other was unlike either—an armored giant whose form gleamed with sleek plates of black metal, his helm crowned with a circlet of pale fire. His armor was not the crude iron of Erytheia but something more refined, alien, as though forged in a forge the world had forgotten.
The Hierophant's lips curled faintly. "Titles mean little. Bastard or no, she wields the Lineage Aspect of Arkanis—Zeus' sovereignty of wind. You see for yourselves the power she commands. I thought you said she was nothing, that your first prince was the truer asset."
The older senator stiffened. "He is," he insisted, though his voice carried a crack. "I… I did not know she bore a Mystery. When her status was examined, it showed nothing. Inconclusive. I judged her harmless."
The Hierophant's voice turned cold. "Harmless? Then what do you call the corpses of my Automatons littering the catacombs? Even that man at her side—the one with the crowning Mystery of war—would have fallen. But with her there, he stands."
The armored figure spoke at last. Its voice rolled like iron dragged across stone, each syllable carrying weight enough to still the others. "An error," It said simply, its helm turning toward the senator. "Corporeal Fabius, it seems the years you've wasted in the Senate have dulled the instincts the Fabius line was once feared for. How could you, of all people, fail to account for Lady Diana's strength?"
At once, both senators bowed their heads. "Your Highness…" Fabius stammered, his face pale. "I swear, I checked. Her bloodline was weak; no mystery registered. There was no sign of awakening. How was I to know she would—"
"Awakening," the Hierophant cut in with a growl, "often comes when the world itself demands it. And she has been demanding for years. She has argued without pause about the dangers stirring in the south. Now she comes herself to find proof where you refused to look."
The armored figure's burning crown flared faintly as it leaned closer to the image of Diana projected in the pool. Her spear gleamed, her eyes blazed blue, her cloak whipped by a wind that bent to her alone.
"She has spirit," It said at last. "Spirit is dangerous. And spirit backed by truth is fatal."
The chamber fell into silence, save for the flicker of Diana's storm echoing in the monitor screens. The light in the monitor rippled, shifting from Diana's spear-sweeps in the catacombs to the quiet streets of Kolma.
The Hierophant leaned heavily on his staff, the fire-shaped anvil crowning it, flickering with a dull glow. His voice was calm, but there was a weight in it, the sort that made acolytes tremble.
"She was sighted in Kolma," he said. "If I am correct, she will return there once she leaves the old laboratory. Shall I dispose of her when the time comes?"
The armored figure stepped closer to the projection. it's crown of pale fire shimmered faintly as the chamber's light bent toward it, as though unwilling to resist it's gravity. When it spoke, it's words clanged like iron striking an anvil.
"No. Not yet. There is a chance she holds the Mystery we seek."
At that, Fabius stiffened, the color draining from his face. "Your Highness," he began, his voice quick, defensive, "the Thread has been lost ever since the She-Wolf's death."
The armored helm tilted toward him. "And was it not the She-Wolf who raised the girl?"
Fabius swallowed hard, his hand tightening on the folds of his senator's robes. "Yes. Yes, she took care of Lady Diana. Which is why we tested her after the She-Wolf's passing, to see if the inheritance had passed. The results showed nothing. No trace of the Thread. And from what the monitors show now, she wields a Zeus Mystery, not the Thread."
The Hierophant tapped his staff once, the sound echoing through the chamber like a hammerfall. His eyes narrowed as he turned back to the pool. "The Thread is no ordinary Mystery. Do you truly believe it would reveal itself so easily? A woman raised by the She-Wolf may have learned to cloak her nature, even from us."
Fabius hesitated. "Even from our aethertech?"
The Hierophant's gaze was hard. "Even from that."
A long silence stretched. The senators shifted uneasily, their holographic forms wavered, but the armored figure stood motionless, it's presence swallowing the chamber.
At last, it spoke again, it's voice colder than before. "Do not underestimate this continent. You see superstition, barbarism, and rot—but I see something else. I see shadows of truths forgotten, waiting in the ash and ruin. Backwards, yes. Primitive, yes. But no forge should be judged cold before the hammer strikes."
It's burning crown flared brighter, washing the others in pale fire.
"And I tell you this: there is more here than the Imperium believes." The monitor rippled again, Diana's face appearing for a heartbeat, her eyes lit with wind and storm. The light in the monitor snapped to a new focus — a thread of silver mapping the Inner Sea, pins blinking where hidden harbors waited. The armored figure's voice cut through the chamber like steel.
"Sergeant Fabius," it said, and it's tone left no room for argument, "apprehend Lady Diana when she reaches Kolma. Dispose of the others. Bring her to me alive. My flagship draws near the sea kingdoms' coasts. When it lands, the seven nations of the Thalassarchtes will bend under our banner."
Fabius's hologram stiffened. A twitch ran through the senator's projected face; sweat gleamed at the temple that the image could not hide. He swallowed, voice thin.
"So it begins," the older senator murmured at last — the first sound from him all meeting — and his words fell into the iron-cold air like a struck coin.
"Yes," the armored presence answered, and the crown of pale fire atop its helm flared as if to punctuate the promise. "The subjugation of Erytheia is authorized." Its hand brushed a visible control at the pool's lip; the map shivered, routes pulsing outward like hungry veins.
One by one the three figures inclined their heads. "Glory to the Motherland," the armored man intoned, and the phrase rolled through the chamber—sober, ritual, inevitable.
"Glory to the Motherland," the Hierophant echoed, his own voice a rasp that betrayed the old ironworker's habit of speaking over the clink of hammers. Fabius's projection gave a brittle nod; even the older senator's mouth shaped the salute. The images trembled, fissures of light collapsing inward, and then the holograms blinked out until only the rippling pool of light remained.
For a moment there was nothing but the low whine of machinery and the echo of their last phrase. The Hierophant kept his hand on his staff. His knuckles whitened around the anvil-shaped head; the metal hummed faintly, warmed by the chamber's hidden cores. A thin smile — almost a scowl of pleasure — tightened the lines at the corner of his mouth. The mission had been given. The long, cold drift of days in this place, the waiting and patient forging, had a purpose again.
He drew a slow breath. Behind the carved stone, the workshop's forges answered in distant throbs — not with the clumsy flames of a village smith, but with the steady heartbeat of engines that fed metal to will. The Hierophant let the sound fill him like fuel. Somewhere far above, a bell tolled the hour; below, in the pool, the maps glowed once more, and already pins winked where new orders would fall.
He straightened, staff steady in both hands, eyes bright in the dim. The chamber smelled faintly of oil and wet iron. For the first time in a long while, excitement uncoiled in his chest — a dangerous thing, and welcome.