Diana forced her gaze away from the pods and their gaunt prisoners, her stomach knotting against the sight. The glow of the chamber pulled her instead toward a row of workbenches that stood in unnerving order against the far wall. Every surface gleamed with surgical precision, polished metal catching the white light.
On one bench lay rolls of crystalline objects—long shards, clear as ice, but veined with faint threads of color that pulsed like trapped lightning. They were arranged in exact lines, each set parallel to the next, as if ritual mattered as much as craft.
The tug of the loom pressed hard against Diana's chest. She reached for one.
The crystal was cold at first touch, but the instant her fingers closed around it, warmth bloomed. It thrummed faintly, a heartbeat that was not her own. The aether in her veins—thin from the exertions of the fight—flared in answer, drawn toward the shard. It reminded her of the door she had opened earlier, how it had yielded at the brush of her essence, as though it recognized something in her blood.
This crystal did more than yield.
It spoke.
The moment her grip tightened, a surge slammed through her skull—images, symbols, equations in strange runes flashing in an unrelenting storm. She staggered, breath catching, as foreign knowledge hammered into her mind. Chains. Formulas. Schematic diagrams of bodies twisted by wire and fluid. She saw charts mapping affinities, whole villages measured like livestock, columns marked with words she half-recognized: Ash saturation, threshold, viability.
Diana gasped, her teeth clenched, her shoulders shaking. The crystal seared into her thoughts like white fire.
But she did not break.
She had known overload before—ever since her second Mystery had awakened. It had tempered her against floods of sensation, taught her to breathe through the storm, to let the torrent pass without drowning. Now she drew on that hard-earned resilience, steadying her breath until the images slowed, became threads she could separate.
Her eyes opened slowly, pale blue light flickering faintly in their depths. The crystal still pulsed in her palm, waiting like a question.
She exhaled, voice low. "You're not just records… you're memory."
Her knuckles whitened around the shard. Whatever the Iron Sovereign was doing here, this crystal carried its truth—and the loom wanted her to see it. The crystal flared once more in her grip, and Diana's vision blurred.
Ash veins mapped through bone.Villagers shackled in pods, their blood glowing faintly with violet light.A formula scrawled in lines of runes: Ash Resonance = Affinity × Vessel Integrity.An iron mask lowered over a screaming face, the eyes burning white, then going dark.Fragments of words—"Sovereign Core… ascension through integration… failed hosts: discard."
Her breath caught as the storm of knowledge pressed harder. She clenched her jaw and forced the crystal to dim, letting the images bleed away before they crushed her.
When her sight cleared, she was on her knees, the shard trembling in her hand, its light faint but insistent. Alaric hovered nearby, sword drawn, his eyes narrowed in concern.
"What did you see?" he asked.
Diana swallowed. The words felt bitter. "Not enough to understand… but enough to know this is no ordinary cult."
She set the shard carefully back on the bench, its glow fading into stillness. The loom still tugged at her chest, demanding she follow the thread deeper.
Diana steadied her breath, fingers still tingling from the crystal's pulse. The knowledge it carried gnawed at the edges of her mind, incomplete but undeniable. She glanced along the workbench—rows of shards, each one whispering with that same cold resonance.
Her jaw tightened. "We can't leave them all," she said. "But we'll take what we can carry."
Alaric's eyes flicked to the pods lining the walls, then back to her. "You think they'll let us walk out with their secrets?"
"I don't intend to ask permission." Diana's voice was quiet, steel wrapped in calm. She reached for a satchel slung at her side, opening it with brisk precision. One by one she selected shards, choosing those with the strongest glow, though each weighed heavier than their size suggested, as though they carried more than crystal in their core.
Her guards followed her lead, though unease showed in their faces. A few hesitated to touch the shards, muttering prayers under their breath. Diana ignored their fear; her own unease she buried deep, beneath the steady rhythm of purpose.
When the satchel held what little they could manage, she cinched it closed and slung it across her shoulder. The loom in her chest tugged again, and her eyes shifted toward the far corridor. The path forward promised only more horror, but the thread of fate no longer pulled her deeper—it pulled back.
"Kolma," she said at last.
Alaric frowned. "You mean to confront them?"
Her gaze sharpened, stormlight flickering in her irises. "The Iron Guild has walked too long in shadow. If they've rooted themselves in Kolma, then that's where we tear at their foundation."
No one spoke against her. The silence carried the weight of their shared exhaustion and the quiet spark of something else—resolve.
Diana turned from the chamber of glass and steel, her spear in hand, the satchel heavy against her side. The villagers in the pods moaned faintly in their sleep, the sound chasing them into the corridor. She did not look back.
The path to Kolma lay ahead, and with it, answers—and enemies.
****
The sea kept them company as they rode north along the coast, its waves hissing against the black stone like the breath of some slumbering beast. Mist clung low to the water, rolling inland to blur the jagged line where land met sea. Diana's cloak snapped in the wind, the satchel heavy against her side. Each mile closer to Kolma felt like tightening string, the loom pulling her toward confrontation.
Her guards rode quiet, the earlier horrors still in their eyes. Alaric rode beside her, glancing often toward the sea as though expecting it to spit forth another secret.
It came not from the sea, but from the cliffs.
The wind changed—carrying the faint tang of scorched metal, the scent of oil and steel. Diana stiffened in her saddle. Her spear slid into her hand without a word, blue sparks dancing faintly along its shaft.
Shapes detached from the mist ahead. Men—if they could still be called such. A squad of ten marched down the coastal path, their bodies gleaming with unnatural additions: arms plated with bronze, joints hissing with valves, eyes lit with faint red lenses. Blades folded out of forearms, rifles fused to shoulders. Their boots struck the stone in perfect unison, the sound cold and mechanical.
Behind them, cloaked in smoke that curled like incense, came the Hierophant. His staff struck the earth once, and the sea air seemed to recoil from it. His helm was wrought of iron and gilded with crimson lines that glowed faintly, and at his back a harness of aethertech plates pulsed with dim blue light. The anvil at the staff's head smoldered faintly, as though it had just been pulled from a forge.
Diana reined in, her guard forming a defensive half-circle around her. Alaric's sword rasped free, his aura coiling like dark fire.
The Hierophant's voice carried on the wind, amplified by the strange plates along his spine. It rolled like a sermon delivered in a temple of iron.
"Lady Diana," he intoned, mock courtesy bending the title. "The loom has brought you to my doorstep sooner than I expected. You should have remained in Leto, playing at politics. Instead, you come to pry into matters beyond your bloodline's reach."
The squad fanned out, their movements too precise to be human. Aethertech augments hissed and clicked, weapons locking into place.
Diana's grip tightened on her spear, wind stirring violently at her shoulders. Her eyes gleamed storm-blue as she called on the current of her bloodline.
"You've taken villagers, twisted them into fuel for your forges. And you dare think Erytheia will bow to that?"
The Hierophant laughed softly, the sound metallic, inhuman. "Bow? No, Lady. You and your kind will break."
At his signal, the squad surged forward, metal claws flashing in the mist. And the coast erupted in battle.
Diana had never witnessed such abominations. They weren't men anymore—whatever humanity remained had been drowned beneath plates of bronze, steel veins, and wires pulsing with unnatural light. Their weapons were not carried but fused, rifles melded into shoulders, blades grown out of forearms like diseased bone.
The word tore into her mind unbidden, a whisper from the crystal she had accessed.
Aethertech.
A false divinity hammered into flesh and marrow, the kind of power that allowed a mortal to mimic a Supreme. The clash came swiftly and mercilessly.
Her guards—good men, loyal men—didn't stand a chance. One tried to raise his shield, but a beam of condensed light burned through wood and flesh alike, leaving only a smoking ruin. Another's scream was cut short as a clawed gauntlet tore through his chestplate, the sound of rending metal and ribs indistinguishable. Blood sprayed across the stone, bright against the mist.
It was a complete slaughter.
Even Alaric, whose Mystery of Battle had been tempered across countless wars, faltered. His blade met one of their bluish energy shields, the impact ringing like a bell, sparks scattering. He pressed harder, his aura blazing—but the shield held, unyielding. A counterstrike hurled him back, boots dragging furrows in the rock.
Diana moved before despair could root itself.
Her spear sang as she leveled it, its adamant shaft humming with the familiar thrum of aether. The weapon drank the wind around her, replenishing what she had spent in the catacombs, until her veins burned bright again. Power surged, stormlight rippling through her hair and cloak.
She whispered the name of her inheritance, and the air answered.
With a twist of her body, the spear became a blur of lightning and gale. She struck, and the wind sharpened to blades, peeling back the enemy's shields as if they were nothing but mist. Her spear punched through the chest of one, scattering gears and sparks in an explosion of gore and circuitry. Another she cut down with a sweeping arc, the gale wrapping around her strike, flinging the thing's broken body across the rocks.
For a heartbeat, she moved as the heroes of old must have moved—storm incarnate, weaving martial skill with divine Mystery, each step precise, each strike final.
But triumph soured.
The fallen did not stay fallen.
Sparks danced across their wounds, blue currents crawling over torn plating and shredded flesh. Gashes sealed, shattered limbs stiffened, and one by one, they staggered back to their feet. Their eyes glowed redder, their breathing mechanical and rasping.
Diana's jaw clenched. She shifted her grip on her spear; the storm still coiled around her, but unease tightened her chest. These things were not men. They were weapons forged to endure.
And for every one she cut down, they rose again.
The coast thundered with steel and storm. Diana's spear whirled, each strike breaking shields and tearing through metal hides, but still the aberrations rose, their wounds knitting with unnatural speed. Sparks crawled across torn plating, and beams of light hummed back to life. Her men were dead. All that was left were her and Alaric.
He staggered to her side, his blade dented, his cheek split and bleeding. "My Lady… they don't stay down," he hissed.
Diana's chest burned with the truth of it. These were not warriors. They were revenants born of iron and false power. To fight them as men was folly.
She inhaled, the sea-wind filling her lungs, but the loom tugged at her heart with greater urgency. Threads coiled in her mind's eye, unseen but tangible—fate's web tightening around her. The whisper of her second Mystery, the gift she never spoke of, even among allies, stirred.
Moira.
Her vision flickered. The battlefield dissolved for a heartbeat into strands of light and shadow—each soldier a knot in the tapestry, cords twisting with strength and brittleness both. Their bodies healed endlessly, yes, but the loom showed her the weakness: small, dim strands that pulsed erratically deep in their chests, tangled where flesh and machine had fused.
Their cores. Their false threads of life.
Her eyes snapped open, glowing not just blue but shot through with faint silver threads. The wind around her rose in a shriek, pulling sand and salt into a storm. She leveled her spear, her voice ringing across the coast, every syllable vibrating with the authority of lineage.
"Mystery of Zeus — Logoi Anemos Stigmē: Truth of the Wind's Strike!"
The gale bent at her command, condensing, sharpening, becoming not a shield nor a gale but a single, piercing instant. The storm funneled down the shaft of her spear until the weapon itself trembled, lightning crawling along its length, the tip radiant with concentrated force.
She struck.
The air split with a sound like shattering glass. A beam of compressed wind, laced with stormlight, erupted from her spear and pierced through the first aberration's chest. It bypassed armor, bypassed shields, bypassed healing. The core-thread, revealed by Moira's sight, snapped.
The creature convulsed once and collapsed, truly lifeless.
Diana did not pause. Her eyes burned silver-blue as she pivoted, thrust after thrust, each guided by the loom. Every strike of her spear became a death sentence, severing the hidden cords that bound the things to motion. Where before they rose again, now they fell for good, collapsing into smoking heaps of metal and flesh.
The storm howled with her, each blow a thunderclap. Sand blasted outward in rings, the sea itself recoiling from the gale.
Alaric watched with awe and terror alike, bloodied but unbroken. He pressed forward to shield her flank, cutting down those staggered by her storm so she could focus on the killing strikes. One by one, the abominations fell. Until only silence and the sound of the sea remained.
Diana stood at the center of it, her chest heaving, spear still alight with residual sparks. The silver-thread glow faded from her eyes, leaving only storm-blue. She tightened her grip, her body trembling—not from fear, but from the toll. The loom's tug receded, its gift withdrawn, and exhaustion pressed at the edges of her limbs.
But the squad was gone. Truly gone.
And on the cliff above, the Hierophant's staff struck the stone, the anvil-head glowing like molten fire. His voice rolled down to them, half fury, half awe.
The Hierophant's voice rolled down from the cliff like iron dragged across stone. His staff flared, the anvil-head smoldering with inner fire.
"So," he said, his words slow, savoring, "the Eagle's offspring shows her shadow at last. I suppose the rumors were true—you bear the Thread Mystery. How else would you know where to strike, how else would you end them?"
Diana's cloak whipped in the sea-wind. She planted her spear, the gale bending around her as if listening for her next command. Her chest still heaved from the storm she had summoned, but her eyes were steady, locked on the figure above.
She turned her head slightly toward Alaric, her voice quiet but firm. "You need to run."
He shifted, blood streaking his cheek, sword still trembling in his grip. "But, my Lady—"
"No." Her tone sharpened, leaving no room for argument. "You must get to Helen. Tell her what we've uncovered. Give her the evidence."
Her hand dropped to her side, unfastening the satchel heavy with shards. She pressed it into his chest. The weight thudded against his armor. Then, without hesitation, she pulled free her own smaller satchel and thrust that into his hands as well.
"I'll hold him here."
Alaric's throat worked as if the words caught in it. His knuckles whitened around the strap. To leave her felt like betrayal—yet he knew, knew too well, that standing by her side now would only drag her down. He had fought beside her long enough to recognize the truth: her power outstripped his, and his presence would chain her.
She read his silence and gave a fleeting, crooked smile, one that held no fear. "Don't worry. They don't wish to kill me." A flicker of blue light ran across her eyes. "And I don't plan on dying."
The storm in her voice finally convinced him. He bowed his head once. "Very well, my Lady."
He turned on his heel, tightening the straps of the satchels, and sprinted toward the horses tethered beyond the rocks. His boots slammed against the stone, the sea spray at his back, every step carrying the fate of what they had found.
Above, the Hierophant's helm tilted, watching him go. His gauntleted fingers pressed against the bronze band clamped around his wrist. The surface of it lit with runes, glowing red as his fingers tapped a precise sequence.
"What makes you so sure I do not wish to kill you," he asked, his voice carrying through the crash of the tide, "after you've seen the secrets of my forge?"
Diana's spear twitched upward, her storm gathering once more. Her reply was almost casual, though her grip told otherwise. "Just a gut feeling." She stepped closer, her eyes narrowing. "Besides—you're more than just a cult. Tell me, Hierophant—how long have you been working with the Varros family?"
The pause was sharp. The Hierophant stilled mid-motion, the runes flickering faintly across his bracer.
"Why," he said slowly, "would you ask me that?"
"Because you've been buying silence." Her voice was low, steady, cutting through the wind. "You paid the governor of Leto to keep your horrors buried. And that governor wears his seat because of Senator Varro's sponsorship."
The Hierophant chuckled, the sound hollow, echoing within the steel of his helm. He finished his sequence, and the runes burned brighter.
"I see," he said. "So you have been digging into us for longer than I thought."
A shrill hum filled the air. Shadows fell across the coast. Diana raised her head as the sky darkened—not with storm clouds, but with machines.
Dozens of drone-like entities descended from the mist, their engines whirring like hornets, each glowing faintly with cold blue light. Their shapes were sleek, avian, wings of bronze and iron beating the air with unnatural precision. Red eyes flickered alive in unison, and then—like hounds unleashed—they swarmed after Alaric, streaking across the coastline in a blur of light and steel.
The Hierophant lifted his staff, its head burning with molten glow. His voice cut across the hum of engines.
"It seems," he said, "that I must bring you in after all."
The drones howled, the sea roared, and the cliffside glowed red with the promise of his power.
The Hierophant stamped his staff into the rock, cracks spider-webbing out from the impact. The anvil-head flared, molten white, and from the vents at his shoulders jets of steam hissed—his body a living furnace.
Diana darted forward, cloak whipping. Her eyes shimmered silver-blue, Moira's threads overlaying reality in lines and knots. She saw him not as armor and flesh, but as a loom of glowing cords: the tubes along his spine, the power-lines to his gauntlets, the nexus pulsing at his chest.
There, she thought, and thrust.
Her spear lanced out, wind compressed into a needle around its tip. She aimed for the cord feeding from his spine into his right arm—thin, flickering, unstable.
The Hierophant twisted. His staff intercepted, the anvil-head ringing against her spear with a burst of sparks. At the same instant, his left bracer split apart, panels peeling back to reveal a socketed emitter. A lance of blue-white energy fired point-blank.
Diana flung herself sideways, the beam scorching past, vaporizing the mist where she had stood. She landed light on her feet, pivoted, and slashed a crescent arc—the gale following her cut like a scythe.
The Hierophant snarled. His bracer rotated, plates clicking into a shield. The crescent crashed into it, wind shrieking, lightning sparking along the edges. The shield held, but the tubes along his ribs sparked in protest, a hairline fracture appearing in the weave of cords her Moira-sight revealed.
Good. He can be broken.
She lunged again, this time feinting high before driving low toward the joint of his knee. Her spear tip kissed metal, sparks flew—
—but a hiss answered. From his thigh, a hidden blade snapped out, intercepting the thrust. Metal screamed against adamant.
He shoved with inhuman strength, the hidden blade forcing her back. His staff swept in a horizontal arc, molten light trailing from the anvil-head.
Diana ducked, wind dragging her low. The swing passed overhead, heat washing across her scalp. She spun from her crouch, drove her spear upward, and whispered:
"Logoi Anemos — Truth of the Wind's Pierce."
The spear shot forward faster than thought, wind twisting into a drill. It struck the nexus glowing faintly at his chest. For a heartbeat, she felt it give—metal denting, cords fraying.
Then the Hierophant roared. His chest-plate blazed as the harness surged, and the recoil hurled her back, her heels gouging twin furrows in the stone.
Smoke curled from his chest, a faint crack spidering through the plate where she'd struck. He glanced down, then back at her, helm glowing like a furnace.
"Impressive," he rasped, raising his staff again. "But the forge tempers under pressure. You will need more than threads and storm to break me."
Diana rolled her shoulders, spear ready, her eyes still aglow with the Moira-threads."Then I'll unravel you, piece by piece."
With a single motion she tore off her cloak. It whipped away into the storm she summoned, leaving her bare-armed in the salt-tinged wind. Her sleeveless robe of midnight blue clung to her frame, its strap crossing one shoulder, exposing the pale skin of her arms etched with scars. Proof she was no sheltered noble, but a warrior who had bled and endured.
The air thickened. The pressure of the winds around her mounted until the stones underfoot rattled. Gales gathered like living things, stormlight flickering within them, until spears of pure wind—infused with aether—spiraled into being at her side. They hung suspended, whistling, straining for release.
Her grip on her own weapon tightened. The adamant shaft thrummed, infusing her with its own aether. Lightning snapped along the blade, coiling like serpents around the wind. Every heartbeat sent more of the weapon's strength into her, and then she channeled that power back to the spear, creating a resonance until the spear blazed as though wrought of skyfire.
The Hierophant answered in kind. His harness glowed a deep crimson, vents along his spine opening with a hiss of steam. Plates across his arms slid apart, reshaping into cannons. His helm tilted forward, the visor splitting to reveal a vertical strip of molten light.
"Let us test," he growled, "whether your storm can outlast the forge."
The first exchange was a storm of barrages.
Diana flung her wind-spears forward in a volley, each whistling javelin trailing lightning. They streaked toward him with the speed of thunderbolts. The Hierophant swung his staff in a wide arc, the anvil-head striking the air with a dull gong. Hexagonal shields rippled outward, catching two, three, four spears—explosions of gale and fire scattering sparks across the cliff.
But the fifth and sixth spears slipped through. One shattered against his shoulder, leaving a crack of molten metal. The other pierced his thigh, spinning him a half-step back before his flesh hissed and sealed around the wound, the tubes along his leg pumping blue liquid into the breach.
He retaliated instantly. His arm-cannons roared, beams of searing light lashing out. Diana whirled her spear, conjuring a barrier of compressed wind that bent the beams aside, but each strike vibrated through her bones. The air itself burned against her skin.
Her Moira-sight flickered—threads danced, some taut, others fraying. She caught it: a pulsing cord at his right side, just beneath the ribs, one of the conduits feeding power from his harness.
She darted left, sliding across the stone as another beam scorched the ground where she had been. The storm coiled tighter around her, and with a sharp cry, she thrust her spear forward.
Wind and lightning focused into a single piercing strike.
The Hierophant swung his staff to intercept—but she twisted, guiding the gale to curve mid-strike. The spear's tip slammed into his side, right where the thread pulsed. Sparks exploded, the harness stuttered, and the Hierophant bellowed, staggering a step.
For a heartbeat, Diana thought she had him.
Then the furnace answered.
The runes on his bracer flared, brighter than before. Tubes across his body pumped liquid faster, glowing with furious light. His staff struck the ground again, and this time the anvil-head cracked open, releasing a surge of molten flame. The ground split, rivers of searing energy lashing upward like whips.
Diana leapt back, wind cushioning her retreat, but heat kissed her cheek, searing her skin raw.
Her lungs burned. Sweat streaked her brow. The storm in her veins shrieked for release, but she clenched it tighter, forcing control.
The Hierophant straightened, steam pouring from his armor, his visor burning like a forge. "Clever girl. But cleverness burns out. The forge remains."
Diana spat blood, her spear steady despite the tremor in her arm. The Moira threads still danced in her vision, fraying more with every surge of his power.
"Everything breaks," she whispered again, and raised her spear for another charge.
The storm shrieked around her, but Diana felt the strain in her bones. Every thrust, every shield, every gale she had summoned clawed at her reserves. The Hierophant loomed unbroken, his armor steaming, his staff glowing hotter with each strike.
He advanced. His steps were deliberate, inexorable, as if the forge itself walked in human shape. "You are faltering," he intoned, voice vibrating with metallic resonance. "The storm rages, but it will always scatter. Fire, iron—these endure."
Diana clenched her jaw, tasting blood on her tongue. Her spear wavered for a heartbeat—then steadied as her eyes brightened again. The silver threads of Moira overlaid the world, and she saw them clearer than ever.
The Hierophant's body was a tapestry: thick cords of power feeding from his harness, glowing knots at each limb where machine and flesh fused. And there—at his center—one thread brighter than the rest, taut, fragile, the true heart of his forge-body.
Her pulse quickened. If she cut that, he would fall.
The wind rose higher, whirling into a cyclone about her. Lightning coiled within it, lashing outward, drawn back into the storm. The gales strained against her will, pressing outward with raw fury, but she anchored them, bent them, compressed them tighter and tighter into her spear.
The adamant shaft thrummed like a living thing, veins of stormlight crawling across its surface. The very air thickened, stones rattling and splitting underfoot.
She whispered, her voice carrying both Mysteries, wind, and fate entwined:
"Mystery of Zeus: Logoi Astḗr — Truth of the Storm Star."
Above her, the cyclone contracted into a sphere of white-blue brilliance, lightning arcing across its surface. Threads of silver light, visible only to her, wove through it, guiding its shape. Fate and storm had never been one before—until now.
The Hierophant froze, visor flaring. "Impossible—"
She thrust.
The sphere collapsed into a singular point at her spear's tip, then erupted forward in a lance of concentrated stormfire. It screamed through the air, threads of Moira guiding it unerringly to the glowing cord in his chest.
The impact shook the coast.
The beam tore through his shields, shattered his staff aside, and punched into his chestplate. The harness exploded in a spray of molten shards and blue liquid, vents rupturing, tubes whipping like serpents. The Hierophant's roar echoed like a furnace breaking, his body staggering back under the sheer force.
For a breathless moment, he teetered, the glow in his chest flickering. The thread pulsed once—then frayed, snapping in her sight.
The storm fell silent.
Diana sagged, the spear still humming faintly in her hands. Her breath came ragged, her arms shaking from the weight of the unleashed strike. The Moira-threads receded, leaving only the world of stone, sea, and blood.
Across from her, the Hierophant collapsed to one knee, smoke billowing from his armor. His staff lay cracked beside him, the anvil-head dim. Yet even wounded, even broken, he lifted his helm to glare at her, eyes burning faint embers through the slit.
"You…" he rasped, voice raw, guttural. "You are… the She-wolf's heir after all."
Then he toppled, the tide washing foam over the blackened stone around his body.