The pain reached beyond flesh. It tore into marrow, into spirit, until Ithan's vision split in two. The room dissolved.
He was standing on the side of a jagged mountain, its peak lost in storm clouds. Chains thicker than ship masts pinned a colossal figure against the rock, each link forged from fire and thunder. The giant's face was cast in shadow, but his frame radiated power, even broken as he was. His chest heaved, torn open by a wound that would never close.
Above, the air shrieked. A blinding shape descended—a white eagle vast as the sky, its wings beating with the sound of storms. Its body was lightning made flesh, feathers burning like bolts, eyes molten with thunder.
The bird screamed, a cry that split the heavens, and plunged its beak into the giant's side. Flesh tore. Blood fell like fire on the rocks below. The giant convulsed, but the chains held.
Ithan's own body arched in pain, as though the eagle's beak had found him instead.
The eagle fed, tearing and devouring, until the giant sagged against his bonds, hollowed and trembling. Then, satisfied, the beast beat its wings and rose back into the storm, vanishing with a crack of thunder.
For a heartbeat, silence. Then the wound began to knit itself together—slow, agonizing, inevitable. Flames licked the giant's veins, reforging what had been lost.
The chained figure tilted its head back, eyes hidden, but a voice spilled from his lips—low at first, then rising until the mountain itself quaked.
Words of fire. Words of rebellion. Words that made the very world shudder with fury.
Ithan couldn't understand the tongue, not fully. Yet the meaning struck him in the bones: Defy them. Defy the tyrants. Steal back the flame.
The vision seared itself into him. Chains rattled. Thunder roared. And then everything fractured—
—he was back in Helen's office, his body convulsing, lightning dancing across his arms, white flame bursting from his pores. His scream tore through the room as if the giant's agony had become his own.
Helen braced herself against the gale. Alaric shouted something lost to the storm. Kallus swore under his breath, his trident clutched but useless against what raged before them.
And still, deep within the storm of his soul, Ithan felt the echo of that chained titan's voice, a whisper beneath his agony.
Defy them.
****
Ithan opened his eyes, but the world he looked upon was not Helen's office. He was lying in his own room.
The first thing he saw was symbols. Strange, shifting shapes burned into the air above him like constellations dragged down from the heavens. Spirals, jagged lines, angular patterns that pulsed with hidden rhythm. At first, they meant nothing, their sharp edges too alien, too jagged for mortal thought. They hovered, an impossible script etched into the very bones of the cosmos.
They should have driven him mad. They should have slipped away like smoke before reason.
But as time passed, his mind began to move—quick, hungry, racing. The shapes bent, shifted, rearranged. What had been chaos now formed coherence.
An equation emerged. Then another. A theorem unfurled like a banner across his vision. A lattice of thought assembled itself in vast, impossible geometry, so immense that he could scarcely hold it.
The voice of the chained giant thundered through the patterns. Knowledge is fire, Ashborn. Fire is the proof of rebellion. To see the world in its hidden lines is to steal it back from gods who hoard it.
The symbols surged, filling every corner of his vision. He saw diagrams of the human body, overlaid with veins of aether like glowing rivers. Equations reduced flame, lightning, stone, and storm into perfect numbers. He saw whole worlds broken down into ratios and harmonics, their beauty revealed in the cold certainty of calculation. His sight fractured into shards of truth, every fragment another puzzle falling into place.
The door opened.
Helen stepped into the room. For an instant, she was caught in the torrent of symbols. He saw her not as flesh and bone, but as a shifting network of equations: strength measured in elegant arcs, will mapped into spirals, cunning expressed as sharp intersections. An elegant solution walking in human form.
But then…something else. A shadow beneath her lattice. Something hidden that the patterns struggled to describe. A secret locked too deep.
Pain spiked through Ithan's skull like a blade. He clutched his head as a searing headache split his mind, the flood of information cascading faster than he could hold.
He blinked hard, and the visions snapped shut. His nose ran hot with blood.
Helen was already at his side, catching him before he toppled from the bed. "Pushing yourself the moment you wake," she murmured, her tone dry but laced with concern. "Not a good look."
"I didn't…mean to," Ithan rasped, wiping blood from his lip. "What happened?"
Helen's eyes flicked briefly to his bare chest, then back to his face. "For some reason, you absorbed the relics Alaric brought back. You gave the poor man quite a scare—he thinks his and the Lady's efforts were wasted."
Fragments of memory returned to Ithan—the crystals, their resonance, the plate flying into him, the chained god. He swallowed hard.
"What happened while I was out?" he asked.
"I sent Kallus and Benji to find Lady Diana," Helen said. "Alaric is resting. Andreas and Nicodemus returned from their mission. As for the Praetor—he has agreed to negotiate. Not willingly, but he had no choice given the circumstances. The date is set. We'll speak of that later."
Ithan frowned, glancing toward the window. "I was out that long?"
"Only a couple of days." Helen studied him. "How are you feeling?"
He looked down at himself. His chest was bare, his olive-brown skin scarred in familiar places, but there was nothing new. No sign of the plate. No sign of the graft that had burned its way into him. Only emptiness, as though the thing had vanished into bone and blood.
"What kind of relic were they?" he asked, voice low.
Helen shook her head, her brows knitting. "I don't know. I've never seen anything like it."
The words rose unbidden to Ithan's lips, knowledge slipping into his mind like it had always been there, waiting. "They were Data Crystals," he said, the name ringing with absolute certainty. "Crystals that store and preserve knowledge—information itself—through the medium of Aether."
His voice trembled, not with fear, but with awe. For he knew, somehow, that the fire Prometheus had stolen was not only flame…but truth.
Ithan's mind turned back to the relic—those shards, the plate, and the one missing piece Diana still held. That absence gnawed at him like an unsolved equation. He needed to know where Alaric had even found such objects, and what kind of game Lady Diana was truly playing.
"What in the gods' names is Lady Diana involved with?" Ithan muttered. Disappearances in the southern provinces. The Iron Guild. The strange crystals that had fused into his very body. Threads were tangling together, but he couldn't yet see the pattern.
"Come with me," Helen said, her voice steady.
He stood, still unsettled, but Helen cleared her throat and arched a brow, a faint grin playing at her lips. "Clothes, Ashborn. Try not to terrify half the company walking around bare-chested."
A faint flush crept to Ithan's face. He tugged on a light blue shirt and followed her down through the creaking stairwell. The air grew cooler as they descended. At the bottom, lanterns burned low, their glow spilling across stone walls carved with runes. On the floor, circles of Logoi had been carefully inscribed, the characters sharp and deliberate. They pulsed faintly, alive with power.
Ithan stopped short, recognition sparking in his mind. A binding array. A magic circle meant to hold and suppress.
In its center, chained at wrists and ankles, was Atticus. His body bore cuts and bruises, some scabbed over, others still raw. The chains themselves gleamed faintly, infused with wards that severed him from the earth beneath his feet. He could draw no strength, no mystery here.
Atticus raised his head when they entered, his swollen lip curling. "Ashborn…yo–you bastard…"
"Is that really how you greet your captors?" Helen asked lightly.
Her voice cut through him sharper than any blade. Whatever fight he had left drained away in an instant. The swagger in his tone dissolved; his shoulders hunched, and sweat beaded on his brow. The fierce warrior of the Ashen field shrank into something small, cornered, pathetic.
"Jus…just kill me. Please…" His voice cracked like a child's.
Ithan frowned, unsettled. "You already interrogated him?"
"I had some words," Helen said smoothly, her expression unreadable.
She folded her arms, then glanced at Ithan. "I told you my backer—Lady Diana—was investigating the Varro family."
"Yes," Ithan said slowly.
"What I didn't tell you," Helen continued, "is that my backer is not just any noble. Lady Diana is of the Imperial bloodline."
Ithan's eyes widened. "Wait…you mean—she's a princess?"
Helen gave a short, dry laugh. "Not quite. Lady Diana is no recognized Princess of the Imperium. She carries no such title. She is a senator, nothing more. By law and by address, she is Lady Diana."
Ithan studied Helen's face, then nodded slowly as understanding clicked into place. So that was it. An Imperial child without a crown. A bastard daughter, caught in the folds of power but denied its crest.
"I see," he said quietly.
The symbols he had glimpsed earlier in his vision lingered faintly at the edge of his sight, wrapping the revelation in silent confirmation. The threads of truth were beginning to show themselves.
"Lady Diana received word once—long ago. A warning from her mentor, her caretaker. Something was coming. A threat that could tear Erytheia apart," Helen said, her tone quiet, deliberate. "When her mentor died, she inherited both the burden and the seat. Since then, Diana has watched. She's catalogued every strange occurrence, every hidden shift. Most of all, she turned her eyes to the Senate itself. She reasoned that the greatest threat might not come from without, but from within."
Her expression hardened. "That was when she noticed something strange about the Varro family."
"What?" Ithan asked, though his voice carried no eagerness.
"The Varro family are traitors to the Imperium," Helen said flatly.
Ithan's lip curled. "Aren't all politicians traitors? Corrupt, power-hungry? It's their trade." He didn't bother to mask his disdain. Politics were games played in marble halls while villages burned.
Helen gave a thin smile, weary but sharp. "Yes. In this age of decay, every politician is a snake. But the Varros are different. They were once a stalwart ally of the Arkanis line. Loyalists. They helped place the current emperor on the throne. For generations they moved in lockstep with Imperial will. And yet—suddenly—they turned. Why?"
Ithan folded his arms, impatient. "If they want power, why not just fight in the open like the rest? Why the games?"
"Because their change began when a new head rose," Helen said.
Ithan's eyes narrowed. "A new head?"
"One who married into the family," she clarified. "A senator. The father of Praetor Lucious Varro, Governor of the Iron March."
At that name, Ithan's face hardened, lines of suspicion knitting into a scowl. He didn't need Helen to spell it out—he was already connecting threads.
"You think the hunting of Mystiques and relics—the Blue Orcas—that was his doing," Ithan said slowly. "And Stormheart…you think the Senator engineered the whole hunt, just to get it into his hands."
Helen inclined her head. "Senator Varro is no ordinary schemer. He has cast his lot with the First Prince. He is backing him to become the next Crown Prince of the Imperium. The Cult of the Imperial Eagle—the family's private cult of Zeus—bends to his will now. Acquiring Stormheart would strengthen his standing beyond question."
Ithan's jaw tightened. "And what does any of that have to do with the South?"
Helen's eyes darkened. "The disappearances. They've been buried. Locked away in records by the Governor of Ashkara. He spreads whispers of pirates from the Mare Thalassion, claims they raid the coasts and take villagers. If anyone asks, he is simply 'dealing with piracy.' A tidy excuse."
"Pirates," Ithan muttered. He had never crossed one, but he knew the reputation—their raids scarred the southern coasts far more than any Dionian incursion.
But Helen shook her head. "The lie unravels. My intel says the seven sea kingdoms have withdrawn their fleets. Their kings have recalled them to face something far worse stirring in the depths. There has been no pirate activity in the Inner Sea for months."
"Then it isn't pirates," Ithan said, his voice flat. "It's the Iron Guild."
Helen nodded once. "Yes. A guild that appeared from nowhere, spreading its rot through fishing villages, one by one."
Ithan started to reply, then stopped, his thoughts running ahead of his words. The fragments of testimony, the cover stories, the political games—all of it began slotting into place.
"The Governor of Ashkara," he said at last. His voice was low, bitter. "If he's tied to the Senator, then of course he'd bury it. Wipe out villages, and dress it up as a raid. Clean. Simple. No one asks questions."
His hand curled into a fist. The memory of Volos pressed down on him like ash. A village erased. Families slaughtered. Not just slaughter—erased. He could see the parallel now, the same method repeating itself in the South. His chest tightened. The same stench of lies. The same deliberate cruelty.
"What did you get from him?" Ithan asked. His finger jabbed toward the cowering form of Atticus, who flinched at even the gesture. The man's chains clinked against the warded circle, his eyes downcast, his lip trembling.
Helen's grin was sharp, almost wolfish. She looked at Atticus the way a cat does a trapped mouse. "It seems our dear Captain Anipather is quite an ambitious man after all."
****
The basement door shut behind them with a heavy thud, the muffled groans of Atticus fading into silence. They climbed the narrow stairwell, the lantern light throwing long shadows ahead of them.
"What do you know about Heroes?" Helen asked suddenly, her voice echoing off the stone.
Ithan's scowl deepened. His hand brushed the wall as if steadying himself, though his expression was carved in stone. "Nothing much. Only that they don't exist." His voice was flat, dismissive. "And if they do, they're nothing more than selfish bastards who do good for the coin, the glory, or the bed they get warmed in after."
Helen's brow arched. She hadn't expected the bitterness in his tone. There was no jest in him, no detachment—it was raw, as if the word hero itself was poison. For a moment, she studied him in silence, the edge of his jaw set, the shadow in his eyes. He looked less like a cynic and more like someone who had been burned before.
She thought of her own path. Heroes had never mattered to her. She hadn't wanted to be one, never dreamed of temples or songs. What she wanted, she had become: a mercenary. She was paid for her blade, for her cunning, for her victories. If the people she fought for called her a hero, that was their story, not hers.
"Didn't you ever want to be a hero?" she asked, more curious than challenging.
Ithan shook his head immediately. "No. But my mom…" His tone softened for just a heartbeat. "She used to tell me stories about them. Men and women touched by the gods' favor. Champions of mortals." His hand tightened into a fist at his side. "But there are no gods anymore. No divine favor. So heroes can't exist."
Helen tilted her head, smirking faintly. "Sounds like this Anipather really got under your skin."
Ithan gave nothing away. His face was unreadable, his eyes hard. But Helen could feel it in the silence between them, in the weight behind his words—something had unsettled him. The way Atticus had spoken of Anipather's ambition to be hailed as a Hero of the Imperium had left marks deeper than Ithan wanted to admit.
Inside, Ithan himself couldn't untangle the knot of it. He didn't understand why the talk of heroes clawed at him, why the word itself scraped raw. All he knew was the image burned in his mind: Larson falling, cut down because of Anipather's schemes.
Hero? No. That title was just another mask for butchers. All Ithan wanted was justice. That was the only word that mattered.
****
Far from Ravenmarch, deep within the black-iron walls of the Governor's palace, the air in Praetor Lucious Varro's chamber was thick with tension. The iron-banded windows let in little light, and the brazier flames burned low, casting the room in restless shadows.
Captain Anipather stood stiffly before the Praetor, his expression schooled, though his jaw worked tight. Across from him, Lucious sat draped in the regalia of his station, wine untouched at his elbow. The subject of the evening was the same as it had been for days: the Ashborn and the negotiation to come.
Anipather still couldn't believe it. The Ashborn lived.
He remembered the sight too vividly: Anastomus' decay mystery swallowing the boy in that sickly, unnatural glow—light that gnawed through steel, stone, even flesh. It was stronger than anything Anipather had seen at the Protos stage. By all rights, the Ashborn should have been reduced to dust. And yet here he was, alive, not only alive but bonded to the lance.
Anipather ground his teeth at the memory of Kallus staggering back from the Ashen field. The man had carried not Atticus in victory, but the Ashborn himself—broken, unconscious, but alive. Claimed he had won the hunt. Claimed he had bonded with Stormheart.
Bullshit.
Anipather could still hear the stunned silence that followed, aristocrats and officers too cowed to breathe as Helen, foreign Mystique and interloper, strode forward and laid claim to the boy's victory. Not one dared gainsay her, not even Anipather. He had swallowed his pride, bowed his head, and endured the Governor's fury later in private, an earful about Volos and their botched hunt.
And now the Praetor was willing to throw away precious assets to claw back what had slipped through their grasp. Two Mystiques, traded for one relic. It stung. Mystiques were rare—rarer still those who had awakened true Mysteries. And yet Lucious was willing to cut ties with them, to bleed their strength for the sake of appearances.
Fool, Anipather thought. The relic was powerful, yes, but what good was a relic without the right vessel to wield it?
Praetor Lucious leaned forward, his tone clipped. "It is imperative that everything appears proper. Those two are to be polished, at least on the surface. We cannot afford a single crack in this negotiation. Especially you, Anastomus."
From the corner of the room, a low chuckle rose. Anastomus leaned against the wall, shadows clinging to his figure like old friends. His smile was wide, manic, his eyes glinting with the fevered light of someone who had stared too long into oblivion and liked what he saw. He idly flipped a dagger over his knuckles as if it were a coin, but at Lucious' words, the blade stilled.
"I told you he would survive," Anastomus said, voice low but dripping with amusement.
Lucious' face hardened. "And now that survival works against us."
Anipather stepped forward, unable to contain himself. "I still don't see why we must give up the pair. Especially the boy. He could be—"
Before he could finish, light shimmered in the air. A projection flared to life behind the Praetor: a tall man in Senate robes, his bearing precise, his expression sharp enough to cut glass.
"Brother," Lucious said, rising from his seat.
"Lucious," the Senator replied, his voice cool as steel. Vincent Varro's eyes swept the chamber, landing on Anipather like a blade point. "You've already blundered once. The Ashborn should have been brought to our side, and yet you and your dogs failed. Father has already tested the Motherland's patience with his blunder towards Lady Diana. Do not forget—the Varro line is at stake."
Lucious bowed his head slightly. "I understand."
"Do you?" Vincent's voice rose, a lash of disapproval. "The relic matters, yes, but more than that—I would rather see the Ashborn drawn to our side than lost to Diana. If it means giving up those damn brats, then give them up. Do whatever must be done. Just see it finished."
The projection flickered once, then dissolved into nothing, leaving the scent of ozone in its wake.
For a long moment, silence held.
Praetor Lucious stared at Anipather, his jaw tight, his eyes burning with blame. He didn't speak it aloud, but the weight of it pressed heavily on the Captain's shoulders all the same. Responsibility. Failure. And yet Lucious said nothing, because Anipather was still his shield, his sword, his necessary beast. Even so, Lucious wondered how much longer he could stand the man's presence.
The Governor dismissed them soon after, weary of their bickering, his face a mask of iron discipline hiding the cracks of frustration.
Anipather and Anastomus stepped into the torchlit corridor, their footsteps echoing against the vaulted stone. The doors shut behind them, sealing away the Praetor's chamber and the suffocating weight of Vincent Varro's projection.
Anastomus broke the silence first, his smile still lingering like a scar. He twirled his dagger lazily, the point catching glimmers of flame from the wall sconces. "I knew he would live, you know. The Ashborn. Just as I survived him."
Anipather cast him a sidelong look. "What are you talking about?"
Anastomus' grin widened, fever-bright. "He carries fire that refuses to die. I tasted it when his blade struck me. A wound meant to end me—yet here I stand. And when my decay touched him, he endured. We are mirrors, Captain. His survival was inevitable." He licked his lips as if savoring the memory. "That's why killing him won't be enough. He must be broken."
Anipather grunted, unimpressed. "You can dress it up in riddles, Anastomus, but the truth is simpler. He's in my way. As long as the Ashborn draws breath, I can't claim the relic, or the name I'm owed. I will be remembered as a Hero of the Imperium—and he's the stone in my path."
They reached the Captain's quarters, a tall chamber overlooking the courtyard. Moonlight filtered through the lattice windows, spilling across maps, wine goblets, and the clutter of mercenary life. Anipather closed the door behind them, ready to pour his frustration into another plan.
Then the air shifted.
Mist slid under the doorframe, tendrils curling across the floor. It thickened fast, swallowing the torchlight, until only the moonlight through the window remained. Within that pale beam, a shadow grew, vast and terrible.
A figure emerged—towering, broad-shouldered, skin painted in swirling ash of red and black that seemed to move like living fire. Upon his head sat the bleached skull of a stag, antlers alive, branching and swaying as though grown from flesh. The helm radiated the savage blessing of Artemis, the huntress goddess who once ruled the wild. His chest bore spirals of scar carved into flesh, Dionysian frenzy-marks that pulsed faintly with a drunken, divine rhythm.
The scent of earth, blood, and wine filled the room.
Anipather stiffened, instinct dragging his hand toward his blade. But even he dared not draw it. His tongue felt dry in his mouth.
"Archon Damarchos," Anastomus breathed, his grin widening in delight rather than fear.
The stag-helmed warrior stepped further into the light, his presence heavy as an avalanche. "I am here to remind you of our bargain," Damarchos said, voice a deep growl that vibrated in the bones. His eyes burned within the sockets of the stag skull, unblinking. "The Maernarchs of Tharnossos have not forgotten. Do not think to forget either."
His gaze fell squarely on Anipather, who felt the weight of it like chains.
The mist thickened until the room felt less like stone and mortar and more like the heart of a forest at night, damp and alive. Antler shadows stretched across the walls like reaching claws.
Damarchos took another step forward, his bare feet leaving faint blackened prints as if ash clung to him wherever he walked. His stag helm tilted toward Anipather, voice rolling like thunder through the confined chamber.
"Our deal still binds you, Captain. Do not let the iron halls of the Imperium fool you into thinking you can walk away."
Anipather swallowed hard, forcing his shoulders back. "I haven't forgotten. The relic was meant for me—to raise me above the squabbling mercenaries, above the petty titles the Imperium throws to its dogs. Power, enough to reshape Erytheia itself. That was our pact."
Damarchos' frenzy-mark scars glowed faintly, swirling red and black like embers stirred by wind. "Yes. Power. For you to wear the mantle of a Hero, for me to claim dominion over the Dionian tribes. Together, we carve out sovereignty from both throne and senate. A new age of blood, ash, and hunt."
Anastomus chuckled from the corner, the dagger dancing between his fingers again. "So this is your grand plan, Captain? You'll be the Imperium's golden hero while the Archon feasts on their corpse?" His grin widened, feverish. "Delicious."
Damarchos ignored him. His gaze burned into Anipather alone. "The Ashborn has upset your schemes. But he is no ally of the Imperium either. His flame resists their chains as much as mine. Do not think the gods' plaything will serve your ambition easily."
Anipather's jaw tightened, anger twisting his scarred features. "He won't live long enough to stand in my way. I'll cut him down, relic or no. My name will be the one remembered."
The Archon leaned closer, the antlers of his helm nearly brushing Anipather's face. His breath carried the scent of iron and fermented wine. "Remember this: power is not earned by memory. It is taken. The Imperium has forgotten the wild, forgotten the gods who once danced and bled in its fields. With me, Captain, you will seize more than their favor—you will seize their throne."
The words hung heavy, charged with something older than both man and Mystique.
Damarchos straightened, his towering form once more framed by the moonlight, mist curling about his legs. "Do not fail me again, Anipather. Or the pact you struck will bind you tighter than chains."
With that, the mist rolled back, carrying the Archon's massive shape with it until nothing but the empty room remained. The scent of ash and wine lingered in the silence.
Anipather exhaled, hand pressed to the table to steady himself. His knuckles whitened.
"I'll not be chained," he muttered. "Not by gods, not by the Imperium, not by him. The Ashborn dies, and I take what's mine."
In the corner, Anastomus only laughed, high and shrill, as though he knew the joke Anipather could not see.