Thousands of leagues to the south, in the jagged, perpetually shadowed realm of Mordus, a conversation was taking place. The air was thick with the smell of sulfur and old blood, and the only light came from glowing fissures in the obsidian floor of a vast throne room.
Upon a throne of screaming, soul-forged iron sat Xylos, the Demon King. He was not a brute. Brutes did not conquer and rule over a realm of ambitious, backstabbing demons for five centuries. Xylos was a being of immense power, yes, but his true strength lay in his intellect. He was a master of strategy, a connoisseur of paranoia, and he saw patterns in the chaos that others missed.
Right now, the patterns he was seeing were deeply, deeply troubling.
Before him knelt one of his chief spies, a wraith-like demon known as a Veridian Lurker. Its form shimmered, a heat-haze of green and black shadow.
"Repeat the report," Xylos commanded, his voice a low, rumbling growl that sounded like an avalanche in a distant valley.
The Lurker bowed its non-corporeal head. "Master of the Seventh Gloom, as you command. Our networks in the Aethelian Empire have gone... quiet. Unnaturally so."
Xylos steepled his long, clawed fingers. "Define 'quiet.'"
"Spymaster V'laria is actively purging her own networks on the northern continent. Our moles, assets cultivated over decades, are being rooted out and... neutralized. Not for betrayal, Lord. For 'proximity.' Proximity to the city of Oakhaven."
This was the third report of this nature. It was no longer a coincidence. It was a strategy.
"Continue," Xylos rumbled.
"Grand Marshal Kaelen Dros has redeployed the Crimson Vanguard. Three entire legions. They have established what they are calling a 'Quarantine Zone.' Yet it is the strangest quarantine I have ever witnessed. They turn away armies, but allow merchants and commoners to pass freely, so long as their business is mundane. They are not sealing the area. They are... filtering it."
"They are protecting something," Xylos mused, his crimson eyes glowing in the gloom. He leaned forward, his massive frame radiating a palpable aura of menace. "The Arch-Mage has erected a weather shield over the entire province. For 'agricultural stability,' their official reports claim. Bah! They are suppressing atmospheric disturbances. The High Priest declares the region sacred ground to be left alone. All of this, centered on one worthless backwater town."
He stood from his throne, the souls bound within it wailing in unison. He paced the obsidian floor, his claws clicking like stone castanets.
CLICK. CLACK. CLICK.
"The Empire does not mobilize its three greatest assets—Dros, V'laria, and the Arch-Mage—to protect a town," Xylos reasoned aloud. "They mobilize them to contain a weapon. Or... to hide a new king."
He spun to face the Lurker. "And what of the Princess, Aurelia?"
The Lurker shimmered nervously. "She... entered the town days ago, Lord Xylos. She has not emerged. Imperial envoys come and go, bearing gifts, but she remains. The official story is that she is on a 'spiritual retreat.'"
Lies! All of it, a pathetic smokescreen, Xylos's paranoid mind screamed. The pieces clicked together, not into a picture of appeasement, but one of terrifying consolidation of power.
The Emperor, Theron IV, was his ancient rival. Cunning, ruthless. What grand move was he playing now?
Xylos's brilliant, demonic intellect provided a flawless and completely wrong answer.
It's a ritual, he concluded, his eyes widening. Of course. A succession ritual of unparalleled power. Theron must be dying, or ascending to some higher plane of existence. He has found a successor, this mysterious 'Librarian' in Oakhaven, a being of such immense power that he can command even the infamous Shadow's Kiss.
The 'quarantine' is not to keep people out. It is to create a consecrated, ritually purified space! The Spymaster purges the psychic static. The Arch-Mage purifies the elements. The High Priest sanctifies the ground itself. The legions are there to guard the perimeter against fools like me who might try to interfere!
It was a devastatingly logical conclusion based on all the available intelligence.
"And the Princess..." he whispered, the final, horrifying piece falling into place. "She is not a guest. She is a sacrifice! Or worse, a vessel! They are transferring the Imperial bloodline, the very 'Mandate of Heaven' that protects their realm, into this new entity!"
He saw it all with perfect clarity: The Aethelian Empire was about to be reborn, led by a new, unknown, and terrifyingly powerful Emperor. All his own plans for a slow, insidious corruption of the human realms, all his centuries of careful scheming, were about to be rendered obsolete.
He had to act. He could not allow this 'Ascension' to be completed. He had to strike now, while the ritual was still underway and the new 'heir' was potentially vulnerable.
"They think me a fool," Xylos growled. "They think their 'filter' can stop the forces of Mordus. If they filter for hostility, for power, for intent... then I shall send an agent with none of those things."
He returned to his throne and spoke a single, resonant name into the darkness.
"Malakor."
The shadows in the far corner of the throne room deepened, swirled, and coalesced into the form of a demon. But it was not a hulking beast of rage or a twisted imp of mischief. Malakor was humanoid, eerily beautiful, with skin like polished obsidian and eyes like pools of liquid gold. He radiated no malice, no killing intent, no aura of power whatsoever.
Malakor was the King's quietest knife. An Infiltration Demon, a being whose entire purpose was to assume shapes, to mimic emotions, and to pass through any ward or barrier that searched for conventional demonic signatures.
"My King," Malakor's voice was like honeyed poison.
"The humans are attempting a great work in a place called Oakhaven," Xylos declared, his voice filled with urgency. "They are anointing a new Emperor, a being of great power. The ceremony is ongoing, masked as a period of tranquility. You will be my vector."
"I am to pass their wards?" Malakor asked.
"You are to become them," Xylos corrected. "You will not go as a warrior. You will shed your power, suppress your nature. You will become a simple traveler. A baker, perhaps. A lost merchant. Something utterly mundane. Their precious filter will see a harmless fool and let you pass."
He pointed a claw at the Infiltrator. "Once inside, you will locate the focal point of the ritual—this entity they call the 'Librarian.' You will not engage. You will not attack. You are to be a scalpel, not a sword. You will introduce a 'flaw' into their ceremony."
"A flaw, my King?"
"A drop of chaos. A subtle poison in their sacramental wine. A misplaced rune. A single whispered lie that unravels their entire web of trust," Xylos hissed. "Undermine their 'Ascension' from within. I do not need you to kill him. I just need you to make him... imperfect. A flawed god is a foe I can manage."
Malakor bowed low, his golden eyes gleaming with cunning. "It shall be as you command, Lord of the Seventh Gloom. I will be the subtlest of apocalypses."
With a whisper of displaced air, he was gone.
Xylos stood alone in his throne room, convinced he had just launched a brilliant preemptive strike against his greatest enemy's master plan.
He had no idea he had just dispatched one of his most powerful and subtle agents on a mission to mildly inconvenience a terrified bookstore clerk who was currently trying to figure out where a chest full of priceless artifacts had come from, and if his landlord was going to charge him extra for it.