A/N: This is an interlude which you can skip if you want— but you shouldn't.
The Demon Realm did not sleep.
It merely held its breath.
Alaric's beloved concubine, Ivara, stood at the edge of the high balcony, silk robes whispering softly against obsidian stone as she watched the silver haze coil above the capital. From this height, the realm looked deceptively still with spires carved from bone and black crystal, rivers of molten light threading through ancient architecture, wards humming beneath the ground like a living pulse.
Order.
That was what Alaric had built.
And that was precisely why the Shadow Covenants wanted him erased and sealed away.
She folded her hands calmly before her, posture elegant, composed. Anyone watching would see only the Demon Lord's favored concubine—adorned in fine silks, draped in privilege, sheltered by proximity to power.
They would not see the strategist beneath the silk.
Nor the quiet calculations threading through her mind.
The silver flames had spoken earlier.
Not aloud, but Ivara had lived beside them long enough to recognize their moods. The way the air thickened when Alaric summoned them. The way the realm itself seemed to recoil, then submit.
The vampire Alaric caught had been a bait.
She had known it the moment Commander Draven spoke.
The Shadow Covenants never struck directly. They were not warriors; they were architects of collapse. They whispered into councils, corroded alliances, poisoned ley lines slowly enough that no single fracture appeared dangerous, until the structure failed all at once.
And now, they were reaching for something far more ambitious.
A formation.
Ivara's fingers tightened almost imperceptibly.
Sealing formations were ancient things older than demon kings, older than realms as they existed now. They were not meant to kill gods.
They were meant to remove them from the board.
"You don't cage a storm," she murmured softly to herself. "You redirect it... or bury it."
The Shadow Covenants knew this.
They were not trying to defeat Alaric in battle. No army could. No assassin would survive long enough to matter.
Instead, they sought to bind him.
To lure him into a convergence of sigils, ley fractures, and sacrificial anchors powerful enough to lock even silver flame in stasis.
A prison without walls.
A silence without death.
The thought sent a chill through her, but it wasn't fear.
Calculation.
Alaric ruled through presence. Through inevitability. Through the knowledge that if he arrived, resistance would end.
If the presence was removed, the realm would fracture within decades.
The high houses would splinter.
The lesser lords would revolt.
The borders would bleed.
And the Shadow Covenants would rise from the rot, claiming order through chaos.
Ivara exhaled slowly.
They had been preparing this for centuries.
Which meant they believed the time was right.
Her gaze drifted back toward the chamber behind her, where Alaric had stood moments before. His silver flame still echoed faintly in the stone. Blindfolded. Unaware only because no one had yet dared to speak the full truth aloud.
Not even her.
Yet.
Loyalty was not blindness.
Love. if that was what bound her to him, was not obedience.
It was foresight.
She had survived demon courts long before Alaric ascended. She had learned early that proximity to power was not safety but instead, was a responsibility. And if the Shadow Covenants were moving now, it meant something had shifted in the deeper currents of fate.
Something had entered the board.
A variable.
A mortal one, perhaps.
Ivara's lips curved faintly, unreadable.
"Silver flame," she whispered. "You burn brightest just before the realm tries to extinguish you."
Her role was clear.
She would not warn him too early because that would force his hand, and make him hunt shadows blindly. Nor would she wait too long, when the formation was already drawn and the trap sprung.
Instead, she would do what she had always done best.
She would watch.
She would listen.
She would move pieces quietly.
And while the Demon Realm pulsed on above her, breathing-
Far below it, in a place carved beyond sanctioned maps and forgotten by law, the shadow covenants gathered.
Their chamber was not built.
It was excavated.
Stone walls curved inward like the inside of a ribcage, slick with ancient condensation and etched with sigils so old they predated written language. No torches burned here. Light bled instead from fractured veins of magic embedded in the floor—sickly hues of violet, ash-white, and blackened gold.
At the center of the chamber stood the formation circle.
Incomplete.
Deliberately so.
Nine figures occupied the outer ring, each cloaked in layered shadow that refused to settle into a single shape. Bone masks hid their faces, carved with runes of silence. Voices were unnecessary here because thought were carried faster.
Still, one spoke.
"Confirmation," rasped the Speaker. "The Silver Flame responded."
A ripple of satisfaction moved through the circle.
Not triumph.
Not excitement.
Calculation.
"The vampire was annihilated," another said. "Instantaneous. No residual soul trace."
"Good," the Speaker replied. "His flame remains absolute."
"Predictable," someone added.
"Yes," the Speaker agreed. "He hunts disturbances personally. He answers provocation with presence. He does not delegate insult."
That certainty was his flaw.
Not mercy.
Not rage.
Certainty.
"The blind god believes himself untouchable," another voice said.
"He is untouchable," the Speaker corrected. "By force."
Silence thickened.
"Which is why force is irrelevant."
At an unspoken command, one figure stepped forward and knelt at the edge of the circle. From within its sleeves, it withdrew a relic wrapped in rotted silk.
When the cloth fell away, the air screamed.
A shard of obsidian hovered above the formation, its surface crawling with layered inscriptions which was demonic, celestial, and something far older. Blood seeped from its edges, evaporating before it could touch the floor.
"A binding anchor," the figure intoned. "Recovered from beneath the Third Abyss."
"One of seven," another added.
Seven anchors.
Seven sacrifices.
Seven convergences of fractured ley lines.
Together, they would form a god-sealing formation.
Not a prison.
A suspension.
"Once complete," the Speaker said, "Alaric will be removed from time, space, and flame."
"No corpse," another murmured.
"No martyr and no succession."
The brilliance of it lay there.
A dead god created legend.
A vanished god created vacuum.
Vacuum bred chaos.
Chaos bred opportunity.
"The Demon Realm will fracture," Another voice said, "High Houses will contest authority. Borders will weaken."
"And we will step in," the Speaker said smoothly. "As stabilizers."
A lie.
But a convincing one.
"What of the concubine?" a voice asked.
A pause.
"Ivara," the Speaker acknowledged. "An irregularity."
"She is close."
"Closeness is not influence," the Speaker replied. "Power blinds those who believe they are seen."
The formation pulsed faintly as another sigil etched itself into existence, drawn in blood siphoned from realms beyond Alaric's borders.
"The first convergence nears completion," a voice reported. "We will require his presence."
"He will come," the Speaker said.
"How?"
"By threatening what he believes already secured."
Silence.
Then approval.
"Prepare the next disturbance," the Speaker commanded. "At the outskirts of the demon realm."
A cruel amusement threaded through the chamber.
"Let him come to us."
The formation pulsed once more.
Far above, The blind Demon Lord silver flame burned, unaware that ancient hands were already sketching the lines meant to still it forever.