Somewhere beneath Empyria, far below the cobbled streets and merchant stalls, a hooded figure moved through the dark, boots silent against ancient stone.
The walls here were older than memory — catacombs carved in forgotten dynasties, long before Empyrias the Unifier ever crowned a capital. Dust danced in the torchlight like ash from a funeral pyre.
The figure stopped before a heavy iron door. No handle. No keyhole. Just a sigil — a coiled serpent with seven eyes, each one closed.
He raised a hand. A gloved finger touched the mark.
One eye opened.
The door groaned inward, and he stepped inside.
Within, a vast chamber unfurled — stone pillars, sacrificial altars, old blood soaked into the floor like wine into silk. Braziers burned with sickly green flame.
At the far end, a woman sat upon a high-backed chair of carved obsidian, her face hidden behind a golden mask shaped like a serpent’s face.
She did not look up.
“Report.”
The hooded man bowed.
“They’ve scattered. One fled the city. The other lies in the earth.”
“And the girl?”
He hesitated.
“Still in Empyria. She bleeds, but she survives. The blade was never retrieved.”
Silence. Then—
“Good.”
She stood slowly, voice smooth and cold as silk in a crypt.
“Let her run. Let her hate. Let her grow teeth.”
She walked toward the altar, trailing her fingers across its surface.
“A dagger sharpens fastest when it’s used. Pain is the whetstone.”
Her mask tilted slightly toward the hooded man.
“Our queen of rats will come to us eventually. Whether by choice… or by vengeance.”
She turned back to the altar, where seven scales lay upon velvet — one for each name on her list.
She picked up the first.
“Elysia,” she whispered, dropping it into a bowl of oil.
It hissed.
The serpent smiled.
