The gate widened, runes shrieking as if they hated to bear his weight, and more of the monster forced its way through.

  Tzaltheron was no ordinary demon. His form was immense; towering at least three times as I was tall.

  His skin wasn’t flesh so much as cracked obsidian, jagged plates shifting over muscle that writhed like molten chains beneath. Every fracture in his body bled a dull crimson glow, as if rivers of liquid misery pulsed just under the surface.

  Hooks and barbs jutted from him at uneven angles, some forged bone, others uneven metal grafts that seemed to grow straight from his body. His spine was a crown of spikes, each one wet with a faint shimmer of black ichor that hissed as it hit the ground.

  His face was worse.

  A twisted parody of a human man’s visage, stretched too wide, lips torn in permanent rictus. Rows of teeth gleamed like polished iron, but between them, his mouth dripped smoke that reeked of blood and burned copper. His four of them glowed green, but they didn’t shine with fury. They shone with delight.

  Delight in pain, in suffering, in simply existing.

  The pressure inside the dome spiked the instant Tzaltheron’s full bulk breached the gate. Chains wrapped his forearms and dragged behind him, tipped with hooks that still clattered with bones. Each step bent the stone, leaving behind craters that wept with foul ichor.

  Every rune burned white-hot, the air thick as molten glass. Dust and shattered cobbles floated up, suspended in the mana storm, then were slammed flat to the ground by a force that felt like a giant hand pressing down on the world.

  Everyone else—Grandmasters, Damon, soldiers outside the dome—was pinned where they stood. Their bodies locked by the sheer weight of power, eyes wide but unmoving, sweat beading on their skin.

  Only I remained upright in the center of it all.

  The bond thrummed through me, a living thread running from my chest into the demon’s core. I felt it like a chain wrapped around my soul, each link hot and cold at once, gripping my authority over him.

  And he felt me.

  Tzaltheron’s head turned slowly, those four poisonous green eyes fixing on me. It wasn’t a casual glance… it was an act of focus, of recognition. A predator noticing the one thing in the room it couldn’t yet devour. The bond made his stare sink deeper, past skin and blood, straight into the marrow of who I was.

  My knees trembled. The crown on my head burned cold against my scalp, runes crawling like insects across the iron thorns.

  This wasn't supposed to happen! The mom’s spell has nothing to do with the summoning spell!

  He noticed.

  His gaze flicked to the Crown, and his cracked lips peeled back into a wicked smile, the expression stretching too far, teeth glinting like forged hooks. The sight sent a spike of pain through the link, like a harp string plucked too hard.

  “Tzaltheron,” I said, forcing my voice to sound as if I was in control. “I’m Queen Charlie. I summon you to help me in my fight—”

  He cackled. The sound wasn’t a laugh so much as a jagged saw cutting through nerves, making the air taste of copper. “Queen?” His voice dripped with pleasure, every word an intimate scrape across my bones. “You wield the Crown, yes… and yet it gnaws at you more than you at it. I taste it. You bleed it.” The gate behind him pulsed, mana gathering faster.

  The bond quivered violently.

  “But understand… pain does not belong to you.” His smile widened. “You belong to it. And I do not bow to another servant.”

  The thread between us strained like a cable about to snap. I could feel his power surging through it, his essence testing my grip, pushing against my will. The summoning magic trembled, my control slipping like ice melting under his grasp. He was too strong to drag with summoning magic alone.

  My fingers clenched, nails biting into my palms, as I poured mana into the bond to hold it steady. At this pace, I won’t be able to control any other demon.

  And even controlling him… impossible.

  “You called me forth,” he hissed, stepping closer, chains dragging from his arms, hooks sparking against the cobbles. “You bound me in iron.” He tilted his head, voice softening into something almost reverent. “But chains are not torment to me. They are truth. I thrive in their grip… and every captor I have ever known…”

  He leaned in; the gate roaring behind him, mana spiraling like a hurricane.

  “I have broken.”

  The bond convulsed again, pain and power lancing through me like twin blades. My breath hitched. The link was tearing apart, my will splintering against his. With one more push from him and the summoning magic would slip from my grasp entirely.

  Plan B.

  I yanked my focus inward, pulling up the one skill I’d been saving like a last resort.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  My heart pounded. Frost swirled around my fingertips as I drew the mana together, the Crown burning cold against my scalp. I closed my eyes, raised my hand, and shouted, not just with my voice but with every thread of power of my title woven into me.

  “I said I AM YOUR QUEEN,” the words tore out of me, echoing through the dome and the city alike. “AND YOU WILL LISTEN TO MY COMMAND. BOW. TO. ME.”

  The skill detonated across the bond.

  Power surged outward, a tidal wave of white-gold light slamming down the invisible tether. The connection that had been fraying whipped taut like a snapped cable re-forged in fire. Runes crawled up my arm, burning into the air around my raised hand.

  Tzaltheron roared—no, screamed—in pain and delight at once.

  His massive frame shuddered, claws gouging the cobbles as the command slammed into his essence. The air smelled of scorched metal and ice. His four eyes rolled back, glowing brighter, and chains erupted with fresh cracks of energy as the magic forced him down.

  He bowed.

  The bond straightened, no longer a fraying leash but a thick iron bar stretching between us. For the first time, I felt it hold. His will still fought me, immense and alien, but for now my power coiled around his like a vice. I could steer him. Control him.

  Tzaltheron lifted his head slowly. His grin was enormous, jagged teeth flashing like hooks. His voice slithered low and thrilled.

  “You think a crown gives you dominion over pain?” His four eyes burned. “It gives you a single leash. And I am not alone on it.”

  The gate behind him surged, runes screaming as mana poured through in violent currents. The air thinned, the smell of blood and frost sharpening until it was hard to breathe.

  “Come forth, brothers!” Tzaltheron bellowed, spreading his clawed arms wide. “Feast on the pain of mortals and immortals alike… drown this world in the agony we were born to bear!”

  The gate shuddered.

  The runes around its edge screamed, their glow flickering. Instead of more demons tearing through the breach, great tendrils of raw magic shot outward in every direction, pulsing like veins of light across the city. Each pulse carried a shockwave that rattled the cobbles underfoot and sent cracks spiderwebbing across the square.

  Tzaltheron’s massive frame twisted, his claws gouging stone as he looked back. “Brothers?” His voice rose, not in fury but in confusion, a flicker of something alien and almost human.

  I smiled, still frozen in place, but my voice cut through the storm like a blade. “Companion circles,” I said, “made demons appear where I, the Queen, need them to be.”

  His head snapped back toward me. All four of his poisonous green eyes locked onto mine. Slowly, the jagged grin returned, wider this time.

  “Indeed, you are the queen,” he rumbled, and then, shockingly, he bowed. A demon’s bow: no grace, just a massive, grinding movement of spiked limbs lowering like a predator crouching.

  “What are my commands?”

  The magic that had been suffocating us like a mountain on our chests was slowly lifting. It didn’t vanish… it flowed outward, torn free from the Binding Stone and funneled through the gate to summon more and more demons.

  Until those small gates couldn’t summon more, and the tendrils broke and no more demons were summoned all over the city.

  The main gate convulsed, vomiting a cluster of these horrors onto the far side of the square… right where Katherine and Llama had been waiting. Their silhouettes were suddenly framed in fire and smoke, as the shrieking tide of pain-born demons began clawing their way toward them.

  Some had stretched limbs bent at impossible angles, joints braced with iron pins hammered straight through.

  They moved in twisted gaits, half-limping, half-lurching, their bodies grotesque. And yet every one of them smiled, lips peeled back to bare too many teeth, eyes content. Their chains rattled as they stumbled forward, dragging hooks, flails, and jagged weapons that dripped with ichor but looked more like surgical instruments than tools of war.

  I clenched my fist, the bond with Tzaltheron taut and iron-strong. My voice overpowered the roar of the demons, “Your first order,” I snarled, “is to… kill the White Grandmaster!”

  The moment the crushing weight lifted, the Grandmaster staggered forward, his breath ragged. For the first time, his immaculate poise fractured… sweat clung to his brow, his silver hair plastered against his temples. But his eyes still burned with conviction. He straightened, robes billowing as he spread his arms wide, reclaiming the air as his stage.

  “So this is your gambit,” he said, his voice carrying, still grand, though sharpened by strain. “To set a beast upon its master and call it sovereignty.”

  Tzaltheron’s claws gouged the cobbles, his four eyes gleaming with poisonous delight as the bond yanked him forward. The White Grandmaster’s sleeve snapped, runes igniting along his arms, and the air howled with violent currents. “Do you think pain will shield you, girl? I am the storm, and no chain, no crown, no demon will make me bend!”

  He thrust his hands outward. Wind howled into walls of silver force, a cyclone spiraling up to meet the demon’s advance. The cyclone cracked against Tzaltheron’s chains, sparks and ichor spraying as the demon pressed forward. The ground buckled under their clash, stone torn up like paper.

  The White Grandmaster’s expression hardened, and then he threw back his head and shouted.

  “Loyal sons of the white house! To me! The Queen is a foreign invader, a usurper wielding demon magic! She would burn our homes and call it justice. Stand with me… stand with the Empire! Crush her before her corruption spreads!”

  Across the city, horns blared in answer. At the other end of the square, loyalist banners unfurled, with those slave symbols of Altandai.

  The Purple Grandmaster’s hands blurred as he drew the gravity down like a net. Runes spun into the surrounding air, and the ground itself seemed to tilt inward; the very weight of the square shifted as if some invisible hand had pressed a thumb into the world.

  Tzaltheron staggered, claws scrabbling for purchase as a crushing tide slammed into his chest.

  Stone groaned, dust spiraled in suspended eddies, and for one long breath the Prince of Pain hung half-bowed, pinned by invisible chains of pressure. It should have been enough.

  It was not.

  Tzaltheron’s body bulged against the force, muscles coiling under plates. He snarled… an animal sound that cracked the air, and pushed. The gravity bowed, flexed, then cracked in places; the demon’s weight drove fissures along its edges.

  It held him back, slowed him, but it didn’t stop him. The prince hunched, claws gouging deeper, and with a vicious pull he strained another inch forward.

  As Purple’s net fought to hold, the Yellow and Black Grandmasters began to cast at once; two spells braided into the same moment.

  Above the clamor, Shad stepped forward. “This is not the will of Altandai!” he shouted. “Those who have chosen the Queen… stand with us. History will remember who stood for freedom!”

  I watched them all at once: the Grandmasters throwing everything into a chokehold for control, my demon straining like a chained titan, the city split across a thousand decision points. From where I stood, I could see the White Grandmaster drawing breath, eyes narrowing as he prepared to broadcast his orders.

  “Enough!” I snapped, louder than I’d meant. It cut through the music of magic. “Not everyone needs to see your execution, slavers.” With the word still echoing, I reached and severed the projection.

  The sky above blinked out like a candle snuffed.