Oswald opened his eyes. The first thing he felt was cold. The cold of a body remembering it was alive.

  He sat up slowly.

  His hands moved to his face. His fingers found smooth skin, uninterrupted. No scarring. No uneven texture. No blotched discoloration across the jaw and cheeks.

  The blood moon hung enormous above him, red and vast, pouring its light across the plateau. It touched his skin and found no fault in it.

  He lowered his hands.

  "I died," he said. His voice came out thin, bewildered. "I died. And then everything was dark."

  He stared at his palms, turning them over and back again. His fingers were trembling.

  "How am I still here?"

  Then he felt it, a pressure in the air, a quiet weight pressing against him.

  He turned.

  She was standing a few feet away, watching him with those silver eyes that gave off their own quiet light. Her dyed black hair fell past her shoulders.

  A sudden wave of embarrassment hit Oswald as he realized he had nothing on.

  His face flushed immediately. He pulled his knees up, wrapping both arms around them, and stared at the ground.

  "I—" He cleared his throat. "Please don't lo—"

  "You're welcome," the divine said. "I have given you a new life. A new purpose. Try not to squander it this time."

  "This time?" Oslwald said.

  "Your first life was spent defecating all over yourself, living in fear."

  The words settled over him.

  He did not argue.

  She turned her gaze toward the scattered remains of what had once been Alexander.

  Oswald followed her gaze. He tried to stand, and his legs did not cooperate on the first attempt. He pressed one hand against the stone and rose on the second, unsteady. He stared at what remained of the Knight of Carymen.

  "He was... a knight, wasn't he?"

  “Above all else, he wanted to be feared,” the divine said. She looked down at the ruin of him. “He reached for power so that he might stand above all others. He adorned himself with what you call corruption. What a fool.”

  He said nothing.

  After a moment, he glanced toward the collapsed entrance. The wall of rubble and shattered stone where the passage into the mountain had been. The arch that Alice had brought down was a wound in the rock face.

  He touched his face again. The smoothness still surprised him.

  "So what now?" he asked, his voice quiet. "What are we supposed to do? Alice destroyed the entrance. It's blocked."

  The divine looked at him.

  “If rubble could stop me, I would have died long ago.”

  She turned toward the wall of rubble.

  Then she extended her hand.

  From somewhere beneath the debris, a pulse of crimson light answered, deep and slow, bleeding up through the earth where the sword had buried itself to the hilt.

  Nihil tore free of the ground.

  It crossed the distance in an instant, trailing a thin spray of displaced earth, and slammed into her palm with a heavy, resonant sound.

  She shifted her weight, drew back, and hurled it.

  The sword left her hand with absolute force. It crossed the destroyed open ground in a fraction of a second and struck the collapsed entrance dead centre.

  The detonation tore outward.

  Stone and rubble exploded inward, driven deep into the passage in a cascade of fractured rock and billowing dust. A path opened wide, the passage beyond it gaping through the haze.

  Nihil returned to her hand as if it had never left.

  The fire opal settled back into its slow, rhythmic pulse.

  Then she heard it.

  A sound so small it should have been impossible to catch beneath the settling groan of stone and the wind sweeping across the plateau.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  Her silver eyes moved downward.

  There, half-buried in the displaced rubble the sword's impact had scattered, something caught the blood moon's light. A small brass disc.

  Still ticking.

  Her silver eyes flashed green for the briefest instant.

  She knelt.

  Her fingers closed around the watch and lifted it free. She turned it over. The engraved E on the back caught the red light.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  She smiled. Almost involuntary.

  “Why do you always have to get in my way?” she murmured.

  It must have come loose during the dragon's impact, thrown clear, buried under stone.

  Then Selene stirred within her, quiet but undeniable, and her body moved. She gathered several strands of hair from behind her ear and wound them with precise, deliberate care around the base of Nihil's hilt, just below the guard, securing the watch so that it hung against the metal.

  The fire opal pulsed.

  The watch ticked.

  She glanced back at Oswald over her shoulder.

  “Come,” she said, her voice almost playful now. “Let’s continue playing this game.”

  The underground passage was lit by rows of torches set in iron brackets fixed to the stone, their flames burning still in the breathless air beneath the mountain. Each cast a warm amber circle across the walls and floor, and between them the shadows gathered in long, unbroken stretches.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  The architecture was old. Similar carved stone as the ruins Selene had spent years studying above Veilmouth, with deliberate shapes in the archways and faint inscriptions worn down to suggestion along the upper walls.

  Nihil’s tip scraped across the stone.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  The divine carried the sword in one hand relaxed. The blade trailed behind in a slow, continuous furrow, sending a low grinding note echoing off the walls as she walked. Oswald followed close behind, barefoot, moving carefully over the cold stone.

  “I have watched kingdoms rise,” she said. Her tone was light, almost bored. “Every one of them naming itself eternal. Carving its name into stone. Building walls around that name.”

  She let out a short breath, not quite a laugh.

  “It is almost charming, honestly.”

  The torch flames passed one by one on either side of them.

  “Every one of them believed itself different. That its borders, its precious bloodlines, its careful arrangements of power would somehow let it endure time.”

  The blade drew a low grinding note from the floor.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  “Fools. All of them.”

  Oswald kept pace behind her, listening. The grinding of the sword against stone filled every silence she left.

  “This valley, this land, this soil,” she said, her voice dropping lower, “is nothing but corpses laid one atop another. Kingdoms pressed beneath their own weight, layer upon layer, each one feeding the next."

  She paused at a bend in the passage, glancing at an inscription on the wall that had been worn almost to nothing. She ran one finger across it. Stone dust crumbled away at her touch.

  “These fools spent their lives carving stone, convinced it would outlast them.” She withdrew her hand. “Can’t even read it anymore.”

  She walked on.

  “They all believed themselves eternal,” she said. “None of them understood they were already becoming the layer beneath.”

  The passage widened. Ahead, the torchlight thinned where the brackets grew further apart, and the stone took on a different quality. Older.

  She did not look back at him. “The ones who built this passage, these walls, these ruins full of carved stone and buried meaning, died. They vanished into nothing. Their land. Their language. Then someone else came and settled over them. Then someone else. And someone else.”

  Her voice remained calm.

  “Layer after layer. Each one certain it would be the last.”

  She stopped walking.

  The torchlight flickered against her silver eyes.

  “And in the end,” she said, “it is all ash. Every kingdom. Every name. Every wall they built and every war they fought to keep those walls standing. Ash, silence, and soil for the next fool to build on top of.”

  Oswald’s bare feet had gone still on the cold stone. He stood behind her.

  “And through all of that,” she said, her voice firm now.

  “I remain.”

  Then, from somewhere ahead of them, the silence at the end of the carved tunnel thinned.

  It was sound, distant and muffled. The low, overwhelming murmur of a crowd.

  The darkness ahead brightened, a faint, trembling glow.

  The divine slowed.

  “Listen.”

  With each step, the sound grew fuller, as though the passage itself were loosening its grip on the quiet and letting the world beyond spill in.

  Her silver eyes caught the light.

  “They are all here,” she said. “Watching. Judging. Deciding."

  A small smile touched her lips.

  “Another kingdom,” she said softly. “Another set of walls. Another name carved into stone.”

  She glanced back at Oswald.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  “Let us turn their world into soil,” she said softly. “And see what grows from the grave of it.”

  The passage opened. The ceiling vanished.

  She stepped forward, and the blood moon found her.

  It hung directly above, enormous and perfectly centered, pouring red light onto the pale stone like visible judgment. The arena was carved into the mountain itself, its walls shaped from living rock, the tiers rising in broad, sweeping curves on every side until the uppermost edge met the open night.

  Thousands watched from above.

  The vampire nobility occupied the high seats, each bloodline keeping its distance from the others. Jewelry caught the moonlight. They sat with the patience of the very old and the very powerful, their attention settling on her like weight.

  Her silver eyes climbed higher.

  One section sat elevated above the rest, separated by ornate stone railings draped with the deep crimson banners of Carymen. The king leaned back in his seat, young, lean, and black-haired, with faint threads of white. His deep red eyes watched the arena floor without expression.

  To his left, the Royal Knight stood at attention, armoured and silent, one gauntleted hand resting on the pommel of a broadsword. To his right, the High Matriarch of the Church of the Holy Blood sat with her white vestments immaculate, her red-threaded hems pooling around the seat like spilled wine. She murmured something into the king's ear, her lips barely moving, her gaze still fixed below.

  Then all of them looked to the divine as the red light settled across her.

  Her gaze dropped.

  The first thing she noticed was Alice.

  She was embedded in the fractured stone ten feet up the wall to her left. The impact crater radiated outward, the rock split and buckled around her body. Her arms hung limp at her sides. Her head had dropped forward, chin against her chest, blonde hair hanging over her face in matted strands. The leather quiver rig was torn nearly in half, hanging from one shoulder by a single buckle. Her warbow lay shattered on the arena floor directly beneath her, split cleanly at the grip, its ornate gold detailing catching the moonlight in two broken pieces.

  Her eyes were open.

  White. Completely white. The irises gone, rolled back, leaving nothing but blank emptiness beneath half-closed lids.

  The divine's eyes narrowed a fraction.

  She heard it.

  A heartbeat.

  "Still alive," the divine murmured. Something like faint amusement touched her voice. "Good."

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  She turned her gaze to the centre of the arena floor.

  Lucian stood there.

  His Academy uniform was immaculate. Not a thread out of place. Not a scuff on his boots. His hands hung at his sides, and the red moonlight caught the metal there: heavy gauntlets of dark iron encasing both fists, their knuckle plates reinforced and ridged for impact, strapped to his forearms with thick leather bindings that vanished beneath his sleeves.

  He flexed one hand. The iron plates shifted and caught the light.

  His gaze traveled over her, over the silver eyes, the massive sword trailing from one hand, the fire opal pulsing at the hilt.

  He gave a low hum. “So you made it, forest girl.” He rolled one shoulder. “I send Alexander after you. A Knight of Carymen, and he couldn’t even handle one girl.” A breath escaped him, almost a laugh. “What a joke. I should have killed him myself. He was never worth the power I gave him.”

  His eyes settled on hers. The smile widened.

  "Pretty eyes, though. Silver." He tilted his head, studying them. "What happened to the green? Did the mountain take your sight along with your sense? You look like a corpse staring at nothing."

  “I see well enough,” she said. “Or rather, I can smell you. The rot pouring off your body.”

  She raised her free hand and covered her nose.

  "So you are the one who corrupted the soldiers. And the knight."

  Something twitched along Lucian's jaw. Brief. Involuntary.

  "And you wish to ascend?" she asked softly. "Smelling as you do, you will not be raised among nobles. You will be penned with swine."

  Lucian took a step forward. Then another. The iron gauntlets swung at his sides like pendulums. His eyes were fully open now, fixed on the divine with naked, trembling rage.

  "You know what I've learned tonight?" he said. "Everyone here is weak. Every last one of them. The knight. The nobles. The king sitting up there on his little throne."

  He stopped walking.

  “They are all weak. And the weak do not get to judge me.”

  The divine watched him.

  “You think you have known true power?” She laughed, short and genuine and utterly dismissive. “You? This kingdom? You are like children playing with fire in the ashes of a house already burned down.”

  Her gaze sharpened, fixing on something deeper within him. Past the skin. Past the bone.

  "And you," she said, her voice dropping. "You are nothing but a parasite. A thing incapable of existing by itself, and yet so eager to speak of weakness."

  The words landed.

  Lucian’s head jerked to the side, just once. A sharp, involuntary snap, as though something behind his face had flinched at being seen.

  Beneath his skin, along the veins of his forearms where the gauntlet straps pressed tight, something dark pulsed.

  "Oh," the divine murmured. "You didn't like that, did you."

  Her smile was thin and cold.

  "Good."

  From the tunnel entrance came footsteps.

  Oswald stepped out into the red moonlight.

  He stopped at the edge of the arena floor, the crimson light settling across his bare skin. His eyes found Alice on the wall at once.

  He went still.

  He stared at the fractured stone around her body. At the warbow broken in two on the ground below. At the way her head hung forward, her hair hiding her face.

  His hands closed slowly at his sides. His throat worked, but nothing came out.

  Lucian glanced at him. “And here comes the ugly one.” His eyes moved over the healed skin, the smooth face, and for a moment something flickered there, confusion perhaps. Then he dismissed it. “Naked, no less. Doesn’t matter. You still wear pathetic too well.” He flexed one gauntlet. “Stay there. I’ll break you after I’m done with the corpse-eyed girl.”

  He turned back to the divine and cracked both fists. The iron gauntlets groaned against each other.

  "Enough talk," he said. "My fists will strip you to blood and bone."

  The divine stepped forward until she stood at the centre of the arena, directly beneath the blood moon. Nihil's fire opal pulsed once, slow and deep. The crimson light from the sky and the crimson light from the blade met on the pale stone at her feet.

  She looked at him.

  A faint smile touched her lips.

  Her silver eyes held steady.

  “You are so full of borrowed things,” she said. “Borrowed power. Borrowed courage. Borrowed grandeur.”

  She raised Nihil. The blade caught the blood moon’s light along its entire length, and the fire opal blazed, crimson, gold, violet.

  "Tell me," she said, almost gently. "When I tear it all out of you—what will be left?"

  Tick. Tick. Tick.