Chapter 40: Fractured Altars
Labyrinth of Ash
The volcanic tunnels of Ornief exhaled heat like a dying beast. Jaster, his Saints Corps uniform charred at the edges, pressed a trembling hand to the sweating rock wall. Two days without water. Two days without Shadow's whispers.
Markings gone. Traps reset.
His torch had died hours ago, leaving only the faint bioluminescence of cave fungi to guide him—or mock him. Somewhere ahead, a demon's laughter skittered over stone, sharp as flint.
"Answer me!" His cracked voice ricocheted through the cavern. The contract sigil on his wrist remained inert, its once-vibrant lines now ashen. Shadow had never ignored a summon. Not when bandits ambushed their caravan in the northern wastes. Not when fever nearly claimed him during the Siege of Twin Spires.
A sulfurous gust whipped his hair. Jaster staggered, vision swimming. Through the haze, a silhouette emerged—horns curving like scythes, tail thrashing in jagged arcs.
"Shadow…?" His calloused fingers brushed the demon's scaled forearm. No warmth. No familiar rasp of You're late again, meatbag.
The demon's molten gaze slid past him. "You're certain this works?"
Pink-haired Abi materialized from the gloom, her smile a crescent knife. "Only one way to feast without shackles, yes?"
Bargains in Blood
The ritual circle pulsed like an infected wound. Jaster's body hit the stone with a wet thud as Shadow's claws flexed, their contract sigil dissolving into smoke.
"Humans bleed rules," Abi crooned, tracing a claw through the air. "But rules… can be rewritten."
Shadow stared at the heart in his palm—a ruby glistening with stolen decades. Jaster's lips moved soundlessly, eyes clouding like frosted glass. The demon's jaws unhinged.
Crack.
Abi's glee lasted three breaths before Shadow's body convulsed. Golden fissures spiderwebbed across his skin, erupting in a geyser of viscera.
"Again." Serd's voice oozed from the shadows, unperturbed. "We'll harvest the next one slower."
Thrones of Dust
King Ignatius's study reeked of bergamot and decay. He flicked the Saints Corps report aside, its parchment scraping against a goblet of wine.
"Tasiya tops the rankings again?" His nail tapped the words Transfer Request Denied. "How tedious."
The Cardinal bowed lower, cassock pooling like spilled ink. "The… situation in Region Eight worsens, Your Grace. Their demons grow bold."
"Let them chew on their own tails." Ignatius's smile mirrored the gargoyles leering from the rafters. "Focus on binding Nathaniel to the Saintess. Once their contract seals, send them to die politely in Region Three."
Memories prickled his neck—childhood nights spent reading his grandfather's journals, the looping script detailing how Saints and Kings alike danced on Nathaniel's strings. Not this reign, he'd vowed. Yet the silver-haired demon still haunted his halls, still whispered to that red-haired blade of a girl who refused to break.
"And her sister's inheritance?" the Cardinal pressed.
"Dangle it. Let the little wolf think she's hunting." He waved the man away, turning to the window where his eldest son's shadow loomed.
Let them all starve for crumbs.
Wounds in White
Tasiya's childhood smelled of lavender and salt.
In the dream, her mother's tears fell hot against her collar, each sob a needle sewing demon into her bones. Little Tasiya stared past the woman's heaving shoulders, counting cracks in the ceiling plaster. Nine. Ten. Eleven.
"Why won't you hug me?" Her mother's nails bit into her shoulders.
The adult Tasiya watched, detached. She remembered this scene—the way her child-self had dissected the question like a tactical puzzle. Hugging won't stop the crying. Hugging invites more tears.
The dream shifted. A withered nun materialized, her robes reeking of embalming herbs. "You flee from hearts yet cling to a demon's leash. Pathetic."
Tasiya's dream-self bared teeth. "Leashes can be cut."
"Can they?" The nun's face melted into Nathaniel's, his silver hair threaded through her fingers. "Or do you fear what crawls from the wound?"
She woke to her sister's parlor, the scent of rosemary soap clinging to Dilia's shawl.
"Bad dream?" Dilia pressed a mug of spiced milk into her hands.
Tasiya studied the steam. "Just shadows."
Waters That Burn
The basement springs hissed, their mineral tang sharpening her senses. Tasiya dipped a toe into the bubbling pool, its heat biting like a scorned lover.
Frolla's laughter echoed off the wet stones. "Never seen a hot spring? Saints train you in ice baths?"
"We train in efficiency." Tasiya slid into the water, letting the scalding current erase the dream's aftertaste. Frolla didn't need to know the truth—that every ripple now reminded her of contracts dissolving, of hearts offered freely and torn out greedily.
Aboveground, Dilia hummed an old lullaby. Tasiya submerged herself completely, the world muffled to a dull roar.
Cut the leash.
Walk away.
Breathe.
Chapter 41: Bonds Beyond Blood
Steam and Shadows
The bathwater rippled, its heat leaching into Tasiya's bones. Across the tiled room, Flora's laughter bubbled like the thermal spring itself. "See? These hot springs are nothing like the toxic pools back home. No dissolving corpses here!"
Tasiya dipped a toe, half-expecting the water to hiss. Even after years in the capital, some instincts clung like swamp mud—memories of gelatinous low-tier demons melting into acidic springs, their remains birthing grotesque new life. Demons, she mused, sinking deeper. Even their deaths rewrite the rules.
She finished washing before Flora could return with those infernal herbal pastes. By the time her sister barged in, arms laden with jars, Tasiya stood fully dressed, hair braided for war.
Flora's sigh could've wilted roses. "Must you always outmaneuver us?"
Bread and Bureaucracy
Dinner unfolded like a strategy session. Delilah stabbed her fork into roasted pheasant as though it were the royal treasurer. "Refugees flood our lands, yet the palace withholds aid under endless pretexts."
Tasiya swallowed a mouthful of rye bread. "Bandits infest the western roads. Three caravans vanished last week alone."
"Bandits?" Delilah's knife screeched across porcelain. "Or convenient excuses?"
They spoke of merchants avoiding demon-patrolled routes, of Father's foolish investments in relic weapons now gathering dust. Tasiya's fingers twitched—a scribe's itch to correct ledgers. "Sell the artifacts," she interjected. "Hoard grain instead. When war comes…"
When, not if.
Flora topped her wine, voice lowering. "There's worse. Anti-demon mobs prowl the capital now. They bait lesser demons into fights, then cry persecution."
The teacup trembled in Tasiya's grip. Across the table, her sisters' faces blurred into Nathaniel's smirk, Sigrid's saintly glow, Kunji's calculating amber eyes. So this is the world we've built—a tinderbox awaiting one spark.
Midnight Metronome
Pain struck like a hanged man's drop.
Tasiya crumpled against the windowsill, nails carving crescents into oak. Her heart convulsed—not the dull ache of overexertion, but something alive and venomous, a serpent coiling around her ventricles.
The window latch clicked.
She lunged for the letter opener, blade glinting like a fang. Nathaniel froze, moonlight etching his silver hair mercury-bright.
"Your heart?" He stepped closer, gloved hands raised. "Let me—"
"Don't." The word emerged strangled. Yet as his shadow fell across her, the agony ebbed like tide retreating from poison shores.
They stared at the abandoned blade between them.
Echoes of Elsewhen
"You think I need a mark to know you?" Nathaniel's laugh held broken glass. "Centuries ago, you couldn't pet a stray cat without it hissing. Now? You've upgraded to gutting men who underestimate you."
Tasiya's retort died as he gripped her wrist.
Memories flooded her skull—
A girl with black braids burying a stillborn foal, tears freezing on her cheeks.
A general's tent, blood-smeared maps, and a silver-haired strategist murmuring, "Burn the eastern villages. Starve them out."
Her own voice, older, wearier: "If trust requires contracts, then let us be bound by nothing."
She wrenched free, gasping. "You… saw all that?"
"Saw?" His smile cut deeper than the blade. "I lived it. Every lifetime, you choose this—distance over chains, silence over questions."
The thermal spring's heat lingered in Tasiya's bones, but her voice emerged wintry. "Then you know what comes next."
Outside, an owl screeched. Somewhere in the capital, a mob's torch flared to life.
Chapter 42: Bonds Unbroken
Veils of Memory
The air between them hummed with unspoken truths. Tasiya's fingers tightened around Nathaniel's, the shared memories flickering like fractured film reels. She saw not his past lives but patterns—the way his gaze lingered on her collarbone when she sparred, the half-second delay before he laughed at Dilia's jokes.
"Why hesitate?" Her breath fogged the windowpane. Moonlight carved shadows beneath his eyes, older than his ageless face.
The vision struck without warning:
A battlefield drenched in rust-brown. Tasiya—no, a woman with her eyes and ash-streaked hair—collapsed against a shattered altar. Her hand pressed Nathaniel's claw to her chest. "Take it… while it's still warm."
He wrenched free. "You've seen enough."
"No." She climbed onto the chair, forcing him to tilt his head back. This angle, this power—she'd used it once to intimidate a bandit chieftain. Now it felt like cruelty. "Show me why you fear the contract."
His sigh misted the cold glass. "Every time, you die before the first wrinkle."
Echoes in Amber
The memories flooded her:
A Tasiya in chainmail, laughing as she tossed a peasant child into the air. "We'll plant an orchard here!"
A Tasiya coughing blood onto monastery tiles, her voice reed-thin. "Promise… keep the valley safe."
A Tasiya with Sigrid's fiery braids, impaled on a demon's horn. "Nate… don't look."
Centuries compressed into heartbeats. Nathaniel's arms trembled around her—not the demon who'd slaughtered armies, but the boy who'd watched his meaning of "home" crumble thirty-seven times.
"This life's different." She pressed her forehead to his. The dormitory's radiator clanked, its mundane rhythm grounding them. "I have sisters. A room with ugly curtains. A demon who folds my socks."
His chuckle rasped like wind through dry leaves. "You'll still throw yourself into fire."
"Then leash me tighter."
Breakfast Theater
Frolla's knife clinked against her porcelain plate. "So… the archives transfer?"
Tasiya choked on her tea. Nathaniel's hand hovered mid-scone, jam dripping onto his cuff.
"Denied," Frolla sing-songed. "But oh, the petition! 'Seeking contemplative solitude'—as if you've ever contemplated anything quieter than a landslide."
Nathaniel's voice dipped to winter-creek cold. "You planned to leave."
"Planned to breathe." Tasiya smeared honey over toast, avoiding his stare. "Turns out I like your suffocating better than silence."
The demon's shoulders relaxed by microns. Frolla kicked Tasiya under the table, mouthing pathetic.
Ink and Absolution
The letters arrived with the noon bell.
Blair's seal cracked under Tasiya's thumbnail: "…Vinsen Territory succession talks advance. Your presence required—"
Vanessa's perfume wafted from lilac stationery: "New sword gallery opened! Let's critique terrible rapiers over terrible wine."
Nathaniel's feather quill lay abandoned by her inkpot—raven-black, identical to the one she'd left buried in her dorm drawer.
"You kept the bookmark." His finger grazed her collar, where his silver-threaded ribbon marked her page in Demonic Thermodynamics.
"Convenience," she lied.
"Liar." He braided her hair with practiced hands, the contract sigil blazing coral-red behind her ear. "It's always been convenience with you."
Thresholds
Morning classes loomed. Nathaniel adjusted her collar, his thumb lingering on the pulse beneath her jaw.
"If you die before forty this time," he murmured, "I'm reviving you as a garden slug."
Tasiya grinned, sharp and bright. "Deal."
The hallway stretched before them, sunlit and ordinary. Somewhere, a demon lord plotted. Somewhere, a sister sharpened knives.
But here, now—his hand warm against her spine—ordinary felt like revolution.