The first true battle came at the border fortress of Ironwatch.
It stood on a narrow pass between two sheer cliffs—gray stone walls thirty feet high, reinforced with iron bands, towers bristling with ballistae and archers. For centuries it had guarded the eastern approaches to the heartlands. Now it guarded something smaller: a convoy of chained pagans being marched toward Sanctum under heavy escort. Three hundred soldiers. Fifty inquisitors. Wagons groaning with iron cages.
The four vessels watched from the ridge above as dusk bled into night.
Elias crouched beside a jagged outcrop, breath fogging in the cold air. Below, torchlight flickered along the column like a river of fire. Chains clinked. A child's sob carried on the wind.
Elara's fingers twitched. Mist began to rise from the dew-soaked ground.
"They're moving slow," she said. "Exhausted prisoners. Tired guards. Perfect."
Liora smiled into the dark. "And terrified. Fear makes the best shadows."
Behemoth cracked his neck. The sound echoed like falling rock.
Elias looked at each of them.
"No unnecessary deaths," he said quietly. "The soldiers are following orders. The inquisitors… maybe some can still be reached."
Liora rolled her eyes. "Soft heart. It'll get you killed."
"Perhaps," Elias answered. "But I'm still the one carrying him."
Abaddon stirred—pleased, impatient.
Enough talk. Let us begin.
Elias stood.
The sigil on his chest ignited—black light bleeding through his tunic like spilled ink. He raised both hands.
Black flames erupted from the ground in a sweeping arc, racing down the slope toward the pass. Not a wild surge this time. Controlled. Precise. A wall of cold, devouring fire that cut the convoy in half—separating the prisoners from their escort.
Screams erupted below.
Soldiers spun, shields raised. Inquisitors began chanting binding litanies. Golden light flared from raised staves, clashing against the black flames.
Elara moved next.
She thrust both palms downward. The small stream running through the pass answered—water surging upward in twin waves, crashing into the soldiers' flanks. Men were swept from their feet, armor clanging, torches hissing out.
Behemoth leaped.
He dropped from the ridge like an avalanche—seven feet of living stone, club already hardening into a battering ram of granite. He struck the main gate. The iron-banded wood splintered. The gatehouse tower groaned and tilted.
Liora laughed—bright, delighted—and vanished into shadow.
A heartbeat later, darkness bloomed inside the fortress. Torches guttered. Men screamed as unseen claws raked their legs, as illusions made friend look like foe. One inquisitor swung at his own shadow and cut his companion's throat.
Elias descended last—walking through his own black flames untouched.
The prisoners—chained in lines of ten—stared up at him with wide, terrified eyes.
He knelt beside the nearest cage. A woman with faint blue markings on her arms clutched the bars.
"You're… one of us," she whispered.
Elias placed his hand on the lock. Black fire licked the iron—cold, precise. The metal crumbled to ash.
"You're free," he said. "Run north. Hide in the hills. Tell everyone what the Church is doing."
She stared at him a moment longer—then bolted, dragging the broken chain behind her. Others followed. The line dissolved into chaos as more cages opened under Liora's shadows or Behemoth's fists.
The soldiers rallied.
A ballista on the remaining tower loosed. The bolt streaked toward Elias.
He raised one hand.
Black flames coiled around the shaft mid-flight—slowing it, twisting it, then hurling it back. It struck the tower's base. Stone cracked. The structure leaned, groaned, and collapsed in a roar of dust and timber.
The remaining inquisitors formed a circle around their captain—a tall man in gilded armor, staff blazing with golden light.
"In the name of the Lord of Light!" he bellowed. "We bind thee, vessel of Abaddon!"
Their chant rose—words of binding, words of banishment.
The golden light surged toward Elias like a spear of dawn.
He met it.
Black flames roared upward in answer—higher, wider, hungrier. The two forces collided in the center of the pass.
Light cracked.
The golden spear shattered into sparks that rained harmlessly to the ground.
The inquisitors staggered. Some fell to their knees. Others stared in disbelief as their holy light guttered out.
Elias stepped forward through the dying embers.
The captain raised his staff again—desperate now.
Elias looked at him.
"You can still walk away," he said. "Tell your Prelates the crusade has already failed."
The captain spat.
"Then burn, heretic."
He thrust the staff forward one last time.
A final beam of gold lanced out—brighter, hotter, aimed straight at Elias's heart.
Elias did not move.
Abaddon laughed—low, rolling, triumphant.
The black flames surged one final time.
Not a wall now.
A sphere.
It expanded outward in a perfect, silent explosion—cold black fire that swallowed the golden beam, swallowed the captain's staff, swallowed the circle of inquisitors.
When it faded, nothing remained but ash drifting on the wind and a perfect circle of scorched earth twenty paces wide.
The remaining soldiers threw down weapons and fled—some toward the hills, some back the way they had come.
The prisoners were already gone—scattered into the night, carrying the story with them.
Elias stood alone in the center of the circle.
His hands shook.
Elara approached first. Water still dripped from her fingertips.
"You okay?" she asked quietly.
He nodded once. "I… held it. Mostly."
Behemoth rumbled approval.
Liora stepped out of shadow beside him, smiling.
"Mostly is better than not at all," she said. "And look—" She gestured at the empty pass. "One fortress down. One convoy freed. Word will spread faster than any Church falcon."
Elias looked at the circle of ash.
Abaddon's voice purred inside him.
First blood, the demon said. And it tastes sweet.
Elias closed his eyes.
He could still smell the smoke.
He could still hear the prisoners' footsteps fading into the dark.
The siege of Ironwatch had lasted less than an hour.
But the war had only just begun.
And somewhere in Sanctum, a silver-haired boy felt the tremor of distant power clashing with his own.
He smiled into the darkness of the Garden of Ashes.
"Soon," he whispered again.
And the golden eyes inside him burned brighter.
End of Chapter 14