The captured convoy had yielded more than freed prisoners.
Among the wagons—before Behemoth had torn them apart—lay sealed crates of Church records: prisoner manifests, inquisitorial reports, maps marked with pagan sighting sites. One small iron-bound chest, overlooked in the chaos, had fallen open when a wheel shattered. Inside: a single parchment scroll sealed with Lucifer's personal sigil, the triple cross encircled by golden wings.
Liora had claimed it immediately.
Now, three nights after Ironwatch, the four vessels crouched in the ruins of an abandoned watchtower on a windswept moor. A small fire—carefully shielded—flickered between them. Liora unrolled the parchment with reverent care.
The writing was elegant, almost luminous, as though the ink itself remembered light.
To the High Prelate and the Council of Sanctum,
The vessel of Abaddon has surfaced. The World-Eater walks free once more. His escape was not accident; the old seals weaken because the greater design demands it. The Entity stirs.
Contain him. Use the boy-saint if necessary. Draw him to Sanctum. Let him see the miracle we have made of his prison.
When the moment arrives, the vessels will serve—not as enemies, but as keys. The heavens must fall before the true game can end.
Fail, and the Light itself will be extinguished.
—L.
Liora finished reading aloud. Silence followed, thick as smoke.
Elara broke it first. "L. Lucifer."
Behemoth grunted. "He writes like one who already knows the ending."
Elias stared at the signature. The sigil beneath it pulsed faintly, as though still warm from the hand that had drawn it.
"He wants us in Sanctum," Elias said quietly. "Not dead. Captured."
Liora rolled the scroll again. "Or turned. Imagine it—four primordials kneeling at the altar of a false god. What a pretty picture for the heavens to burn."
Elara's expression darkened. "We're not going back there."
"We will," Elias said. "But not as prisoners."
He looked at each of them.
"We go to free the ones they still hold. We go to show the Prelates—and the people—what their saint really is."
Behemoth nodded once.
Liora smiled. "I do love a good reveal."
They moved that night.
The Church had established a forward holding camp ten miles south of Ironwatch—temporary palisades, watch-fires, iron cages arranged in rows like a grim orchard. Two hundred soldiers. Thirty inquisitors. And one very special prisoner.
They struck at moonrise.
Liora's shadows came first—spreading across the camp like spilled ink, swallowing torchlight, turning sentries blind and mute. Elara followed, calling water from the nearby stream to flood the perimeter trenches, miring horses and drowning supply wagons. Behemoth simply walked through the palisade—wood splintering, stakes snapping like twigs.
Elias entered last.
The black flames rose around him in a low halo—enough to light his path, enough to terrify without burning indiscriminately.
Chaos erupted. Soldiers shouted orders. Inquisitors began their chants. But the four vessels moved in perfect, unspoken coordination—Abaddon's will threading through them like invisible wire.
They reached the center cage.
Inside stood Lucian Vale.
He was chained at wrists and ankles, silver hair matted with dirt, white robe torn and stained. Bruises darkened his cheekbones. Yet his face—when he looked up and saw Elias—was calm. Almost relieved.
"You came," he said softly.
Elias knelt outside the bars. "We're getting you out."
Lucian shook his head once. "No. Not yet."
Before Elias could protest, Lucian's eyes changed.
The hazel bled away. Gold flooded in—bright, molten, radiant.
Wings of pure light erupted from his back—six of them, vast and blazing, tearing through the chains as though they were thread. The cage bars glowed white-hot and melted into slag.
Lucian rose—still in the boy's body, yet no longer the boy.
The golden wings folded neatly behind him. His voice, when he spoke again, was layered: Lucian's softness overlaid with something ancient, beautiful, terrible.
"Hello, brother," Lucifer said through the child's mouth.
The camp fell silent.
Soldiers dropped weapons. Inquisitors sank to their knees. Some wept. Some screamed.
Lucifer stepped forward—bare feet untouched by the mud and ash.
"You have gathered them all," he said, gesturing to Elara, Behemoth, Liora. "My jailer's generals. How poetic."
Elias stood. The black flames around him flared higher, protective.
"You used him," Elias said. "The boy. You made him your mask."
Lucifer tilted his head—Lucian's head—and smiled with heartbreaking gentleness.
"I gave him purpose. I gave him love. The Church gave him worship. Without me, he would have been nothing but another frightened pagan child waiting for the stake."
He spread his arms.
"Look around you. The Light I built. The order I imposed. All of it to keep the cage intact. To keep him—" golden eyes fixed on Elias's chest "—locked away."
Abaddon answered through Elias—deep, amused, venomous.
And yet here I stand.
Lucifer's smile widened.
"For now."
He stepped closer. The air shimmered with heatless radiance.
"I offer you a choice, World-Eater. Join me. Tear open the heavens together. Find the one who wrote the banishment decree. End the game properly. Or continue this little rebellion… and watch me use every vessel I still hold—including this sweet child—to seal you away again. Forever."
Elias felt Abaddon coil tighter—furious, eager.
But Elias himself spoke.
"No deal."
Lucifer sighed—soft, almost regretful.
"Then we do this the hard way."
Golden light exploded outward—blinding, searing, holy.
The black flames surged to meet it.
Light and darkness crashed in the center of the camp.
The ground cracked.
The palisades burned.
And in the heart of the maelstrom, two ancient beings regarded each other through mortal eyes—one gold, one black—knowing the true war had only just begun.
End of Chapter 15