The horns did not stop screaming. They blared from every tower, every gate, every stretch of the dark-green battlements until the very stones seemed to shake with the sound.
Below, the outer farmlands and watchtowers were already going up in flames. The Abyssal advance was like a tide of black fire—twisted armoured brutes, shadow-beasts that slithered through the ground itself, and siege engines built from iron and charred bone that rumbled forward like living things. King Corvin, Hestia’s father, had commanded Necrokeep for forty years and claimed no force under the sky could breach them. Today, he stood at the main wall gripping his sword until his knuckles went white, watching that promise start to crack.
Arrows rained down, spells hurled out from the wardens—only to shatter or burn away on contact with the Abyssal shield. The first gate groaned under the impact of a ram the size of three oak trees. Splinters flew. Dust choked the air.
Alice moved through the chaos like water. No one stopped her; guards were too busy running to their posts, citizens scrambling for shelter. She did not grab a weapon, did not run to man the walls. Instead she slipped down hidden passages she’d memorised since she was small, straight toward the sally port at the least guarded edge of the fortress.
From a shadowed archway she looked back one last time. Across the crowded battlements she spotted Hestia, shouting orders, her cloak snapping in the smoke-filled wind, fearless but stretched thin. For a heartbeat Alice almost called out. Almost stayed. Then she remembered: no one had fought for her when she was small. No one had offered her a place of her own. Necrokeep was Hestia’s birthright. It was never hers.
A great crash shook the ground—part of the outer wall finally gave way. Screams rose up.
Alice stepped out into the open.
Immediately a pack of three hulking Abyssal raiders spotted her and charged, axes raised. She didn’t flinch. Dozens of strong, firm hands bloomed out of the air all around them—grabbing wrists, snatching weapons, curling tight around throats and ankles. Before they could swing or shout, she lifted them clean off their feet and slammed them hard into the smoking earth until they stopped moving. The extra limbs faded away as silently as they’d come.
She kept walking, straight through the skirmish line, right past burning wagons and broken shields. Every foe that blocked her path was seized, tripped, pinned, or tossed aside from angles they could never see coming. She was heading straight for the heart of the invading army—toward the source of all that shadow and fire.
Hours later, bruised, cloak torn, but completely unbowed, she crossed the line where the living lands ended and the blighted Abyssal border began. The grass turned black and crumbled underfoot. The air grew hot and tasted of ash and iron. Mountains of jagged obsidian rose up ahead, and far above them loomed the fortress-capital of the Abyss: the Black Spire, pulsing with deep crimson light.
No guards turned her away. No arrows flew. Word had already raced back: there was a woman cutting straight through their ranks, unharmed, making directly for the Emperor.
Two towering gatewardens stepped aside without a word as she approached the great iron doors. She walked inside, down halls lit only by burning torches of blue flame, until she stood before the highest dais of all.
There he was. The Dark Knight, larger than any man, his helm glinting like shards of midnight, looking down from his obsidian throne as if he’d been expecting her all along.
“You walk into the jaws of ruin,” his voice rolled through the vast hall, deep and unreadable. “You come to beg for your walls to be spared?”
Alice lifted her chin, dusting ash from her sleeve, and met his unseen gaze straight on.
“I come to make sure your ruin falls on those who actually deserve it,” she said clear and steady. “I know everything about Necrokeep’s defences. I know every secret route, every weak point, every fear its leaders hide. I can give you all of it. But I don’t kneel. And I don’t work for free.”
Silence stretched for what felt like forever. Then the Dark Knight shifted forward, and for the first time, a low rumble shook the air that might have been a laugh.
“Finally,” he said. “Someone who speaks like they belong here.”