The heavy doors of the Knight Headquarters creaked open as the twelve left one by one, cloaks fluttering, boots crunching against the fractured stone courtyard. Distant fires still burned in the horizon. The air was thick with smoke, ash, and the taste of decisions made.
Mistress Calra Vynn drifted beside Layla, her presence more perfume and shadow than substance.
"Walk with me, darling," she said softly, her smile serene but unreadable.
Layla gave her a wary side glance but didn't object. The others dispersed into their respective directions, and the two women turned toward a quieter corridor, away from lingering knights and officials.
"That transformation of yours," Calra began, her voice velvet-smooth. "It wasn't just demonic resonance, was it? You engineered it."
Layla didn't flinch. "It was a serum. Synthesized from succubus DNA—harvested in the forbidden zone. I isolated the adaptive traits and fused them with a stabilizing genome. It wasn't possession. It was biology."
Calra's eyes gleamed. "Marvelous. You did what no one else dared. You became one of us… through science."She leaned in. "You know, I am a succubus—by blood, not just title. My lineage was bound in the old miasma. That same forbidden zone you trespassed to find your miracle."
Layla arched a brow, intrigued but cautious. "So I assumed."
"You've awakened something rare, Layla," Calra murmured. "A living conduit of temptation and power. You could hold a position of influence in my circle—the Children of Ecstasy. High Priestess, even. Our followers are growing. And you… you would thrive."
Layla stopped in her tracks. Her voice was calm, but edged with steel."You mistake my path. I didn't do this to indulge. I did it to survive the miasma. To adapt to this crumbling world. Your cult—" she gestured vaguely—"feeds on pleasure, on excess. You worship no god, follow no higher truth. That's why the Sacred Flame Church tolerates you. You're a social indulgence. A vent for the rich."
Calra's smile did not falter, but her eyes turned cold.
Layla took a step back. "I'll walk my own path. My science has rules. Your games do not."
The two women stared at each other—one veiled in perfume and power, the other armored in intellect and transformation.
Then Calra dipped her head, the smile returning, more amused than wounded."As you wish, darling. But remember—temptation waits patiently. Even for the strong."
She turned and vanished into the smoke-laced streets, leaving Layla to watch her go, unmoved.
As Layla disappeared down the smoke-veiled corridor beside Mistress Calra Vynn, Liam lingered at the headquarters' entrance, his mechanical eyes glowing faintly beneath the cracked eaves of his hood. The evening had cooled, but the air was still thick with ruin and restless magic.
He stood still, arms folded, watching Layla vanish from sight—calculating, perhaps concerned, though his face gave little away.
A soft rustle of robes signaled the arrival of another.
"An elegant construct," said a gravel-deep voice behind him. "Too elegant for mere imitation."
Liam turned his head to find Magister Orvax Grimm, the necromancer and Grave Custodian, standing like a funeral shadow, his skeletal hands folded over a black staff adorned with bone and obsidian.
"Grimm," Liam acknowledged.
"You transferred your soul," Grimm said without preamble. "Cleanly. Precisely. No decay. No scream of the soul into the void."
Liam was silent.
"That shouldn't be possible," the necromancer murmured. "I've watched men become liches and gods become husks. I've heard the wails of corrupted spirits bound to empty vessels. And yet here you stand—lucid. Whole. Not even cursed."
"I didn't use necromancy in the traditional sense," Liam said. "I used precision. AISAR calculated every neural map, every synaptic pathway. I cloned my brain—layered it into a synthetic vessel, then simulated the electrical pattern of life until the signal synced."
Grimm's hollow eyes glinted faintly under his hood. "No soulbinding. No phylactery. And yet your self persists."
"I don't know if I still have a soul in the traditional sense," Liam replied. "But I have my mind, my memories, my will. If that's not a soul, then perhaps I've never had one."
Grimm chuckled, a low and dry sound. "Necromancers chase centuries—five hundred years if they're lucky. The strongest lich we've recorded lasted a thousand. You might exceed them all without ever touching death."
Liam shrugged. "I didn't pursue immortality. Just freedom from failure."
Grimm tilted his head. "You've created something new. Neither undead nor divine. I wonder if the gods fled this world because they feared men like you."
For a brief moment, the wind carried silence between them. The crumbled world around them whispered secrets neither science nor sorcery could fully explain.
Grimm tapped his staff once against the stone.
"If your creation begins to crack, Passart… you come to me. I will not let that brilliance die unnoticed."
Liam gave a faint nod, more acknowledgment than agreement.
And with that, the necromancer turned and melted into the dark, as the night deepened and the world edged closer to the unknown.