A golden statue towers in the center of the ceremonial chamber,
a four-headed demon wrought from the forms of a serpent, a goat, a bat,
and a dragon whose face stretches downward into coils of slithering scales.
Leviathan, the Demon King of Miraeth.
Czar stands at the outer ring of the semicircle of guests, positioned near the side aisle with an unobstructed view of Niraya beside Ferguson at the center.
While beneath the towering statue,
a bound little girl writhes weakly as an old priest in white robes kneels before her, murmuring a ritual prayer.
Bile burns up his throat as he forces away the thought of his own son.
Horror darkens Niraya's eyes as a minister approaches the priest with a tray covered in red cloth,
incense curling beside a gleaming dagger.
"I can't wait for tonight's special dishes," Thomas Elordi, the politician beside him, says with a grin.
His mistress laughs quietly at his side. "So sweet and soft. Almost like cream cheese."
Czar clings to the thought of his wife, and of the Lord,
as the priest rises and rotten grins carve themselves across the cannibals' faces.
In the suffocating silence,
as the priest lifts the dagger above the girl frozen in terror, Czar hears the steady ticking of the full hunter pocket watch resting inside his breast pocket.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
He steps back into the shadows, his hand tightening around the cold steel of the Sig Sauer.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
The little girl whimpers against the binding over her mouth as the priest lifts the dagger high above her.
"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" Niraya screams as Czar levels the pistol at the priest.
"Stop it, please!" Niraya cries, breaking into frantic sobs as she thrashes against Ferguson's grip, while laughter like the writhing hiss of blow flies ripples through the crowded ceremonial chamber.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
The priest drives the dagger downward toward the girl.
A sharp pop cracks through the chamber.
The priest crumples to the floor with a sickening thud.
The laughter rolling through the chamber does not falter.
A minister kneels beside the fallen priest, but the laughter echoing through the room continues unabated.
Crimson spreads across the priest's white robes,
blood pooling beneath him as he stares blankly toward Czar with wide, hollow eyes.
An inhuman shriek tears through the chamber as the ritual collapses.
The ground trembles, cracks splitting through the golden statue now denied the blood and life of the girl.
Czar does not flinch as the room sinks into suffocating stillness, darkness creeping over the chamber while candles gutter out around them.
He pulls the trigger and fires at Ferguson.
"Move," Czar says into the earpiece as chaos breaks loose.
A shoulder crashes into him, but he forces his way forward. Ferguson lies in his own blood before a motionless Niraya.
A booming explosion rips through the night. Another follows. Another after that.
An echoing symphony of detonations rolls through the hall as guests scream and surge, shoving, falling,
clinging, lunging toward the exit while dust rains down upon them.
He scoops up the light child and seizes Niraya's limp arm, pushing through the collapsing madness of the gathering. The door won't budge, locked from outside.
Something catches his ankle.
He doesn't stop, dragging them toward the hidden passage behind a painting.
"Look! Look!" a woman screams as he forces it open, pushing Niraya through before following her inside.
Behind them, the elites surge in a panicked wave—politicians, royalty, religious leaders, CEOs, philanthropists—scrambling forward.
A wild, red-rimmed-eyed Thomas Elordi breaks through the crush, crawling forward as Czar slams the door shut and locks it.
"Move," Czar says.
Niraya only blinks at him.
And despite the chaos around him, something in her soft almond eyes strikes him,
so eerily like his wife's it unsettles him.
Perhaps it is his own desperation for his wife that blurs his perception into hallucination.
The screaming and pounding on the door grow louder as he seizes her arm and drags her down the dim lantern-lit stairs,
cobwebs crawling across corners despite half-hearted attempts at cleaning.
A heavy thud echoes behind them as the door is forced open, footsteps pounding in pursuit.
They reach the narrow stairs and turn toward a second flight descending deeper.
"Now!" Czar shouts into the earpiece.
He yanks Niraya down to the floor, covering the girls as a violent blast shakes the walls. Dust erupts into the air, thick with blood and the stench of burned flesh.
"Come on." His voice is muffled, his ears ringing sharply as he carries them down the stairs.
By the fifth flight, his hearing begins to return in fragments, the child whimpering against his shoulder, the chaos breaking above, and hurried footsteps closing in behind.
Down the sixth and final flight, footsteps close in, curses trailing behind as he passes the child to Niraya and points at the door, pistol already drawn. "Go."
Niraya nods, holding the child tight as she turns and hurries toward the door.
Czar turns, just as Thomas Elordi stands before him, blood running down his head, clutching his ear, pistol raised.
"Die!" he snarls through broken teeth.
Then his eyes dim. He drops to the floor as a bullet hole opens between his eyes.
Czar lowers his pistol,
a sigh escaping him as he confirms Niraya has made it out,
the door still swinging behind her.
He rips off the mask, tosses it aside,
and descends the remaining steps before stepping out.
An unmasked attendee, one of his disguised rebel guards, waits outside.
"Any children left inside?" Czar asks.
"No, sir," the young battle-hardened guard, Caius replies, the little girl now safe and unbound in his arms, still crying softly.
Another explosion at the docks shakes the ground beneath them.
He glances at Niraya.
She meets his gaze with dim stillness, but something in her expression has shifted.
''Follow me." He moves toward the treeline beyond the shaded rear of the castle, where screams, orders, and gunshots ripple through the air in an apocalyptic surge.
Jack's voice cuts through his earpiece. "The children are safe."
"Get them on the boats." Gunpowder and blood thicken the air as wind stirs through the leaves overhead.
"Roger that," Jack replies, and the line goes silent.
Muffled commands and the splash of oars carry through the night as they near the shoreline.
Dim lantern light filters through the woods while Czar flashes a signal onto the forest floor beneath the rotting leaves, once, twice, a pause, then once more.
Nothing answers.
He waits, hearing only the pulse throbbing in his ears, Caius's heavy breathing,
and the small breaths of the little girl.
Wind stirs through the silence, a twig snapping beneath Niraya's step as a lantern flickers from the trees above, once, twice, a pause, then a final flash.
He moves toward the lantern light flickering between the trunks when a large shadow suddenly manifests at the edge of his vision.
Czar raises his pistol toward it. "Show yourself."
It does not move.
The lantern light spills through the trees, but never touches it.
Never touches it.
Czar steps toward it, toward the thing standing where lantern light touches the trees around it, but never its form.
"Sir," Caius says quietly.
Something tugs at his dinner jacket, stopping him cold.
"No." Niraya's voice is barely a breath.
A chill crawls across his skin as the shadow recedes into the woods, lantern light finally spilling through where it had stood.
"What is it, sir?" Caius asks.
Czar lowers his gun and turns to Niraya.
Niraya retracts her hand away from his jacket.
"You saw it," he says quietly.
She only nods.
Beside her, Caius frowns, confused.
Without another word, Czar heads toward the shore, lantern light rippling across the water where boats wait as his guards quietly load the children aboard.
Jack is crouched beside one of the boats, a little girl clinging to his chest while he gently smooths her hair,
murmuring reassurances.
"How many have been dispatched?" Czar asks, his gaze moving over the older children gathered by the shore.
Most of them cannot be older than eighteen.
"Two have already departed, sir." Zachary steps forward, a hand resting on the hilt of his sword.
He's the leader of Scout No. 8, who's overseeing the boarding of the children.
"The injured were sent ahead first," he says, stroking his long light-brown beard.
One of the guards nearly drops the child
he's boarding onto the boat before turning away and vomiting into the sand.
He had been disguised as an attendee inside the castle.
"He saw terrible things, sir," Zachary says, voice low. "Infants. Dead in the larder."
Czar says nothing, his shoulders heavy as guilt settles into him like a rancid ache beneath the skin.
Guilt.
The sin that haunts him most of all.
A presence stirs behind him.
Niraya stops when their eyes meet.
"Why aren't you with them?'' he asks.
Niraya glances toward the children boarding the fifth and final boat.
A cold wind sweeps through the shore as she wraps her arms around herself,
dressed only in an off-the-shoulder deep purple gown.
Czar removes his dinner jacket and offers it to her.
Niraya pauses, then quietly takes it.
"Thank you," she whispers and pulls it around herself.
She stares down at the sand for a long moment. "I... I..." She swallows, fingers clenching around the jacket.
Czar waits in silence for her to speak.
"I... my name... it isn't Niraya," she whispers.
Czar gives a slow nod.
"It's..." She swallows hard. "It's Neriah Lei."
Neriah.
The name strikes something deep inside him.
His wife chose it for their unborn daughter.
Czar says nothing, unable to think of anything that could possibly be enough.
Tears stream down her cheeks as she bites down on her lip. "I think—I think I've gone back... back in time..."
Before he can process her words,
another explosion erupts, shaking the sand beneath their feet.
Beyond the thick woods, flames consume the castle in a raging inferno,
smoke clawing into the darkened heavens.
A verse rises in his mind first. ...I need You, fire are You, slaying the parched;
A desert of thorns and thistles, left burning.
Gradually, his Angel's poem unravels through him like a slow-rushing tide.
Indeed, God is a consuming fire.