The lower city of Sol-Vaelen was a ghost metropolis of white limestone and looted silk.
The twelve thousand warriors of the Northern Vanguard poured through the pulverized gap of the Lion Gate, fanning out across the grand avenues that climbed the first three hills. Mansions of carved alabaster stood empty with their cedar doors thrown wide; merchant warehouses sat gutted along the river quays, their grain spilled into the gutters where stray dogs fought over dry crusts.
The Emperor had not simply retreated; he had consolidated every shred of life and iron behind the Wall of Saints.
Aurelia paced Malakor’s left flank as they crested the fourth hill, entering the monumental Plaza of the Sun. In the center of the square, an eighty-foot obelisk of polished porphyry was wrapped in heavy chains of cold-forged iron.
At its base, the cobblestones were stained black from dried ichor.
"The execution ground of the Heretics," Aurelia murmured, her eyes tracing the ancient glyphs etched into the base of the stone.
The silver resonance in her marrow twitched violently, responding to the horrific accumulation of death beneath the square. Thousands of souls had been bound and burned here during the century-long purges of the Solar Concord. The Veil above the plaza was thin, hanging like torn spider silk, through which the cold whisper of the Hollow Realm scratched at her consciousness.
Malakor paused beside her, the flat of his great sword resting against his iron-plated shoulder. His amber eyes swept the deserted colonnades lining the plaza, alert to every shadow.
He felt the prickle of the dark across their shared bond—the cold, dragging gravity that tried to pull her thoughts into the grave. Without a word, he reached out, his broad, calloused hand curving over her hip, pulling her firmly against his side. The scorching heat of his sovereign blood flared in answer, washing over her senses and incinerating the phantom whispers into absolute silence.
"They will not touch you, Aurelia," he rumbled near her ear, his deep voice an immovable wall between her and the abyss. "Not here. Not in the heart of their empire."
Aurelia drew a long, steady breath, her hand rising to cover his fingers where they gripped her waist. The steady, thunderous cadence of his heart grounded her instantly, anchoring her soul in the living, breathing reality of their shared conquest.
"I am not afraid of their ghosts, Malakor," she said softly, meeting his gaze with unyielding defiance. "I am waiting for the living to show their teeth."
A sudden, rhythmic thrumming sound echoed from the high terrace at the far end of the square.
Above the grand marble staircase leading to the inner city, the massive iron gates of the Wall of Saints stood bathed in a blinding, unnatural luminescence. The hundred-foot wall of white granite was lined with thousands of figures standing shoulder to shoulder in absolute stillness.
They were not the mortal conscripts of the provincial garrisons.
They were the Seraphic Cohort—the Emperor’s personal guard of twenty thousand automata, constructed from blessed silver-steel and powered by the trapped souls of condemned sorcerers. They stood motionless beneath the sun, their gilded halberds held upright, their faceless helms carved into serene, weeping masks.
In front of their center rank, standing upon the battlements of the central bastion, stood a figure draped in robes of spun amethyst and ermine.
Emperor Valerius.
He was an old man whose face was gaunt, his sunken eyes burning with the manic, apocalyptic fever of an emperor who had traded his humanity to keep a crumbling throne. In his right hand, he held the Scepter of the First Dawn, a staff of black iron topped with an eye carved from a living abyssal core.
"Malakor!" the Emperor’s voice rang across the empty plaza, unnaturally magnified by the resonant architecture of the palaces. "You bring barbarians and an escaped thrall to the threshold of the throne! You think you have conquered the empire?"
Valerius raised the scepter high into the air.
A pulse of pitch-black light erupted from the staff’s eye, shooting straight up into the afternoon sky where it tore open a three-mile fracture in the cloud layer. The ground beneath the plaza began to groan as the ancient seals holding the imperial vaults beneath the city shattered one by one.
"You have brought me the final sacrifice," Valerius shrieked, his laughter echoing shrilly off the marble colonnades. "The Veil opens today, Lord Malakor! And this city will be its altar!"
Malakor looked up at the parapet, his lips peeling back from his teeth in a slow, savage snarl of absolute contempt. He tightened his grip on the hilt of his great sword, the sovereign fire in his blood redlining into incandescent white fury.
"He talks too much," Malakor growled, turning to Aurelia with an unholy promise burning in his eyes.
Aurelia drew her twin blades, the silver light in her palms blazing with terrifying power as the earth began to shake.
"Then let us shut his mouth," she said.