AMAIA

  SMOKE FILLED THE TEMPLE like breath held too long. Thick, grey, choking. Holy men scattered. Guards shouted, blades out, blind in the blur. And in it something moved.

  A shape. Hulking. Brutal. A demon, some cried. The hand of a god, others whispered as they fell. Like puppets when the strings have been cut.

  Amaia stayed seated. Still as a carved idol on her throne. Heart thudding like a war drum. Eyes wide. Proud mother of the future son of god, yet she knew it was Yanick’s baby.

  The smoke parted only to be swallowed again, and in those shifting gulps of haze, she saw him. The beast carved through the guards cutting their strings.

  The demon didn’t stop.

  Closer now.

  Closer.

  The smoke curled off shoulders too broad to be anything but him. That terrible, impossible shape. She rose, slow. Her fear shrank like the fog before fire.

  It couldn’t be. But it was.

  Big Mike.

  When his hand reached for hers she didn’t fight. She stood. And went with him. Allowing him to pull her strings, believing her fate with Mike as the puppeteer would be better.

  He carried her like she weighed nothing. Like she was breath, not bone. A puppet stuffed with straw and sawdust.

  Smoke still clung to them, rising from the burning temple behind, screams tucked into its folds like dying prayers.

  They ran through broken alleys. Past children crying behind shutters, past corpses cooling in the dust.

  Amaia buried her face against his chest. His heart thudded like hooves, constant, unstoppable.

  She didn’t ask where they were going. She didn’t need to. Away was enough. Towards the light.

  An open square near the gate, washed in red from the fires.

  And waiting there, still as a statue carved from ash stood Gabriel. She remembered him standing next to her inside the temple, now he was there. They were calling him an angel, but he was the true demon.

  From the smoke-lined ranks of the guards, Gabriel stepped forward. Alone. He held one of the black rods in his hand. Longer than a dagger, sleeker than a club.

  Mike placed her down, slow and careful, like setting a sacred thing back on its altar. Then, with one smooth motion, he pulled a similar rod from under his coat. With a twist of his wrist, it unfolded. Click click click. Segment by segment, until it gleamed full length in his hand. A weapon summoned like magic. Amaia’s breath caught.

  No one moved. No words. Just the weight of something ancient in the air. Tension strung tight enough to hum.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Then it snapped.

  Gabriel lunged. Too fast for an ordinary man. She have seen Ademund getting into fights. Many fights, one to one, sometimes him alone against a bunch of other boys. He was good, he was fast, but nothing like Gabriel.

  His speed was unnatural, truly divine. The rod in his hand moved like liquid steel, flickering from one angle to the next. Shoulder, ribs, knee

  Mike parried low, high, high again. Sparks danced. The rods hissed where they clashed.

  Amaia had never seen a weapon dance like that. Not like a sword. Not like a staff.

  They didn’t swing. They snapped. Every move was a whip-crack. Precise. Brutal. Controlled fury.

  Gabriel struck. Mike sidestepped, hooked his weapon under Gabriel’s arm, twisted hard, too fast to follow. Gabriel hissed, but countered with a sharp jab to Mike’s flank, a flash of pain in metal.

  They moved like wolves in a pit. Every feint was real. Every strike meant to end.

  Mike stepped in, close, too close, and slammed the butt of his rod into Gabriel’s jaw. Gabriel reeled, but didn’t fall. Blood painted his chin, like and ordinary man, not an angel.

  He spun low, swept Mike’s legs. Mike stumbled, rolled, came up already swinging.

  The clash echoed through the square. Through Amaia’s bones. Like something sacred breaking.

  Their weapons locked mid-air. Steel grinding steel. And for a heartbeat they just stared, eyes locked, muscles trembling.

  Then Gabriel broke the hold with a growl and lashed out. Mike blocked. Countered. Parried again.

  Faster now. Meaner. The rods hummed as if remembering war.

  Gabriel caught Mike across the shoulder. Amaia flinched at the crack. Mike grunted, returned the blow with a twisting strike across Gabriel’s ribs. Dust lifted where Gabriel staggered back.

  Still equal. Still brutal. No pause.

  Amaia’s breath came fast. She no longer knew which one she feared more.

  And then Gabriel dropped his rod. But not out of surrender.

  He reached into the folds of his coat and pulled another thing. Smaller, darker, heavier. A shape Amaia didn’t recognise. But she knew what it meant when he aimed it at Mike’s heart.

  Mike mirrored him in the same instant. His hand slid back, fast, practised. Drew the same strange object. Lifted it. Pointed it.

  Two outstretched arms. Two machines. And silence. Screaming silence. Puppet master contemplating his next set of moves. Amaia couldn’t breathe.

  “You’d do it?” Gabriel asked, voice low, edged like glass. “Here? In front of all of them?”

  “It was you who pulled out first,” Mike said.

  Gabriel gave a bitter smile.

  “We were supposed to keep the curtain up. Keep the myths alive.”

  “It’s too late for myths,” Mike said. “They went to far with this. With the boy, with her.”

  Gabriel’s jaw tensed.

  “Then it ends here.”

  “It starts here,” Mike growled. “I am putting an end to this madness. Once and…”

  He didn’t finish. A sound split the air. Long and sharp.

  Trumpets.

  Not the brittle cry of village horns or tribal war pipes.

  These were massive, bronze throated things, carved with suns and moons and faces too smooth to be human. They screamed from the towers above, turning every head.

  Then came the grinding of chains. Stone shifting. And the gate behind Gabriel creaked open.

  Dust rolled outward as the city’s great gate split apart, like the jaws of some ancient beast yawning to taste blood once more.

  Marching feet followed. Hundreds of them.

  No chaos. No shouting. Just perfect rhythm, drums beneath each step, boots stamping the earth into memory.

  Sun-emblazoned armour glinted like fire, polished to blind. Their faces were masked in gold, expressionless. Unyielding.

  And at their head riding a creature Amaia had only heard of in whispers, yet once she saw him she knew it was him.

  The Emperor.

  He sat atop a massive black beast, taller than any horse she’d ever seen, its hooves striking sparks on the flagstones. His robes were a cascade of white and crimson, trailing behind him like smoke from a dying god. Crown was simple, but cruel, razor-thin metal circling his brow, with one sharp sun-spike rising at the front.

  She couldn’t look at his face for long. It was too still. Too perfect. Like it had been carved from marble by someone who’d never seen a real man.

  Beside him rode two generals.

  On his left, a tall, hawk-eyed old man with silver armour etched in constellations.

  And on the right—

  Amaia’s breath caught.

  The general wore a black coat over his armour. Skin shade same as her. Hair longer than he used to have, jaw sharper, but the eyes… the eyes hadn’t changed.

  Ademund.