The agent’s footsteps echoed softly on polished stone as she led him down another gilded corridor. Her ruined voice rasped: “They are waiting for you.”

  Alistair said nothing. His cloak trailed ash across the floor, his new armor whispering like scripture every time he moved. He still hadn’t decided whether that was intimidating or absurd.

  The doors opened.

  A large chamber spread before him, high-ceilinged, vaulted arches etched with ancient script. Inside, gathered in nervous clusters, were the survivors.

  Seventy.

  About seventy souls.

  Men, women, and a dozen children who huddled close to their parents, wide-eyed and pale. Their alabaster skin gleamed faintly, granite-like, their sharp features carved as if from stone. Without their bone-swords and spikes extended, without their armor of desperation, they looked… like people. Like humans who had been sculpted into something slightly too perfect, too tall, too cold.

  But they looked desperate too. Clothes torn and smeared with ash, eyes ringed with exhaustion. The way they clutched one another, knuckles white, jaws tight, spoke louder than words. Some were barefoot, their soles blackened from running through collapsing halls. The children’s shoulders shook beneath threadbare cloaks, and even the tallest men stood stiffly, like they were waiting for the next blow to fall. They weren’t warriors in this moment. They were refugees. Survivors of a story they hadn’t chosen to be part of.

  And every one of them turned to him when he entered.

  Every gaze locked onto him.

  Alistair froze in the doorway, caught in that silent tide of attention.

  There was no fear in their eyes. Not anymore. No suspicion. No hate.

  There was hope.

  Even, gods help him, devotion.

  Alistair’s jaw tightened. He swallowed hard, his tongue thick in his mouth. He’d faced champions stronger than him, monsters that could tear his head off in one swing, and gods that wanted him dead for existing. None of that made him hesitate the way seventy pairs of expectant eyes did now.

  “Great,” he muttered under his breath. “I’m a one-man daycare for ancient marble statues.”

  Ash trailed off his cloak as he stepped forward, every motion pulling the room tighter with anticipation.

  He was their leader now. Whether he wanted it or not.

  And it was time to say something.

  Alistair cleared his throat. The sound echoed too loudly in the vaulted chamber, as though the whole room had been holding its breath.

  The Pale Tongue Accord stirred inside him. Words twisted on his tongue, reshaping, reshuffling, turning his speech into the guttural, clipped cadence of the Caelari. The moment he opened his mouth, their eyes widened.

  “Right,” he began, shifting uncomfortably. “So. You all decided I’m your leader now.”

  Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Not confusion. Agreement. Expectation.

  Alistair rubbed the back of his neck, sighing. “Yeah, I don’t get it either. Usually people look at me and think ‘spoiled noble brat’ or ‘let’s stab him while he’s not looking.’ But you...” he gestured at them, sweeping across seventy tired, pale faces, “... you went with ‘leader.’ Bold choice. Risky.”

  A few heads tilted, their expressions unreadable, but their attention didn’t waver.

  Alistair’s lips twisted into a humorless smile. “I should probably tell you I have no idea what I’m doing. Leadership experience so far consists of… oh, saving your asses from being eaten by the Maw. And before that? Mostly gambling, drinking, and making poor life decisions.”

  Silence.

  The words hung in the air, awkward and raw, but still every eye stayed on him.

  Alistair swallowed and pressed on. “But here’s the thing, you’re looking at me like I have answers. I don’t. What I have is… well, a very bad attitude, some sharp knives, and apparently a knack for pissing off gods. That’s about it.”

  He exhaled, shoulders sagging. “And still, for reasons I will never understand, you’re all staring at me like I can fix this. Like I can fix you.”

  The room remained quiet, but the silence wasn’t hostile. It was heavy. Patient. Trusting.

  Alistair grimaced. “I’m telling you this up front so when I inevitably screw something up, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Alistair let the last line hang in the air. For a moment, he thought that was it, that he’d said enough, maybe too much.

  But their eyes stayed on him. Not blinking. Not wavering. Waiting.

  He felt something twist in his chest.

  He cleared his throat again, his voice rougher when he spoke next. “Look… I’m not good at this. I make jokes when I don’t know what else to say. But you deserve more than jokes.”

  His gaze swept the room, men clutching their families close, women with tired eyes, children staring at him like he was the only thing keeping the ceiling from collapsing.

  “You all barely knew her,” he said, softer now. “The dryad who stood with me. Thessaly. To you, she was just the kind woman who led you through falling halls, who pulled children to their feet, who wouldn’t leave anyone behind. But to me…”

  His throat tightened. He forced the words through anyway.

  “She was my friend. My bond. And the gods, your gods, my gods, they laughed while she died. They laughed and called it spectacle.”

  The Caelari shifted uneasily, murmurs rising, their expressions hardening.

  Alistair’s hands curled into fists at his sides. His voice sharpened, low and fierce. “That’s what they do. They break us. They play their games, watch us bleed, and call it entertainment. They wanted you culled. Erased. Just like they wanted me dead a dozen times over. You’re alive because I said no. Thess is dead because the gods wanted a good show.”

  He paused, staring at the floor, then back up at them. His next words came out like a vow.

  “So here’s what I can promise you. I can’t promise you it will be easy. I can’t promise we all make it through. But I can promise this: if you follow me, I’ll fight until my last breath to keep you alive. To spit in the gods’ faces. To give you something more than this endless cruelty. Survival. Safety. A future.”

  The silence that followed was heavier than before, but different. No longer expectant, charged.

  Alistair’s jaw tightened. “And when the chance comes, when the moment is right, I’ll give the gods something to choke on. I’ll make them regret every life they stole from us.”

  The Caelari stirred, the murmur swelling louder. Not fear this time. Not confusion. Something else.

  Something closer to belief.

  Alistair blinked, surprised by the sound of his own voice. By the fire that had bled into his words. By the fact that, for once, he meant every single one.

  The murmurs rose into a low chant. Then one by one, the Caelari dropped to their knees.

  Seventy alabaster forms bowed in unison, the sound of it echoing like thunder across the vaulted chamber. Men, women, even the children mimicked their parents, pressing their foreheads to the stone floor.

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  The air thickened, charged.

  [System Notification]

  Faction Loyalty Deepened – Caelari Remnants

  The Caelari have formally pledged themselves to you.

  Loyalty Level: Devoted (80%)

  New Effect – [Sworn People]: While Caelari units fight under your banner, they gain +5% to all attributes.

  New Effect – [Resonant Authority]: You may issue one mass command per battle to all loyal Caelari within range.

  Lore: “In the shadow of ruin, the forgotten chose not to pray to gods that abandoned them, but to kneel to the one who stood in defiance.”

  Alistair froze, ash curling at his boots as he stared at them all kneeling. The sight was overwhelming, alien, and… terrifying.

  The Bloodmistress’s agent stepped forward, her ruined voice rasping low. “It is done. They are yours. And now, Champion, it is time. In a few hours, the final trial will be called.”

  Alistair let out a sharp breath, the weight of her words settling on his shoulders. He glanced once more across the room, seventy bowed heads, seventy lives resting on him now.

  He straightened, his voice carrying, transformed into Caelari syllables by the [Pale Tongue Accord].

  “Tomorrow at this time,” he said, forcing the words past the hollow in his chest, “we will be home. To our new home.”

  He paused, letting his gaze linger on the children clinging to their mothers.

  “Hold on just a little longer.”

  The Caelari lifted their heads, eyes shining with something fierce, something that looked dangerously like faith.

  Alistair clenched his fists inside his bracers, fervently hoping his words wouldn’t turn into just another lie.

  The doors closed behind them, muffling the chant of the Caelari. Alistair walked at the agent’s side, ash trailing from his cloak, the silence stretching between them.

  Her rasping voice broke it. “That was quite a speech. Quite heretical. The Bloodmistress will not like it.”

  Alistair shot her a sideways glance, lips quirking into something halfway between a grin and a grimace. “Will she find out?”

  “Yes.”

  He arched a brow. “You going to tell her?”

  The hooded woman inclined her head once. “Of course.”

  Alistair sighed, the sound sharp and weary, the weight of seventy souls dragging at his shoulders. His steps slowed, heavy, reluctant. “And if I don’t win? What happens to them?”

  The agent pushed open the gilded door to his chamber. Her voice was crisp, flat, without inflection, as though she were commenting on the weather.

  “They die.”

  The words rang in the silence as Alistair stepped inside, the door closing behind him like the seal of a tomb.

  For the rest of the day, Alistair did what he could to quiet the storm inside him.

  He drank. Not enough to forget, but enough to blur the edges. He sprawled across the velvet bed, rolling a dagger across his knuckles, checking the way his new armor whispered when he moved. He lined up weapons, bottles, trinkets, an absurd little mountain of loot stacked on the table, each piece a potential lifeline. He studied them one by one, because he had no idea what new hell the gods had cooked up for the final trial. All he knew was that he would need every advantage.

  Time was impossible to measure. The gilded city never dimmed, the half-dozen suns hanging above pouring eternal daylight across the towers and plazas. He only realized the hour had come when the chamber door opened and the agent entered, her crimson robes dragging like a wound. A dozen attendants followed in her wake.

  “It is time,” she intoned.

  Alistair rose, ash curling faintly from his cloak, and let them lead him. The procession wound up stair after stair until the walls fell away and he stepped into open air.

  The city spread below, magnificent and unbearable in its perfection. And above... Godlings. They wheeled and hovered in the sky like carrion birds, radiant wings and impossible forms blotting the suns.

  The moment they saw him, the noise began.

  Clapping. Whooping. Voices raised in cruel, delighted chorus:

  “Kneel! Kneel! Kneel!”

  Alistair bared his fangs in a grin. He spread his arms wide, exaggerating every motion, strutting across the platform like a performer on stage. “Kneel!” he roared back at them, pumping his fists, greeting his mock fans with a swagger that made them howl with laughter.

  At the edge of the tower stretched a platform of polished stone, jutting out into nothing. At its end shimmered a portal, its light the deep red of fresh blood.

  Alistair strode toward it.

  And just as he reached the threshold, a hand, liquid and crimson, formed of roiling blood, settled on his shoulder.

  He froze, the touch cold and heavy.

  A whisper slid into his ear, sweet and venomous, a voice he knew too well.

  “Win.”

  Alistair’s grin sharpened. He tilted his head toward the portal and stepped through.

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