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Idris had been watching the rising sun set fire to the horizon above the sea of mist, leaning against the railing that led to the top of the tower. The thin air at that altitude gave him a slight dizziness, but he bore it without complaint. From time to time, tendrils of fog drifted from the open dome and swirled around him, carrying a strange, indefinable scent—but he didn’t care.
The night had been endless, and exhaustion weighed heavily on his limbs, but he refused to give in to sleep. He was a warrior. He had been through worse. He had to endure.
He had wandered for much of the night through the laboratories, exploring freely without a single demon trying to stop him. Most of them ignored him entirely, absorbed in their tasks, and even the guards hadn’t minded that he kept his sword at his side. He had been allowed to observe strange experiments—dissections of demons who had not survived the transformations inflicted on them.
He had spent a long moment contemplating the tanks where the Rephaïm slumbered, and had even seen one awake. With such beings, no army could stand against the humans. So why couldn’t Aisling and Strife see it?
If Naamah and her demons had truly wanted them dead, they would have acted long ago. Idris was convinced of this after his night of observations. The demoness had spoken the truth—she was offering them an unexpected chance. And her request didn’t seem all that unreasonable.
He had ended his journey by passing the prison. Even without entering, he could make out the massive silhouettes of the demons confined there, forced to watch from their cells the tanks below that held the Rephaïm.
Was that what kept them silent? The vision of what they would become to finally serve the right side?
One prisoner in particular caught his attention. The demon was staring intently at him, clearly trying to catch his gaze, murmuring something and pointing to an object at his feet. But Idris looked away. He had other concerns.
Every time he closed his eyes, the attack on Nimrach flooded his mind. The bright red sky, the flames, the thick smoke—and above all, the screams. He saw familiar faces twisted in pain and fear, men and women hunted, chained like cattle. He heard their cries for help, their pleas, their last breaths strangled by terror.
The humans hadn’t been ready. They had been swept aside like dry leaves in a storm. And the thought made him sick.
He had spoken to neither Aisling nor Fenja about it. Especially not Fenja. What would she think of him if he admitted his doubts?
And Aisling… No. He didn’t want to go there. What could she possibly understand, anyway? She had never had to fight for her place. Was it anger he felt? Or worse… envy?
He refused to think about it.
So instead of seeking sleep, he had climbed higher and gazed at the sky, trying to make sense of his thoughts. But just as he found a moment of stillness, a cold shiver ran down his spine. A chilling breeze brushed his face, and a heavy sensation crept into his chest—
as if someone were whispering right beside his ear.
“How many more will die before you’re strong enough to save them?”
“You are a burden.”
“You think strength makes you a hero?”
“All the fight has given you is more blood on your hands.”
He clenched his jaw and shook his head, trying to drive the voices away. It was only fatigue. Yes, that had to be it. He couldn’t give in. He had to focus. Plan the next steps.
If he could convince his mother to accept Naamah’s offer, they might have a chance. Maybe he should go alone—leave Strife and Aisling behind—step through the portal and bring Ren and Briana here, let them see for themselves.
“Is everything all right, young human?”
He flinched hard, his hand flying instinctively to the hilt of his sword. He turned sharply—and found Naamah standing still, watching him with curiosity. How had she gotten so close without him hearing her?
“Oh, my apologies. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Naamah gave a soft laugh, a delicate, almost musical sound with just a hint of embarrassment. Idris slowly released his grip on his sword, though his body remained tense, alert.
He had to admit it: there was something intimidating about her. Not just because she was a demon, nor even because of the power she clearly held within this strange fortress. No—it was something else. An aura. A presence. An intelligence. That magnetism possessed by brilliant women, which she wielded with unsettling ease.
He looked away and leaned back against the railing, adopting a casual stance, as if her presence barely registered.
“It’s nothing. I was just lost in thought.”
Naamah stepped closer and took her place beside him, mirroring his posture. Her laugh rang out again, gentle, with no trace of mockery.
“My people told me you spent the night exploring our laboratories. So? What did you think?”
Idris let the silence linger before answering, still gazing at the horizon drowned in mist.
“It’s… very impressive,” he said, turning slightly to catch the sharp gleam in her eyes.
“Truly impressive. Your Rephaïm have tremendous potential.”
“I’m pleased to hear it. Unfortunately, your friends don’t share your view,” she replied, her tone light, almost conspiratorial, as if merely stating a fact.
She didn’t seem offended by the disagreement.
“Aisling’s not a warrior—she can’t grasp the implications… And Strife…”
Idris let the sentence trail off, unwilling or unable to finish it.
“The Horseman is wary,” the demoness completed with a knowing smile.
“Understandable. But the real problem is… you’re running out of time.”
He frowned slightly.
“The war is really that close?”
“Closer than ever.”
The young man clenched his jaw. The idea of humanity being caught off guard again deeply unsettled him. No—it couldn’t… mustn’t happen. Not on his watch.
“But… if the humans don’t fight…”
“I’m afraid that won’t spare them anymore,” she said, leaning further against the railing, her eyes distant on the horizon.
“If they don’t choose the battlefield, others will choose it for them. Without allies, you’re vulnerable… And the excessive caution of the Four will only harm you.”
He knew she wasn’t wrong. He also knew that Aisling and Strife would never admit it.
“I understand that you need their approval,” Naamah continued gently, “However, if you fail to convince them…”
“I don’t need her approval,” Idris snapped upright, a fierce light flaring in his eyes.
Naamah offered him a radiant smile, laced with quiet satisfaction.
“Your people are lucky to have you as their protector. And the Bearer of the Seed even more so. I see why you were chosen to watch over her… The two of you, are you… close?”
Idris gave a short, humorless laugh.
“I think of her as a little sister. She has a natural gift for setting off chain reactions she only understands much later. Someone has to make sure she survives her own ideas.”
Naamah raised an eyebrow, her smile stretching ever so slightly.
“Oh… so there’s no one?”
The image of Fenja struck him without warning—a sudden, almost painful flash. Her eyes blazing with fierce determination, her clear laughter, that infuriating way she had of challenging him without ever backing down…
Why was he thinking of her now? There had never been anything between them. Just endless disagreements, arguments, a constant tension he refused to name. So why…?
He brushed the thought away with a blink.
“No. No one.”
The demoness’s smile deepened at that final word. She straightened gracefully and pretended to move away.
“I was just on my way down to check on the latest specimens… Would you do me the honor of accompanying me? I’m certain you’ll appreciate their potential—and perhaps it will help you better persuade your friends. And your people.”
She extended her arm with a nonchalant elegance, as if giving him a choice.
Idris knew he should be wary. He knew every word she spoke was measured, that every smile hid intent. But part of him… a subtle part, flattered by her attention, couldn’t help but relax beneath her gaze. He allowed himself to surrender to that feeling, to the understanding she offered him—where others saw only opposition.
Without a word, he offered her his arm. Naamah wrapped hers around his with a delicacy that felt almost affectionate.
“With pleasure.”
“No… no… please… not this…”
The words choked in Aisling’s throat, broken by sobs.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. This is my fault.”
The young woman pressed her trembling hands against the gaping wound tearing through Ren’s chest, her fingers sticky with blood on the fabric of his tunic, now soaked in scarlet. She pushed down with all her strength, desperately trying to close the impossible, to stop the inevitable.
But the dark stain kept spreading, and the old man grew paler before her eyes, his weary gaze full of infinite tenderness.
“It’ll be alright, Aisling. Listen to me… it’ll be alright.”
“Don’t leave me! I can’t… I can’t do this without you!”
“You can…” he murmured with a frail, dying smile. “I raised you for this… I’m so proud of you. So proud…”
“Please… don’t leave me… Don’t die!”
But the blood kept flowing. And flowing.
And then— A merciless hand clamped down on her shoulder, forcing her to turn around. A wave of dizziness hit her, her tears blurring everything.
A towering figure loomed above her— Massive. Covered in blood.
Death.
“Aisling, wake up!”
She jolted upright, a scream tearing from her throat, her breath ragged. Another pair of hands gripped her shoulders firmly, keeping her from thrashing.
“It’s alright, it’s alright…” Nimue’s voice was gentle, but urgent. “You were having a nightmare.”
Aisling brought a trembling hand to her face, trying to catch her breath.
“Ren… Nimue, Ren is going to die! We have to go back to the Twilight Realm… Death… I…”
She stopped, her throat tightening. Her mind swirled under the weight of the questions crashing into her. Why would Death go after Ren? What could possibly be the reason? Had he come to regret the sacrifice of the Nephilim for humankind? But even if that were true… it wouldn’t bring them back. Nothing could.
She couldn’t make sense of the vision. Back there, in the Twilight Realm, when he had joined her, they had shared something. A silent understanding, a moment suspended in time when, just for an instant, she had thought she glimpsed something else in him—something more than a cold, unyielding force.
So why? Why did this nightmare feel like a warning?
The question haunted her, drilling into her skull like a slow-acting poison. Nimue was watching her intently now. Since the Burning Lakes, the Watcher had learned not to take Aisling’s dreams lightly.
“What did you see?” she asked, her tone more serious.
Aisling swallowed hard.
“I… Ren… he was wounded… he was dying… and Death was there, covered in blood… I…”
The little specter fell silent for a moment, visibly shaken, thinking fast.
“We have to get out of here,” Aisling declared, a feverish urgency in her voice. “To hell with Naamah and the Essence of Air—we’ll deal with that later! Let’s find Idris and—”
She stopped abruptly, her eyes scanning the surroundings. Only she and the Elemental remained.
Idris hadn’t returned during the night—she knew that. He had spent hours exploring the laboratories under Nimue’s discreet watch.
But Strife… Strife had never left her side. He had stayed with her, troubled, unable to sleep. They had talked endlessly, trying to unravel the truth hidden in Naamah’s promises, weighing the risk of the Rephaim against the advantage they might offer. The conversation had led nowhere. Aisling had dozed off, eyes lost in contemplation of the Air Elemental, drifting between wakefulness and oblivion.
A knot tightened in her stomach.
“Where is Strife?”
“I was just about to wake you…” Nimue hesitated before answering. “He left a while ago and… he hasn’t come back.”
“Left? Left where?”
Nimue lowered her head slightly.
“He… found something.”
She stepped aside, revealing the immense white mass of the Essence of Air. At first glance, nothing seemed different. But upon closer inspection, Aisling noticed something off.
Thin wisps of mist were escaping in much greater quantities than before, floating just above the ground like spectral threads.
Then she understood. The body had moved.
Instinctively, she stood and stepped toward the Elemental. Contrary to what she had thought upon waking, the mist was not coming from it—but from beneath it.
Her gaze locked onto a hatch, misaligned, barely hidden under the massive creature.
A cold shiver ran down her spine.
“Strife realized the mist was coming from somewhere beneath the Elemental, not from the creature itself,” Nimue confirmed. “He wanted to check it out… but he still hasn’t come back.”
A heavy, menacing silence fell over them.
“What do we do, Aisling?” Nimue’s voice finally broke the quiet, trembling.
The young woman struggled to gather her thoughts. The image of Ren, lying in a pool of blood, wouldn’t leave her mind. Her dream had felt so real… too real. But she couldn’t leave without Strife or Idris.
She glanced toward the open hatch beneath the Air Elemental, where ghostly wisps of mist were still escaping. Drawing a deep breath, she pushed the fear from her gut.
“Stay close to me… Let’s see what’s going on.”
Nimue nodded silently and stepped toward the hatch. Together, they managed to fully slide aside the misaligned panel, revealing a narrow opening plunging into the heart of the tower. A long metal shaft stretched below them—tight and oppressive. Aisling grimaced. How had Strife, with his massive build, managed to squeeze through?
A metal ladder descended into darkness. From up there, it was impossible to see where it led. All they could make out was the thick mist drowning the passage, spiraling silently upward. The air was saturated, heavy and damp, leaving an odd taste on the tongue.
A shiver ran down Aisling’s spine. She exchanged one last look with Nimue, then, without a word, gripped the cold rungs of the ladder and began her descent into the unknown. Nimue followed closely behind, gliding almost soundlessly into the shadows of the passage.
They arrived in a kind of tunnel that branched into several corridors—a labyrinth where the mist seemed to have seeped in like a living creature. Aisling couldn’t see beyond her outstretched arm, and every step she took echoed strangely, muffled by the mist-thickened air.
Then she heard footsteps. Quick. Stealthy. Rushing toward her with fierce intensity. Her heart sped up, her muscles tensed, ready for a threatening shadow to leap out. But nothing. The sounds vanished as quickly as they had come, swallowed by the void. She waited, breath held. And every time she moved forward a few steps… they returned.
They surged toward her like an invisible wave, always just out of sight, stopping just before she could make out their source. Then they would disappear again. A cruel game that frayed her nerves, making her tremble despite herself.
Then came the voices.
The same ones she had heard the night before in the ruined, deserted streets. They first slid in like indistinct murmurs, a chill in the air, before growing clearer, weaving together, assaulting her from every direction.
“You should’ve run while you still had the chance…”
“You knew what was coming. You knew.”
“You led them to ruin.”
Images burst through her mind like searing lightning. Shadows fleeing into the night, chased by devouring fire. Nimrach in flames, steel, screams.
“Why did you abandon us?”
“You could have saved them. But you didn’t.”
The stone ground of the Burning Lakes beneath her knees. Dried blood crusted into her palms. The stifling heat, the howls echoing in the abyss.
“Every choice you make brings more death.”
“You carry chaos within you.”
A piercing cold. Absolute silence. Then tiny figures, fragile silhouettes, barely shadows in the mist. Infants, with empty eyes. Silent. No spark in their gaze.
“They breathe… but it isn’t life.”
“You didn’t save them. You never saved anything.”
Aisling brought a trembling hand to her temples, as if she could drive the voices away, stop them from consuming her alive. But they kept coming, relentless, hammering her worst fears, throwing her failures in her face, dragging her into a nightmarish spiral where past and present blurred.
Desperate, she turned a pleading gaze toward Nimue, searching for some anchor in the storm of shadows and whispers. But what she saw froze the blood in her veins.
The little specter was curled up tightly, trembling, her hands clamped over her head as if shielding herself from invisible agony. Her eyes, usually sharp and piercing, were wide with terror. Nimue was hearing the voices too.
A strange clarity pierced the thick fog of fear wrapping around Aisling. Her heart pounded wildly, her temples throbbed under the pressure of the insistent whispers, but she managed to pull her thoughts together. The mist. The voices had only appeared within the mist.
Drawing a shaky breath, Aisling forced her hands away from her ears. The cacophony hit her full force—deafening, brutal, like a hurricane of cruel whispers. She shut her eyes, trying to understand.
Unlike the Essence of Fire, whose howling presence had been fierce and overwhelming, what she felt here was different. More insidious. More intimate.
A reflection.
Yes, that was exactly it. These weren’t memories. Those poisoned words—no one had ever spoken them to her. But she knew them, because she had thought them herself, in moments of doubt and solitude, deep within her own mind.
Her eyelids snapped open. The voices surged again, fusing into an unbearable shriek, a silent scream that tore at her nerves like a blade. Thinking became nearly impossible. Every attempt at thought drowned beneath the deafening flood of voices. So, Aisling simply stopped trying.
She remembered the Essence of Fire. For the Elemental to perceive beyond its rage, she had needed to calm her own anger. Perhaps this time too, the key was not to fight—but to accept.
Holding Nimue at arm’s length, she leaned back against the freezing metal wall, letting her weight sink into it. The cold bit through her clothes, anchoring her consciousness in the present. She focused on her breathing, slow and steady, on the pounding of her heart, on the pressure of the air in her lungs. Gradually, she emptied her mind to make room for the whispers.
I hear you… You are heard.
She had no idea how long she remained that way. But as she let herself be permeated by the mist, something strange happened. The voices didn’t vanish, but they seemed less chaotic, more structured, as if merely listening had stripped them of some of their power.
Slowly, she turned her head toward Nimue. The little specter rocked gently back and forth, her broken whimpers nearly sounding like sobs. Aisling moved closer and placed a hand against her insubstantial chest—a gesture as comforting as she could manage.
“Breathe… Focus on your breathing. Feel your body. Let them speak, let them be.”
She spoke softly, whispering so as not to disturb the fragile balance she had found. She could still feel the voices circling within her, but they no longer crushed her. Gradually, Nimue stopped trembling, though her small spectral form still shivered now and then.
“What’s happening?”
“I don’t know. But we have to get out of here. These voices come from the mist… Don’t fight them. Focus on what you feel, and let them exist.”
“Are you sure?” Nimue hesitated, her large luminous eyes fixed on Aisling with worry.
“No.”
A silence passed between them. Then Nimue nodded, resolute. Aisling took her hand—both to guide her and to keep herself from falling back into the spiral—and together, they moved on through the mist.
They eventually emerged into a larger, circular chamber, its walls of metal dulled by moisture and time. Several tunnels opened around them, some blocked by massive ventilation fans whose blades turned slowly, diffusing the mist downward through the lower levels. The air thrummed with a deep, distant rumble, like a metallic heartbeat.
At the center of the room yawned an immense chasm. The mist seemed to pour from it in thick, ghostly waves, like an exhalation from the earth’s depths. Aisling narrowed her eyes. Something was suspended just above the void, barely visible through the shifting vapors. She saw thick chains stretched from the walls, holding an indistinct shape in place.
“Aisling! It’s Strife!”
Nimue’s panicked voice made her start. The little specter was pointing across the chasm at a collapsed figure. Through the milky veil, Aisling made out a massive body, half-hidden in the mist.
Without hesitation, she rushed toward him, carefully stepping across the uncertain edges of the metal tiles. When she reached Strife, she dropped to her knees and gently turned him onto his back.
Above them, the wall bore dark stains. Bullet marks marred the steel surface, aligned toward one of the chains hanging in the mist. A desperate attempt to break a bond.
Aisling carefully removed his mask. He was breathing, but his face was contorted, frozen in the grip of a nightmare from which he could not wake.
“Strife…” she murmured, placing a hand on his cheek.
A cold shiver ran through the air.
“You can do nothing for him, young human.”
A deep, sepulchral voice echoed through the chamber, coming from an unseen point above the well.
The mist suddenly began to spiral downward, drawn into the chasm by an invisible force. Slowly, a figure took shape—suspended in the void, bound by thick chains that sank into its flesh. A slender, broken body, haloed by a fallen radiance.
An angel.
Nimue staggered back, her voice broken by fear.
“By the Creator…” She raised her translucent hands to her face. “Lord Azrael?!”