The Nether Court did not echo, for sound in that place was devoured.
The hall was carved from ancient obsidian and bone, its ceiling vanishing into blackness threaded with faint veins of violet fire. Columns loomed like petrified giants along the length of the chamber, their surfaces writhing softly with runes no mortal tongue could speak. Torchlight here burned blue, casting no warmth only warping shadows that slithered and reached without shape.
They waited beneath those lights: five vessels, hand-selected, bound in chains of spectral silver. Two women. Three men. Their bodies bore no wounds, yet their eyes held the terror of those who had seen the edges of death and been made to kneel before it.
Behind them, a dozen highborn ministers of the Nether Court stood still as statues — robed in ash, faces half-covered in horned masks. Among them was Ivan, First Hand of the Devil, tall and lean in dark velvet, his expression unreadable as he surveyed the trembling five.
Low murmurs undulated through the chamber. The scent of myrrh and sulfur clung to the air, perfumed rot braided with incense.
Then the great doors opened, soundless but final.
The murmurs died at once.
He had arrived.
Morris entered the hall without announcement, yet every head bowed the instant his shadow fell across the threshold. The room recoiled from him, even as it yearned for his presence.
"Hail, Lord of the Unfallen, Keeper of the Seal, Son of the Forbidden Flame," the court intoned as one, their voices layering like choral thunder.
Morris did not acknowledge them at first.
He walked slowly not out of hesitation, but inevitability. Like a storm passing through a graveyard. Each step on the black marble echoed like a drumbeat from some ancient, forgotten war.
His robes were obsidian velvet, embroidered in silver veins that pulsed with subtle light. The high collar framed a throat marked faintly with sigils runes of dominion and blood pact. No crown adorned his head, but none was needed. Power radiated from him in waves, thickening the air, distorting it.
His eyes, when they lifted, were unreadable not glowing, not empty, but hungry. They seemed to look through the world, not at it. And his beauty the unearthly kind that disturbed rather than soothed only made him more unbearable to behold.
Morris reached the obsidian throne at the head of the room, turned once toward the vessels, and slowly, languidly, took his seat, he gestured to officials to rise.
His voice, when it came, was a thing of cold silk.
"Proceed."
Ivan stepped forward, his long shadow stretching across the floor like a claw.
"My Lord," he said, bowing low. "As commanded, the five vessels have been gathered and presented to your court. Each has been bound, tested, and prepared. None resisted."
The five remained kneeling, heads lowered, their shackles humming faintly.
Ivan turned toward them and raised a hand.
"Rise."
They obeyed, slowly, limbs trembling, eyes flicking toward the throne.
Morris studied them in silence, fingers drumming once against the bone armrest.
Ivan began the introductions, his voice echoing beneath the high vaulted ceiling.
"First, my Lord Vala, the Shadowveil Enchantress."
A woman stepped forward, or tried to her knees nearly gave out. She wore a cloak of spun dusk, her skin like onyx, her lips ink-black. Vala raised her head only halfway, unable to meet Morris's gaze directly.
"She commands shadow and illusion. Her victims are drowned in the dark terrors of their own minds. Fear is her wine, nightmares her bread. She consumes the soul, not the body."
Morris tilted his head.
Vala shuddered.
"Second Zira, the Veiled Mistress."
Zira moved with quiet grace, her face veiled in a lattice of black silk. Beneath it, faintly, her eyes glowed like fading embers. A scent of grave-earth clung to her skin.
"She sees what should never be seen," Ivan said. "She breathes life into the dead and rots the living with a kiss. Her blood is cursed with the knowledge of fallen bloodlines necromancer, seer, poisoner."
Zira bowed her head low.
"Third Vark, the Crimson Marauder."
The man who stepped forward had the eyes of a wolf bright, gold, and too alive. His hair was stained with dried blood, his fingers sharp and stained red. He grinned with a mouth full of sharpened teeth.
"Cursed vampire, assassin, slaughterer of kings," Ivan intoned. "He feeds on blood and madness, thriving in war. His presence causes decay. His strength blooms in carnage."
Vark didn't bow. He knelt instead, one fist to the floor, the grin still wide on his face.
"Fourth Mord, the Behemoth of Chaos."
The man who stepped forward was a mountain. Bare-chested, scarred, and marked with brands of power from dozens of ancient cults. His eyes were pitch-black. He breathed like a sleeping volcano.
"He is destruction incarnate. A beast of smoke and ruin. The chains of reason do not bind him. He is chaos given flesh."
Mord exhaled, and the stone beneath him cracked faintly.
"Fifth Kron, the Nightmare Wraith."
The final figure moved with inhuman stillness. Neither male nor female in shape cloaked in black gauze, no face visible beneath the hood. But something stared from that veil. Something wrong.
"He exists between sleep and waking. He turns fears into weapons. He corrupts the mind, wears it like clothing. He is what screams inside silence."
Ivan stepped back then, the ceremony complete.
Morris looked at them for a long moment.
The vessels trembled beneath his gaze.
Then he raised his hand.
Without a word, a silver tray materialized from the air floating carrying five wooden cups, smooth and round, each filled with a dark liquid that steamed with no heat.
The tray drifted toward the five.
"Drink," Morris said.
They hesitated only a second before obeying.
Each lifted a cup. Each drank.
And the moment the liquid passed their lips, the screaming began.
It wasn't loud. Not at first. More like a tearing within a soul rending.
Their bodies contorted, bent backward or to the side, eyes rolling white. Shadows exploded from their skins ghosts of what they were, what they would become. Bones cracked, reformed. Skin shimmered. Clothes burned away, replaced by silken garments of dark enchantment and perfect design.
And when the light dimmed, the five knelt again transformed.
Beautiful.
Terrifying.
Their eyes now shimmered faint silver. Their features sharpened. They looked human… but the way an artist might paint a god after dreaming too long.
Morris leaned back, one hand resting against his jaw, and smiled slow, cruel, satisfied.
"Perfect vessels."
Ivan bowed. "They await your command."
Morris's tone shifted colder now, almost weary. Yet every syllable was sharpened to a point.
"You will go to the human realm and bring me people as many as can be tempted. The willing. The curious. The desperate. Offer them glory, gold, whatever they hunger for. But they must come by choice."
The five listened in silence.
"Guide them to the Nether Court first. Let them see my power. Let them taste what is waiting. Then" he extended a hand toward the void beyond the throne, "they will be sent to Howling Mountain. That is where they will find what remains of me."
His voice darkened, coiling like smoke.
"Anyone who tries to stop you crush them. Anyone who questions your right erase them. You will not return here empty-handed."
The air shimmered with heat.
"If you fail…" His eyes flashed, "you will be unmade, not in flesh, but in soul. You will scream in the pit of hell where no gods look, no sun shines, and no memory remains."
The vessels bowed low, their new voices whispering in perfect harmony.
"We will not fail you, Lord of the Unfallen."
Even Ivan who had stood beside Morris through a hundred conquests felt the breath leave his lungs at those words. He knew the Devil did not give warnings lightly.
"Good," Morris said, his gaze distant now, as though watching time itself unfold. "Go."
Ivan stepped forward and raised one hand.
A circle of pale fire blazed to life before them a portal carved through the veil between worlds.
Wind tore through the court. The hall darkened. The boundary thinned.
The five vessels turned toward it. And one by one, stepped through.
Into the human realm.
Into war.