The holy city of Sanctum Luminous had stood for eight hundred years, its white stone walls gleaming like pearls in the morning sun. Its towers reached toward the heavens like fingers stretched in prayer, topped with golden spires that caught the light and threw it back in brilliant cascades. The city was a jewel of faith and learning, home to the greatest cathedral on the continent and the sacred libraries that held the accumulated wisdom of ages.
Now it burned.
Kael Viremont rode through the shattered gates on a destrier as black as midnight, its eyes glowing with hellfire, its hooves striking sparks from the cobblestones. Behind him marched his army—ten thousand strong, a tide of darkness that flowed through the streets like spilled ink. They wore armor of black steel and carried banners that bore no heraldry, only the symbol of a crown consumed by flames.
The defenders had fought bravely, Kael had to admit. They had held the walls for three days, their white-cloaked templars singing hymns even as they died. But bravery meant nothing in the face of overwhelming power. His siege engines had pulverized their defenses, his sorcerers had turned their own blessed weapons against them, and his demons had scaled the walls like spiders on a web.
Now the city was his, and he would see it reduced to ash and memory.
The grand cathedral dominated the city's heart, its massive dome visible from every street. Kael guided his mount toward it, ignoring the screams that echoed from the side streets, the crash of falling masonry, the acrid smell of burning wood and flesh. His soldiers knew their work—they would spare no one, leave nothing standing. By sunset, Sanctum Luminous would be nothing but a cautionary tale.
The cathedral's main doors were massive things of carved oak bound with silver, depicting scenes from the holy scriptures. They had been barricaded from within, but Kael's gauntleted fist shattered them with a single blow, the wood exploding inward in a shower of splinters. He dismounted and walked into the sacred space, his boots clicking against the marble floor.
The cathedral was a masterwork of divine architecture. Pillars of white stone rose to support a vaulted ceiling painted with scenes of angels and saints. Stained glass windows threw rainbow patterns across the floor, and the high altar gleamed with gold and precious stones. It was beautiful, in its way—a monument to faith and hope and the belief that somewhere, somehow, the gods were watching.
It made Kael want to burn it all the faster.
"Please," came a voice from behind the altar, thin and desperate. "Please, we mean no harm. We are servants of the light, healers and teachers. We have done nothing to deserve this."
Kael walked toward the voice, his sword singing as it slid from its sheath. The blade was a thing of dark beauty, forged from meteoric steel and quenched in the blood of the innocent. Runes of power crawled along its length, pulsing with a sickly red light that seemed to drink in the rainbow patterns from the windows.
Behind the altar, he found them—the last survivors of the cathedral's clergy. Perhaps two dozen souls, men and women in robes of white and gold, their faces streaked with tears and soot. They had gathered around their high priest, an elderly man whose kind eyes held no accusation, only sorrow.
"You are the one they call the Demon Lord," the priest said, his voice steady despite the circumstances. "I have heard the stories. The cities you've burned, the armies you've shattered. But I do not see a demon standing before me. I see a man in pain."
Kael's grip tightened on his sword. "Then you see poorly, old man."
"Do I?" The priest stepped forward, ignoring the blade that could end his life with a thought. "You were Duke Kael Viremont once. The Gentle Duke, they called you. The Lord of the Western Vale. I knew your father—a good man, a just man. He would be proud of the leader you became."
"My father is dead," Kael said, his voice flat as stone. "As is the man you speak of. I am what remains."
"No." The priest shook his head, his eyes never leaving Kael's face. "A man's past does not die so easily. It lives in his actions, his choices, the mercy he shows to those who cannot defend themselves. You could choose mercy now. You could spare us."
Kael raised his sword, the blade catching the light from the stained glass windows. "I choose nothing. I am what I was made to be."
The priest opened his mouth to speak again, but a sound cut through the air—a child's cry, high and desperate. Kael's head snapped toward the sound, and he saw them: a family huddled in the shadow of a side chapel. A man, a woman, and two children, no more than five or six years old. They were not clergy—common folk, perhaps, who had sought sanctuary in the cathedral when the walls fell.
The man was wounded, blood seeping through his torn shirt, but he had positioned himself between his family and the approaching soldiers. His face was a mask of terror, but his voice was steady as he whispered to his children.
"Close your eyes," he said, his hands trembling as he held them close. "Close your eyes and think of home. Think of the garden where you played, the stream where we caught fish. Think of Mama's lullabies. Don't look. Don't listen. Just remember the good things."
The children obeyed, burying their faces against their father's chest. Their mother wept silently, her hand stroking their hair with infinite tenderness. She was beautiful, Kael realized—not with the polished beauty of nobles, but with the quiet grace of a woman who had known love and loss and had chosen to love anyway.
"Lyanna," whispered a voice from the depths of his memory. "Lyanna, singing in the garden, her voice like silver bells."
"Papa, look! I caught a butterfly!"
"Daddy, tell us a story!"
The sword trembled in Kael's hand. The family before him blurred, and for a moment, he saw other faces—his wife's gentle smile, his daughter's laugh, his son's eager eyes. The pain hit him like a physical blow, doubling him over, and he gasped for air that seemed too thin to breathe.
"Strike them down," came the Goddess's voice, sharp and insistent. "End their suffering quickly. You know what mercy looks like in this world—it looks like death."
Kael straightened, his jaw clenched against the agony that threatened to tear him apart. He raised his sword again, and the father looked up at him with eyes that held no hatred, only desperate love for the family he was about to lose.
"Please," the man whispered, his voice breaking. "Please, my children... they're so young. They've never hurt anyone. If you must... if you must, take me instead. But let them live. Let them remember kindness."
The sword hung in the air between them, poised to fall. Kael's hand shook, and he could feel the eyes of his soldiers upon him, waiting for the killing blow that would end this farce of mercy.
"Strike," the Goddess commanded, her voice like ice in his mind. "Strike, and be done with it."
But Kael looked at the man's face, at the way he held his children, at the love that burned in his eyes even in the face of death. He looked at the mother's tears, at the way she tried to shield her babies from the horror around them. He looked at the children themselves, so small and innocent, their faces pressed against their father's chest.
"Papa, tell us about the brave knight who saved the princess!"
"Daddy, why are you crying?"
"When I grow up, I want to be just like you!"
The sword fell from Kael's nerveless fingers, clattering against the marble floor. The sound echoed through the cathedral like a bell tolling, and in that moment, something inside him broke—not shattered, but cracked, like ice beginning to thaw.
He turned away from the family, his movement sharp and sudden. "Go," he said, his voice barely audible. "Take your children and go. Find the back entrance to the crypts. The passage leads to the old cemetery outside the walls. My soldiers will not follow you there."
The man stared at him in shock, unable to comprehend this sudden reversal. "My lord... I don't understand..."
"Go!" Kael's voice cracked like a whip, and the family scrambled to their feet, the father gathering his children in his arms. They fled toward the back of the cathedral, their footsteps echoing in the vast space.
The soldiers who had been watching exchanged glances, their faces hidden behind their helms. General Malachar stepped forward, his voice carefully neutral.
"My lord? Your orders?"
Kael bent and retrieved his sword, his movements mechanical. When he looked up, his face was once again the mask of cold marble, but something had changed in his eyes—a flicker of... something. Doubt? Regret?
"Burn it," he said finally. "Burn it all."
But as he walked from the cathedral, leaving the trembling priests behind, one thought echoed in his mind like a prayer he dared not speak aloud:
What have I become?
"You hesitated," the Goddess's voice followed him into the street, cold with disapproval. "You showed weakness. Why?"
Kael did not answer. He mounted his destrier and rode through the burning city, watching the flames consume everything he had come to destroy. But the image of the father shielding his children burned brighter than any fire, and for the first time in seven years, the Demon Lord felt something other than emptiness.
He felt afraid.
Afraid of what he had become.
And more terrifying still—afraid of what he might yet remember himself to be.