Maria turned to her children, softening her voice for a moment—though anger still smoldered in her eyes. She ran her hand gently through their hair, a brief gesture heavy with tenderness.
"Mom will speak with you in just a moment, all right? We just need to settle something here. If you find Elise, stay with her."
Elian, Emanuelle, and Anthony rose in silence. The mages led them to the door. Before it closed, Elian turned back for one last look at his mother. What he saw in her was not only the pain she always carried—but something new, honed like a blade: wrath.
The door shut with a dry snap.
★★★
Silence fell over the room after the children—and the two mages who escorted them—departed. Maria, who had been seated, stood and began to pace, trying to steady herself.
The baronette's family still knelt on the floor, not daring to lift their eyes to her. They knew their future sat in the hands of that peasant woman.
"I will take full responsibility for my son's words," the baronette began—only to be cut off at once by Anna.
"No one gave you leave to speak," she snapped, her voice slicing the air.
Maria kept her gaze on the three, kneeling, heads bowed. Then her voice broke the silence:
"Is what your son said true?" she asked, cold, almost devoid of emotion.
The baronette remained silent. It wasn't that he lacked an answer—he knew, deep down, that it was true.
"Answer the lady," Iolanda ordered, her look as sharp as a blade. "And do not dare lie."
The silence stretched for long minutes until, at last, he spoke:
"Yes… it's true." His voice trembled, laden with fear. "I told him—once or twice—that as a noble he wouldn't have a problem… having his fun with peasant girls."
Maria's stomach turned. Her head swam for a few seconds, seized by the memory of Baron Hoffmann's sneering face when he'd said he would do anything to get what he wanted.
"So… if we did not have Elder Marduk's protection, or if my son had not been accepted by the Dark Throne—and she by the Tower of Wisdom—you would not mind your fifteen-year-old son 'playing' with my daughter, who is only eight?" Her voice grew ever more glacial.
As she spoke, her mind betrayed her—dragging her back to the alley where she had been pulled. The instant when fate almost repeated itself—and didn't, only because Elian had been there to stop it.
The baronette kept silent. There was no answer he could give. Any word would be a lie, and he knew it. Only one path remained: desperation.
"Please… spare my wife's life and my son's," he begged, his voice unsteady, dragged along by fear. "I will take the full weight of the sentence."
His plea erased nothing. If anything, it confirmed Maria's question.
She paced, heart in turmoil, until her body rebelled. She vomited then and there, her stomach recoiling at the mere possibility that Emanuelle might become a toy in that boy's hands.
"What do you want to do, Maria?" Iolanda asked, lifting a hand to conjure a simple spell that cleaned the floor in an instant. Her voice—though firm—carried a rare shadow of hesitation.
"I don't know…" Maria answered, voice choked. "I've never had the power to decide what a person's life is worth."
Iolanda watched her in silence. She could see the duality clearly—the weight of centuries condensed into a woman who had never wielded the blade of justice, and who now held three lives in her hands.
"The decision is yours alone, Maria," Iolanda said, tone grave. "We can let them go, if that is what you wish."
Doubt consumed her. She had never taken a life… but so many had been taken from hers. And now they were willing to steal even her daughter's innocence? Hoffmann's memory rang within her like a living ghost.
At last, with great effort, Maria stopped pacing. Her tear-rimmed eyes no longer shook. She drew a long breath, and when she spoke, her voice was cold as steel:
"Perhaps I will regret the decision."
The silence held—long enough for the baronette to nurture hope. He was already picturing how he would punish his son at home, perhaps enforce some lesson… nothing that would truly change. Only the promise of greater caution next time.
But his hope died there.
"Please… do not spare any of their lives," Maria said, steady, her voice not despairing but delivering sentence.
"For the gods' sake, milady, don't do this! I swear we will—"
"I don't care what you will do from now on," she cut in, raising her voice. She took a breath, but did not waver. "Perhaps you would even keep whatever promises you make now, but it does not change the fact that—if not for my son's sacrifice in joining the Dark Throne, or for Emanuelle's acceptance into the Tower—my daughter would be marked. Your son would have done what he said. And all of it… because of you."
The air in the room grew heavy. The flames in the hearth shivered, as if even fire feared those words.
"Even if it brings me pain and regret in the future…" Maria finished, her blue eyes honed like knives, "this is what I want now."
Iolanda drew a breath, meeting Maria's gaze with the same iron steadiness as always—but for the first time, her eyes reflected a quiet understanding.
"Go to your children, Maria," she said, voice deep yet gentle. "What happens from here is not something you need to carry in your eyes. Your decision has been given."
Maria hesitated. Her lips trembled, but she nodded. Before leaving, she looked once more at the three kneeling before her. The baronette's wife trembled; the boy cried in silence. For a heartbeat, Maria almost asked herself whether her sentence was just. The doubt vanished at once. If not for Elian—if not for the Tower accepting Emanuelle—her daughter might have been dragged into the same hell that had once nearly consumed her.
She drew a deep breath and walked to the door. As she crossed the threshold, two mages fell in beside her, guiding her into the corridors where her children waited.
Inside the room, the silence grew heavier.
Anna stepped up to the kneeling trio and, with a swift motion, drew three strips of black cloth from her leather satchel. One by one, she gagged them without the slightest gentleness, smothering any chance of screams. The boy tried to resist, but one of the wall-guarding mages seized his hair and forced his head down until the gag was tied off.
The air thickened when Iolanda snapped her fingers.
From the back of the bookcase wall, a seam opened. Heavy planks slid aside with a low grind, revealing a hidden door. Beyond it, a narrow corridor descended in stone steps, swallowed by darkness. A gust of cold, damp air wafted out—the unmistakable scent of a dungeon.
"Take them," Iolanda ordered, her voice like iron.
The mages hauled the Javier family up by their arms and dragged them down the steps. The baronette tried to fight, but fear had weakened him. Chains clasped to their wrists clinked and whispered—as if already rehearsing the fate that awaited them.
At the end of the corridor, a wide chamber opened. It was a silent dungeon, lit only by torches fixed in the black-stone walls. In the center, a runic circle was carved into the floor—red lines pulsing as if alive.
And there, standing before the circle, waited Elder Demétrio Marduk.
His presence filled the space. His red eyes burned in the low light; his black-and-crimson garb shimmered as though woven by living shadows. Only his voice broke the hush, deep and unyielding as a decree:
"My promise is a debt," he said, every syllable reverberating in the stone. "And I settle all of them."
The mages forced the three onto their knees inside the runes. The baronette tried to rise; the wife sobbed in silence; the boy shook like a leaf. The chains binding them fused into the ritual itself, pinning their bodies to the floor.
Marduk raised his left hand. The runes carved into the stone flared a fierce crimson, casting off ethereal sparks that coiled around the three.
The air grew heavy. Torchlight faltered, as if afraid to keep burning.
With his right hand, the Elder traced a precise motion—and a black flame bloomed in his palm. It was no ordinary fire, but a heatless blaze that consumed only what could not be seen.
He murmured words in an ancient tongue, and the flame split into three. Each coal-dark ember flowed to the bodies of the baronette, his wife, and his son.
Then it began.
Their bodies arched; their mouths opened in screams smothered by the gags. No human sound came forth—only a rasping howl, as if something were being torn out from within. A pale, bluish light began to seep from their eyes and mouths, writhing like living mist.
It was the soul.
Marduk closed his fist, and the three black flames braided together, fettering those souls in shadowy chains. The Javiers' bodies sagged, inert within the circle—hollow husks. The chamber smelled of iron and burned incense, as if even the air had been sacrificed.
The Elder opened his hand slowly. The three bluish lights were crushed by the black fire until they vanished completely. Nothing remained. No cry, no life. Only silence—and ash that wasn't ash lingering in the air.
He drew a long breath and shut his eyes for a heartbeat, as if this execution were merely another duty in an eternity of obligations.
"Let the name Javier be erased from the memory of men," he murmured.
He turned and left through the hidden door back into the corridor. Behind him, the runic circle dimmed, swallowing the bodies as if they had never existed.
When he emerged again into the upper halls, not a flicker of doubt touched his bearing. He straightened his garb, lifted his chin, and returned to the main way.
In the reception room, Count Albert Avenue waited. He stood draped in a mantle of scarlet velvet embroidered in gold thread that caught torchlight like living embers. Beneath it he wore a refined silver-gray tunic, tailored with the elegance of his station.
Part of his face was concealed by a black metal mask adorned with gold accents, leaving only mouth and jaw bare—enough to drink from the goblet of ruby wine in his hand. His fingers, heavy with gem-set rings, glittered in the dim light.
Marduk strode past him, his grave voice cutting through the air:
"Come. The conference cannot wait."
Albert Avenue inclined his head in respect and followed the Elder without a word.
And so, as if nothing at all had transpired in the hidden cells below, Marduk returned to the bright sphere of ceremony.