Opening her eyes, Sacrifice was met by Arkham, his electric wires extended, fear etched across his face. In a single, quake-like motion, she seized the blue-faced device and smashed it against the nearest rock. The impact rang out in a sharp bang as the flying device shattered into pieces.
[Arkham]: Warring...Warring...Warring...They know w"WE." have failed.
Then the screen had gone black.
Sacrifice exhaled once and turned to the mercenaries surrounding her.
[Sacrifice]: Reth. Gather everyone.
Her eyes hardened.
[Sacrifice]: We're leaving. Now.
[Somewhere else]
Theresa jolted awake.
Her first instinct was to search for the girl she had seen within the Crown.
But for some reason, the previous kings in the Crown had begun to panic, and riot, and something in the Crown suddenly silenced them and left.
They then started screaming about Diablos and the Punishment Clan, and gargoyles.
[Theresa]: Sacrifice… just who is she?
Her voice drifted weakly through the haze of her thoughts, fragile and searching.
Something brushed against her hair.
A soft tag.
Theresa looked down.
A small Cautus girl sat quietly on her lap, eyes wide with concern. Amiya—the child she had been reading a bedtime story to before darkness claimed her. Her ears twitched as she looked up, sensing something was wrong.
[Kal'tsit]: Your Highness… are you alright?
Kal'tsit knelt beside them, green fur immaculate, expression unreadable. Babel's chief physician. A veteran of wars long forgotten. A figure carrying centuries of memory and consequence.
Theresa blinked, fighting through the lingering haze.
[Doctor]: I'm interested in what just happened… and in the name you mentioned. Sacrifice.
The Doctor stepped forward then, face obscured, presence unmistakable. A tactician shaped by Babel's darkest hours, a man whose past was heavy with consequence.
Theresa drew a slow breath.
[Theresa]: It was a name I heard from a girl I met within the Crown.
Her fingers tightened slightly.
[Theresa]: She looked like an emotionless doll—empty, distant. But beneath that stillness… I felt it. Sadness. And something else.
A pause.
[Theresa]: Her emotions aren't gone. They're buried—sealed deep within her heart.
A pause.
[Theresa]: Also… I think she was a Diablos.
For a heartbeat, no one spoke.
Then reality faltered.
A passing vampire operative stiffened. A Sarkaz intelligence officer froze mid-breath. Several Sarkaz exchanged looks of raw disbelief.
The emergence of a new Sarkaz subspecies would have been easier to accept than the existence of a living Diablos.
Kal'tsit's composure cracked—only slightly.
She raised a hand, studying Theresa with open shock.
[Theresa]: …I mean, she did turn into a massive fire monster at one point. But afterward, she apologized.
That did it.
Somewhere in the room, a spy from her brother's side nearly lost consciousness. Kal'tsit's breath hitched—once—and only once. The implications cascaded faster than any battlefield report.
[Kal'tsit]: Call all available medical personnel. Full diagnostic teams.
Her voice snapped into command, precise and merciless.
[Kal'tsit]: Announce the highest level of internal security. Assume possible poisoning or cognitive interference affecting Her Majesty.
She turned sharply to the nearest operator.
[Kal'tsit]: Summon Logos and the caster teams immediately. Scan the area and Theresa herself for any residual Arts—active or dormant. If something capable of fabricating a Diablos exists, I want to know how before it happens.
Her eyes returned to Theresa, narrowed with rare urgency.
[Kal'tsit]: This situation is urgent.
By nightfall, Babel entered a silent lockdown.
Twenty spies were captured—some exposed by panic, others by overconfidence. Hidden Arts arrays were uncovered in corridors once believed secure, and several internal channels revealed traces of corruption that had gone unnoticed for far too long.
Even information itself became suspect.
News of Theresa's words spread faster than any official order. A certain pink-haired Sarkaz, face carefully composed, had no choice but to recall every embedded agent. None were exempt. All underwent full medical examinations and deep Arts screenings out of fear of what hidden residual Arts they might already be carrying.
And somehow, against all reason, the entire country entered a rare, uneasy day of peace. Both sides—Sarkaz and internal factions alike—halted plots, paused attacks, and even the usual underhanded schemes ground to a halt. A nation teetering on the brink of civil war had been forced into silence, all because a green-haired man had been too lazy to file a report.
[Six days later]
Sacrifice continued her march toward the Scar Market.
With each passing day, more lives were saved—and more people joined her.
She was attacked more than once by wandering mercenaries.
Each time, someone she had saved intervened—blocking blows, feeding false information, or betraying their own ranks to protect her.
[Mordred]: Still can't believe this group's past two hundred.
He cast a wary glance at the growing column behind them.
[Mordred]: Boss, why do you insist on picking up every stray we come across? If this keeps up, we're going to end up on someone's big list.
[Sacrifice]: Because they are my patients.
Her voice was flat, clinical—spoken as if she were stating an obvious truth, not a choice that reshaped everything around her.
[Sacrifice]: And if someone already had me on a list, I would've been dead long ago.
Mordred opened his mouth to respond—
—but Reth came sprinting back, panic stripping all composure from his face.
[Reth]: BOSS—RUN! THE KNIGHT IS COMING!
The warning arrived too late.
A colossal blade—less a sword than a metal pillar—crashed into the ground beside Sacrifice, obliterating the space where Mordred had stood moments before. Stone shattered. dust rose.
Sacrifice lifted her gaze, following the path of the falling weapon.
What stood before them could only be described as a grotesque parody of a knight—a towering frame like a Gundam cobbled together from scrap metal and warped wood, gripping a spear large enough to impale a vehicle. At its center was a man clad in battered armor, his helm replaced by the exposed skull of a deer.
A scream tore from him, thick with rage and bloodlust.
[Knight]: ARKHAM TODAY IS YOUR END.
[To be continued]