The Order Hidden by Time
The summer heat blazed mercilessly, the air shimmering under the scorching sun. The two mages rested in the shade of a tree, where the sunlight filtered through the leaves in scattered patches across the grass. Despite the heat, their conversation was lively—about a five‑hundred‑year‑old tale, a mysterious knight order, and a past that still cast a shadow over the present.
Eli held the book in her lap, her fingers tapping lightly on the cover as she thought.
"Let's approach this from another angle," she said at last. "Why would someone—or a group of people—found a secret knight order? Presumably within the Empire's territory."
Andras tossed the towel over his shoulder and stared into the distance. "To rebel against the Emperor?"
"Istvan was a member of the Heroes' Party," Eli shook her head. "He fought against the Demon Army, and the Demon King was his main target. The book doesn't mention him being dissatisfied with the Emperor. But it also doesn't say he worked for him. Or that they were allies."
"But you haven't even finished the book yet," Andras pointed out.
"That doesn't matter right now," Eli waved it off. "Let me ask it differently. Why would you found a secret knight order?"
Andras smiled. "I already have a knight order. The Order of the Wolf Knights. But if I didn't… then yeah, I'd need my own army against the demons."
"Exactly!" Eli clapped her hands. "The hero can't be everywhere. He can't save everyone. But everyone cries out for him when danger comes. And what happens when help doesn't arrive?"
Andras shrugged. "Then you either defend yourself against the demons… or that's the end of the story."
Eli's expression darkened as memories surfaced. Her voice grew quieter, heavier, as if the weight of the past pressed down on her.
"Once, when I was still part of the Heroes' Party and traveling with Robin, we arrived late to a village. Implings had attacked them. Weak to us, but terrifying demon creatures to the villagers. They cried out for the hero. But we weren't there."
Andras listened intently, the air around them growing still.
"The implings started a massacre," Eli continued. "There weren't many—maybe ten. But the villagers fell one after another. Then… when one young man watched an imp kill his lover right before his eyes, something snapped inside him. Pain and grief overcame fear. He grabbed a pitchfork… and stabbed the imp to death."
The scene replayed in Eli's eyes as if it had happened yesterday.
"That's when the villagers realized they had a choice: scream helplessly and die… or fight back and let at least some survive. The hunter shot an arrow into one imp's eye. The woodcutter smashed another's head with his axe. Even an old woman—already halfway to the grave—slit one imp's throat with her sickle."
Andras nodded slowly. "A lot of people died, didn't they?"
"Most of the young men," Eli said softly. "But the women and children survived."
Andras was silent for a moment before asking:
"What happened to the young man who killed the first imp?"
"He killed three of them before he died from his wounds," Eli replied. "We learned that when we finally arrived. That young man had a little brother. When we entered the village, the villagers no longer looked at us as heroes. They looked at us like a plague to avoid."
Eli paused, then continued with a bitter smile:
"That boy spat on Robin. We didn't understand why. We only saw that they didn't welcome us. Naturally, we left and never returned. Robin couldn't get over it for days. It wasn't the spit that bothered him… but the look in the boy's eyes. He looked at him like he was the lowest worm alive."
Eli lowered her head.
"And his words… 'You're not a Hero. My brother was the real hero.'"
The leaves above them rustled softly, as if the wind itself sighed with them.
The two mages sat in the shade of the tree, discussing topics that felt chillingly serious despite the summer heat. The past, demons, a secret knight order… and the Empire, which slowly absorbed everything around it.
"Was that village inside the Empire's territory?" Andras asked, staring at the blades of grass near his feet.
"Back then it belonged to another Kingdom," Eli replied. "But according to the latest maps, that Kingdom was conquered by the Empire five hundred years later and annexed."
Andras raised an eyebrow. "That sounds suspicious."
"Don't misunderstand," Eli shook her head. "I didn't tell the story because I think the survivors founded the secret knight order. But we failed to save a lot of people from demons. And some people had enough of that. They decided they didn't need the Hero—they would take their fate into their own hands."
Andras leaned back, tucking the towel behind his neck. "If you look at it that way… it's not a bad thing. That dark knight, Istvan, ended up fighting alongside the Hero. If that secret dark knight order still exists, they could theoretically be our allies in the war against the Demon Army."
"Maybe we really should take a look at that village," Eli said.
"A thousand years is a long time," Andras countered. "The village could be gone. Maybe nothing is left. Or maybe an entire city was built on top of it."
"Well, since we're heading to the Empire anyway," Eli smiled, running her fingers along the edge of the book, "we might as well look around properly and investigate everything thoroughly."
"Do you even know how huge the Empire is?" Andras asked, half serious, half amused.
"I do," Eli replied, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "That's why I can't wait for all the adventures."
As Young Wolf and Eli savored the possibilities of their upcoming imperial journey, footsteps echoed across the castle courtyard. Noelle approached, carrying a steaming cup of coffee and a damp towel.
"If I'm not mistaken, you've finished your daily training, Young Wolf," she said as she set the cup beside him. "Here's your coffee, and I'll wipe the sweat off your back."
Andras nodded gratefully and reached for the cup. He took a sip of the hot drink.
Eli stared at him in disbelief. "How can you drink hot coffee in this heat? You should be drinking iced coffee."
"We don't have an ice‑user," Andras shrugged.
"What about Anita?" Eli asked immediately.
"I'm not putting demon‑ice in my coffee," Andras grimaced. "Ugh. She'd probably curse my taste buds."
Noelle cut in. "Speaking of Anita… she and Fireburp just returned from the capital. They placed the Succubi corpse in the magic lab. And they brought some kind of magic book too."
"The Succubus had a magic book?" Eli asked, suddenly alert.
"No," Noelle shook her head. "They got it from some mage. But they'll tell you the details themselves."
Andras set down the cup and stood up. His gaze sharpened, turning toward the castle.
"We hit a dead end with the necklace anyway," he said. "Come on, let's examine that Succubus properly."
The three mages returned to the laboratory, where Anita and Fireburp were already waiting impatiently. The air still carried the faint ozone scent of earlier experiments, and the cursed necklace's subtle, almost imperceptible vibration seemed to linger in the background like a quiet heartbeat.
Andras immediately turned to Anita.
"So? How did it go? How many points did you earn in the capital?"
"Eight," Anita replied casually, as if she were announcing she'd bought a loaf of bread.
"The Succubus's head was worth eight points for your dark sword?" Andras raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, no," Anita waved dismissively. "The Succubus was only three points. But there was another… demon creature worth five. Not in the capital, though—some village nearby. A water mage was experimenting on demons, and the idiot turned himself into one. Here's his book."
The female Wolf Knight handed the magic book to Young Wolf. Its cover was slightly scorched, and where the magical seal had once been, a clean, razor‑sharp cut ran across the surface.
"Which one of you tore off the magical seal so neatly?" Andras asked as he examined the book.
"Fireburp did," Anita declared.
"I did not!" the dragon girl protested. "Anita snatched it out of my hands and sliced it open herself!"
"This was clearly cut with wind element," Andras said, inspecting the edge of the slice.
"It only scratched the cover a little," Anita muttered, as if that made it harmless.
Eli leaned closer. "What kind of magic book is this?"
"Some guy named Watered Marek wrote it," Andras said. "Never heard of him."
Anita burst out laughing. "He said the exact same thing about you."
"If he never heard of me, he must've been some hermit mage," Andras shrugged.
"Well… by the end he was everything except human," Anita added with dark humor.
"Just tell me what's written in it already!" Eli urged, practically bouncing with impatience.
"Calm down, I'm just starting to read it," Andras replied, flipping through the pages.
"That's enough," Eli clapped her hands sharply. "Give it here! I'll skim through it. You go examine the Succubus corpse."
Young Wolf didn't need to be told twice. He handed the book to Eli, who immediately sat down and began flipping through the pages at a speed that suggested she was racing against time itself.
Andras headed toward the body wrapped in a carpet in the corner of the lab. A faint metallic scent seeped from the fabric—the unmistakable smell of demonic essence, recognizable even from afar.
Everyone in the laboratory felt it:
Now the truly interesting part was about to begin.
The carpet wrapped around the Succubus's body was already laid out on the long oak dissection table—the very table reserved in the castle for cutting open monsters and demons. The wood grain had absorbed the traces of countless experiments over the years, and now it welcomed yet another unusual guest.
When Andras unwrapped the body, he raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"Well, this is a fine specimen," he remarked, looking over the demonic female form. "Kind of a shame you didn't catch her alive. But… why is she naked?"
Anita stood beside him with her arms crossed, giving him a look that said are you seriously asking this?
"Are you kidding? I hunted her down in a brothel. You think anyone wears clothes in a place like that?"
"So you fought her without clothes on?" Andras asked—not prudishly, but with genuine curiosity.
"My dark sword's bloodlust caught her attention immediately," Anita shrugged. "So I couldn't exactly… use her services."
Meanwhile Eli was already hunched over the book, slapping a page with outrage.
"This Watered Marek guy was completely insane. Listen to this!" She began reading aloud. "His grand theory was to implant gray imp genes into humans. The idiot. Humans can only use demon blood and demon hearts through catalysts—and even then only if they have a magical element. Otherwise demon blood destroys the human body from the inside. What a moron! And experimenting on goblins would've been one thing, but on humans? And then on himself? There really are lunatics among mages."
"I saw the result with my own eyes," Anita said. "The guy was a total maniac."
Noelle leaned closer to Andras with a mischievous smile.
"See anything interesting on the Succubus's chest, Young Wolf?"
"What? No!" Andras jerked his gaze away. "I was just… examining the wound. You got her from behind, Anita?"
"Yeah," the knight nodded. "She tried to escape through the window, then Fireburp gifted her a fireball to the face, and she fell right onto my sword."
"Nice work," Andras said. "We can start the dissection."
"Can I stay and watch?" Noelle asked hopefully.
"Of course," Andras nodded. "It's not every day we get to study a demon's anatomy."
"Ugh, I'm out," Anita grimaced. "I already threw up in that other mage's lab."
"I don't care about demon guts either," Fireburp added. "I'm going to tell Lili about our adventures in the capital."
And so the detailed examination of the Succubus's body was left to the three mages. Not that they needed convincing—studying demonic anatomy was more of an exciting challenge than a disgusting task for them.
The experiment lasted an entire week. In the end, only the demon's eyes, heart, two arms, and diluted blood were preserved—sealed and stored in reinforced vials. The rest of the remains were burned to prevent any contamination or demonic essence from lingering within the castle walls.
A week later, the long‑awaited guest from the Empire finally arrived: Young Wolf's maternal grandfather, Jack Goldfred. Not only was he a wealthy merchant, but one of the four leaders of the Empire's great merchant city—a man whose words carried weight and whose connections reached far.
With Bandorn's death and the demons' appearance, the time had come for him to reap the benefits of the political marriage he had arranged years ago when he sent his daughter to Wolfwood. What he hadn't expected was how strong, influential, and formidable Carla had become in the meantime.
And now, with the shadow of demons looming over the world, Jack Goldfred had arrived to personally step onto the stage.