Fallen Forest, Borderlands.

The delegation advanced through the border of the Fallen Forest at a cautious pace, though the white griffons leading the formation did not seem to share that caution. They moved with the confidence of creatures that had spent their entire lives being treated as symbols of divine authority and weapons of war. Their talons crushed wet leaves and half-rotten branches, sinking into the dark soil with each step, while the golden engravings on their armor caught what little sunlight managed to pass through the dense canopy above. In another place, they would have looked majestic. Here, surrounded by twisted trees, old vines, dark moss, and the distant sounds of things moving just out of sight, they looked more like something bright and arrogant walking through a graveyard.

Behind them came soldiers in heavy armor, their white cloaks already stained with mud and pollen. Some carried spears, others shields or curved blades, while a few used heavy chopping swords to clear the path whenever the forest became too dense. Around the main formation, hooded knights and mages from the Temple of Dawn walked in silence, using controlled bursts of magic to burn away thorny vines, purify patches of poisonous moss, or force tangled roots to release the soil long enough for the carriage to pass.

The carriage itself was reinforced more like a small moving bunker than a noble vehicle. Thick wooden plating, metal braces, narrow windows, and warding plates marked with golden patterns covered most of its body. It was not built to be pretty. It was built to survive impact, claws, arrows, and whatever else the Fallen Forest might decide to throw at them. Two larger griffons pulled it, both armored more heavily than the others and surrounded by a faint ethereal glow that distorted the air around their bodies.

They were not going deep into the forest. Everyone knew that. The border was already dangerous enough, but the true depths of the Fallen Forest were something else entirely. It was one thing to move through a region where high-level beasts watched from the shadows and waited for weakness. It was another to step into the territories where the old things lived. The Temple of Dawn claimed that the Goddess’s light reached all places, but even the most devoted priests preferred not to test that statement more than necessary.

Inside the carriage, Jasminy Fahnar sat with her hands folded over her lap, eyes closed but body too stiff to look truly relaxed. The further they traveled, the more the pressure in her chest grew. It was not fear, exactly. Fear would have been easier to deal with. Fear could be disciplined, prayed through, or burned away by faith. This was more like absence. The warmth of the Goddess was still there, but distant and muffled, as if something had been placed between her soul and the divine light she was supposed to feel at all times.

“Hum...” she murmured after a while. “I do not have a good feeling about this.”

One of the hooded men sitting across from her raised his head. He was tall, broad, and almost unnaturally still beneath his ceremonial robes. “Is something wrong, Lady Jasminy?”

“I can no longer feel the illustrious divine light of the Goddess as clearly as I should,” Jasminy said, opening her eyes with visible discomfort. “We should conclude this mission as quickly as possible and return to the safety of the light.”

She reached into her robes and pulled out a small Solarium. It was a golden sphere no larger than a child’s fist, with eight thin disks inside it turning in different directions without ever touching each other. A warm glow pulsed from its center like a small sunrise trapped in metal. Jasminy held it between her hands and lowered her head in silent prayer. The warmth of the Solarium reached her fingers, but for some reason, it did not bring her the comfort it usually did.

From the corner of the carriage came a long yawn.

“Haaam...”

Sir Desmond Targaryen sat with one leg stretched forward and one arm resting over the back of his seat, looking far too relaxed for someone traveling through one of the most dangerous forests on the continent. He was a large young man with red hair, a strong body, and the general attitude of someone who knew exactly how irritating he was and had decided to make it part of his personality. Unlike the temple soldiers, his armor was not ceremonial or polished. It was practical border armor, scratched in several places and darkened by old smoke stains.

“I still do not understand why you dragged me into this mess,” he said, looking at no one in particular. “Because of you people, my father is one step away from disowning me.”

“Sir Targaryen,” one of the hooded men said, with the tired patience of someone repeating an explanation for the third or fourth time, “your presence was requested because of your knowledge of the Fallen Forest and the borderlands. It is in the interest of both the Marquisate and the Temple of Dawn that this mission succeeds.”

Desmond snorted. “Bullshit. You just want someone to blame if the sun turns its back on you.”

Jasminy’s eyes opened sharply. “Sir Targaryen. How dare you insinuate that our Goddess would abandon us during a sacred mission?”

Desmond looked at her for a few seconds, then yawned again. “Sure, sure. Wake me up when there is something real to—”

A loud impact shook the carriage.

The change inside was immediate. The hooded men reached for weapons and spell focuses. Jasminy’s hands tightened around the Solarium, while Desmond’s lazy expression disappeared for just long enough to show that, despite everything about him, he was not actually careless. Outside, soldiers shouted orders, griffons growled, and the sound of heavy armor shifting against metal and leather came from all sides.

A knock came against the carriage door. One of the hooded men opened it at once.

“Situation?” he asked.

A soldier stood outside, one hand over his chest in salute. “We found an anomaly, sir. We do not know its nature, so the vanguard stopped the march until we could determine whether it is dangerous.”

“Anomaly?” Jasminy asked, already rising. “What kind?”

The soldier hesitated before answering. “The easiest way to describe it would be black stains spreading through parts of the forest. Similar to demonic corruption.”

The air inside the carriage became colder in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.

“Demonic corruption?” Jasminy repeated. “Here?”

Desmond clicked his tongue. “That would be new.”

Jasminy ignored him and stepped toward the door. “If there is demonic corruption spreading this close to the border, we cannot ignore it. We will investigate.”

The soldiers led her and the temple followers through a narrow path cut into the undergrowth. The forest around them was wet, dense, and hostile in a way that made every movement feel watched. The trees were tall and twisted, their bark darkened by age and moisture. Vines hung from the branches like old ropes, and the ground was covered in fallen leaves, fungus, and roots that seemed far too ready to catch ankles.

It did not take long for Jasminy to see the anomaly.

A tree near the path was covered in black slime. The substance clung to the trunk, roots, nearby stones, and patches of undergrowth like spilled tar. It was thick and wet, with a faint shine that made it look unpleasantly alive whenever the light touched it. Small insects and lesser beasts had been trapped inside it. Some still twitched weakly, while others had already begun to rot. White fungal patches grew in clusters through the slime, spreading like mold through spoiled food.

Jasminy instinctively covered her nose.

“The smell of death,” one of the hooded men said.

“But not demonic,” another added after a moment. “I sense no demonic energy.”

Jasminy stepped closer, careful not to let the edge of her robes touch the substance. He was right. It looked foul enough to be demonic corruption and smelled almost as bad, but the energy inside it was wrong. There was no malice, no hatred, no burning sickness trying to crawl into the soul. If anything, the slime felt empty. No, not empty. Hungry.

“This may be produced by a monster,” Jasminy said. “Or perhaps by a necromancer. The white mass seems fungal in nature, though, so it may also be plant-related.”

“Plant-related?” one of the men asked.

“This is the Fallen Forest,” she replied. “Here, that does not make it less dangerous.”

A rustling sound came from the bushes nearby, and the soldiers immediately raised their weapons. Jasminy lifted one hand, ordering restraint. A few seconds later, several small creatures crawled out from beneath the leaves.

Wappos.

They were weak, low-level monsters, soft-bodied and usually harmless unless they appeared in large numbers. Their kind survived by breeding quickly and dying easily, not by hunting with any particular skill. Yet these wappos ignored the soldiers completely. They crawled toward the black slime without hesitation, and when one soldier shifted his sword to kill them, Jasminy stopped him with a gesture.

The wappos entered the slime. They did not struggle or become trapped. They simply passed through it as if the substance belonged to them, crawling over the trapped corpses of insects and small beasts. Then, to Jasminy’s surprise, they began secreting more of the same black slime over the bodies.

One of the hooded men leaned forward. “What are they doing?”

“Hunting?” another said, clearly uncertain.

“No,” Jasminy said. “Wappos should not hunt like this. They overwhelm prey through numbers, not traps.”

“A mutation, then? The forest creates unique variants from time to time.”

“Perhaps.”

Jasminy extended one hand, and a soft sky-blue light gathered around her fingers before spreading toward the wappos. The creatures glowed faintly for a few seconds as the spell examined them. She frowned. “They are not demonic. Not undead. Not directly cursed either.”

“Should we take them?” one of the hooded men asked. “Calaspiel would likely be interested in studying them.”

Jasminy looked at the wappos again. They were strange, yes, but not important enough to justify slowing the mission. “Wappos are not worth the delay.”

One of her followers crouched and touched the slime with two fingers. Almost immediately, he hissed and stepped back. “This poison is stronger than it looks. Even with my resistance, my fingers are going numb.”

“How strange,” Jasminy said quietly. “Why wappos? Most anomalous beasts of the Fallen Forest are at least mid-level.”

“Perhaps the forest is evolving,” one of the hooded men said. “Or perhaps those blasphemous monstrosities we came to investigate are involved.”

Jasminy looked deeper into the trees. For a moment, she thought she heard growls and the faint grinding of teeth. Movement shifted in the shadows around them. The high-level beasts of the Fallen Forest were watching. That did not surprise her. It would have been stranger if they were not. The delegation was too bright, too loud, and too heavily armed to pass unnoticed. The beasts were likely waiting for the group to weaken, separate, or move deeper than they should.

They would not attack yet. Not unless someone made a mistake.

“We continue,” Jasminy said. “This is not our objective.”

As she turned away, one of the soldiers stepped forward and drove his sword into the wappos. The creatures did not flee or fight. They simply died, sliced apart inside the black slime they had created. Jasminy did not stop him. She only returned to the carriage.

A few hours later, they found the first signs. At a distance, they looked like random wooden markers stuck into the ground, but as the delegation moved closer, it became clear that they had been placed intentionally. Crude planks had been carved with symbols no one in the group recognized. Some were tied with plant fiber, while others had been marked with claw scratches, ash, or small bits of bone.

Desmond, who had finally stopped pretending to sleep, leaned toward the carriage window. “Well, that’s new.”

Jasminy looked at him. “Do you recognize them?”

“No. That is why I said it is new.”

One of the hooded men gave him a sharp look, but Desmond only smiled. The path ahead became clearer after that. Not a true road, but a dirt trail created by repeated passage. Small feet had packed the soil down. Low branches had been cut. Traces of smoke drifted faintly through the air.

They were close.

Jasminy stepped out of the carriage before they reached the village. “From here on, we proceed with caution,” she said to the soldiers and temple followers gathered around her. “Sir Gareth Veiled was specific in his report. The beasts commanding this region appear intelligent, coordinated, and numerous. We do not know whether harming one of the kobolds will provoke a response from the unknown creatures protecting them. Until I give the order, no one attacks.”

The soldiers saluted. The hooded men bowed. Desmond did neither.

“I still doubt anything dangerous would settle this close to the edge,” he said. “If something lives near the border, it is either too weak to claim deeper territory or too stupid to know better.”

Jasminy turned to him. “I appreciate your experience, Sir Targaryen, but I am the authority on this mission. Insubordination will not be tolerated.”

Desmond pulled a small box from his pocket and placed a cigarette between his lips. “That is a lot of confidence from someone who has spent more time praying than fighting. If you are so confident in your understanding of the forest, why bother dragging me here at all?”

One of the hooded men stiffened, but Jasminy answered before he could. “Your presence was requested because of the formal ties between the Temple of Dawn and the Targaryen Marquisate. Any mission beyond the border requires acknowledgment of the border defenders. Not requesting your presence would have been seen as ignoring the authority of your house. That should be obvious even to an uneducated commoner, but apparently the thought torments you enough that you must express it aloud for all of us.”

Desmond looked at her for a moment. Then he slowly raised one hand, created a small flame at the tip of his middle finger, and used it to light his cigarette.

One of the temple men nearly stepped forward. “How insol—”

A knock sounded against the carriage door.

They had arrived.

The village was smaller than Jasminy expected, and poorer as well. Wooden fences surrounded it, reinforced by trenches and sharpened stakes. The houses were simple structures made of wood, mud, bark, and woven plant fiber. Smoke rose from a few clay chimneys. Small figures moved behind the barricades, watching the delegation with fear and suspicion.

At the entrance stood two kobolds. One was tall for his kind, covered in fur as black as obsidian. His posture was tense, but he stood firm with one hand near the hilt of a crude curved blade. The other was smaller, a female kobold with gray-brown fur, leaning on a rustic wooden staff. Her body looked old or perhaps simply worn down by hunger and stress, but her eyes were sharp.

And beside her shoulder floated something Jasminy did not understand.

At first glance, it resembled an insect, but only in the loosest sense. Its body seemed fragile and incomplete, covered in shifting white patches that flickered as if the act of existing required effort. Above its head, a thin golden thread rose into the air before dissolving into nothing.

The soldiers seemed to notice it only as an oddity. The hooded men showed mild curiosity. Jasminy stopped breathing.

There was no strong mana coming from it. No demonic corruption. No divine light. No elemental signature she recognized. The creature itself was weak. She could feel that clearly. It had no overwhelming strength, no deep mana reservoir, no obvious predatory pressure. A single well-placed strike could probably kill it.

But something had marked it.

Something heavy. Something vast. Something not present, but close enough in essence that her instincts hesitated.

It felt familiar and impossible at the same time. Like a distant echo of the Demon Lord, but without the rot, malice, or corruption that stained his existence. Jasminy had no category for such a thing, and for a few seconds, that lack of understanding erased every prepared word from her mind.

She had planned a speech before coming here. It had been a good speech, or at least useful. She would speak of the mercy of the Goddess, the protection of the Dawn, the danger of falling into darkness, and the opportunity offered to low creatures that accepted proper guidance. Firm, merciful, politically acceptable.

She forgot all of it.

“Your Holiness?” one of the hooded men said beside her.

Jasminy blinked. The kobolds were watching her. The black-furred one had moved slightly in front of the female, as if preparing to shield her. The strange creature remained floating beside her shoulder, silent and still.

Jasminy took a breath. “Forgive my rudeness,” she said, eyes fixed on the small being. “But... who—what are you?”

The female kobold’s grip tightened around her staff. “This is my contracted beast. He is not usually very communicative.”

The creature remained silent for several seconds. Then it spoke.

“I am a child of the stars. A follower of the Great Mother. The one who stayed behind. Who are you?”

The female kobold looked startled, as if she had not expected him to answer. Jasminy stared at him.

“I am Jasminy Fahnar, daughter of the divine light that covers the world. Follower of the light that protects and guards the dark night. Chosen of the Great Goddess to walk the path of light.”

The creature watched her, then left the kobold’s shoulder and floated toward her. Several soldiers drew their weapons, but Jasminy raised one hand. “Do not.”

The creature circled her slowly. It did not move like a normal flying monster. Its body flickered with each motion, and the golden thread above it trembled when it passed near the Solarium in her hands. Jasminy felt no hostility from it, but she did feel examined.

“You carry malice within you,” the creature said.

The words struck harder than an insult.

The kobolds reacted immediately. The black-furred one barked an order, and several kobolds appeared along the wooden walls with bows drawn. The soldiers raised shields. The griffons growled. The hooded men reached for spells.

“Hold!” Jasminy ordered.

The soldiers stopped, though barely. The female kobold looked between Ciel and Jasminy with obvious fear. Jasminy swallowed. For some reason, the creature’s accusation felt less like a threat and more like judgment. Not the judgment of an enemy, but of something innocent enough to say what others would hide.

“You are not wrong,” Jasminy said.

Several of her followers turned toward her in surprise.

“My intention to eliminate this settlement has not fully disappeared,” she continued carefully. “But your existence has made me uncertain about how to deal with you and those under your protection.”

The creature stopped circling. “I cannot stop you from harming us. My power is too limited. The power of this village is also limited. But I, Ciel, son of the Great Mother, carry her protection. This village has received the same gift. To harm them is to be marked as an enemy of the Great Mother.”

“A pagan threat,” one of the soldiers muttered.

“Silence,” Jasminy said sharply.

The soldier shut his mouth.

Jasminy looked at Ciel more closely. “Great Mother. Is she the source of that strange power inside you?”

“I bathe in the power of the Great Mother,” Ciel said. “I am her fruit, blood, and flesh. A fragment of something greater that, once complete, reveals the true face of the Great Mother.”

One of the hooded men made a warding gesture. The female kobold’s ears pressed back in irritation. Jasminy felt cold.

“A fragment,” she said. “Then you are not simply a beast.”

“I am Ciel.”

“Yes,” Jasminy said. “Ciel.”

She hesitated, then asked the question that had been burning in her mind since the moment she saw him. “Are you a descendant of the Demon Lord?”

The effect was immediate. The temple soldiers stiffened. The hooded men turned sharply toward the creature. The kobolds hissed and snarled, some pulling their bows tighter. The female kobold slammed her staff against the ground.

“How dare you blaspheme against a divine beast!”

The words “divine beast” made the hooded men even more alert, but Jasminy did not look away from Ciel. The small creature thought about the question longer than she expected.

Then he said, “I am not part of what you call the Demon Lord. The Great Mother abhors his existence and wishes for his death.”

Jasminy exhaled slowly. “I see.”

She did not, in fact, see. Not fully. But the answer mattered. If true, this unknown Great Mother was hostile to the Demon Lord. That could make her a possible asset. Or a rival. Or a danger no less terrible simply because it pointed its hatred in a convenient direction.

Behind her, Desmond chuckled. “That was the strangest thing I’ve heard all week.”

Ciel turned toward him. “You mock what you do not understand.”

Desmond shrugged. “I mock most things.”

“You see them as lesser,” Ciel said, looking toward the kobolds and then back at the delegation.

Desmond took a slow drag from his cigarette. “They are kobolds.”

The black-furred kobold growled.

“That is not an answer,” Ciel said.

“It is where I come from.”

The golden thread above Ciel’s head trembled, and the air became heavier. It was not enough to hurt anyone or force them back, but it was enough for the nearest griffon to lower its head and take one cautious step away. Jasminy noticed. So did Desmond. For the first time since they arrived, he looked genuinely interested.

Ciel did not attack. He did not gather mana. He simply existed, and something about the mark he carried made even trained war-beasts hesitate.

“I am not strong,” Ciel said. “But I carry the Great Mother’s protection.”

One of the hooded men whispered, “Your Holiness...”

Jasminy understood the warning. This was dangerous, not because Ciel could kill them, but because he represented something unknown, organized, and possibly divine in nature. A pagan power active inside the Fallen Forest. A strange energy connected to mutated beasts and perhaps to the intelligent monsters Sir Gareth had reported. A mark strong enough to affect griffons.

They could not ignore him. They also could not simply retreat. If they left now, they would return with nothing but questions, and the Temple would send a stronger force. The Marquisate would demand explanations. The kobolds would prepare or flee. The unknown Great Mother would remain hidden.

Jasminy needed information. The village needed mercy. Her followers wanted certainty. The soldiers wanted orders. Desmond wanted something to happen. The kobolds wanted them gone. No part of the situation could hold for long.

“Ciel,” Jasminy said. “Would you come with us willingly? Not as a prisoner. As a guest. You could explain your Great Mother to the Temple, and perhaps—”

“No,” the female kobold said before Ciel could answer.

Her voice trembled with anger and fear.

“He will not go with you.”

The black-furred kobold barked something in their language, and the kobolds on the walls shifted. Jasminy closed her eyes for half a second.

That was the wrong movement.

One of the soldiers took it as permission. Or perhaps he only pretended to. A spear flew from the human line. It was not aimed at Ciel. It struck the wooden wall near one of the archers, splintering the post beside his head. The kobold panicked. His arrow released.

It struck one of the griffons in the neck. Not deep. Not fatal. But enough.

The griffon screamed.

Then everything fell apart.

“Hold!” Jasminy shouted, but the word was already too late.

The wounded griffon lunged forward, claws tearing through the first barricade. A kobold on the wall failed to jump away in time and was caught beneath one talon with a wet crack. Arrows came from the fences and rooftops. Most shattered or bounced against armor and shields, but not all. One soldier cried out as an arrow slipped beneath his arm. Another cursed as a shaft struck the exposed side of his neck.

The temple mages raised barriers of pale-gold light, and the soldiers advanced.

“No slaughter!” Jasminy ordered. “Restrain them if possible!”

Some listened. Others were already inside the village, and orders given after blood has been spilled rarely remain clean. The kobolds fought with the desperation of creatures who knew they could not win. They used trenches, rooftops, narrow alleys, hidden pits, and their small size to delay the larger soldiers. A group rushed one of the griffons from the side and drove hooked spears into its legs. The beast screamed again and smashed one of them against a wall.

The black-furred kobold charged toward the gap in the barricade, curved blade in hand. He was fast for his size, and for a moment he managed to slip beneath a soldier’s spear and cut into the man’s thigh. Then Desmond stepped forward, his fist igniting with a controlled layer of flame, and struck the kobold in the chest.

The impact threw the black-furred leader backward through a broken fence. Smoke rose from his fur as he hit the ground and rolled. He tried to stand, but a soldier kicked him down and placed a blade against his throat.

“Alive!” Jasminy shouted.

The soldier stopped.

The female kobold raised her staff and screamed. The soil beneath the human front line shifted, and wooden spikes burst upward, crude but effective, catching two soldiers by the legs and forcing the formation to split. For one brief moment, it looked as if the kobolds might open a path for escape.

Then three hooded mages cast together.

Golden rings opened beneath the female kobold. She tried to leap away, but light wrapped around her legs and waist, dragging her to the ground.

Ciel moved.

He flew between the female kobold and the mages, his fragile body flickering violently. “Stop!”

No one stopped.

A soldier swung the flat of his blade at him, perhaps trying to knock him away rather than kill him. The blade slowed before touching him. The soldier’s arm shook. His face went pale. For a moment, he looked like a child standing before an open grave.

Ciel’s aura had flared.

It was not power in the normal sense. It did not burn, crush, cut, or bind. It simply warned. Every instinct in the soldier’s body screamed that this creature was claimed by something he did not want to anger.

Desmond noticed. He moved faster than Ciel could follow, and a small burst of flame exploded near Ciel’s side. Not directly against him. Close enough. The blast threw Ciel out of the air and sent him tumbling across the dirt. The golden thread above his head twisted violently.

The female kobold screamed.

The village broke after that. Some kobolds rushed forward to protect Ciel. Some tried to drag children and wounded into the forest. Some continued firing from the walls. A few simply froze, unable to understand how quickly the meeting had turned into slaughter.

The soldiers pushed deeper. A house caught fire from a spell that missed its target. Smoke rose into the trees. A kobold child ran from the doorway, coughing and stumbling. One of the griffons saw movement and lunged.

Ciel rose from the ground. His body flickered so badly that Jasminy thought he might disappear, but he still flew. He placed himself between the child and the griffon.

The griffon stopped.

Its beak hung open only a short distance from him. Its pupils narrowed, and its wings half-opened, not in aggression, but in fear. Then it backed away from Ciel slowly, claws digging into the ground.

Jasminy felt her blood run cold.

A war-griffon. A trained beast that would charge trolls, ogres, undead, and lesser demons. It had retreated from something small enough to fit inside a helmet. Not because Ciel was strong. Because the mark was.

“Capture it,” one of the hooded men said.

Jasminy turned, but the spell had already begun. Chains of pale-gold light erupted from the ground around Ciel. They wrapped around his body, his wings, his limbs, and the golden thread above his head. Ciel struggled once, and the chains cracked.

Several soldiers stepped back.

The pressure in the air deepened. For a heartbeat, Jasminy felt something watching from very far away. Many eyes. A vast grief. A mother’s rage, sleeping beneath distance.

Then the feeling faded.

The chains tightened.

Ciel fell silent.

The child he had protected was dragged away by another kobold, but by then the battle was already lost. The kobolds who remained at the barricades were crushed. Those who surrendered were bound. Those who kept fighting were cut down. A few escaped through hidden paths leading deeper into the forest, but not many.

Jasminy ordered her soldiers not to pursue too far.

“Let them go,” she said.

One of the hooded men looked at her in disbelief. “They will warn the unknown monsters.”

“Yes,” Jasminy replied. “And if those monsters truly exist, I would rather they hear of this from terrified survivors than discover a silent massacre and assume we tried to hide it.”

He did not like the answer, but he obeyed.

When the fighting ended, the village was no longer a village. The wooden gate had been destroyed. Two houses burned. One side of the fence had collapsed. The trench line was filled with broken stakes, blood, and bodies. The smell of smoke mixed with wet soil and opened flesh.

The kobolds had lost badly. Most were dead, unconscious, or bound in golden restraints. The black-furred leader still lived, though barely. The female kobold was alive as well, but her legs were bleeding from where she had fought against the spell binding her. Both tried to reach Ciel whenever they regained enough strength to move. Neither succeeded.

Ciel floated inside a small cage of light, suspended above the ground like a captured lantern. He looked dimmer now. The white patches across his body were faint, and the golden thread above his head had been forced downward, coiled unnaturally inside the cage. The pressure around him remained, but weaker. Almost tired.

Desmond approached the cage and stared at him. “That thing made a griffon retreat.”

“Yes,” Jasminy said.

“I have seen griffons attack things twice their size.”

“So have I.”

“And it is weak.”

“Yes.”

Desmond smiled faintly. “That makes it more interesting.”

Ciel opened his eyes. “You harmed them.”

Jasminy faced him. “Yes.”

“You came with malice.”

“I did.”

“You will be remembered.”

Several soldiers shifted uncomfortably. Jasminy did not look away.

“Perhaps.”

The female kobold screamed something from behind them. Her voice cracked halfway through, turning into a coughing sob. Ciel’s small body turned toward her.

“I cannot leave them,” he said.

“You no longer have a choice,” Jasminy replied.

“I am not yours.”

“No,” Jasminy said. “You are not.”

That was the truth. He was not theirs. He was not a beast they had tamed, not a monster they had defeated, not a prisoner whose value came from his own strength. He was a sign. A fragment. A living clue to a power none of them understood. And that made him far too important to leave behind.

“You will be taken to the Temple,” Jasminy said. “No one will harm you without my permission.”

Ciel stared at her. “You think that is mercy.”

“I think it is control,” she answered. “Mercy would require more safety than this situation allows.”

For the first time, Ciel seemed uncertain.

One of the hooded men stepped closer. “Calaspiel must examine him. A divine beast marked by an unknown entity, carrying an energy similar to the Demon Lord but without his corruption... This may be one of the most important discoveries in years.”

“Or one of the most dangerous,” another said.

Desmond exhaled smoke. “Usually those are the same thing.”

Jasminy looked at the ruined village. She wanted to say this had not been her intention, but that would have been too easy. She had come prepared to destroy them if necessary. She had spoken of caution, but brought soldiers, griffons, mages, chains, and holy authority. The kobolds had seen weapons and answered with fear. Her side had seen fear and answered with force. Perhaps the first arrow had been an accident. Perhaps the first spear had been. It did not matter anymore. The result was the same.

“Collect samples,” she ordered. “The markings, the tools, the slime residue if any is present, and anything touched by the same energy as Ciel. Take the leaders alive if they survive transport. Burn the dead before the forest claims them.”

The soldiers moved. The hooded men bowed.

“And the escaped kobolds?” one asked.

Jasminy looked toward the deeper forest. “They are no longer our priority.”

In the trees, far beyond the broken fence, several wounded kobolds fled. One dragged a younger one by the arm. Another limped with an arrow in his side. A third carried a small bundle wrapped in cloth, though whether it was a child, a relic, or the last remains of someone dead, none of them knew. They did not look back. They ran until the smoke of their village blurred behind the trees.

Inside the ruined settlement, Ciel was carried toward the carriage. No one touched him directly. The soldiers used rods of blessed metal attached to the cage, keeping distance from the strange pressure that still clung to him. Even the griffons watched the cage with uneasy eyes, stepping aside whenever it passed too close.

Jasminy noticed everything. Every hesitation. Every lowered head. Every instinctive avoidance. The mark was weaker now, but not gone.

Ciel was not powerful. That was what made the situation worse. If he had been strong, they could have understood him as a threat. But he was weak, and the world itself seemed to whisper that hurting him was dangerous.

At the carriage, Jasminy paused. Ciel looked at her from inside the cage.

“You are afraid,” he said.

The soldiers nearby went still.

Jasminy did not deny it. “Yes.”

“Of me?”

“No.”

She looked beyond him, toward the smoke rising from the village, then toward the deep forest where the survivors had disappeared. “I am afraid of what you belong to.”

For a moment, Ciel said nothing. Then the golden thread above his head lifted slightly against the cage, as if pulled by something far away. The motion was small. Almost nothing. But Jasminy saw it.

Ciel’s expression changed. It was not quite a smile, but close enough.

“You should be,” he said.

No one spoke after that.

The cage was placed inside the carriage, separate from the bound kobold leaders. Jasminy sat across from it, the Solarium glowing softly between her hands. Desmond entered last. He did not return to sleep.

Outside, the delegation prepared to leave. Behind them, soldiers finished burning the dead. The houses continued smoking. The broken signs at the entrance of the village lay trampled in the mud.

The mission had succeeded. They had found the strange beasts. They had captured one of them. They had obtained proof of an unknown power acting inside the Fallen Forest. By every practical measure, it was a valuable result.

Jasminy watched Ciel through the bars of golden light and felt no satisfaction at all.

The carriage began to move.

Ciel remained silent for a long time. Then he turned his face slightly toward the forest, toward the village, toward the path where the survivors had fled.

His voice was quiet when he spoke.

“Mother will know.”

Jasminy tightened her fingers around the Solarium. The disks inside it continued to turn, glowing with warm divine light.

But for the first time in many years, that warmth did not make her feel safe.