CHAPTER 205: "THE SUMMONING OF THE FALLEN FLAME." PT 2

The words hung in the air like a curse already spoken.

"What does the spell require?" Vetra asked, all business now, a general planning a campaign.

Aira consulted the text again, lips moving silently as she read. "Two practitioners, one wielding dark magic, one wielding knowledge of the old flames. Blood sacrifice, at least ten lives given willingly or taken by force, their essence used to crack the seal. And a geographic weak point, somewhere the barrier between their prison and our world is already thin."

"The old geothermal vents," Vetra said immediately. "On the eastern outskirts of the capital. The first settlers built there before they understood the danger, abandoned the district after a collapse. The ground is still warm, still unstable. The barrier there would be like parchment."

"Precisely." Aira’s ruined face managed something like approval. "And the timing?"

Vetra’s smile could have frozen the sun. "Tomorrow. During the Star-Shard ritual, when Soren and Eris will be far from the city, isolated in the Rifted Glacier Forest. By the time they receive word of the attack, by the time they return, hundreds will be dead. And every survivor will remember that the demons came when the fire queen arrived."

She turned to Isolde then, and the younger woman fought not to flinch. "You will help us prepare. Gather the prisoners from the lower dungeons, the ones marked for execution anyway. Ten souls, as the spell requires."

"I..." Isolde swallowed hard. "Yes, Your Grace."

"Good girl," Vetra purred, the endearment somehow more threatening than any curse. "And Isolde? This conversation never happened. You were never here. If questioned, you were in your chambers all night, recovering from your... unfortunate incident with the fire queen."

Isolde’s hand rose unconsciously to her bruised cheek. "Understood, Your Grace."

"Now then," Vetra gestured to the center of the chamber, where thick carpets had been rolled back to reveal the bare ice floor. "Let us see if this spell is worth the trouble."

What followed would haunt Isolde’s dreams for years to come, if she lived long enough to have years.

The prisoners were brought up in chains, ten of them, men and women marked for death by various crimes, some legitimate, some invented. They knew they were going to die but not how, not why, not that their deaths would crack open hell itself.

Vetra killed them with a gesture, frost crawling through their veins so fast they barely had time to scream. Their bodies crumpled like puppets with cut strings, blood pooling on ice that drank it in as though thirsty.

Aira knelt, dipping her scarred fingers in the warm blood, mixing them together, and began to draw. Symbols older than writing, geometric patterns that hurt to look at directly, concentric circles that seemed to spin even when staying still. The blood steamed as it touched the ice, vapor rising in thin coils.

"Stand there," Aira instructed Vetra, pointing to the northern edge of the circle. "I’ll take the south. We must be precise, this is only a test, a way to know if we are on the right path. We’re checking if the seal will crack, not shattering it completely. Not yet."

Vetra moved into position, her composure absolute, as though she stood in a ballroom rather than a makeshift ritual chamber reeking of blood and dark magic. She raised her hands, and the temperature dropped another ten degrees. Frost spread from her feet, crawling across the floor, up the walls, reaching for the blood-drawn symbols.

But this was not the clean, precise ice magic the empire knew. This was something else, something that had been twisted, corrupted, turned from protection to poison. The frost that spread from Vetra’s palms was black at the edges, shot through with purple veins like bruises under skin.

Aira began to chant, her voice rising and falling in rhythms that predated melody. The words were Old Flame-tongue, the language Pyronox had spoken when teaching humanity to light their first fires, before those fires learned to burn their creators.

"V’rakhûn dh’el-morta, síntharix! Rálūn v’éshîr āmok, thāl’rūūn e’môrák."

"Ka’virnul seth’larr, m’néshak ri’yol t’húm’nak; s’vēk’orá náthil, grémū vōsh."

"Ith’shaar ven-lók’tah, r’émuth Q’orún d’él’shavír, t’uúm’él kôr’ásh ven."

"Al’thrémn q’uom-esh v’áríldu, Nék’ha rálven, ōrūsh tem’khá dor’él."

"Z’mírõl váthūn-khél, p’ríyash t’rēmul, hōv’ék āl’rish, d’úrú jáhn."

"Sh’áelvor nik-thalū r’môkh, v’ēqārún ísh’el, throm v’aélūn."

"D’ról’ám sén-t’akh v’ureh, qīlún m’áresht, D’hévra k’ōlun, S’AAATH!"

"K’uúvrān ēlt’hōs M’írahk, vrēshá nímul, Q’árash t’él’nô."

"Yél’thra m’nó-vārū khés’īn, ōlr’ek th’ávun, p’ērísh q’ōm’él." "Úsh’ral dén-kôr vimêh T’álun īs’hráv... VORAKUN. N’ELLL’TH!"

Translation:

"O, Wretched King of the Black Death, hear the sign! The marrow is weak, the chains are broken, the Abyss demands its toll."

"The flayed-bone whispers in the dark, the sinew rips from the teeth; I taste the sweet rot of the heart, the fevered breath of the dying."

"I tear the veil where the light bleeds out, through the wound of shattered faith — My command is carved in your deepest shame."

"The soul-oil is ready, the victim’s dread burns clean; let the spirit shiver into ash."

"Scream not of prayer, but of fire and endless torment, you who are given, The fuel is ready."

"Consume the living wick, and rise from the festering core, I grant you the mortal flesh."

"Split the Earth and drink the sky! Let the innocent tremble, let the righteous fall...BURN!"

"The pit opens its maw, the smoke chokes the breath, the Black God rejoices in the feast."

"Bring forth the searing light of the damned, the blistering hunger, and the final pain."

"The vessel is prepared, the bargain struck in blood and agony... DEMON. ARISE!"

Vetra joined her, her own voice weaving between Aira’s like ice threading through flame, and together they created something that should not exist, a harmony of opposites, a perversion of the balance the gods had intended.

The blood-drawn symbols began to glow, not red but white-hot, burning without consuming. The circle pulsed once, twice, like a heartbeat.

Then the ground trembled.

Subtle at first, barely more than a vibration under their feet. Then stronger, a shudder that rattled the candles, that sent ripples through the pools of blood.

The temperature In the chamber spiked viciously. Impossible heat, volcanic heat, the kind of warmth that belonged leagues beneath the earth in places mortals were never meant to reach. Isolde gasped, pressing herself against the wall, feeling the ice sweat behind her.

And for just a moment, no longer, they heard it.

Screaming.

Not from the chamber, not from anywhere in the palace, but from far below, from depths that should have been unreachable. Voices that remembered what it meant to be angels, that remembered falling, that remembered the taste of divine fire turned to punishment.

The screaming built, layering over itself, dozens of voices, hundreds, all crying out in a language of rage and longing and terrible, terrible hunger.

Then Vetra and Aira stopped chanting.

Silence crashed down like a physical thing.

The blood stopped glowing. The ground stopped shaking. The heat dissipated, leaving only the familiar, comfortable cold of Nevareth’s winter.

But something had changed. The air tasted different now, scorched, as though lightning had struck too close.

Aira’s laugh cracked through the quiet, a sound like breaking glass. "It works. Oh, it works beautifully. The seal is weak, weakened by time and neglect and the gods’ own absence. When we perform the full ritual tomorrow, when we give it our complete power..." She didn’t need to finish the sentence.

Vetra stared down at the blood-drawn circle, at the bodies cooling at its edges, and her smile was a thing of terrible beauty. "Then the fire queen will finally show her true face. And even if Soren survives his infatuation, even if he tries to protect her, the empire will demand justice. They will demand her death."

"And if she somehow manages to seal the demons again?" Isolde’s voice was barely a whisper.

"Then her own power will destroy her from the inside," Vetra said simply. "Either way, by the time the sun sets tomorrow, one way or another, Eris Igniva will be gone from my empire."