"I may not be well-versed in how ranks are assigned in this realm…" Agnes began, her brows furrowed in disbelief, "but a donkey... as a Guard?"
Her voice was laced with genuine confusion, eyes narrowed as she struggled to make sense of what she was witnessing.
"Donkey?" Marcellus echoed, tilting his head with equal bewilderment. "Mum, that's not a donkey. That's a man."
Yet even as the words left his lips, his gaze remained locked, trying to decipher how that man, if he truly was one, could possibly hold the title of Second Guard.
Before another thought could form, Mirah's voice cut through the tension like a blade through silk. Hovering above with Marcellus and Agnes cradled gently in her palm, she spoke:
"No one sees his true form… Each pair of eyes beholds something else entirely. I see a kraken, colossal, riddled with maws that gape across every inch of its flesh, a beast whose presence dwarfs all things."
Marcellus and Agnes fell silent, their eyes once more drawn to the figure before them, Absalom, the being whose image defied uniformity.
"You decline the offer to become an Elder?" Jarul asked, his voice firm, yet tinged with a trace of curiosity.
"I do," Absalom replied, his tone calm yet resolute. "I would've nominated Aurora, but given… recent events, I'll leave the decision in your hands, great masters."
As he bowed, his eyes found Elder Celine, and lingered.
"She won't be considered," Celine answered, her voice smooth and unbothered, as if responding to a silent, unspoken question. "Still, she is here… watching, despite the seals that bind her."
Absalom's smile was faint, almost tired, yet polite. Still bowed, the very space around him began to pulse, rhythmic and deep, like the heartbeat of something vast and alive. A pressure descended, disorienting even the highest-ranked beings who dared to look directly at him.
Then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.
It wasn't unusual for certain Calamities to be present... without being present. To exist in a space that was both inaccessible and yet deeply, disturbingly aware.
Low whispers slithered like a plague through the chamber, hushed and venomous. A Guard had refused an Elder's invitation... and with it, the sacred rite of ascension.
Jarul exchanged a long, knowing glance with the other Elders, a silent conversation humming beneath the stillness, heard only in the language of shared power.
"The next Elder shall be chosen soon," he finally spoke, his voice carved from stone and centuries.
His gaze shifted, measured, deliberate, settling upon Agnes and her son Marcellus, who stood like shadows on Mirah's palm.
"And now… the other matter," Jarul intoned, his voice echoing faintly across the obsidian walls.
"The rumors have spread, wide as wind, deep as rot, through every corner of the realm."
He paused. Even the Calamities, harbingers of old terror, fell into reverent silence.
For this was the truth all sought, the wound everyone feared to name.
Then… Celine rose.
A thing both divine and damned.
Her lower half slithered forward, a monstrous centipede's body adorned with shriveled, twitching heads jutting from her carapace like imprisoned souls clawing to escape perdition.
Above, from the waist, she was a vision of haunting beauty: a siren in form, a demon in essence.
Six arms moved with a dancer's grace and a butcher's purpose, one pair ending in twin appendages at the elbow, twitching in eerie symmetry. Another pair, long and elegant, held a golden harp that wept with every step.
Her face, obscured in aged bandages, revealed only her eyes, two blazing crimson orbs that smoldered with seduction… and torment.
And her back? It was veiled, unseen… yet those who dared imagine it were cursed with visions of writhing impossibility. A canvas of madness made flesh.
"Pretty mortal," she cooed, voice as sweet as honey laced with poison. "Mother of the boy who cast the realm into chaos… and rose to take the Guard's mantle…"
She smiled, though no one saw it, they felt it.
"…You shall be judged, my love."
"Long ago," Celine began, her voice like a melody hummed through a crypt, "love seeped into this accursed realm, treacherous, forbidden, and unwise. Not love for us, but between one of our own and your kind. We warned her. Still, she strayed."
Her tone soured, silken yet sharp.
"And from that love, so pure, so blind, came knowledge never meant for mortals to grasp. A truth twisted into a weapon."
Her burning eyes flicked to Mirah, unblinking.
"The bond between our Beloved Mirah and the human she trusted most… ended in betrayal. In failure. And now again, one of ours has fallen, for the sake of a mortal."
Silence thickened like fog as her gaze slid, snake-like, to Agnes. Her stare peeled away every pretense.
"That man…" she whispered, "the one Mirah bore a child with, he wielded Kamah, the same forbidden technique you now command. The very curse that anchors us to this plane and turns our gifts into dust."
Her voice was a funeral dirge.
"Kamah… is a threat to us all."
One of her grotesque fingers, scaled, banded, inhuman, rose and pointed directly at Agnes.
"Veritas sigillata."
The words slithered like a spell, delicate as a kiss, final as judgment.
Agnes felt it instantly. A cold rush surged through her spine, then a blooming warmth beneath her skin. Her body betrayed her: her breath caught, her nipples tightened, and a slick discomfort formed between her thighs, like something unseen had entered her, probing her essence. Yet she did not falter.
She stood, tall, composed, defiant.
Marcellus saw it all. His eyes, filled with quiet rage, slowly met Celine's in warning.
If the game shifted further, he would abandon all restraint. He would burn the realm to ash before watching his mother fall prey.
"You are now bound," Celine whispered, her smile unfurling like rot beneath silk. "To truth. To lies. And to your fate, a horror sweet and everlasting."
Loki remained silent. Not a growl, not a breath.
Marcellus had hoped, foolishly, that Loki might intervene if things spiraled.
But he had been mistaken.
Loki was no ally. He never had been.
Celine tilted her head, mock-curious, a clawed hand drifting toward her lips as though readying to blow a kiss.
"Tell me, mortal… are you of that fallen nation, Ursula? If so, how many of your kind still possess Kamah?"
Her voice dripped with mockery. "And what is it you desire, with such power nestled in your blood?"
Agnes exhaled, a slow, measured sigh that masked the storm within.
"If I answer truthfully," she said, her voice level yet edged with resolve, "what becomes of me then?"
Silence answered her.
Cold, absolute.
Not even the shifting of limbs or breath stirred among the Calamities. Only Celine's gaze remained fixed, ageless and unrelenting.
Agnes continued, unshaken.
"Yes," she declared, her eyes steady. "I am of that kingdom."
Marcellus's heart thundered in his chest. He clenched his fists, a thousand thoughts racing, none of them able to change what had already been spoken. He didn't know what Celine's spell would do, whether it bound the truth or punished it. But he knew this: admittance was still a sentence, if not of death, then of something worse.
"For the others…" Agnes said slowly, "…some escaped. But their whereabouts are lost to me."
A pause. Then the final blow, soft yet resolute.
"This ability, Kamah, gave me the strength to protect whom I choose to protect."
Her words lingered in the chamber like a blade suspended in still air. There was no fear in her tone, only a truth sealed in blood and choice.
"Gradually, a quiet relief washed over her. The weight she'd carried dissolved, and with it, the fear that her truth would be her undoing. It hadn't been her end, it was her release."