The root of malice

The Scorched Valley of Kemet

The land bled fire.

Crimson veins of molten rock carved jagged scars through the blackened earth, the air thick with sulfur and the acrid scent of burning stone. The sky above was a lifeless void, its expanse consumed by heatwaves and the ashen breath of slumbering titans. The heat was not merely oppressive—it was designed to crush the living. Even demons, creatures who had long since abandoned the comforts of flesh, felt their forms strain beneath the valley's unrelenting torment.

Yet, they marched on.

The dead did not complain. The undead did not falter. They moved in rigid, unnatural unison behind Iblis, their master. Their empty sockets and rotting faces betrayed neither fear nor pain, but even in their silence, something in their brittle bodies betrayed hesitation.

They felt it.

Something older than them. Older than war. Older than death.

Vlad felt it too.

"By now, they must suspect our movements. Draco has bought us time... but Iblis wastes none."

The thought sat bitter on his tongue, but he did not voice it. There was no point. Iblis was beyond persuasion, beyond patience. He was the only creature among them unfazed by the valley's relentless assault, riding atop his monstrous, five-horned beast as though he belonged here.

Perhaps he did.

Vlad's fingers twitched. Even his body, long accustomed to suffering, felt the weight of this place—a landscape so devoid of mercy that it had no right to exist.

Before leaving Achaemenid's northern frontier, Vlad had ensured his own lineage, cruel as it was. He had commanded his men to hunt, to scour the lands for an Amanécerian virgin. One was found, broken, bound in chains and spellwork so absolute that she could not even will herself to die. He did not trust fate. He did not trust bloodlines. He trusted only control.

And yet, here in this valley, that concept meant nothing.

Control did not exist here.

The Valley of Volcanoes had long since abandoned life. The blackened peaks roared occasionally, spewing molten rock into the sky, but they did so without consciousness—without design. But something else watched them.

Something beneath.

Iblis rode forward, silent and unreadable.

Vlad felt it again—a ripple, a shift in the air that made his very bones ache.

Then, Iblis raised a hand. The entire army halted.

Vlad followed his gaze and felt something cold wrap around his spine.

A volcano.

Not the largest. Not the most violent. But wrong.

Dead, but watching.

The silence was unbearable. Iblis waited, staring at the peak, as though listening to something only he could hear. The moment stretched impossibly long.

Then, he moved.

It took a full day and two nights to reach the summit.

By then, Vlad's body was screaming. Even in the dead of night, the heat did not relent. The lava pools churned like wounded gods, casting their poisonous light against the cragged walls. Yet, Iblis stepped forward, his movements precise, his intentions absolute.

Then, he stopped.

The volcano's wall was fractured, brittle—thinner than the rest.

Iblis lifted a hand. A whisper of black magic, a tremor in the earth.

A passageway opened.

But it was not the stone parting that unsettled Vlad most.

It was the absence of lava.

The molten rivers that should have filled their path did not exist. Did not flow here. As though something in the mountain refused to burn.

"Great Lord, this is—"

Iblis stepped inside without so much as a glance back.

Vlad clenched his teeth and followed.

The darkness swallowed them whole.

The stone passage twisted downward in impossible angles, the cavern walls lined with jagged spikes that looked as though they would collapse at the faintest tremor. The silence was suffocating, the air thick, poisoned by something unseen.

No, not unseen.

Waiting.

The deeper they went, the heavier it became. The unknown presence that had whispered in the valley now pressed against Vlad's very bones. It was concentrated here. Watching him.

He forced himself to focus on the ground beneath his feet.

The rock was too smooth. No natural formation had made this place.

This was not a cave.

It was a path.

And something had walked it before them.

For hours, for days—it felt endless—they descended. Until the air became so dense that Vlad's lungs fought to breathe.

Then, Iblis stopped.

The silence was so absolute that when he struck the stone with his palm, the entire world screamed.

A crimson orb rose from the shattered rock.

Its glow was sickly, violent, alive.

The ground lurched violently beneath them.

"It's erupting—!" Vlad's voice was lost in the chaos as the earth tore itself apart.

Above them, the ceiling cracked. Entire slabs of rock collapsed into the abyss below, yet Iblis stood untouched, smiling as if he had expected this.

"At last."

His voice was wrong.

It did not belong in this place.

The chamber pulsed, a heartbeat in the stone. The air trembled as the orb fed greedily on the black energy seeping from Iblis's outstretched hand.

Vlad staggered as the pressure mounted. It was like being crushed beneath the weight of a dying star.

"This can't be…!"

The orb's light twisted, its shape expanding, the tremors growing into a full-blown convulsion of the world itself.

And then Iblis's voice ripped through the void:

"Come, Triglav! Wyvern! Dabbah! Come at my command!"

The chamber collapsed around them, but it no longer mattered.

Something in the distance had stirred.

Something that should have remained buried.

Something that now knew his name.

And it was coming.