CHAPTER 4: THE SERPENT'S FEAST
The halls of the Sanctum bled light. Amber and crimson, leaking from the chandeliers like spilled wine. Sophia stood at the head of a banquet table long enough to seat a hundred, though only thirteen chairs were filled. The Circle of Thorns had gathered to witness the feast.
Not of food. Of loyalty.
She raised her goblet. Inside was not wine, but the still-warm blood of a traitor. The man's head sat at the center of the table, eyes glassy, mouth agape.
"To new beginnings," Sophia said.
The Circle drank.
That night, alliances were made with blood and skin. The walls witnessed every scream.
Sophia's lover for the night wore a mask of bone. She didn't ask his name. It didn't matter. She had become something more than flesh, something that devoured power with a kiss.
Lucas watched from the shadows.
He saw the bruises, the knife marks, the hunger in her eyes that didn't need him anymore.
Amara joined him. "She's changed."
"She was always this," Lucas replied. "She just stopped hiding."
---
The Sanctum was once a place of reverence. Now, it pulsed with a hedonistic rhythm. Servants moved like shadows, naked and anointed in oils that shimmered with crushed gemstones. Incense clouds turned the air into velvet and heat, laced with hallucinogens from the jungle.
Sophia reclined on a throne carved from petrified roots. At her feet, two acolytes played music on strings spun from human hair. She barely moved, her fingers idly stroking the jeweled armrest as if conducting the madness.
One by one, the thirteen members of the Circle came forward. Each brought an offering, a secret, a soul, a sacrifice. One woman laid the corpse of her child. A man wept as he handed Sophia a scroll that would doom his entire bloodline.
Each gesture was met with silence. Then, only when the room held its breath, Sophia would nod.
It was all ceremony. All design.
Every cruel, precise moment.
---
Later, in her private chamber, Lucas confronted her.
"This isn't control," he said. "It's chaos."
Sophia turned slowly, her skin glistening with sweat and something darker.
"It's faith," she whispered.
"You're building a cult."
"I'm building an empire."
"You're losing yourself."
She walked to him. Kissed him. Soft at first. Then harder. Her teeth grazed his lip.
"I've never been more me than I am now."
He hated that he still wanted her.
They didn't make love. They clashed. Nails, hands, sweat, words. Their bodies sang a brutal hymn, and when it was over, Lucas lay breathless and bleeding on the floor, staring at her silhouette against the moonlit glass.
"Tell me you still love me," he gasped.
"I don't love," she answered. "I conquer."
---
In the lower chambers, Ethan carved symbols into his skin.
He had escaped the prison of bone by sheer will, dragging what remained of his soul behind him.
Now, he remembered.
Her scent. Her cries. The promises they'd whispered in the dust.
And the betrayal.
He bled into a chalice, whispering her name into the wound.
"Sophia…"
Somewhere, she heard it.
And smiled.
But the smile was thin. Tight. A mask.
For Ethan had not just escaped, he had changed. No longer a lover scorned. Now, a prophet of vengeance.
---
He gathered the remnants of the Forsaken, the exiled, the cursed, the broken-hearted. From the scorched barrens to the sea of cinders, they answered his call.
He offered them fire.
He offered them her.
He stood before them, naked but for ash and blade, and said:
"They made her a queen. We will make her a myth."
The crowd roared.
He cut his palm and smeared it across his chest, forming the mark of the Thorned Crown.
"We bleed to remember. We kill to forget."
They followed.
---
Sophia began to have visions.
Nightmares, yes, but more than that. Glimpses.
A child's hand reaching from a pit.
A serpent devouring its tail.
Ethan's face was older, sadder, surrounded by flame.
She awoke in a sweat, her sheets soaked, her body thrumming with a fear she hadn't known in years.
Was it prophecy?
Or punishment?
She asked the Mirror of Teeth.
It answered with silence.
Only her reflection remained and behind it, always, Ethan's eyes.
---
She held another feast.
This time, no Circle. Only strangers. The poor. The desperate. The dying.
She fed them from golden plates. Let them drink from her chalice. Some called her savior. Others wept.
When the feast ended, she chose three at random and slit their throats.
Balance, she said.
The survivors bowed.
One girl refused. She stood, unafraid, eyes wild.
"Do you even know what you are?" she asked.
Sophia approached.
"I am everything," she said.
The girl spat.
And laughed as she died.
---
In her bath of oils and bone fragments, Sophia sat motionless.
Lucas joined her. Uninvited. Unwelcome.
"Do you remember the forest?" he asked. "The first time we kissed?"
"No."
"I think you do."
He moved closer.
"I remember how you looked at Ethan," he said. "You've never looked at me that way."
Sophia turned.
"Because I never believed you'd survive me."
And then she kissed him slow and deep until he stopped breathing.
But he didn't die.
She pulled away.
"Next time, don't pretend to be a lover."
---
The war was coming.
And Sophia smiled.
Because finally, she'd see him again.
Ethan.
The only wound that never closed.
---
They came from the east, cloaked in mist and myth. The Children of Smoke.
Sophia watched from the balcony as they emerged, silent figures wrapped in rags and ash. Some walked, others crawled. A few floated just above the ground. Their eyes burned like coals. Not one of them spoke.
They didn't need to.
They were hers.
Bred from the crucible of the War of Embers, trained in the ruins of the Old Faith, and broken until loyalty replaced identity. The Children did not remember their names. They didn't need to. They answered only to Sophia.
Inside the Iron Hall, Lucas argued with Amara.
"They're monsters," he said. "We can't use them."
"They're necessary," Amara said. "Sophia knows what she's doing."
"Does she?"
Amara looked out the window. "If she doesn't, we're already lost."
---
Sophia walked among the Children. They did not bow, but parted like smoke. She reached the smallest of them, a girl no older than ten with scorched hands and eyes too old for her face.
"What do you dream of?" Sophia asked.
The girl blinked slowly. "Ashes. And your voice."
Sophia kissed her forehead. "Then you're ready."
---
The training began at dawn.
No weapons at first. Only silence.
Each child was taught to move without sound, to kill with breath alone. Their first task: to watch the flames of the Sacred Furnace until the fire spoke back. Most saw only smoke. But those who saw shapes, those were marked.
Sophia watched from above.
By nightfall, the first blood had been spilled. Not by order, but by instinct. Two of the youngest had fought over a bone charm. One was dead. The other offered her heart to Sophia in cupped hands.
Sophia accepted it.
---
Lucas tried to reason with her again.
"This isn't what we meant to build," he said.
Sophia sat on her throne of blackstone. Her voice was flat. "What we meant to build is dead. This is what survives."
"They're just children."
"They're weapons."
Lucas shook his head. "You weren't always like this."
"No," she agreed. "I used to believe in peace."
"And now?"
"Now I believe in victory."
---
That night, Sophia lay with a boy barely sixteen. Not for pleasure. For ritual.
Their bodies were painted with ash and gold. As they moved, others watched from the shadows, the Children learning the rites of domination, devotion, and despair.
The boy cried when she finished. Not from pain.
From gratitude.
Sophia whispered, "You are reborn."
He repeated it. Again. And again.
Until his voice broke.
---
In the northern wastes, Ethan received word from a spy. A raven with obsidian eyes brought the message:
THE CHILDREN ARE MOVING. SHE HAS BECOME FIRE.
Ethan crushed the bird in his hand.
He turned to his lieutenants.
"Time to bleed the smoke."
---
Weeks passed.
The Children spread through the land like mist before war. They left messages carved into bone, painted onto the walls of churches, whispered through dreams.
One message only: SHE IS COMING.
Villages emptied overnight. Entire towns knelt in silence as black-robed figures walked their streets. No death. Not yet. Just the scent of fear.
Sophia stood at the edge of the Weeping Coast and smiled. Behind her, the Children lined the cliffs. Not one word was spoken.
She raised her hand.
They vanished into the mist.
The conquest had begun.
---
Lucas began drinking.
He couldn't sleep. Couldn't eat. Couldn't look at her without seeing Ethan's eyes in her expression.
Amara tried to console him. He shoved her away.
"I loved her first," he said.
"She was never yours," Amara replied.
"She's no one's."
"Exactly."
---
Sophia sent a raven to Ethan.
Not a threat.
A question.
Will you burn for me?
His answer came on the wind.
Only if you burn with me.
She cried for the first time in years.
---
The first true battle came at Thornwall.
Ethan's forces had held the fort for weeks. When Sophia arrived, the defenders saw only fog.
Then came the screams.
No weapons. Just smoke. Just shadows. Just children with blades of bone and breath like poison.
By morning, Thornwall was silent.
Sophia stood atop the ruins.
One hundred skulls were arranged in a perfect circle.
Inside the ring, a single word: ETERNITY.
---
Back in her sanctum, Sophia gathered the ashes of the fallen.
She bathed in them.
A ritual of remembrance.
A communion with the dead.
Lucas watched, broken.
"I don't know who you are anymore."
"I am the fire you feared," she whispered.
Then she kissed him.
And let him go.
---
The Children danced that night.
Not for joy.
For war.
Sophia danced with them.
And the world burned a little more.