Seraphine was half-draped across her bed when the door opened, her blonde hair spilling over one shoulder in casual disarray, and she tilted her head at the entrance with mild curiosity. She didn't even bother reaching for the sheets, since there was only one man who was allowed here anyway.
Ashen, for once, didn't notice the view.
"Regina is here."
Two words. That was all it took.
The warmth drained from Seraphine's face the moment the name landed. In its place, something else appeared; briefly, before she caught it. It was a face that had no business belonging to a Saintess. Something that exuded decadence and lethargy toward all life, including her own.
"Should we ask her why she is here…?" Her voice had taken on a different register, too. Becoming mellower.
"What?"
"I mean, we torture her, Ash," she explained as if it was a matter of course. "You're an expert at making her sing, no?"
"Seraphine." His tone was flat. "Snap out of it. You forgot who is behind her."
A blink. Then another.
blink—blink—
And just like that, the devil-may-care quality melted away, and his Seraphine was back, blinking at him with an expression like she surfaced from a brief, strange dream.
"Oh!" She straightened slightly. "Right. Right, yes. Sorry."
Ashen merely smiled and let her gather her bearings.
"Why is the Custodian Order caring so much about a small region like ours, though…?" The distress was genuine now since it was coming from the kind and earnest Seraphine.
"Based on how they operate…" Ashen leaned against the doorframe, thinking aloud. "They only move when they need something, when they judge something useless and eliminate it, or when something intrigues them."
"I don't think they want to eliminate us," Seraphine started carefully, drawing her knees up. "They would've done it already if that were the case. As for anything they need… do we even have something precious enough to grab their gaze?"
Ashen's expression flattened.
"…the mine."
Seraphine stared at him.
"Fuck," she said, suddenly recalling the most significant secret their territory was sitting on.
The reason she hadn't thought of it immediately was the same reason she rarely thought of it at all — by design. The measures they had taken against mind-reading kept the important information buried in Ashen's dreamscape, surfacing only when actively needed. It was a necessary precaution that occasionally made her feel like she was being surprised by her own knowledge.
"But my point still stands," Seraphine continued. "What are they waiting for?"
He had no answer to that either.
"Maybe they don't know of it yet?" he ventured.
Seraphine tilted her head, making her blonde locks sway as she considered it.
"I mean… if they'd been able to detect the mine despite the null stones, they would have moved to take it before we even arrived." She nodded slowly, building on his thread. "So as to why they came here now… it could only be suspicion."
"Yes…" He exhaled. "We have a delegation of demi-humans acting suspiciously chummy with us for no apparent reason, and they have an oracle on top of that. There was bound to be something. Now that I think about it, that oracle probably sensed something related to the mine… something vague enough to bring them here without being specific enough to act on."
Seraphine didn't entirely agree. "Or maybe they came because of you…?"
"Me?" Ashen looked genuinely confused.
"Pfft." She let out a small giggle, and the last of the earlier strangeness dissolved entirely. "You look quite cute when you're clueless, but this can't go on." Her eyes twinkled. "Let me enlighten you, darling… You yourself, beyond that mine, and beyond this whole territory, are quite the treasure."
She raised an eyebrow in challenge, daring him to keep playing innocent. "Or do you think just any man would be capable of accomplishing your stunts?"
"Ah…" His expression opened into something between mock-horror and genuine alarm. "They're after my body, after all?!"
He slipped out of his boots, crossed the room in three steps, and dove into the bed directly into her embrace.
"Kyaa~"
Seraphine cooperated admirably with a girlish squeak, arms and legs instantly contradicting the helpless image by snaking around him with instinctive possessiveness.
He rested his chin on her ample breasts and looked up at her.
"So what should we do about that hypocrite?"
"That vampire…?" Seraphine considered it, her fingers moving through his hair with comfortable absentmindedness. "Maybe just leave her be? She's done nothing but observe for a whole year. As long as we play dumb from our side, I don't think she'd do anything rash anytime soon."
"Don't startle the snake…" Ashen nodded in his current position, which had the effect of pressing his chin further into her. "Let's go with that. The more time I'm given, the better equipped I'll be to handle whatever they throw at us."
"Right." Seraphine smiled with smugness, looking so proud it could almost be mistaken for personal accomplishment. "With the freakish way you keep getting stronger, time is undoubtedly on our side."
She caressed his hair and let a cozy quiet settle between them.
Then: "On that note… I think I'm ready to advance, Ash."
"Really?!" He lifted his chin, and his surprise was genuine.
It wasn't misplaced. The third step was different from anything that came before it, as it was not merely the next threshold, but the dividing line between pathwalkers who would be remembered and those who wouldn't. The hallmark of the transcendent. On the third step, when the integration of concepts with the soul is fed back into the vessel, it produces a massive leap in physical potential. A second Thema became available, to be fused with the one acquired on the seventh step, giving higher quality to the skills and complicating the path in ways that made every step beyond it harder to replicate and anticipate.
And then there was the domain. The accumulated concepts, finally able to express themselves outwardly, would produce a rudimentary territory unique to the wielder's Sin.
But all of that only came if one ascended safely without being swallowed by their own Sin, or in Seraphine's case, virtue.
The third step had claimed many, and so, humanity had developed a crutch for it, an anchor of sorts, something external to hold the self in place while the self was being remade.
Seraphine's expression shifted.
"And I still don't have it…" A small pout settled onto her face.
Ashen's surprise deflated on cue. "I thought as much." he was with her all the time after all, and he did not see her prepare anything of the sort.
"I'll help you after we clear the territory of Narkals," he offered after a moment. "How about that?"
She nodded, the pout easing into a happy smile. "My previous Lust concept is still being consumed and converted into Chastity anyway. I can wait."
When that process was completed, every path skill she had gained as a Lust pathwalker would invert into its opposite counterpart, remade for her current concept. The waiting was doing its own kind of work.
"Alright, that works." He resettled comfortably. "By the way… what's your current epithet?"
"Warden of Longing," she answered, and then, before the natural follow-up question could fully form: "And as to how I was able to embody it…" Her voice suddenly turned sweeter… unnecessarily so. "It isn't all thanks to your relentless teasing without ever allowing me to taste that big cock of yours!?"
Smack—!
"—what the…" Ashen blinked. The sound had come and gone before his brain fully registered what had preceded it.
He was absorbed, more than anything else, by the expression on her face. Seraphine always liked to play at shyness around him. The sudden, unfiltered outburst from that same woman caught him completely off guard.
Seraphine had apparently also realized her slip, because she was now gently pressing her palm to the spot she had just struck, occasionally caressing it gently… not unlike a mother trying to soothe her child.
"You didn't hear that, right, mm?" Her voice had returned to its usual velvet timbre, tilted up at the end into something that was technically a question.
"…yes, honey." Ashen obediently nodded his head. "I did not hear your aggravated declaration about how you were never allowed to taste that big cock of mine. Don't worry."
Smack—!
He received his reward for the audacity with complete composure.
***
***
***
As the days passed, the wrecked territory seemed to regain its vitality, especially with Seraphine tirelessly working to heal the injured, and the lord now back to keep everything running smoothly.
When two weeks had passed, Ashen decided it was time.
He would take his small army and raze every Narkal presence in his region to the ground. This was the prerequisite for everything else he intended to do.
His next goals were two.
First, find Lapis. Confirm she was alive, confirm she was not in immediate danger, and then make the trip back to Esperra to see his parents and Dorian… after all, they were faces he had been carrying around in the back of his mind for too long without being able to reach.
Not to mention, he couldn't imagine the distress his parents must be feeling after losing not one, but both of their children without a trace.
Second… invade the Narkal Metropolises, and kill every last one of them on the way.
The second goal was the kind of thing that, said plainly in a room, would produce long silence before someone asked if he was crazy.
He was. But he was also serious.
It might seem like foolishness at first pass. What right did he have to think he could accomplish what humanity had failed to do across two thousand years? And what right did he have to drag his entire race into a war that might end in their extinction?
But Ashen's view of the matter had arrived at a different place.
In his opinion, the current human race had grown far too comfortable with its own precarious existence. They had spent so long warding off invasions only to retreat behind their walls and live as though the thing that wanted them dead had simply grown bored of wanting it, that complacency had calcified into something they mistook for strategy.
As if the threat lurking beyond their borders did not still hunger for their flesh and dream of burning their civilization to the ground.
In the first fragment of history, he saw how humanity resisted without a system. He saw the Pride Army wreak havoc across the battlefield with nothing but their bare bodies and mana.
He saw men slay Great Beasts that would strike terror into today's soldiers.
That humanity had been a warrior race.
This one was hiding.
With all the advantages the system had granted them over the centuries… the steps, the concepts, the expanded lifespans and the exponential physical potential; they were stumbling and getting pushed around more than ever. Why is that? It was completely illogical in Ashen's mind.
For fuck's sake! The Pride Domain had pushed back the Demi-Human Empire AND the Narkal race for so long without any such crutch.
So how…?
Unfortunately, he knew the answer to such a miserable reality.
'We are just a bunch of cowardly trash.'
It was fear.
Fear, coupled with the fact that they had already survived for more than two millennia this way. So why change?
But Ashen knew that fantasy would not last forever. The regressed soul residing within him was damning proof of that.
So he would move. He would wake them up… and drag them into this war with him, their fear be damned.
It was no longer solely about his promise to his soldiers, nor was it just his savior complex speaking. At this point, it was about survival.
Who knew what horrors would crawl out while they stayed huddled in their turtle shell?
Ashen would rather strike first and clear out the fodder. And if that decision led to their premature deaths… then so be it. At least they would die as a warrior race, and not a spineless one.
'Isn't that right, Rowan Vance…?'