Two weeks later, the rulers of the Ten Kingdoms were summoned to an emergency council. The Violet Moon had risen twice more since the ritual. The monsters were increasing in number and ferocity. The plague was spreading unchecked. The people were terrified, and terrified people demanded answers.
Kaelen provided them.
He stood before the assembled kings and queens, his robes immaculate, his voice steady, his presence radiating absolute authority. The other Architects flanked him not as equals, but as witnesses to his truth. Ophira, her blind eyes veiled, stood slightly apart, her testimony ready. Transcripts of Eldric's visions were circulated among the rulers, annotated with the Architects' "interpretation."
"Your Majesties," Kaelen began, his voice carrying effortlessly through the great hall. "I come before you not as a supplicant, but as a witness. A witness to a war that has been fought in the spaces between worlds a war that, until now, has been hidden from mortal eyes."
He paused, letting the silence build.
"Few weeks ago, a being of immense and malevolent power attempted to breach our reality. It called itself a Grim, but it was no mere shepherd of souls. It was a devourer, a consumer of life, a predator that fed on the transition between existence and oblivion. It sought to unmake the Cycle entirely to seize the souls of all living things and bend them to its will."
He gestured to Ophira. "My colleague, the Blind Seer of Artheris, foresaw its coming. So too did Eldric the All-Seeing, whose fragmented visions we now, at last, fully understand. They warned us. And we the Menancers you have trusted to guard the arcane balance of this world we answered the call."
His voice dropped, becoming low and intimate, as if sharing a secret with each person in the hall.
"We fought it."
The words hung in the air.
"We fought it in the spaces between moments. In the cracks of reality. In the darkness beneath the world. The battle raged for days, invisible to mortal eyes, but cataclysmic in its scope. We sacrificed our own bodies " he raised his scarred hand, and the other Architects displayed their wounds "to drive it back. And in the end, we succeeded. We banished the Grim from our plane of existence. We cast it out beyond the Veil, where it cannot touch us again."
He let the relief settle before delivering the blow.
"But it did not go quietly."
Kaelen's face hardened. His voice took on an edge of cold fury.
"In its death throes, as it was torn from our world, the Grim struck back. With its last, spiteful breath, it stained our moon with its corruption. The violet light that now rises in our sky is not a curse we brought upon ourselves it is the blood of a defeated enemy, the venom of a dying serpent spat into the face of its conquerors. And from that venom, the monsters were born."
Murmurs rippled through the assembled rulers. Kaelen pressed on.
"But the Grim's vengeance did not end there. Before its banishment, it sowed a final, insidious seed among us. It spawned progeny children who are not children. Vessels of its will, scattered across the Ten Kingdoms, hidden among the innocent like wolves among sheep."
He nodded to Ophira, who stepped forward.
"Through the celestial sight granted to me," Ophira said, her voice hollow and resonant, "I have seen them. Infants born with eyes that glow with the same violet light that stains our moon. With irises marked by symbols shifting, writhing sigils that are no human language, but the script of the Grim itself. Eldric the All-Seeing, in his blessed visions, foresaw the same. We did not understand his warnings then. We do now."
Kaelen raised his hand, and an illusory image appeared in the air above the assembly a child with glowing violet eyes, their irises crawling with geometric symbols that pulsed with a sickly light.
"They are called the Curselings. The Grim-Spawn. And they are the reason our world continues to suffer. Their presence calls the monsters from the darkness. Their existence anchors the Violet Moon's corruption to our reality. As long as even one of them draws breath, the Grim's vengeance continues. The plague will spread. The dungeons will fester. The creatures will multiply."
He let the image fade.
"We fought a god for you," Kaelen said, his voice dropping to a near-whisper that somehow filled the hall more completely than any shout. "We bled for you. We won. But if you want to keep that victory if you want your children to inherit a world that still knows light then the Grim's spawn must be purged. Every last one. Without hesitation. Without mercy. For mercy toward them is betrayal of all humanity."
He straightened, and his voice rang out like a bell.
"The war is not over. The enemy has simply changed its face. And now, the question falls to you: will you finish what we started? Or will you let the Grim's last laugh be our extinction?"
The hall erupted.
Not with questions. Not with doubts. With applause. With cheers. With the desperate, fervent gratitude of people who had been given a villain they could understand a face to put on their suffering, a target for their rage.
The Decree of Extermination and Surrender was drafted that night and issued the following dawn.
The great hunt had begun.
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