The halls of the palace were silent. The city still burned with the rhythm of drills and hammers, but the palace itself had fallen into a hush. The torches guttered against the stone, their smoke bending in drafts that smelled of iron and ash.
The chamber of queens waited. It was not the throne hall, not the lesser hall — but a room lined with dark banners, a single long table cleared of maps and ledgers. The chairs had been pushed back. The space was bare.
Noctis entered alone.
The queens were already waiting: Lyxandra, Seraphyne, Veyra, Selandra. Behind them stood Vaelora and Nyxira, bound into his dominion and now folded into Twilight's order. The concubines — Tina, Clara, Iris — knelt to the side, their eyes lowered.
They all rose when he entered.
Lyxandra spoke first. Her tone was not soft, but it held a rare steadiness."The empire is prepared. The regents will hold it. But the march will take you into Kaeltharion's lands. You may not return quickly."
Noctis did not stop walking. He crossed the room, stood before them, and said simply:"I will return. If Choirs strike, I will answer. If Demons move, I will cut them. Kaeltharion will be broken first."
Seraphyne's silver eyes caught the torchlight. "Even broken, he has hundreds of years of networks. His clans will not collapse easily. You will be striking at the bones of an elder line."
Noctis's gaze did not shift. "That is why I march first. His bones will be ground down, his treasury seized, his legacy erased. When he is gone, Maltherion's remnants will follow."
The room absorbed the certainty. Even the concubines lifted their heads slightly, breathing faster at the weight of the words.
Selandra stepped closer. Her gauntlet rasped against her armor."You know what leaving means. The Legion will hold the walls, but you are the marrow of the empire. The city will feel your absence like a missing limb."
Veyra's voice was quieter, but her words were heavier. "The faith of the people is bound to your presence. They believed because they saw you on the plain. When you leave, belief will waver. I will hold it, but it will waver."
Noctis looked at them in silence. His aura pressed outward, low and steady, filling the chamber with a weight that cut off hesitation. Shadows bent along the banners. The queens trembled, not in fear, but in recognition of what they carried.
He moved closer. His hand brushed across Selandra's armored shoulder, across Lyxandra's sleeve, across Veyra's beads. He said only one thing:"You will hold it because you must."
The concubines rose from their knees. Tina's hands trembled as she touched his cloak, but her eyes did not look away. Clara's voice broke, but she forced it steady."You are leaving us behind, but we will remain loyal. We belong to you. We will not falter."
Iris bent lower, her hair brushing the stone. "Even if the city burns, we will still wait."
Vaelora, regal even in submission, stepped forward last. Her crimson eyes burned."You claimed me in blood. I was Kaeltharion's queen once. Now I kneel here, bound by your will. His kin will fall, and I will see it done through you. I do not resist."
Nyxira, draped in silks that shimmered faintly with abyssal runes, laughed softly — but it was not mockery. It was the sound of someone who had already chosen."I followed Maltherion once. He is dead, and his legacy rots. You stand where he never could. I will follow you now."
The words pressed into the air like links of chain.
Noctis said nothing for a long time. The room waited. His aura thickened until the torches bent and guttered out. Darkness swallowed the chamber. Only his eyes glowed crimson-gold in the void.
He spoke then, low and final. "Hold the empire. When I return, I will not accept weakness. When I march, you will not falter. I leave you my law. You will carry it."
The queens lowered their heads. The concubines trembled. Vaelora and Nyxira knelt together, their loyalty sealed in silence.
When the torches flared back to life, his aura had already receded. But the weight remained in the marrow of every woman in the room.
Noctis turned, cloak trailing against stone. The door opened with a low groan. He stepped into the hall and left them in silence.
The queens and concubines remained bowed, each one trembling with the echo of his presence. They did not rise until long after he was gone.
Months passed like hours in the marrow of the Grid.
The Twilight Empire drilled until its streets pulsed with discipline. The regents bound themselves to their burdens. The Cathedral held faith through Veyra's hands. Lyxandra kept the treasury flowing. Seraphyne drilled the border legions without pause. Selandra cut down unrest before it could breathe.
Noctis did not linger in the city. He gave them law, left them strength, and turned west.
The march across sea and plain consumed the weeks. Grain was shifted through ports, iron forged into fleet, dominion tests refined into doctrine. The Night Legion expanded its rhythm until even the newest recruits moved with marrow-tempo.
Then the sails fell behind. Then the harbors shrank into horizon.
The Northwestern continent rose from storm seas like a black knife.
Noctis traveled without spectacle. He left his armies veiled in shadow miles behind. He crossed storm cliffs alone, cloak tight, steps carrying him over basalt ridges slick with salt.
The palace of Kaeltharion's line loomed above the coast. Towers of bone-white stone and obsidian fused into spires that bent into the clouds. Banners, crimson and black, sagged against the salt wind.
Noctis did not slow. He walked through gates that stood open, the guards frozen mid-breath as his aura pressed over them. He did not need to raise a hand. Their marrow stilled, and they dropped their weapons as if forgetting they had ever held them.
The corridors echoed. Stone floors clacked under his steps. Torches guttered out as he passed. Shadows followed.
The first elders appeared in the great hall. Six of them, pale and sharp, their eyes burning with fury. Behind them, younger kin drew weapons, iron and marrow-blades lifted with shaking hands.
One of the elders spat. "Noctis. You dare desecrate this hall? You abandoned your kin for humans and traitors. You return now only to butcher your own?"
Noctis stopped at the edge of the dais. His cloak hung loose around him. His voice was cold, level. "Kaeltharion betrayed me first. This is balance."
The elders hissed. One raised his hands, abyssal fire coiling in his palms. Another bent his marrow into illusions — shadow images that layered themselves through the chamber, half a dozen false Noctises stepping from the walls.
The younger kin shouted and charged.
Noctis moved without Apex. No wings. No halo. Only his body and the blood running in it.
The first elder's abyssal flame burst across the hall. Noctis stepped once. The fire folded away, dissipating like smoke against his presence. His fist drove through the elder's chest, marrow cracking like iron. The elder fell before he could scream.
Illusions surged from every angle. Noctis let them come. His aura pressed outward, and the false bodies wavered, unraveling into smoke. He found the marrow-thread of the caster and pulled it taut. The elder's head snapped back, blood spraying as the illusion web collapsed.
Guards tried to hold ranks. One swung a marrow-forged spear. Noctis caught it, snapped the shaft, and drove the broken half through the guard's throat. Another stumbled back, eyes wide, before a spectral double struck him down from behind.
He moved step by step. Each step brought a corpse. Each strike dismantled an elder. Their dominions cracked, their marrow bled, their bodies hit stone with sickening thuds.
The hall filled with sound: bone breaking, banners tearing, blades shrieking against the floor.
By the time Noctis reached the dais, the floor was a litter of corpses. Elders sprawled across shattered banners. Guards groaned against walls, their weapons broken beside them.
He stopped, cloak brushing the blood-slick stone. He did not speak. His aura pressed outward in silence, and the survivors staggered back until their backs hit the walls.
One whispered, shaking: "Monster…" Another dropped his sword entirely, eyes wide with terror.
The torches snuffed out. Only the glow of Noctis's eyes lit the hall.
The palace had been breached. Kaeltharion's legacy had begun to bleed.
Months bled into drills and ledgers. The regents bore their burdens, the Cathedral held its wards, the treasury shifted iron into fleets and grain into soldiers. The Night Legion hardened into marrow rhythm, ready to bleed without hesitation.
Noctis left them law and strength. Then he crossed the sea.
Storms broke under the hulls. Leviathans strained at their chains. When the fleets dispersed into shadow veils, Noctis stood on the cliffs of the Northwestern continent, the salt wind pressing his cloak tight.
Kaeltharion's domain rose before him — a palace carved of bone-white stone fused with obsidian, towers jagged against the clouded sky. Black and crimson banners hung heavy with salt.
The gates did not resist. Guards froze as marrow clamped inside them. Spears clattered against stone, and their throats convulsed in silence. Noctis walked through, steps echoing as torches guttered and went out.
The great hall stretched wide. Six elders waited on the dais, robed, faces composed into masks of welcome. Guards and lesser kin lined the walls.
One elder stepped forward with a thin smile. "So it is true. Noctis returns at last. We thought you lost, but blood endures. Kaeltharion will rejoice to see his brother walk these halls again."
Another raised his arms in hollow warmth. "The clans will rejoice. You belong here. Stand with us as kin."
Murmurs stirred through the lesser kin. Some whispered, others knelt, their eyes darting between the elders and the figure at the threshold.
Noctis stopped at the edge of the dais. His cloak hung loose, his eyes steady."Do not dress treachery in welcome. You know where I was. You know who chained me to the altars. You know who sold my marrow to the Church."
The torches bent inward, flames snapping sideways under his aura.
"It was Kaeltharion who betrayed me. And you stood with him. I did not return to join you. I came to erase you — your clans, your legacies, and your treasuries."
The lesser kin gasped. Their whispers broke into panic. The elders' masks strained to hold, but their eyes betrayed them.
One spat. "So be it."
The first elder thrust both hands forward, abyssal fire roaring into a pyre that swept the length of the hall. Heat blistered stone; banners curled.
Noctis stepped once. The pyre smashed against emptiness. He reappeared inside the elder's guard, Bloodfang Reaper in sword form drawn. One stroke cut across the chest, and orbitals followed — one through the throat, one through the hip.
The body parted before a scream could form. Blood sheeted across the dais. Behind him, a pillar hissed where fire had licked obsidian, molten cracks glowing.
The second elder slashed his own palm, casting six shadows forward. Blades of smoke rushed from every angle. Noctis's Omen Eyes lit the marrow thread anchoring them. He advanced unfazed, illusions brushing through him. Abyssal Chains lashed out, binding the caster's ribs and dragging him forward.
The Reaper shifted into scythe form. The blade hewed from shoulder to hip. Orbitals widened into crescents and finished the cuts — one severed the remaining shoulder, the other both legs. Illusions collapsed in a rush of smoke. Flesh and bone hit stone in wet fragments.
The third elder stamped, forcing marrow-forged weapons to erupt from the tiles. Spears and hooks rattled upward like a forest of blades.
Noctis extended his hand. Sovereign Arsenal answered. Blood Telekinesis seized the weapons, reversed them, and screamed them back toward their maker. Guards screamed as shards tore through their armor.
He advanced with the Reaper in guan dao spear form. One thrust pinned the elder to a pillar through the stomach. Orbitals became twin swords, intercepting bone lances and shearing them into splinters. He twisted the guan dao upward, splitting the body from gut to collarbone. The pillar fractured; dust cascaded.
Two elders rose together, voices grinding marrow into static. A storm of calcified needles filled the air.
Noctis muted his steps with Phantom Dominion. His aura pulsed with Choir Drown, snapping their voices into silence. Needles shredded air as he raised Sovereign Bulwark. They struck, and half rebounded as a pulse that broke ribs among the guards.
He moved under the fading storm. One palm strike of Marrow Rend caved an elder's chest, snapping the spine. The body folded as though its skeleton had dissolved. The second fell to a clean sword slash, orbitals shearing knees before the throat was opened.
The last elder did not hesitate. He hurled a blood curse, dense and black.
The curse struck Bulwark. Noctis twisted the return into a shockwave that flung nearby guards into columns. He walked through the mist. The Reaper snapped to scythe form, hooking the elder's ankle and ripping the foot free. Before a cry formed, he swung backhand, cleaving through collar and lung. Orbitals cut the rest. Blood sprayed in arcs, coating the dais.
Silence broke only with drip and sob. Limbs lay scattered — a hand flexing, a severed leg twitching, a forearm tapping reflex against tile. Banners sagged, soaked in blood.
A young guard stumbled back, his voice cracking. "No… I don't want to die."
Another dropped his blade, boots sliding in blood as he bolted for the doors.
Noctis did not move. Cloak dripping, he stood at the dais, eyes burning crimson-gold. Orbitals rotated down and sank into stillness. The torches guttered and died, leaving the hall lit only by his gaze.
The lesser kin whispered in terror. The truth of betrayal bled across the stones with the bodies of their elders.
Kaeltharion's palace was breached. His spine was cut.
The ruin of the hall still steamed with blood. Limbs twitched where they had fallen, and smoke rose from the scorched pillars. The corpses of six elders sprawled across shattered stone, their betrayal carved into the floor.
But the survivors did not flee. Loyalists crawled back into the shadows of the dais, dragging their wounded bodies into the sanctum. Blood poured from their arms into carved grooves. Their chants shook the air, marrow-deep, words older than walls.
The floor cracked. Veins of red lit under the tiles. Iron shrieked from the foundations.
From beneath the palace, something stirred.
The hall convulsed. Tiles split. Columns burst. Stone ribs tore open as the first titan rose — a colossal frame stitched from marrow, plated with iron, veins glowing with demonic circuitry.
It stood as tall as the highest spire, shoulders scraping the ceiling. Its helm was a blank skull, fanged and jawless, its chest lined with runes that burned with borrowed life.
Two more tore free of the ground, dragging claws the size of siege towers. Their bodies fused bone, steel, and abyssal core, each step collapsing the floor beneath.
The vampires in the gallery screamed, then cheered, desperate voices rising into a frenzy. They saw salvation in the monsters they had fed their marrow to.
Noctis stood alone on the broken dais, cloak soaked in red. His eyes narrowed, and the Grid stirred. He raised his hand.
Chains roared. Abyssal Genesis Dominion cloaked the battlefield, void hymns pressing the air into suffocating silence. Black links erupted, whipping across the legs of the nearest titan. Marrow Rend burst forward, spearing the chest.
The titan staggered. The floor quaked.
But then it straightened. The chains tore free. The Rend cut marrow and left only a glowing scar. The wounds hissed and sealed with steam, circuitry pulsing brighter.
Noctis's gaze tightened. Even titans had bled before him. These constructs shrugged it off.
The first swung a weapon wrought of bone, the blade longer than a corridor. It cleaved downward. The floor split in a shattering boom, half the hall collapsing as vampires screamed.
The second slammed a hammer, forged around a demon core, into the wall. The stone ribs of the palace cracked, dust raining in clouds. A balcony collapsed, lesser kin shrieking as they tumbled.
The third titan waded forward, claws scything in arcs that shredded columns like dry twigs.
Noctis dodged. Dominion Step folded shadow, his body surfacing across the field. Sparks exploded where he had stood. The hammer blow shook the hall until banners ripped free and fell burning.
He moved, weaving between strikes, measuring rhythm. His orbitals slashed at ankles, Reaper blades tearing marrow and sinew, but wounds closed in seconds. Blood sprayed only to be pulled back by circuitry's glow.
Every strike brought ruin. The palace groaned with each impact, the ceiling shedding chunks of obsidian. The air stank of burning iron and bone dust.
Noctis's aura darkened. He cast Oblivion Rend, the blade of void cutting deep into the nearest titan's side. Flesh split; bone shrieked. The wound burned black.
The titan turned its helm, unfazed, and smashed its claw down. Noctis folded aside, stone splintering where he had stood.
His jaw tightened. Each dominion drained essence into the Grid. Each strike devoured reserves. And still the titans moved.
The second titan raised its hammer again. Its circuitry pulsed in unison with the chant that still echoed from the loyalists in the sanctum. The hammer fell — a strike meant to erase the dais itself.
Noctis did not move aside.
He lifted his hand. The hymn inside him inverted. A sanctity veil ignited, white fire burning along his arms. The hammer struck it. The impact screamed — holy radiance colliding with abyssal circuitry.
The veil held.
The titan reeled, plating cracking across its chest. Runes dimmed. Marrow seams glowed like fissures.
Noctis pressed forward. Radiant arcs carved into the weak points, hymns bending into inverted strikes. Sanctity burned where abyss could not.
The first titan staggered. The second groaned as cracks spiderwebbed across its chest. The third froze mid-step, its circuitry faltering.
Vampires stared in silence, their cheers choking into disbelief.
Their marrow-forged gods, fed with centuries of blood, cracked under sanctity they thought he could not wield.
Noctis stood in the ruin of the dais, veil burning faintly around him. His eyes shone with inverted hymns, crimson threaded with light.
The titans groaned. Their plates split. Their cores glowed like wounds ready to burst.
The palace trembled, waiting for collapse.
The palace groaned like a wounded beast. Every strike of the titans had fractured the hall, pillars leaning, the ceiling weeping dust. Their colossal frames still towered above the ruin, plating cracked, marrow seams glowing, demonic cores exposed by sanctity's bite.
Noctis stood beneath them, cloak dragging through blood. The veil still burned faintly along his arms, a white fire overlaid on crimson. His eyes shone with inverted hymns, crimson threaded with light. The titans' movements faltered, but their weight still pressed the air, each step collapsing more of the floor.
He moved first. Orbitals screamed outward, three blades carving in spiral arcs. He lifted his hand and the marrow of the hall screamed with him. Oblivion Rend cut from palm to air, the void strike shearing through the cracked plating of the nearest titan. The fissure widened, glowing black along its marrow seam. The creature roared without lungs, arms flailing, but its body was already folding at the cut.
Chains erupted from the shadows at his feet. Abyssal Genesis Dominion bound the second titan in a web of links, pulling its arms down and dragging its knees toward stone. Runes across its chest flared, resisting, but the chains tightened until marrow snapped. The titan collapsed forward, its head smashing into the tiles with a thunder that split the dais in half.
The third swung its hammer in desperation. The demon-core inside it pulsed, screaming like a choir of broken voices. Noctis raised his arms, aura deepening. Crimson Crucible Tempest ignited — a storm of pressure and bloodlight that tore the air itself into a vortex. The hammer strike folded into it, swallowed and inverted. The core drained under the crucible's weight, its light funneled into the Grid. The titan staggered, its arms sagging, as essence was ripped from it.
One by one they fell. The first collapsed to the side, its spine shattering. The second buckled on its chains, ribs folding inward until its chest cavity imploded. The third slumped forward, black smoke pouring from the fissures across its body as its hammer fell from limp hands. When the last of them hit the floor, the palace shook hard enough to send banners tearing loose, crashing down in bloody heaps.
Noctis walked among their husks. His hands pressed to cracked plating, and the Sovereign Blood Grid answered. Light flared across the floor, marrow-lines drinking deep. Iron, marrow, demonic circuitry — all drained into him. The titans twitched once under his touch, then went still. The sound of their cores extinguishing rang through the hall like bells being smothered.
The vampires who had cheered salvation fell into silence. Many collapsed to their knees, some sobbing, others clawing at their hair. To see their god-engines devoured like prey shattered marrow-deep certainty. Loyalists still clutching weapons raised them half-heartedly, then dropped them as chains lashed out from the shadows. Sovereign chains pinned them to the floor, impaled them against walls. Their screams were short; the blades of orbitals ended them in passing strokes, necks opened, torsos parted.
Noctis killed without pause, each cut another fact written in blood. The hall became a slaughterhouse. Bodies slid across stone in halves and quarters, blood splattering in fans against the cracked pillars. Those too terrified to move were crushed where they knelt, skulls splitting under Reaper arcs. Only a handful he spared — the most beautiful among the females, frozen in terror. It was not mercy. It was selection. Design, not reprieve.
At last the noise subsided. The titans were husks. The loyalists were corpses. The hall burned with smoke and silence, chains rattling against walls as they pulled taut around the dying.
The door at the far end opened.
From the smoke, she entered.
The queen moved with regal bearing despite the ruin. Her silks clung to her frame, crimson and black, flowing behind her like banners. Her aura burned with grief and fury, crackling like marrow set alight. Crimson eyes cut through the haze, fixed on Noctis as she strode forward.
Her voice was sharp, laced with venom."Enough, Noctis. You dare butcher my kin?"
The silence of the hall bent around her words. Survivors looked up, trembling.
Noctis turned his gaze toward her, steady, cloak heavy with blood. His reply did not come yet. It hung, unspoken, as the ruin breathed around them.
The hall still smoked from titan husks. Blood pooled across broken tiles, marrow fog thick in the air. The survivors pressed against walls, trembling, chains rattling as they shifted in fear.
From the haze, she advanced.
Vaelora's gown clung to her as she strode into ruin, silks soaked in blood and dust. Her crimson eyes cut through the smoke, locked on Noctis with a fury sharp enough to break stone. Her aura flared as she entered, heavy and searing, cracking the tiles beneath her bare feet.
"Enough," her voice carried, steady in its grief. "You dare butcher my kin, Noctis? You walk into this hall and slaughter those bound to me?"
Noctis stood among the wreckage, cloak dragging. His eyes burned steady, not rising or lowering, only fixed on her. His answer was cold."They betrayed me. They chained me to altars. They sold my marrow to the Church. Kaeltharion ordered it, Maltherion joined him, and your elders stood with them."
Her face twisted. "Lies. You vanished. Kaeltharion told us you abandoned your throne. You chose exile, and now you return to claim power through slaughter."
Noctis stepped forward. The weight of his aura bent the air. "I did not vanish. I was betrayed. And you lived under the lie."
Vaelora raised her hand, nails lengthening into talons etched with marrow runes. Her voice trembled with fury."Then I will cut that lie out of you myself."
Her aura ignited. The chamber shook as she unleashed her bloodline dominion. Crimson fog surged outward, thick as flesh, marrow threads lacing through it. The floor split where she walked, essence boiling out of the cracks. Illusory doubles tore free of her frame — half a dozen spectral Vaeloras stepping forward with her movements. Their voices overlapped, the hall echoing with layered venom.
Noctis answered with silence. His aura deepened, pressing shadows flat against the floor. Phantom Dominion muffled sound, leaving only the thrum of his Grid. He lifted his hand, and orbitals clicked into motion. The Bloodfang Reaper bled into scythe form, its blade catching the faint glow of broken firelight.
Vaelora's doubles struck first, darting in from every angle. Their claws shredded stone, tearing grooves in the floor. She followed, her true form masked among them.
Noctis let them come. Omen Eyes burned, marrow threads visible against the smoke. He pivoted and cut. The scythe swept wide, orbitals screaming through the air. Illusions snapped into mist as the real Vaelora twisted aside, claws raking his cloak. The fabric shredded, the aura beneath untouched.
She spun, both hands thrusting forward, marrow fog condensing into a spear of blood aimed at his chest. Noctis raised his hand and answered with Sovereign Bulwark. The spear struck and dissolved, the recoil pulsing outward to slam two surviving guards against the wall. Bones broke with dull cracks.
Vaelora's eyes widened, but she did not retreat. She darted low, talons carving for his legs. Noctis stepped once — Dominion Step folding shadow — and reappeared behind her. The scythe reversed in his grip, blade hooking down her back. Cloth ripped, blood sprayed in an arc across the floor.
She staggered but turned with fury, bloodline aura blazing hotter. Her doubles rose again, more numerous, layering into dozens that filled the hall. Every corner of the ruin echoed with her voice, grief burning into rage.
Noctis advanced, his steps deliberate. Sovereign Arsenal spun at full cadence, orbitals fanning outward in three forms: sword, guan dao, scythe. Each rotation shredded illusions, cutting through them like wet cloth. He moved through the storm without pause, carving the false Vaeloras apart until the last dissolved in smoke. The real one stood exposed, chest heaving, blood running from her back where his blade had struck.
Her voice cracked but did not break. "You think this proves you sovereign? You think chains and slaughter make you more than kin-slayer?"
Noctis's eyes burned crimson-gold. His voice was iron."I do not think. I show. You resist only because you still believe the lie. Kaeltharion betrayed me first. And you kneel because you must."
He closed the distance. She struck with both claws, essence burning around her arms. Noctis caught her wrists in one hand, grip tightening until bone creaked. With the other he drove the Reaper's blade into the floor beside her, close enough for stone shards to burst against her side.
Her aura flared, then buckled under his. Shadows bent toward her, her knees trembling as the pressure pressed her marrow into submission. She tried to wrench free, lips baring her fangs, but his hold did not move.
The lesser kin watched, trembling, as their queen faltered. Her fury burned in her eyes, but her body sagged under the weight of his sovereign aura.
Noctis leaned close, voice low and final."This hall belongs to me. Your clans are mine. You will break, Vaelora. Whether by blood, by chain, or by your own marrow, you will break."
Her breath shuddered. She did not kneel yet — but her struggle slowed, her body trapped against the ruin, her defiance caught in the shadow of inevitability.
The palace trembled around them.