While Emperor Emhyr var Emreis sat in his cold throne room in Vizima, staring at the intelligence reports with narrowing eyes, the "No Man's Land" of Velen was being rewritten. The Emperor's response was predictable: he had ordered a heavy detachment of the 4th Cavalry Group to move in. He didn't want a negotiation; he wanted an occupation of the "anomalous zone."
But inside the violet-domed sanctuary of the Cult of Dusk, the mood was electric.
Thomas had spent the last several days organizing the first Trials of the Source. Drawing on his memories of Earth, he had introduced games that looked like sports but functioned as high-intensity combat drills.
Infernal Keep-Away: Teams of Leviathan sorcerers struggled to keep a sphere of pure energy suspended in the air using only mental force, while Beelzebub warriors tried to disrupt the weave with pulses of physical pressure.
The Breach: Warriors had to sprint through a gauntlet of shifting magical traps, testing the raw speed and durability of the Beelzebub pact.
When the games concluded, the award ceremony was a sea of violet light. The top forty competitors—the new elite of the village—stood proud as they were granted the Trophies of Death and the Forbidden Ritual Knives.
A heavy silence fell over the hundreds who hadn't made the cut. Dejection hung in the air like the old swamp mist. Thomas stepped down from his throne, his human form moving among the crowd. He stopped before a young man who was staring at his empty hands in shame.
"Raise your head," Thomas said, his voice a warm, resonant hum. "Do not be upset. You are not failures; you are my comrades. Every one of you carries the spark of the Source. Those who won today simply found their rhythm first."
He looked around at the gathered crowd, his violet eyes glowing with a soft, protective light.
"The Source is infinite. Train yourselves. Sharpen your focus. In the next competition, I want to see you standing where they are. We are a family of the Dusk, and no one is left behind."
The gloom vanished instantly. The "losers" didn't just regain their smiles; they felt a surge of fanatical resolve. They began to drift back to the training grounds, not out of fear, but out of a desperate desire to prove themselves worthy of their "Guardian."
With the morale of the cult secured, Thomas turned his attention to a final problem: the economic chains of the old world. He saw the villagers still holding onto battered copper groats and rusted Novigrad crowns.
"We are an independent people," Thomas declared, standing in the square. "We will not be beholden to the coins of kings who would see us burn."
He raised his hands, and the air between his palms began to scream. He pulled Infernal Energy directly from the void, condensing it until it solidified into a jagged, dark metal that shimmered with a trapped, violet galaxy. With a pulse of Lucifer's light, he hammered the energy into physical coins.
"The Hell Coin," he announced, holding one up. It hummed with a physical weight that made the nearby air feel thick.
The value was undeniable. Unlike a crown, which was just gold, a Hell Coin was a battery. A single coin could be "tapped" by a Leviathan sorcerer to fuel a massive spell, or used by a Beelzebub warrior to instantly heal a wound.
Word spread through the local traders within hours. In the markets of Velen, the exchange rate skyrocketed immediately. One Hell Coin was worth a hundred Novigrad crowns. Iblis had not just given his people power; he had given them the strongest economy on the Continent.
The Hell Coin was the heartbeat of a new world, a jagged shard of the Source hammered into a circular promise. It was not merely currency; it was a physical and metaphysical revolution. In the lawless stretches of Temeria and the war-torn No Man's Land, the coin acted as a magnetic pull. Poverty and fear could not compete with a piece of metal that actually functioned.
For the Beelzebub warriors, the coin was an engine of infinite momentum. Slotted into their obsidian armor or pressed against their volcanic-red skin, it acted as a reservoir of infernal stamina. It allowed them to maintain their limitless physical power for weeks without rest. They were the primary engines of the nation's growth; they didn't need cranes or pulleys. They lifted the massive black-stone pillars by hand, their muscles fueled by the rhythmic thrum of the coins on their belts, striking the earth with the same intensity at dusk as they had at dawn.
For the Leviathan sorcerers, the coin was a limitless well of magical destruction. It acted as a pure focus, allowing them to carve the city's obsidian infrastructure with beams of violet light or weave the massive defensive wards that kept the swamp rot at bay. They were the architects and the heavy artillery, their power dwarfing anything the Continent's "diluted" mages had ever witnessed.
Even the regular sorcerers—the hedge wizards and scholars who had spent their lives terrified of the "burn" of Chaos—found sanctuary in the coin. It allowed them to cast their lesser spells with a precision and safety they had never imagined. In the cafes of the new city, these mages practiced their craft with calm smiles, finally free from the volatile elements.
And for the normal people—the peasants with no magical blood—the Hell Coin was a miracle. A commoner holding a coin could focus their will and draw out a spark to purify water, heal a wound, or keep a hearth burning through a blizzard. In Hellheim, magic was no longer a gate-kept secret of the elite; it was a tool for the masses.
Thomas stood on the highest point of the city's new obsidian wall, his human eyes tracking the horizon. Thousands of refugees were moving toward the violet glow of his barrier—destitute families, rogue mages, and deserters who were tired of dying for kings who didn't know their names.
"Velen is a grave," Thomas said, his voice carrying the resonant authority of the Demon Lord. "I will turn it into a cradle."
The nation of Hellheim rose from the mud as a meritocratic paradise with a jagged, "exotic" aesthetic.
The Meritocratic Society: Anyone could enter, but in Hellheim, a person was judged by their contribution. A knight who refused to work went hungry; a peasant who mastered the Leviathan pact became a lord of the academy.
The Obsidian City: Using the tireless labor of the Beelzebub warriors and the precise carving of the Leviathan sorcerers, they built roads that never cracked and multi-story apartments that stayed warm in the harshest winters without a single log of wood.
The Trade of the Source: As Hell Coins trickled into the markets of the North, the loyalty of the common folk shifted. They didn't want the debased crowns of kings; they wanted the "magic money" of the Sovereign.
The aesthetic was a black-glass nightmare of spires and violet fires, but the life within was a paradise. People were well-fed, healthy, and for the first time, truly free from the whims of the "diluted" lords of the Continent.
Thomas watched as a group of Beelzebub warriors and Leviathan sorcerers worked in perfect unison to complete the city's main gate. He looked toward the horizon, where the dust clouds of the approaching Nilfgaardian legions were finally visible.
"Let the Emperor see," Thomas murmured. "He comes to occupy a swamp. He will find a god-machine powered by the very souls he tried to ignore."