The chamber of Twilight's sovereign was silent when the last of the servants withdrew. Outside, frost glazed the court stones, and banners snapped in the hard wind. Inside, the fire burned low, the lamps dimmed. Noctis closed the door and claimed the night.
Lyxandra and Seraphyne stood together at the bed's edge, queens who in daylight commanded nations, but here bowed their heads without word. Tina, Clara, and Iris lingered nearby, their eyes fixed on him, breath shallow, already waiting for command. Veyra entered last, robes set aside, hair loose, carrying none of the authority of her cathedral.
Noctis did not speak. He did not need to. His presence was order, and the order pressed down until each woman yielded. The queens moved first, hands rising to unfasten their own garments, eyes lowered. The adventurers followed, submitting as they had since the day his will had broken them. Veyra closed the door behind her and joined them, her strength set aside, her body bowing under the same weight that ruled kingdoms.
The night was not tenderness. It was dominion.
The bed gave under the rhythm he set, its frame creaking until the sound became part of the night's cadence. The walls carried the echo, steady, unrelenting. Cries filled the chamber, some muffled in pillows, some loosed into the air raw and ragged. They called for him faster, harder, without end. They called him master, over and over until voices broke. The sound of bodies striking filled the silence between their cries. The sovereign took, and they yielded, and no other shape existed in the world.
Exhaustion claimed them one by one. Lyxandra's hands trembled against his back before falling limp. Seraphyne collapsed into the covers, her breaths ragged and uneven. Tina, Clara, and Iris clung until their strength left them, sliding into silence with flushed faces and slack limbs. Veyra, last to fall, pressed her forehead to his chest, whispering once in broken cadence before going still.
When the cries ended, the room held only his breath, steady and unchanged. Noctis stood unwearied among them. Around him lay queens, servants, priestess — every voice silenced under his will. The chamber smelled of sweat, heat, and the iron tang that always followed his touch.
Dawn crept pale across the stone before he moved.
Morning
The women rose in turn, their bodies weary, their discipline intact. Lyxandra buckled her armor, her crown bound tight against her hair, ready to lead Twilight's cohorts. Seraphyne adjusted her cuirass and fastened her helm at her hip, already speaking sharp orders to her captains. Tina, Clara, and Iris dressed plainly, each standing near him with eyes downcast, silent shadows prepared to follow wherever commanded. Veyra washed and wrapped herself in her vestments, seal-ring set firm, ready to marshal the clergy's army.
Noctis donned his own armor in silence. The collar sealed at his throat, the plates seated across his ribs, gauntlets fastened in practiced rhythm. Twilight Reaver crossed his back. The Bloodfang Reapers orbited into motion, after-images trailing crimson arcs around him. His wings unfurled once, filling the chamber, then folded close.
They walked with him to the keep's gates.
Outside, soldiers waited in ordered ranks. Banners of Twilight and Ashara rose high, snapping in the dawn wind. Drums stood ready but silent. Lyxandra and Seraphyne took their places before their armies. Veyra raised her hand, and priests and zealots stepped forward in serried lines. The muster stretched across the frost-silvered yard, ten thousand strong and more.
Noctis stood before them. His voice carried without effort.
"Twilight and Ashara are cleansed. The other kingdoms remain. You will march together to every throne where the abyss has taken root. Each lair will be cut down, one by one, until no anchor remains. Leave nothing standing that bends to the demons."
He let his wings spread. The Reapers hummed in orbit. The soldiers stood frozen under the weight of his aura.
"I go alone to the Hollow Steppes." His words cut like iron. "The wraith nets confirm the largest foothold there. Three Titans have already been summoned. I will break them myself. You will not follow. Your task is the other ten kingdoms. Do it without delay."
The armies struck spear to shield in answer. The sound rolled across the field like thunder.
Noctis lifted his hand, and the orbiting Reapers flared, leaving red trails like banners in the sky. He rose on his wings, crimson aura spreading wide, and the soldiers below bowed their heads against the pressure.
He turned north, toward the Hollow Steppes. Toward the lair where three Titans waited.
The queens and armies would burn out the lesser lairs. He would break the greatest.
The war had entered its next hour.
The Hollow Steppes had no horizon. Ash and slag covered the earth until it looked like the bones of a continent, burned black by something that never cooled. The wind carried grit instead of air, and every breath of it stung like powdered iron. Even before he saw the armies, Noctis knew the ground itself had become a hive. The abyss was rooted here more deeply than in Twilight or Ashara.
He descended through the haze on black-crimson wings. The land recoiled under his aura. The closer he drew, the more the field swarmed to meet him.
The first shapes were the infantry—rank upon rank, armor fused into their skin, eyes hollow. Behind them came zealot-priests, bone staves high, their chants a constant drone that kept the army from breaking even as his shadow fell over them. Siege-beasts moved among them like mobile altars, ribs cracked open to spit fire. And above, the air churned with wings, thousands of them, circling and diving in shrieking waves.
He let the Twilight Reaver fall into his hand. The orbiting Reapers whined in motion, crimson trails spinning around him. The Grid opened at a thought, and his Omen Eyes burned.
The battlefield changed.
What had been a blur of bodies became a lattice of fractures. Weak seams glowed across armor, cracks along straps, the faint pulse of marrow where plates met flesh. Farther off, in the smoke, three towers of shadow stirred. He felt their weight before he saw them: the Titans chained to the Steppes. Their cores pulsed faintly like covered suns.
The infantry charged first. Shields locked, spears angled, they came in a wall. He did not step back. The Reaver cut once, and the wall folded. Armor burst like rotted bone, essence ripped free in a red tide. He walked forward into the collapse, and the zealots screamed louder to fill the silence.
From above, the flyers shrieked. He did not look up. The orbitals broke formation and rose, carving wings from the sky. Black bodies fell headfirst into their own vanguard. The zealots pointed staves at him, chanting harder, but the ground gave them no answer. He willed the Crucible into life, and the veins of the Steppes lit crimson. Blood and marrow drained upward; zealots crumbled to husks mid-word.
The earth shook.
Chains groaned, links thicker than towers. The ash haze broke apart.
The first Titan rose. Iron-Bone, its frame plated in marrow-iron, hammer dragging behind like a mountain on a chain. Its skull sockets blazed with abyss fire as it turned to face him.
Another roar cracked the smoke. Fire-Blood spread its wings, lava pouring in streams from its chest and back. Its spear glowed brighter than the slag rivers that cut the field. The air shuddered from the heat.
The third rose in silence. Armor black as void stone, runes pulsing with abyssal light. In its hand, a staff bound with chains that did not end. Its presence smothered the Grid itself. Noctis felt essence resist him, like the marrow of the world was locked shut.
The army howled in worship.
Omen Eyes burned brighter. Weaknesses lit across the giants—Iron-Bone's knee seam, Fire-Blood's wing straps, the Colossus's runes. The true cores flickered deeper: marrow-heart, infernal chest, abyssal nexus. He drew his wings wider.
The swarm came again. This time it was not only the ground and sky—they climbed. Demons swarmed up Iron-Bone's legs, clawing over one another to cling to the Titan's chains and plates. Others scrambled along Fire-Blood's wings, catching fire as they went, shrieking but climbing still. The Colossus's staff dragged bodies with it as zealots lashed themselves to its chains. The Titans became fortresses covered in their own worshipers, all reaching toward him.
Iron-Bone moved first. The hammer rose. He saw the weak glow in its wrist as it lifted, but the swing came before he struck. The hammer came down, and the ground burst apart. The shockwave tore through thousands of demons as easily as it tore the ash plain, leaving nothing standing where the blow had landed. Noctis rose on his wings, the quake rolling beneath him.
Fire-Blood hurled its spear. The Omen Eyes marked the straps on its wing even as the weapon left its hand. The spear struck like a falling sun, incinerating ranks of zealots where it landed. The air burned white around it. Whole cohorts of demons collapsed screaming, burned by their own master.
The Colossus exhaled silence. The runes on its chest pulsed, and void pressure rolled outward. The zealots nearest it turned to dust where they stood, chains and staves collapsing beside them. The Grid flickered again, pressing back against Noctis's veins, demanding he yield. He did not.
He stepped.
The world folded, and he stood against Iron-Bone's knee. The seam glowed like a crack in stone. He drove the Reaver into it once, twice, until marrow burst from the gap. The Titan roared and dropped to one knee, smashing hundreds of its own climbers beneath it.
He rose on his wings, orbitals clearing the swarm around Fire-Blood's wing. The straps glowed molten in Omen Eyes. He cut them with precision strikes, marrow-sparks spraying as they parted. The wing lurched, lava spilling uncontrolled. Fire-Blood stumbled, grounded by its own failing lift.
The Colossus turned, runes pulsing. He hurled the Arsenal lances into its chest. One rune shattered, void pressure faltered, and for a moment the Grid surged clear again. He opened the Crucible wider, and the battlefield itself bled into him. Demons collapsed into ash as their marrow ripped skyward.
For a breath, the three cores flared. Iron-Bone's chest pulsed red, Fire-Blood's heart glowed gold, the Colossus's nexus flickered violet. The Omen Eyes showed them clear, open for the strike. Then the light was gone, sealed again.
He hovered above the battlefield, surrounded by swarm, flyers, climbers, zealots, and three Titans tearing their own army apart in their rage. The Reaver burned in his grip, orbitals whined in arcs around him. His wings spread wide until the ash bent beneath their shadow.
"Three cores," he said, his voice carrying without force. "Three deaths."
The Titans roared in answer, and the Steppes broke open beneath them.
Iron-Bone moved like a broken citadel remembering how to walk. Every step carved trenches through ash and slag, every breath rattled iron plates threaded into its ribs. Demons clung to it in layers—rank upon rank climbing chains and seamwork, their bodies turning the Titan into a living siege tower. The hammer in its right hand dragged a wake of sparks and powdered bone. When it rose, the air leaned away.
Noctis hovered at the edge of its reach and let his Omen Eyes open fully.
The seams of the world shifted. Glow-lines etched themselves along Iron-Bone's wrist and elbow, threads of weakness braided beneath knuckle-plates, a hairline fracture running through the hammer's hand-guard. Farther up, faint pulses dotted the spine where corroded links crossed armored vertebrae. Beyond those, deep inside the plated chest, the marrow-heart flickered once like a coal under ash and went still again.
He angled his wings and went in.
The flyers reached him first. Three packs fanned out to box him toward the hammer's arc. He did not change course. Orbitals lifted, bright and cold, and went through them in a rake of clean lines. Feathers of black leather and splinters of bone spun down on the drafts from his wings. The hammer's shadow fell across him; he sank into a narrow fold of black-red and stepped through its path. Spectral Veil left an afterimage where he had been, and the hammer obliterated it, smashing a crater into the ground and wiping out a wedge of demons crushed beneath their god's missed blow.
He reappeared against Iron-Bone's wrist.
Up close the Titan smelled like old battlefields—iron, marrow, ash. The Omen Eyes narrowed the world to glyph and seam. He struck where they told him: a shallow cut along the knuckle seam to shock the nerve; a deeper cleave between plates to split the tendon; a twisting thrust to dislocate the carpal hinge under bone. The Reaver found soft paths through hard metal. The hand jerked. The hammer dipped.
Climbers screamed and lost their grip as the Titan's elbow faltered under its own weight. Noctis rode the lurch, stepped sideways in air as the second hand swung up instinctively to stabilize the weapon, and cut again along the elbow's inner seam. Marrow vapor hissed. The arm spasmed. When the hammer came up the next time, it trembled.
Zealot-chants swelled from the ground—bone staves raised, cords of void-lit chant lashing toward the Titan's wrist. The Omen Eyes showed fine chains weaving between his cuts, bridging damaged tendon to plate. He broke them before they set. A marrow shard through one link, an orbital's flat edge through another, three quick lances from the Arsenal across a knot of runes hidden under blackened leather. The ward fell apart mid-weave; the zealots choked mid-hymn as the Crucible's veins reached them and pulled their breath out through their teeth.
Iron-Bone tried to swat him out of the air with the back of its hand. He stepped twice more—short folds through hot wind—and the slap crushed a spread of climbers plastered to the Titan's forearm instead. He felt bone snap through the sound, felt the slate scrape of plate against plate as the elbow tried and failed to fully straighten.
"Drop," he said.
The orbitals tightened into a saw around the base of the hammer's haft. The Arsenal threw wedges into the guard, jamming the hand open one finger at a time. The Reaver drove down through the web of the thumb with a blow meant to split knots in living wood. The hand convulsed. The hammer slipped.
He let the Titan have its panic. It snatched at the haft with the off-hand, overcorrecting. He cut the new grip as it formed, a single diagonal slash that severed the tendon behind the index plate where the Omen Eyes drew a thin red thread. The second hand failed with the first. The weapon sagged, slipped, and dropped.
When the hammer hit, the Steppes shook. It buried itself head-first in ash and slag, half-submerged, ribs of bone humming from the force. The shockwave rolled outward, leveling a shield wall and folding the front ranks like grass under a scythe. Demons went to pieces under their god's unweaponed failure.
Iron-Bone bellowed. The sound rattled behind Noctis's teeth. It swung for him empty-handed, a sweep of torn plates and bone, all mass and no leverage. He took the strike on air and pressure, wings folding to let it pass close enough that chain-links scraped his greaves. The Omen Eyes brightened along its spine.
Spinal chains: six runs, three deep. Rust had taken some, not enough. Demons were looped in the links by the dozens, their bodies a moving curtain that hid the weak points behind thrashing limbs. He cut them away methodically, not from spite or mercy but because they were in the way—clean arcs through rope and flesh and iron. The Arsenal painted lines for him where his body could not reach in time, driving bone-tipped lances between links to stop the spin. When the back opened, he went in.
The links were pitted from years of heat and grind. He saw the weak one three rings in, a blackened oval misshapen where someone had hammered it shut in haste ages ago. He put two orbitals into it to wedge it open. Then he stepped down, drove his heel against the plate next to it, and turned the Reaver like a crowbar to twist the chain out of true. It screamed metal. The link cracked. The chain went slack across the Titan's shoulders.
Plates sloughed. What had been a seamless back bent away in segments, gaps opening between ribs. Between them, for the first time, he saw the narrow, pulsing vents that fed the marrow-heart. Heat rose from them with a breath like a kiln's. A fine spray of grained ash carried the taste of iron and old blood.
He did not reach for the heart yet. The Omen Eyes showed the truth: the core's light flickered, not steady; no clean window. He extended the Crucible instead—thin this time, a band to take what unbound blood the ground still offered without slowing his hands—and turned to cut the second run of chains.
Iron-Bone fought him the only ways it could. It tried to roll its shoulders to close the gaps; he slid with the plates and kept cutting. It tried to ram him backward into the slanted mass of its own shoulder blade; he stepped half the length of the field and reappeared already striking as if the intervening air had always been a staircase. It tried to crush him against itself with both hands clasped behind; the hands no longer had the grip to clasp, and they scraped together like dull saws.
The field below bucked with the Titan's rage. Demons redoubled their climb. Flyers hurled themselves from every angle to break his balance mid-cut. He did not look at them head-on. The orbitals watched his back, humming just where a talon would have met spine, just where a blade would have caught under a rib. When packs formed tight enough to become a net, he lifted his left hand and let a short ring of storm fall out of him. Not the full Tempest—only the language of it: three rising blades of blood, a spear of inverted sanctity threading them, a falling gout of heat that taught everything below which way to break. The climbers fell away from the Titan like spray from a wheel.
A pressure throbbed against his ribs. The Colossus was awake and working again; its runes boomed a dead tone that tried to turn his Grid inward. Noctis snapped a glance across the field. The Omen Eyes found the fresh crack in the Colossus's chest script without asking. He lanced it from this distance, harsh and accurate. The note died. The air came back.
Fire-Blood's spear came on a long arc. He watched the line of it and gave way, not stepping but folding his wings to let it pass and shear a wave of demons off Iron-Bone's hip. The molten core of the weapon burned a furrow so deep that slag rivers changed course to fill it. For a breath the battlefield smelled like wet stone and scorched marrow.
The second spinal chain snapped.
He did not pump his fist or let out a breath. The body tells you to mark a break. The fight tells you to keep moving. He moved.
The third run had no rust to offer him. He made its weakness. The Arsenal threw hooks to drag it into new angles; he used the weight of Iron-Bone's desperate, clumsy swat to jerk it across the corner of its own plate until the link groaned. Then he slipped a Reaper's edge under it and levered up. The link hissed, flattened, and gave.
Back plates sluiced away in a rain. Vents opened like slats. Heat hammered him. Beneath it, too bright and too brief, the marrow-heart flared like a mouth opening.
He could have thrown a spear into it. The angle existed for that heartbeat, clean and calm in the chaos. The Omen Eyes showed him the window's edges, showed him the moment it would close. He did not take it. A single spear might have scored the surface and made the next window shorter, not longer. The core flared because the chains were gone; it would flare again when the body struggled to armor itself and failed. The next time would belong to a blade, not a throw.
He left the back and went for the hands again.
The Titan had not learned to drop its habits. It still tried to punch. He let it, in a way—he took the punch's line and stepped alongside it, close enough to feel the wind of it, close enough to hear the crackle of drying marrow inside the plates. The Omen Eyes' glow ran the length of each finger like a quiet script on a cathedral column. He read them and cut. Thumb first—always thumb first. Then ring. The Titan's hand made a sound like a sack of hammers dropped on stone. The other hand came hunting to crush him between them; his blade met it at the wrist on a downward cut that lamed it again. When they clapped together, they were out of time and a finger short. They slid. He was not there anymore.
On the ground, the zealots tried to weld strength back into their god. He wasted a breath to break them for a stretch of field as far as he could see, lancing their staves with needles of marrow-light that turned their chants against their lungs. Then he rose, slow enough for Iron-Bone's sockets to follow him, and let the Titan see him deliberate.
"Your weight belongs to me," he said.
The Titan swung a naked arm. He stepped into its reach and set the Sovereign Chains with a turned wrist. The bindings did not materialize as iron or light—they settled like obedience. From the elbow to the shoulder, tendrils of sanctified script wrapped plates and bone and told them stillness. Noctis let them wear the shape of blessing so the zealots would try to reinforce them. When they poured void into the bindings, their power flowed into his will and not their god's.
Iron-Bone strained. The arm held.
He walked the length of that arm like a narrow bridge and cut the last stubborn fibers of grip from the fingers that had not learned they were useless. Then he lifted off the shoulder toward the back where the vents breathed and the core slept between pulses.
The Omen Eyes brightened. A full line of glow traced from the lowest vent up across the ribs toward the sternum—the future seam of a plate that had not yet closed. He followed it with the edge of his blade and scraped that future away before it existed. The body's first attempt at healing failed. The core brightened and held a little longer.
He did not strike it yet. Fire-Blood's shadow passed over him, hot and angry; the Colossus's staff rang once like a bell and pulled the world toward it; climbers boiled up the Titan's back to put their bodies between him and the light inside. He cleared what he had to. He split what he had to. He held the idea of the heart steady until the field gave him a silence worth killing in.
Iron-Bone tried to kneel and could not find the muscle to do it without falling. It half-collapsed instead, torso lurching, hands scraping trenches that filled with demons who died pressed into slag. The back opened wider in the motion. The core's light lengthened its breath. When it dimmed, it was slower to fade.
He settled on the edge of the opened plates, wings drawn in against the heat. His orbitals described calm circles over his shoulders. The Reaver rested loose in his right hand and dripped bright lines that hissed and vanished against the air.
"Next," he said, not as a challenge to the Titan but as an order to the field.
The flyers came. The swarm climbed. The other two giants moved. He did not look away from the core in Iron-Bone's chest for the first full count it gave him.
It held.
He bared his teeth—not a smile, only a showing—and drew his arm back.
He did not throw.
He went in.