The village didn't look like it had fallen—it looked like it had been devoured.
Ash clung to everything. Not the soft white-gray of cooling hearths, but the thick, tar-colored kind that stuck to your boots and stained your skin. Structures had collapsed inward, like ribs crushed by a giant's fist. The scent of death was thick and layered: blood, rot, smoke, bile. And something else.
Magic. Wild, unfiltered dungeon essence.
Alisanne stood at the edge of the devastation, her cloak drawn tightly around her shoulders. The soldiers had already fanned out, forming secure perimeters. Caelis walked among them like a specter in crimson and ivory, flames trailing faintly from the hem of his cloak.
A soldier approached her, helmet tucked beneath his arm. "Princess. The ridge wall was breached three nights ago. The villagers resisted. The monsters—giant class, but more evolved—overran them."
"Were there any survivors?" she asked, though her voice already knew the answer.
"None. At first." He hesitated. "But this morning… we found someone. A boy. Maybe eighteen."
That made her lift her head. "Still alive?"
"Barely. Commander Caelis has him under guard. Says he's to be cleansed."
Her breath caught. "Where?"
The soldier pointed deeper into the village, toward a square that might have once been a meeting place. "Near the center. He wouldn't let the medics near him."
Alisanne turned without another word, her boots crunching over scorched stone and fragmented wood. Meria followed close behind.
She passed a house blackened by fire, its door still swinging on a single hinge. A doll lay in the dirt beside it, its fabric body half-burned, its face smeared with soot. Alisanne paused only a moment before pressing on.
As she stepped into the clearing, the heat in the air sharpened. Caelis stood at its center, arms folded, eyes locked onto a figure who knelt in the dirt.
The boy—no, not a boy. A young man.
His back was to her, but she saw the wounds clearly. Blood crusted over open gashes. His shirt was torn, his frame trembling from pain or fever—or both. Chains looped around his wrists, and despite that, he didn't kneel like someone broken. He knelt like someone waiting to strike.
Caelis didn't turn as she approached. "You should remain with the rear, Princess. This is not a matter for courtly mercy."
"He's a survivor," she said. "He lived through this."
"He lived," Caelis agreed. "And that makes him dangerous. No ordinary person survives a dungeon surge of this magnitude."
"He's not ordinary. He's strong."
"That strength is tainted." Caelis' voice was iron and fire. "And he has hatred in his eyes."
Alisanne stepped around the prisoner and knelt so she could see him.
His one open eye met hers—green, sharp despite the pain. But behind that sharpness, there was something deeper. Grief. Rage. Yes. But not madness.
She had seen madness in dungeon-touched before. She had watched Caelis burn a nobleman alive who had tried to bind a lesser demon to his soul. That madness was wild, erratic, shrieking.
This boy—this young man —was quiet. Controlled. Suffering.
And he was still fighting.
"I won't let you kill him," Alisanne said quietly.
Caelis' voice was dry. "Then what will you do, Princess? He is no orphaned stray you can keep in a silk-wrapped cage."
"I claim him," she said, her voice calm as still water — but beneath it, an iron thread.
Caelis finally turned, eyes smoldering. "On what grounds?"
Alisanne stepped forward, skirts trailing ash and blood. "On mine."
"That is not an answer," he said flatly.
"It is the only one you need." She met his gaze without blinking. "You burn cities in the name of purity. I save lives in the name of the Crown. Balance."
His silence pressed heavy.
"I will not let him be executed for surviving what your scouts failed to report," she added, voice sharpening. "He is a witness, a symbol, and perhaps something more. You want a weapon, Commander? Then let me forge him my way."
Caelis tilted his head. "You would mold him with kindness?"
"No," she said. "With purpose."
A flicker of something crossed his face—approval, perhaps, or amusement.
"And if I refuse?" he asked.
Alisanne took another step, now only a breath away. Her crimson eyes gleamed. "Then I will ride back to the capital and tell my father his famed pyromancer cannot distinguish flame from folly."
A pause.
The air crackled. For a moment, she thought he might test how flameproof she truly was.
But instead, Caelis smiled. A rare, terrible thing.
"Very well," he said. "He is yours. Do not disappoint me, Princess."
Alisanne turned back to Reivo, sinking to one knee. Gently, she reached out, brushing his shoulder. He flinched and retreated.
"My name is Alisanne," she said, soft but steady. "You've lost everything. But I won't let them take what's left of you."
His eye flicked toward her. Red met green.
He said nothing.
But he was listening.
And for now, that was enough.