Tyrannical Reprimand

The Middle Ring never slept.

But on that dawn, something felt terribly wrong. The street leading to the House of Letters was quieter than usual, as if the entire city had held its breath.

When Daniel and his group arrived, the establishment — belonging to the Gran-Devana Messengers’ Guild and, in the Middle Ring, serving the affairs of petty criminals trying to look respectable — was already far too quiet. Its doors were closed, the windows sealed, and the side alley guarded by men who were clearly not regular patrons.

Bodies lay scattered across the uneven cobblestone street. Men and women Daniel recognized as informants of the Coins Party, disgraced aristocrats, and small merchants who, in Prebito’s twisted view, had financed the wrong faction. He remembered seeing many of them once walking the corridors of Arx Noctis.

A sword, dripping with blood, was planted on the curb — a deliberate mockery of the dead.

“Damn it…” Grace muttered, tightening his fist until his knuckles turned white, scarcely believing what he was seeing.

The others said nothing.

While Gupta, like Daniel, silently studied the message of steel and blood sent by the Swords, Lais and Sallustia fixed their eyes on the entrance to the House of Letters. There, a group of soldiers in black armor stood in a silent line.

The quality of their armor alone marked them as no ordinary troops. None of the travelers recognized the emblem on their black breastplates: a white rose splattered with crimson. Long capes trailed across the blood-soaked ground. Their helmets, with narrow slits revealing eyes darkened with soot, bore the shape of roses.

Each carried a wide, heavy-bladed sword, serrated to tear flesh rather than cut it clean. Their movements were precise, economical, silent — despite the weight of their armor.

Executioners, Daniel realized.

And among them stood a man whose presence seemed to stretch beyond the natural order, casting a shadow larger than life itself.

Tall, broad-shouldered, his posture rigid, he was clad in deep shades of black and crimson — a fusion of military discipline and gothic nobility. His cloak, darker than a storm-tossed sky, fell to his heels, and beneath it a crimson tunic, clasped with silver fastenings and patterned lines, resembled the ceremonial armor of some forgotten war cult.

His face was partially obscured by a wide-brimmed, crimson hat bound with a hemp cord. Long black hair spilled across his shoulders, and the severe lines of his mouth were half-hidden by a dark, unkempt beard.

In his hands, he gripped a black trident — a nightmare forged in metal. Its triple-pronged head curved like the thorns of a twisted rose, the shaft thick, ridged, pitted like ossified bone.

“You can stop skulking in the shadows like cowards” he growled, voice rough as stone dragged across iron. “We are not cowards like Vega’s men. That pathetic creature would never give you the gift I am about to bestow — honorable combat, and a clean death.”

Daniel and the others stepped further into the street, but the man didn’t move. He simply raised the trident and slammed it into the ground with a dull, echoing thud.

Two prisoners were dragged into the center of the street. Sallustia recognized Brother Vigae, the dwarven priest with his square-cut beard, faithful to the Orthodoxy. Behind him stumbled the kitchen girl… Justa. Thin, dark-skinned, arms scarred from work — the slave Thanatos had once promised to free.

“Please…” Vigae tried to speak, but one of the soldiers shoved him to the ground. “Do what you want with me, but have mercy on the girl — for the love of the gods!”

The tall man walked toward him, each step beneath his heavy boots ringing like the mournful bells of a cathedral. The wide brim of his hat concealed his eyes, but his intent was clear.

“Traitors” came the low, rasping voice. “Rejoice — for though you are but punishment, you shall all receive the same fate awaiting this rotting world. Our saviors are coming.”

“Man, you’re mad! There is no salvation except with the Nine of the Orthodoxy —”

“Silence, fraud!” The roar of the enemy leader cut him off, deep and commanding as thunder. “Your gods are nothing but the faded memory of a long-forgotten jest. Our true masters return to this world, answering the call of Vel’Shaad… and I am their executioner. Diabolus.”

He raised the trident, and without hesitation, drove it through the priest’s chest. The blow tore through flesh, bone, and even stone beneath. Brother Vigae’s scream died in a gush of blood before his body went limp, hurled aside as Diabolus ripped the weapon free in a vicious arc.

Daniel took a step forward, but Sallustia raised a hand to stop him.

“We can’t be reckless” she said, voice tight with restrained fury. “This man is not like Vega. One mistake, and they slaughter us all.”

But beneath her words, Grace heard it — fear. For the first time, Sallustia was afraid.

Justa screamed as two soldiers held her down. Her head had been shaved for some unknown purpose, but she fought anyway, biting, kicking, thrashing not just for freedom, but for life itself — for the faint hope of a life beyond cruelty, beyond chains.

It was pointless.

Another soldier raised his blade —

— and her head flew like a bird loosed into the air.

“No one defies the Black Roses” the soldier hissed, “for we destroy all we touch.”

But before Diabolus could speak again, Gupta roared. True, unrestrained hatred flared in his eyes — a rare sight in the man who, despite his military past, had always been more scholar than soldier.

The alchemist thrust his arm forward, the nozzles on his gauntlet hissing, and a cloud of green smoke engulfed the Black Roses. The wrath of the gentle man had been awakened.

“Attack!” Daniel shouted, abandoning caution at the sight of Justa’s brutal death.

Lais began tracing runes in the air, circles of crimson light spiraling around her hands. Sallustia surged forward like a thunderbolt, her greatsword blazing violet as it materialized mid-sprint.

The Black Roses reacted instantly. Two struck at Lais, who threw up a wall of flame in time to drive them back.

Another fell convulsing when Gupta’s toxins seeped through his visor. Sallustia reached the soldier who had killed Justa and severed his sword arm before burying her blade in his chest.

Diabolus remained still for a moment, surveying the battle with cold detachment. Then, finally, he advanced —

— and the beast was unleashed.

The black trident swept a wide arc, crashing against Sallustia’s blade with a metallic crack that echoed through the street. She staggered back, boots gouging furrows in the blood-soaked cobblestone.

“Stand aside, woman” Diabolus commanded, voice rasping like it rose from the depths of damnation. “I did not come here for you.”

“Then you leave in pieces” the slave-paladin snarled, fury blazing now that she had lost too many allies to these men.

Their duel consumed the center of the street. Sallustia struck in relentless flurries, her greatsword flashing violet as it carved the air, but the trident met each blow with minimal, effortless motions, as though the man barely needed to try.

Around them, the Black Roses clashed with Gupta and Lais. One soldier was blasted back when the magus ignited the ground beneath him, but another slammed a mailed fist into her face, knocking her to the knees.

Gupta felled two with his poisons, but a serrated blade pierced his abdomen. He choked blood, yet still managed to seize the attacker’s head in both hands, venom hissing from his gauntlet as it ate through the man’s eyes and flesh in steaming acid.

“Alchemist!” Lais cried, trying to reach him.

“Fool! Worry about yourself” he gasped, clutching his wound. “I’ll manage…”

Sallustia and Diabolus still clashed at the center, a storm of steel neither side could break. Her blade tore his cloak, scored his crimson tunic, but never touched flesh. The trident punched through her shoulder, spraying her blood across the stones.

“You’re strong” Diabolus admitted, twisting the weapon, forcing her back. “But not enough.”

Then came the brutal sequence — three crushing strikes. The first numbed her sword arm, the second she barely parried, the third slammed the trident’s shaft into her gut, hurling her against the House of Letters wall.

She fell to her knees, gasping, but conscious.

Bleeding, half-collapsing, Gupta unleashed his last toxins, a curtain of choking smoke swallowing the street.

“Fidenzio!” Lais shouted, struggling to finish a spell. “Where —?”

Inside the House of Letters, Daniel had already searched shattered drawers, burned ledgers, blood-smeared records. He stuffed what little remained into a sack, though most of it was worthless — Prebito’s men had destroyed everything.

“Out!” Gupta bellowed through blood and smoke. “Or we all die here!”

Lais tried to summon a fireball like before, but two Black Roses slammed her down before she could finish. Diabolus raised his trident over Sallustia —

— and the smoke consumed everything.

Gupta vented every last vial from his gauntlet, a desperate gamble risking catastrophe in the Middle Ring itself. But survival came first.

“Run!” the alchemist roared.

Daniel dragged Sallustia up as Lais scrambled to her feet, and together they fled into the side alleys, coughing, bleeding, stumbling over corpses while the Black Roses reeled behind the veil of green haze.

Diabolus did not pursue. He stood, cloak whipping in the poisonous wind, trident planted among the dead. When the smoke finally cleared, only the butchered bodies remained.

A warning to all who defied the Swords.