During the Ternary Strife, loyalty to one’s species was not exactly unanimous. Many humans collaborated with the Outsiders under the illusion that they would be rewarded in the afterlife. No one knew who the cabbage-for-brain moron coming up with that idea was, but it had persisted until today and inspired countless cultists.

After losing the Strife, seraphs rarely answered summonings. Daemons, however, always gleefully did so. The process had been perfected over time. An willing anchor, with sufficient how-to knowledge and mastery in the Forbidden Script, could easily find summoning material like feathers and iron after a walk in the market and called up a daemon.

In an instant, the daemon would seize control of the anchor’s soul and assume control over their body. An afterlife, presumably, would require an intact soul, though by then the anchor was well past the point of complaint. The human body was then mutated to suit the daemon’s Domains and the rest was everyone else’s trouble.

The woman before Manziholet, therefore, looked very weird. For starters, she seemed quite healthy, with wavy long black hair and a small nose. Even while dressed in the servant outfit with the funny-looking glass wings on her back, her beauty could pass for one of Sui-Jen’s residents.

The only thing that gave away her status as an daemonic anchor was the fact that every Seraphists inside the hall was giving her a wide berth and yelling at everyone else to do the same.

Their Circuits had detected the presence of a Fourth Circle daemon, which was impossible – the Oculon System should have notified them of one long ago, and an anchor should be greatly mutated under the influence of four whole Domains.

“Greetings,” she said. With her feet as the epicenter, blood spreaded out the floor, swept past people, and ran up the walls. It covered up doors and exits to the backstage, holding hostage the panicked guests and students. Some pounded hard on the liquid, but it seemed as hard as metal. “If I can have a moment of your time. I’m sure you will leave here alive, but you need–”

A Breaker Seraphist manifested her Miracle, conjuring up five humanoid skeletons around her. They had four arms with a long spear in each. They assumed formation and charged. Before they could make it far, the floor of blood under them liquified into a pool. The Seraphist and her Miracle fell down, splashing up blood as they struggled. When it returned to solid, only half of her head was sticking out of the floor along with a twitching left hand that was reaching up for the air.

“–to be very quiet,” the anchor raised her voice. Other Seraphists barked at everyone to follow the request. The hall silenced down, saved for the laborious breaths from the drowned Breaker as life left her.

It occurred to Manziholet that they were dealing with a Sanguine Alchemist, a daemon that occupied the same Circle with Brute Lords and specialized in blood transmutation. They had been taught about the daemon, with a heavy emphasis on one key strategy: run, as fast as possible. Under its influence, any matter except gasses could be turned into blood, including human bodies.

He scanned the room. The few Seraphists present were hardly enough to protect themselves let alone the mortals, especially when they were all already standing on transmuted blood.

“Your Miracles cannot hurt me,” she said, casting a sidelong glance at a gathering host of Seraphists, among whom were Kylla with her Solfire Scarf, “but feel free to waste your vaepor if it calms your nerves.”

“What are you?” one of them asked back.

“I am a human just like you, except without an Archetypical Soul, and I am neither mindmeld with a seraph nor possessed by a daemon.” She raised her right hand up. It was burning in blue flame, another Miracle linked to a Sanguine Alchemist. “Yet, here I am with both power and your lives in my grasp, Seraphists. Heed my words.”

Her servant outfit melted down as blood, while the flame surged to envelope her entire body. Manziholet squinted his eyes to shield from the blazing display of power.

The flame receded gradually. Left in its path were pieces of plate armor made from obsidian-like metal with red veins running on their surface. Jagged edges and twisted spires protruded from the pauldrons and gauntlets. A helmet coiled up around her head, its visor shaped like the gaping maw.

When the flame extinguished, the woman had been fully covered in a set of monstrous armor, revealing only her dark blue eyes. Layered underneath it was also a chainmail of the same color, presumably for both protection and ease of movement. Someone whimpered at the sight.

“My name is Amat Ninlil,” she declared. “I was once a mortal, battered at the whim of a coin-counting scribe and abused by a priest who hid behind his false God. No more, for I had broken the will of a Sanguine Alchemist and claimed its Domains as my own. Now, as a Fourth Circle Daemoneer, I came to deliver a message from my people, the Defiant Path.”

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Amat paused to let the name sink in. “Impossible,” muttered a student behind Manziholet, a sentiment that many others agreed with.

The Defiant Path had been the most critical contributors to humanity’s victory through their invention of the Circuits and the sa-serpents, but they had splintered into Guilds decades ago. For most mortals, the name had long been forgotten.

“The three planets Red Sparrow, Chirhus, and Kallan along with their star systems will fall under the Defiant Path’s jurisdiction from today,” she continued. “Do not entertain the idea of reclaiming them back. Our Daemoneers, elevated from mortals and not limited by ArchSoul, will obliterate your Seraphists who, let’s be honest, are too valuable in your bickering with the Church.”

Amat looked in his mother’s general direction, who had calmly remained in her seat since the beginning. “I see many sound minds here. Let them explain to you why it is a very stupid idea to ignore my threat. Should your military choose to deny both us and themselves of those systems by detonating their stars, remember how I served you food and drinks a moment ago. We are among you. Your Circuits only saw me, because I allowed it.”

The Daemoneer walked over to the drowned Seraphists and firmly pressed one armored boot against her head. With a sickening crunch, the skull gave way. Blood and brain matter seeped out as her boot sinked in, squashing any hope of revival for the Seraphist. “Be wise, unlike her. Relay that message to your Imperator.”

Her audience lost balance as the entire floor turned into liquid blood. For a moment, Manziholet thought he would drown as his body submerged, but it was only two inches deep. He wiped it off his face and stood up. Amat had disappeared.

By tradition, the Vixtrian Paragon would spin a wheel to pick out a District at random on Promethean, where the students would get drunk and trash the streets of their lesser (who would be compensated for; they were not barbarians) but in view of the recent event, no one was in the mood.

They were, as it turned out, not the only ones who got honored with a visit from the self-declared Defiant Path. Inside private functions attended by Republicans, Admins, or other members of the Assembly as well as government buildings, private institutions, or even a strictly guarded pleasure demiplane, Daemoneers made themselves known.

Simultaneously, they also addressed crowds across Promethean, targeting those who should not listen to what was said – tenants laboring within farming demiplanes, menials bound to domestic servitude, thralls chained to relentless factories, or strays scraping by on the streets. Here, the Defiant Path’s speeches were a tad different, spiced up with scary words like ‘liberation’ and ‘your true potential’.

Many witnesses (later detained by the Chainbreakers) claimed they had been their past acquaintances or worked in various menial roles for months, and they all left via spatial shift or means of similar visual effect. They were still stunned – an ordinary person they shared a dormitory with or ordered around had suddenly commanded Miracles.

Conservative estimates put their number at forty-eight Fourth Circles, two thousand Third Circles, and twice as many Second Circles, all displaying the Miracles that their daemonic counterparts were capable of. Casualty was set at thirty Seraphists, eleven of whom were non-revivable, compared to zero Daemoneer. Despite their overwhelming power, they had also been remarkably lenient with even the most hot-headed mortals.

In an official announcement, the government claimed that the despicable Daemoneers (the name “Defiant Path” was not used) had chosen their location well, where their Seraphists were decisively outmatched. The fact that they had not set foot on the Ausaessig Ring and Terra itself spoke volumes of who scared whom. The Oculon System was being recalibrated to detect the Daemoneers. Next time, their Seraphist would be ready to avenge their fallen comrades.

It was in every citizen’s interest, the government went on, to not be deceived by the Daemoneers’ rhetoric. The Guilds had combed through their archive and found no such individuals existed or worked for their predecessor organization. Therefore, these Daemoneers were not only dishonoring an illustrious name but deserving of the death sentence. The Order of Knight Purifiers and the Order of Imperial Hammers were being readied to descend on the three claimed systems. The Daemoneers would soon face the overwhelming force of justice and order. Any individuals found to spread their words would be considered traitors of TerraSol.

As the Vicechair of the Logic Committee of Vigil, with many contacts in the government, Manziholet’s mother knew the announcement was just for show. The workers must return to their routine so that farms and factories could keep churning out products (“... and busy bees don’t have time to question the hive”, her friend Amenemopet had joked), while most residents of Sui-Jen quietly withdrew behind their estate walls.

The fact was many important people were really scared out of their wits. A war with the Church would be tolerable since they already had spies and saboteurs ready on Zaicaster and vice versa. Both sides’ upper strata were aware of mutual destruction, hence an unspoken agreement to limit open battle on the capitals. The Daemoneers would have no such reservation.

They talked between each other then whispered to their relatives and friends on Ausaessig and Terra, who, being of a highly sensible and entirely self-interested nature, advised the Imperator that any retaliation would invite a riot on Sui-Jen. They had helped him overthrow the previous Republic, and it would be wise, they suggested, for the Imperator to keep that little detail at the forefront of his mind.

He could not anyway, since no signal gems had been crushed on Red Sparrow, Chirhus, or Kallan. The Guild of Caelivagantes attempted to reroute some of their sa-serpents there but encountered a spatial lock by unknown Miracles. Until the Guild figured out a way to break past them, neither intelligence gathering nor troop deployment was possible. The general consensus, therefore, was to adopt a tried-and-true strategy: wait, watch, and pretend to look busy.

Most of his Vixtrian classmates, for their part, seemed unbothered. After all, their next biggest decision was whether to pursue higher education for their dream job or skipping that step and getting hired by their family regardless.

For those with an ArchSoul like Manziholet or Aezixia (who, by the way, had not thanked the boy for not only mentioning but also somehow elevating her name to that of an ancient goddess in his speech), it might mean their encasement would be postponed and their seraphs would have to wait.