Santa Segnonero Castle was squat, ugly looking thing which crowded against the relatively miniscule Valetia Bay with its brash bulk. Once the seat of the Count of Valeti, until the Demon Wars it had served as an unimportant collection of stone walls deep in the heart of the empire, defending no one from nothing.

And then a third of the damned Empire was lost and suddenly it found itself on the border of the most devastating war in modern history.

That the castle had survived was a miracle. That it still served now even more so. Its western walls were pockmarked and damaged by endless Demonic artillery barrages, and each year the sea laid siege to its salt-battered foundations. The city-states of Opida and Iscrimo likely funneled enough resources and manpower into keeping it intact to fund an army funded and fed for a decade. Torn flags flew high above the towers, replaced near daily in shifts so that the Valeti colors never lowered in the face of the Hordes.

Santa Segnonero was a gluttonous, crumbling relic of a castle, and yet despite everything the century had thrown at it it still stood strong.

"A little bit like me," Charles chuckled grimly to himself from where he stood on its weathered walls. "Stubborn bastards, the both of us."

It was almost nostalgic, standing here again, even despite how much had changed. New battlements had been added to replace the old useless ones he'd nearly died behind what felt like a lifetime ago. Each stone had been blessed thrice over, and silver fire now burned every few dozen feet, the sanctified smoke warding off aerial attacks from unholy invaders. Even the courtyard was new, flat grasses and mud instead of the orchard which had been burned down in a raid a decade ago.

They hadn't fixed the staircase to get up here though. Damn rickety thing was as much of a deathtrap as ever.

Maybe he should file another complaint? Or do them all a favor and put the damned things out of their misery himself.

Charles shook his head, scoffing in dark amusement. Not that there were many other kinds of amusement out here—this castle was a death trap at the best of times, even if the border had quieted down with the supposed death of the Lich-King. Why, there weren't even tens of thousands of corpses climbing the walls anymore, it was practically peaceful!

The old knight suddenly tensed, blue eyes darting off beyond the walls. The land to the west was long dead, muddy earth pockmarked by craters and trenches in a constantly shifting patchwork of battlefields and fortifications. The ash of millions of dead bodies painted it a bleak grey; mortals, animals, and monsters together cremated in a mass grave hundreds of miles long. And he could have sworn he saw—

There.

With movement borne of decades of practice he unslung the bow from his back, then knocked an arrow and in the same breath let it fly.

A body missing its legs and half its skull shuddered, fingers twitching as it tried to drag itself across the charred corpses of its fellows. It got all of a foot before a silver arrow pierced through its neck, severing its spine in a single strike and leaving it to spasm in undeath until the next bombardment of holy fire was launched out into the no man's land.

Charles shot a second and third for good measure, one pinning its hand to the ground and the other missing his original aim for the elbow but still managing to lock the shoulder in place regardless.

Releasing a breath he returned his bow to his back, letting the tension slowly eke out of his body.

One corpse did not an invasion make. It did not even make a proper fight. But still…

He remembered an unending tide of the dead crashing against the walls. Stone buckling under the sheer weight of flesh, a wave of zombies crawling over their fellows in their mindless attempts to reach them. It did not matter how many were cut down in waves of flame and frost, how many were buried under earth or purified through holy light. They still came.

They never, ever stopped.

Hundreds, thousands, millions. The men below wielded castle-forged steel and bore the coverings of knights, priests, and peasants, all twisted regardless of wealth or faith or class into soulless monstrosities. And from the skies rotting vultures came, eagles and ravens wearing their own skulls about their necks clawing out the eyes of anyone unfortunate enough to not have been afforded a helmet. For weeks their sheer numbers blotted out the sun, no amount of arrows in the world enough to bring back the day.

All they were able to do in that endless night was hold—hold against the monsters, against the men. Hold as the soldiers standing beside you were dragged screaming into the hordes, knowing they'd be standing against you soon after. Hold knowing that you lived not through skill or service but merely luck as everyone around you died and died and died.

Hold because you've been fighting so long all you can remember how to do is stand.

Charles took another deep breath, carefully locking the memories away.

They had won. It had been costly, it had been bloody, but they had won.

He would not do a disservice to his brothers and sisters in arms by breaking down from mere memories.

He blinked slowly, finding that at some point he'd fallen to his knees. His forehead was pressed against the cool stone and his knuckles were white around the hilt of his sword.

Taking another breath he forced himself to unclench his hand, focusing on the feeling of blood flowing back into his fingers.

Damnit, he needed a drink.

It was then, as he came back to himself where he was kneeling on the dirty stone, that he noticed something. Something which tugged faintly at an old memory.

Leaning down, he squinted at a peculiar patch of older stonework near the bottom of the battlement, muddy and faded with age.

Etched into it was a crude drawing of a Demon with a sword up its rear and a glorious stick figure of a man shoving it deeper.

"…Hah," a bittersweet smile twisted at the corner of his mouth at the sight. "Karl you little shit. Don't you know they give extra shifts to the idiots who deface the Count's walls?"

The dead did not speak—at least not today—and he hadn't really been expecting an answer regardless. So with a sigh Charles merely returned to his patrol in silence, the brief bit of reminiscence fading as quickly as it came.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

But, if another soldier were to walk by and happen upon the same piece of stone, they might notice that a second stick figure had joined the first, joining his old friend in defiling a Demon one final time.

-<X>-

Chiara was angry.

No, scratch that.

Chiara was incandescent with rage.

She had thought, long ago, that she had hated the Demon Lords. Because they were evil, obviously, and because they were easy to hate. Every problem in the world could be blamed on them after all, and nobody good or sane would judge you for it. So she hated them—in the abstract, in the sort of ways you might hate a cruel lord of a foreign land, or a bandit who burned down a village far away.

Now? Now that hatred was personal.

The eye-fucker had kidnapped her best friend (who was not Lorenzo) and when they finally caught up to the bastard she was going to shove glass shards into every single one of its disgusting eyes.

Which in turn brought up another thing—the reason why she found herself stomping up to the nominal leader of their little expedition, her quartz teeth grinding against each other like nails on a chalkboard.

They had reached the Santa Segnonero Castle yesterday. And now she learned they weren't planning to leave until tomorrow!?

Fuck that!

Chiara burst onto the walls with all the fury of a teenage girl—loudly and with a great desire for violence.

"Teresa!" she snapped at the holy woman, who was currently conversing quietly with one of the local soldiers. The woman gave her a glance, before turning back to the soldier and after a few more quiet murmurs waved them off. "Teresa! Answer me!"

"Yes, Chiara?" the leader of their expedition finally turned to look at her fully, sighing heavily. And how dare she do that, like this was some big chore— "I assume I already know what you're going to be shouting at me about."

"You're damn right you do!" she growled. "What's this I hear about us leaving tomorrow!? On our way through Opida you said we were catching up, and now right on the border you're making us lose two whole days of progress? What the hell gives!?"

"Would you rather we rush in and die?" Teresa raised an eyebrow, completely unimpressed. "We need time to prepare. Time to rest and restock. We need to take the time to—"

"It has been days!" she snarled, shoving a finger into her chest. "Days since Palmira was kidnapped! Days since who knows what has been fucking with her mind! We do not have the time to do anything! Hell, just two days ago you had us run through the night in hopes we'd catch up! And now we might never find her if we waste it all away faffing around in this damned castle!"

"I'm aware of that," the older woman grabbed her hand and forcibly lowered it. Chiara tried to struggle out of her grip, but that only made it tighten. "Do not think I'm not. But the Demon Lands are dangerous in a way the peninsula isn't. If we do not take the time to properly prepare now, we will all die within days of our leaving. And if we are dead, who do you think will save Palmira? The Demons? Because it certainly won't be us."

She snarled, turning her head away as she tried harder to yank away her hand—only for Teresa to grab her chin and force them to lock eyes.

"Look at me, Chiara," she growled lowly. "Look at me when I am talking to you. I promised your brother I would bring you back alive. We are going to do everything in our power to save Palmira—I swear that on the Goddess herself—but I am not going to kill us doing so. Every single person here is going to return to Firozzi or so help me I will drag you back myself. Am I understood?"

She grumbled something inaudible under her breath.

"I said," her voice started low, but by the end was deafening, "AM I UNDERSTOOD!?"

"Yes, I get it!" Chiara snapped, flinching back from the sheer sound. "I know, okay? You don't have to keep telling me how dangerous this is, I got it the first hundred times! I just—I don't want Palmira to die…!"

She hated the way her voice cracked at the end there, hated even bringing up the possibility, because it wouldn't happen. They'd save her and bring her back so she could rib Palmira over getting kidnapped by a bunch of eyeballs.

They would save her. They had to.

Something must have shown in her face because Teresa's eyes softened just a tad.

"Oh, Chiara," she sighed, finally releasing her grip. "I know you are scared for her. We are all scared for her."

"I'm not scared," she hissed back, rubbing at her chin.

"Fine, you aren't scared," she very clearly refrained from rolling her eyes. "But I am. And that's why I'm making sure we do this right. Because the only thing that scares me more than failing is losing someone else in the process. How would you feel, if we saved Palmira only for Lorenzo to die?"

Chiara flinched at that, before turning away and glaring off into the distance.

Teresa sighed, leaning over and giving her a comforting pat on the shoulder. "I know it's hard, but take today to relax and think it over, okay? Because trust me—this is the last time you'll have the opportunity to do so until we're back over this wall."

Then with one last squeeze she left, leaving Chiara alone again.

And damn it all but she hated the fact that the woman was making sense. It felt so much like wasting time, like if she could just go for one more day they'd catch the bastards who took Palmira and everything would be fine!

But what if they didn't? What then? Would they then be trapped in the Demonlands with no way to return?

Chiara snarled, stomping off to… to somewhere. Somewhere that wasn't here!

She didn't know how long she walked, burning off her anger as best she knew how. Eventually she started to run, past startled soldiers and even Charles at one point, faster and faster until everything blurred around her in a haze of rage and colors.

Eventually, as her legs grew tired and her mind ran out of obscenities, she stumbled to a stop, gasping as she leaned against the stone walls for support. And even then she slammed her fists into them, diamond knuckles crunching against dark stone until both her legs and her arms burned too much to so much as think.

She came down slowly, anger and hate having finally drained out of her enough to leave her only numb instead. With heaving breaths she looked back up, before blinking in surprise at the smooth black basalt which stood in front of her.

She had been… near the ocean before, hadn't she? These part of the walls… they were nearly on the other side of the castle. Had she really run so far…?

There was a strange sort of disconnect, standing here now. She knew what this was—everyone alive knew what this was—but being here, standing before it… it didn't seem as impressive as she'd once thought it would be.

Or maybe she was just too drained to care.

For this was Le Mur Sacre, the sacred barrier between Humanity and the Demons looming tall and stretching far off into the distance.

During the final days of the Demon Wars Luciano Calcolo—now Podesta of the City of Iscrimo—did battle against the Demon Lord Brunhildir amongst the hills of Ivalei. It had been a cataclysmic fight, described by some as the last gasps of the Age of Chivalry. Mortal and Demon alike died by the hundreds, mountains had been reshaped and maps had needed to be rewritten in the aftermath. But come the end Brunhildir was slain, and against the remaining hordes of Demonkind the exhausted yet triumphant Luciano drew his line in the sand.

Literally.

Le Mur Sacre, the final bastion between the Alovoan Peninsula and the old Heartlands of the Empire, was a massive series of walls and fortifications stretching the entire western border from Opida near the coast to Icrimo in the mountains. A seemingly endless wall of jagged volcanic rock, it had held for decades against the near constant assault against Lich-King Aethric's undying hordes. To this day it was manned by the largest Holy Order left in the world—The Nobili Esiliato, an order founded by some of the exiled nobles of the west who had sworn on their souls to defend the remaining cities of Humanity until their dying breath.

Every few hundred feet was a watchtower, a towering black pillar of obsidian which jutted high into the heavens, holy silver flames burning at their peaks. It connected castle after castle all the way up the border, in some places it was even said lava still erupted from the fissures the old mage had torn into the earth in order to raise so much volcanic stone.

It was dark, depressing, and constantly on fire. It reminded her of Iscrimo, which reminded her of Palmira, which just made her angry all over again, even as subdued as she now was.

Slumping to the ground, she scowled as she rested her cheek against the warm obsidian which made up the greatest wonder of the modern day. It was infuriatingly comfortable.

Resting there she glared out to the west, beyond the ash and mud which was all that remained of an empire long dead. Out to the land where only the Demons now dared to tread.

"We'll save you, Palmira," she swore, crystal eyes shimmering as they reflected the sunlight. "Even if we have to kill every damn monster between here and you, then we'll fucking do it. The blood of the damned will water the trenches before I let you die."

The sun and the sky did not answer her oath, indifferent to the world's woes as they'd ever been.

But—and perhaps it was just her imagination—she could swear it almost felt like the black wall warmed in response to her oath.

For what greater purpose did they both share, if not the death of Demons?

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