ACROSS ALL OF ITALY: LAZIO AND THE TREVI DISTRICT IN ROME, LOMBARDY IN MILAN, CAMPANIA IN NAPLES, VENETO IN VENICE, MARCHE IN ANCONA, TUSCANY IN FLORENCE, VERONA IN LITTLE ROME, AND UMBRIA IN PERUGIA.
Two weeks had dragged by since the last meeting...an assembly that had left a thick, cloying tension in its wake. That tension hadn't lifted. It lingered like a second skin, trailing through the halls and whispered through the factions.
And still...no word from Archon.
Life within the empire appeared to resume its rhythm, a semblance of normality returning… or so they believed.
But the clock had other plans.
It was the final day of the month. The day marked for initiation. The enforcers had been sent to gather new bloods...those forgotten by the world, the nameless and homeless plucked from alleys and asylums across the globe.
Then, precisely at midnight, they came.
Not the enforcers.
Not the whispers.
Just silver parchments. Thin scrolls sealed with wax so dark it bled into black.
Archon's seal.
No warning,No instruction beyond what lay written within.
And the message? Simple... Precise... Chilling.
---
LOMBARDY DISTRICT, MILAN - PIAZZA CASTELLO MILANO ESTATE
THE WEB OF DESIRE'S DOMAIN.THE TEMPLE OF ALLURE.
The Temple of Allure: the place where fresh bloods were inspected, cleansed, and welcomed… or reshaped.
Greta paced like a woman possessed. She was waiting on Nell;the enforcer. And while normally, Greta didn't give a damn about delays, the way Uranta had been watching her lately sent a new kind of chill down her spine.
Uranta was convinced that Archon had eyes everywhere.
They didn't know what the test was. Not truly. But perhaps… perhaps it was about training. About who could shape chaos into grace.
They wished.
Greta hissed in frustration. "Where the fuck is Nell?" she muttered under her breath, her nerves fraying. She had just reached for a chair when the great doors swung open.
Nell entered.
And behind him… the girls.
New bloods.
Barely of age,pale,trembling. Each with a crimson ribbon fastened tightly around her neck like a leash.
Greta shot up, fire in her eyes, ready to hurl a storm at Nell's delay...but his voice cut through first.
"Archon assigned a girl to us."
"What?!" Greta's voice shattered the air, a scream sharp enough to draw blood.
Nell stepped aside.
The girl he revealed was delicate...ethereal almost,pale hands trembling,her voice, when she finally spoke, was like smoke drifting through a mausoleum.
Greta's eyes snapped to Nell, demanding answers.
Nell reached into his coat, retrieving a scroll sealed with that obsidian wax.
"She came with this."
Greta froze,her heart skipped. Then she turned to the girl with a mask of unreadable calm. "Oyra," she called to her first lieutenant. "Prepare her chamber,fragrant, soft,silk everything."
She turned to the rest of the trembling girls, contempt flickering in her eyes. "Yasmine," she barked at her second-in-command. "Strip them...Search them...Ready them for training. Now."
She gave her orders with trembling precision, her every movement weighed beneath Uranta's imagined gaze.
She only hoped her decisions would make her proud.
---
MARCHE DISTRICT, ANCONA - TORRE DA BORA ESTATE. THE SIREN'S LAIR DOMAIN. THE SIREN'S COURT.
Along the storm tossed Arcona coast, the Siren's Lair waited.
And with it, Goldie,watching.
Archon's girl had arrived...though calling her a "girl" seemed an understatement.
She was tall,feral-eyed...wild in presence, but strangely silent.
Goldie watched her from the steps of the Siren's Court, turned to Sawyer; the enforcer,then to Jael and Yael;her lieutenants...each of them wore the same uncertainty in their gaze.
Goldie cleared her throat softly. "What's your name?"
The girl said nothing. Just walked barefoot across the chilled marble, her silence unsettling. Her eyes flickered to each of them...curious, wary.
"Vanya." she finally murmured. The name sliced the air like perfume laced with arsenic.
"Vanya..." Goldie repeated, tasting it.
Then she turned and walked away, glancing over her shoulder. "…follow me."
Vanya paused, hesitated, then obeyed.
Behind them, the rest of the girls stared at her with burning envy.
They knew...whatever she was, whoever she was...her journey would be different.
---
VERONA DISTRICT, LITTLE ROME - ARBIZZANO DI NEGRAR ESTATE.
THE HONEY TRAP DOMAIN. THE MOONLIT ATRIUM.
Kolly stared at Vince like he'd just brought her a ghost.
"You sure about this?"
Vince held up the sealed scroll like it was cursed. "Don't look at me. That's what the seal says."
The girl was the youngest of them all. Maybe sixteen. Trembling, with lashes too long for the fear in her eyes.
Kolly didn't hesitate.
She wrapped the girl in a white shawl, kneeling to whisper something in her ear. Her smile was the sweetest she'd ever conjured.
Then she turned to her lieutenants,Liz, Seline, and Echo,and whispered so only they could hear:
"We are to protect her like she was born of fire. This one… she's a key."
No one questioned her.
Not tonight.
They all knew.
This was the test.
The one whispered in shadows.
The one that would separate the empires from the ashes.
---
VENETO DISTRICT, VENICE - CASTELLO TERRAZZA ESTATE.THE VELVET VIPERS DOMAIN. THE HOUSE OF VELVET SINS.
In the House of Velvet Sins, chaos was born in silence.
The gates opened with no fanfare. Fog licked the stones of the courtyard like a warning.
Drex entered with a host of twenty girls behind him.
From above, Shante Jarret stood motionless,black-clad and still as a statue, one hand resting on a metal pistol, her eyes unreadable.
Drex smirked and gestured for her to descend.
Julian and Mae rolled their eyes, already beginning the inspection.
Shante moved slowly, each step echoing like a bell of reckoning. When she reached the final stair, she didn't speak,didn't smile. She simply observed.
Then, without warning, she pointed at a girl. Her eyes shifted to Drex, demanding explanation.
Drex approached. "I don't have her background," he admitted.
Julian and Mae froze. Eyes on Drex.
He stepped forward, bringing the girl closer.
The girl trembled, red ribbon tight against her throat. Her heels clicked like a metronome of fear.
"She was assigned by Archon," Drex said. "There's a seal..."
As he reached for the scroll in his pocket, he saw it.
The knife.
Her knife.
Shante had drawn it.
"Teeeeew...!"
Too late.
The blade sliced into the girl's throat, cutting through ribbon and skin like silk.
Blood spattered across her blouse,she dropped instantly.
No screams,no fight.
Just stillness.
A gasp echoed from every corner of the house.
The new girls shrieked, screaming in intense fear.
Julian and Mae stood in stunned silence.
Drex stared, horror flooding his features.
"WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?!"
Shante turned slowly,her voice void of emotion. "Eliminated an infection."
"That was the test!" Drex roared. "We were supposed to keep her alive. Shape her. Study her. Protect her!"
Shante blinked. "How the fuck was I supposed to know she was a test?"
Drex unrolled the scroll, voice trembling with fury as he read:
"The girl I give you by the end of night.
She is not yours.
She is not to be broken.
She is to be shaped, fed, studied, protected.
And above all…
She is to be kept alive."
The silence was unbearable.
The blood still warm.
The ribbon, now soaked, lay limp against the corpse.
"If you hadn't been smiling like a fool and told me about the seal," Shante said coldly, "maybe this would've been avoided."
Drex looked at her in sheer disbelief. "You realize how stupid you sound right now?"
Shante gave a cool, detached grin.
And walked out.
"Fucking shit..." Drex hissed.
Julian and Mae exchanged a glance.
They didn't believe it was an accident.
Not for a second.
And somewhere deep within the Eros Empire's gilded marble halls, a line has been crossed.
The test has changed.
It was no longer about protection.
It was about obedience.
And Shante Jarret?
She just made it clear.
She obeys no one.
Not even Archon.