Primordial Heir: Nine Stars

The reports came in throughout the night. One after another, they piled on Azariah’s desk like fallen leaves. Thornwall: ten thousand dead. Millbrook: seven thousand. The numbers were cold, precise, the work of clerks who had learned to count corpses without flinching. But the names behind the numbers were not cold. They were farmers, merchants, children. People who had trusted the north to keep them safe.

Azariah read each report, his face expressionless, his hands steady. He had seen worse. He had done worse. They had been careless. The barrier had held, but the organization had found a way around it.

The messenger waited. Azariah dismissed him with a wave and turned to the window. Beyond the glass, the northern mountains rose against a sky still dark with the remnants of storm clouds. Somewhere out there, the organization had spies. Informants. Agents who had watched the hydras fall and reported back to their masters. They thought themselves hidden, safe.

They were wrong.

The communication crystal on his desk glowed. He touched it, and the emperor’s voice filled the room, cold and hard as steel.

”Clean the north. Every spy. Every cell. Every shadow that belongs to the organization. I want them gone by morning.”

Azariah nodded curtly. ”It will be done.”

He did not summon his regular troops. They were good, loyal, but this work required a different kind of blade. He walked to the far wall of his study, pressed his palm against a section of paneling that seemed no different from the rest, and waited. The stone slid aside, revealing a passage dark as a held breath.

He did not enter. He simply spoke.

”Scarlet Squad. Assemble.”

They came from the shadows, as they always did. Seven figures, each dressed in dark leather, each face hidden behind a mask of black cloth. Their weapons were varied—swords, daggers, garrotes, things that had no names. Their eyes were not. Every pair was cold, flat, empty of anything but purpose. The weakest among them was Red level. The strongest was Purple.

They knelt before him, a single motion, a single will.

”Reports have identified twenty-three organization cells in the northern territories. Safe houses. Supply caches. Communication posts. Some are hidden in cities, some in villages, some in the wilderness.” He paused, letting the information settle.

”You will find them. You will eliminate them. No survivors. No evidence. No trace.”

The leader of the squad, a woman whose name he had never known, raised her head. Her eyes were the color of old iron. ”And the civilians?”

Azariah’s expression did not change. ”If they are in the way, they are collateral. The organization has had years to dig in. Their people are everywhere—servants, merchants, guards. You will not waste time distinguishing. You will cleanse.”

The woman nodded. ”Understood.”

She rose, and the others rose with her. They moved toward the passage, silent as ghosts, and disappeared into the darkness. Azariah stood alone in his study, the reports still scattered across his desk, the weight still heavy on his chest.

He had given the order. Now he would wait.

The first cell was in a warehouse on the outskirts of Frosthold, a trading town that had grown fat on northern silver. The building looked ordinary—wooden walls, a slate roof, a single door that opened onto a muddy street. But the squad’s scouts had watched for three days, had seen the patterns, the coded signals, the deliveries that made no sense for a legitimate business.

They struck at midnight.

The woman with iron eyes led the way, her daggers flashing in the dark. She killed the two guards at the front door before they could cry out, their throats opened, their bodies lowered silently to the ground. The others fanned out, covering the exits, sealing every route of escape.

Inside, the cell was preparing for something. Papers spread across tables. Maps pinned to walls. A communication crystal glowing on a pedestal, its surface flickering with distant light. Twelve men and women, some in robes, some in armor, some in the simple clothes of merchants. They looked up as the door opened, as the shadows flowed through it.

They had time to scream. Not much.

The squad moved like a single creature, its limbs striking in perfect synchrony. A man reached for his sword—his hand was gone before it touched the hilt. A woman raised her hands to cast a spell—her throat was cut before the words could form. The leader, a gray-haired man with a face like cracked leather, tried to run for the communication crystal.

Iron Eyes was there. Her dagger took his knee, then his other knee, then his hands as he tried to crawl. She knelt beside him, her face close to his, her breath cold on his cheek.

”Who sent the hydras?”

He spat at her. She sighed, almost disappointed, and her dagger found his eye.

The others were dead by then, their bodies scattered across the floor, their blood pooling on the wooden planks. The squad moved through the room with practiced efficiency, gathering papers, smashing the communication crystal, pouring oil over the evidence. Iron Eyes struck a spark, and the warehouse went up in flames.

They were gone before the first townspeople arrived with buckets of water.

The second cell was in a village called Oakhaven.

The name made Iron Eyes pause, just for a moment. She had read the reports, knew that Nero Adams had passed through here, had fought ghosts and goblins and the organization’s agents. The village was quiet now, its people sleeping, its streets empty. But beneath a bakery, in a cellar that did not appear on any map, the organization had a listening post.

The squad entered through the back, through a tunnel that led from the forest to the cellar’s hidden door. They moved in darkness, their eyes adjusted, their weapons ready.

The cell was small—only four men, huddled around a table, whispering. They had maps of the academy, of the city, of the routes the cadets took during their missions. They had notes on Nero, on Khione, on Elreth. They had orders from above, written in a code that meant nothing to the squad.

It meant nothing to Iron Eyes either. She did not need to read them. She only needed to burn them.

The four men died without a sound, their throats cut, their bodies left in the cellar. The squad gathered the papers, the maps, the notes, and carried them out. Behind them, the tunnel collapsed, burying the cellar and everything in it.

The village of Oakhaven would wake to find a sinkhole behind the bakery. They would never know what had been buried there.

The third cell was in a cave system in the Greyfang Mountains, deep in the wilderness, far from any road or trail. The organization had been here for years, using the caves as a staging ground for operations throughout the north. Supplies, weapons, captured monsters—all of it stored in the darkness, waiting.

The squad approached on foot, their steps silent on the frozen ground. The entrance to the caves was guarded, but the guards were careless, accustomed to solitude, unprepared for enemies who moved like shadows.

Iron Eyes killed the first with a garrote. One of her squad killed the second with a knife between the ribs. They entered the caves, and the darkness swallowed them.

Inside, the cell was larger than expected. Forty people, maybe more. Some were soldiers, armed and armored. Some were workers, loading supplies into crates. Some were prisoners, chained to the walls, their eyes hollow, their bodies covered in scars.

The squad did not hesitate. They moved through the caves like smoke, killing as they went. Soldiers fell with arrows in their throats. Workers collapsed with daggers in their spines. The prisoners watched, silent, as their captors died around them.

The leader of this cell was a woman with white hair and eyes that glowed red in the dark. She was strong—Purple level, Law of Fire. She rose from her chair as the squad approached, flames gathering in her palms.

Iron Eyes stepped forward to meet her.

The fight was short, brutal, and silent. The woman launched a jet of fire. Iron Eyes was not there. She appeared behind her, her dagger already moving. The woman spun, her hand blazing, but Iron Eyes was faster. Her blade took the woman’s wrist, then her other wrist, then her throat.

The cell leader fell, and the flames died with her.

The squad moved through the rest of the caves, methodical and merciless. When they were done, forty-three bodies lay scattered across the stone floor. The prisoners were freed, given directions to the nearest town, and left to find their own way.

The squad collapsed the cave entrance, sealing the darkness within.

°°°

By morning, twenty-three cells were ash. Twenty-three safe houses, supply caches, communication posts—all gone. The organization’s network in the north, decades in the building, had been dismantled in a single night.

Azariah received the report as the sun rose over the mountains. He read it slowly, noting the locations, the body counts, the evidence recovered. The squad had done well. They had done what he had asked, what the emperor had commanded.

He set the report aside and looked out the window. The sky was clear, the snow white, the mountains still. The north was clean.

But he knew it would not stay that way. The organization would rebuild. They always did. The king would send more agents, more monsters, more nightmares. The war was not over. It had barely begun.

He picked up his communication crystal and sent a single message to the capital.

North secure. Awaiting further orders.

Then he sat back in his chair, closed his eyes.