Calamity Awakens

Harold woke with a groan, every muscle stiff, every breath dragging through his chest like gravel. His bedroll felt like it was stuffed with stones, his sparse room colder than it had any right to be. The ache was worse than last time. No surprise there—he hadn't given himself near enough time to recover before tearing open his soul again.

He lay there a moment, eyes closed, listening to the faint hum of the settlement beyond the walls. Then he forced himself upright, joints popping, his body screaming at him.

"Feels like hell," he muttered. But even beneath the bone-deep weariness, there was a strange satisfaction. His soul affinity no longer felt like a raw wound—it felt alive. Responsive. He was getting a better sense of people now, of their essence, their truths. And his own soul…he could finally feel its shape, its edges, even if it still cut him when he pushed too hard.

He staggered out into the main hall, hair unkempt, eyes bleary. He barely made it three steps before Meala shoved a steaming bowl into his hands.

"Eat," she snapped, the ladle in her hand more threat than utensil.

Harold blinked at her, then looked down at the thick stew. "Don't I get a good morning first?"

"Eat."

He obeyed, spoon moving on instinct more than hunger. The warmth hit his stomach like a blessing. He hadn't realized how hollow he felt until now.

Meala sat down across from him, her apron dusted with flour, her eyes sharp. "You did something yesterday," she said flatly. "To the Matriarch."

Harold swallowed hard, throat dry despite the stew. "…I did."

"Whatever it was—you ripped something out of her. Broke something. I saw the force that came out of you. She rushed outside, out past the barracks, before anyone could stop her. And then—" Meala shook her head slowly, as if still struggling to believe it. "She advanced. Past Baron. Past Tier Four. Straight into Tier Five, her dao with her."

The spoon froze halfway to Harold's mouth.

Meala leaned in, voice lowering, heavy with disbelief. "Tier Four was already a story people told around hearths where I grew up. A legend. My family is from a very low tier planet, its part of why we put ourselves on the recruitment stone. But Tier Five?" She gave a bitter laugh. "That just isn't heard of. Not anywhere I've ever known."

Harold sat back, stew forgotten, the weight of her words pressing into his chest heavier than any wound.

Harold set the bowl aside, appetite gone. His fingers drummed against the wood, restless, uneasy.

"Tier Five…" he muttered, almost tasting the words. "That's not supposed to happen. Not like this. Not here."

Apprehension slid into his gut, sour and sharp. He'd wanted an ally—needed her strength to balance the scales—but this? A power like that didn't just shift the balance. It crushed it. He was used to playing his hand carefully, stacking ploys against stronger opponents, finding angles to turn their weight against them. But what happens when the piece you push forward stops being a piece and starts being a storm?

His hand tightened around the edge of the table until his knuckles whitened. "Things may not be mine to steer anymore," he admitted under his breath.

Meala didn't answer, just watched him with that flat, measuring look she always had when he was being particularly thick.

Finally, Harold blew out a slow breath and forced himself to his feet, every movement stiff, his shoulder throbbing where the poison had lingered. "Where is she?"

Meala's chin tilted toward the open doors. "Past the forge. Out near Kelans tower. Been standing out there since dawn."

"Of course she has," Harold muttered, dragging himself upright fully. His legs protested, his body still running ragged, but he didn't stop. He shoved the weariness aside, pushed open the longhouse door, and stepped into the cold.

Snow crunched beneath his boots, the wind carrying flakes across the settlement in lazy spirals. He followed the trail past the forge, where even the hammers had gone quiet, until he saw her.

Marroween stood alone in the snow, crimson eyes fixed on the horizon, armor gleaming faintly in the winter light. She didn't turn at his approach, but he felt the weight of her awareness settle on him all the same—like a mountain noticing an ant.

Harold straightened as best he could, ignoring the tremor and pain in his limbs. "Matriarch." His voice carried over the snow, steady despite the knot in his gut.

She listened to him without flinching. Snow drifted down around them, hush soft as cloth, and when she spoke her voice was thinner than the armor made it sound — older, rubbed raw by years.

"When I was young," Marroween said slowly, "I thought oaths were anchors. They kept allies close, bound vassals to duty, held lovers to promises when desire cooled. My Dao learned their shape; my blood learned how to set them into the soul so that they would not slip." She turned her head, looking past him to the pale horizon. "Some were bargains with houses. Some were pacts with men I called brothers. A few were for love." Her mouth tightened. "Some of those men died. Some of those bargains were broken. Every broken vow carved into me and left its mark."

She let a long breath out. "I made my power a ledger. I could bind those I led — elders, retainers — to the family so that when the city wavered they would not. At equal tier they could fight back; they could refuse me. But I kept the web tight enough to hold the line. It has been how we survived."

Her eyes came back to him, not cold now but weary and very, very old. "What you did—what you tore from me—unlocked more than movement. You have given me the means to reweave those links. To press the family's oaths into one chain again. To own them — body and soul — as you put it. I do not think you knew the scale of that gift, nor perhaps that you lent me the hammer."

She almost laughed. The sound had no joy. "And now I have a terrible choice. Your god wants my fall so you may ascend; the mechanics are clear. I can kill you, take the boon that would come from your death, and press my family higher. Or I can accept this... strange mercy, this alliance you propose, and bind them to a future I cannot yet see. Either path will cost blood. Either path will define my line for decades."

Her hands curled into the gauntlets. For the first time the Matriarch's voice broke slightly. "How do I resolve the conflict within my heart and soul, Calamity? To take the boon would be to seize power by the old iron way. The way the family I was reborn to would. To refuse it would be to trust a man whose soul burns like a new thing and who has already surprised me. If I take that power, I ensure strength—perhaps survival—for my line, but I become the very thing my children whisper I am. A tyrant. If I do not, I risk everything on the hope that your vision can be made real without me becoming a tyrant, and without my family becoming embroiled in endless war."

She searched him then, as if trying to read his marrow. "Tell me plainly. If I will not make my family monsters in your name, what then? How do I hold both honor and survival? How do I hold my blood and not crush it?"

Harold felt the words like a blade laid across a ledger. The cold around them bit, but he heard the tremor under her armor — the human beneath the title. She was dealing with the same fight he used to and had been dealing with it for far longer than he ever had.

He sat down next to her in the snow. Ignoring the cold pressing into his aching body and muscles.

"You don't have to become what you hate to keep what you love," he said, voice low and steady. "I'm not asking you to abandon honor. In fact, it's part of why I'm even asking you to join me instead of just killing you and make no mistake I could have. I'm asking you to stop letting old oaths be a cage. There's a difference between owning your people and owning their souls. The first is leadership; the second is slavery. Though it sounds like your bloodline link effectively makes those you turn your slave." He said, giving her a pointed look.

He let that sit, then continued, more bluntly. "You can kill me and take a boon. Probably a very good one. You'll gain power. You'll probably gain more fear-based obedience, too. You will win battles. You may not win the thing you actually want — a future where your family is respected rather than feared. True allies you can rely on cause it sure aint Lionheart City. And every boon bought in blood, though they may rise higher, will cost the next generation their freedom."

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Harold shifted, feeling the old surge inside him — the thing that had cost him near everything — and he swallowed back how raw and dangerous those memories were. "Or you can let me help you unbind the vows that do nothing but feed old ghosts. The ones that weigh you down and prevent you from advancing. Those binds were made for a different time and a different enemy. They keep the family whole by force, yes, but they also choke innovation, loyalty, change. I can't promise you safety if you choose that route. I can promise you something grimmer and, I think, truer: the chance to build strength without stealing the souls of those who follow you."

He rubbed the edge of his shoulder where the poison had been, wincing. "You asked me how to resolve it. You start honest. You name which vows are sacred — those that bind you to your people's welfare, oaths you cannot and should not break. You set them in stone. Everything else you let go of, or you change so it binds to action and not to fear. You publicly reforge the family's code so no one can claim you betrayed them later. You keep the honor; you remove the cages."

Harold watched her closely, then added, quieter: "And if you ever find me trying to turn your people into tools, you kill me yourself. If I'm worth anything, I'll accept that price." He tried for a wry half-smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Not flowery, I said. Just ugly, practical honesty."

Snow fell, soft as a curtain. The Matriarch listened. In the silence, something shifted — not a breaking, necessarily, but the slow, dangerous moving of ice underfoot.

She did not answer at once. The choice remained hers; the bargain, if any, would have teeth. But Harold's words had put a way forward: not easy, not clean, but one that might let her hold both honor and survival without buying either with another's soul.

The Matriarch's eyes narrowed, thoughtful and slow. Her voice came out like gravel turned to steel.

"You have proven you think and fight unconventionally," she said. "What is your plan to finish this Calamity upon my family—and to achieve these other objectives you claim?"

Harold let the words sit a beat. He wiped the last cold from his hands on his tunic and spoke plainly, the fatigue in his voice making every sentence harder-earned.

"Short version: we make the duel the hinge, and everything else turns on it. Long version," he said, and leveled his gaze at her, "I'll walk you through it."

_______________________________________________________________________

The gates of Lionheart groaned open, and Harold walked through shoulder to shoulder with Matriarch Marroween. The city was already awake, its streets crowded with merchants craning necks, children perched on crates, and guards doing a poor job of hiding their unease as the procession entered. Whispers rippled ahead of them like wind through tall grass.

Lira matched Harold's stride on one side, Kelan on the other, the two of them silent but steady. Behind trailed the strange retinue that bound them all together: Barons of the Bloodnight marching beside freedmen with patched armor, Rysa with her pack-carts rattling full of crude explosives, Jerric practically vibrating with energy as he sketched summoning circles in the air with a stick, and Hal's frost-rimmed breath steaming above the heads of the pack threading along the street.

The cobbles rang with every step, but the louder sound was the hush — the kind that came when the entire city held its breath. Lionheart had seen armies, but not this. Not a Calamity and a vampire Matriarch walking side by side, flanked by wolves and children of two different worlds.

Marroween's voice was low, pitched so only Harold could hear over the crowd's murmur.
"How are your people holding up after the fight?"

Harold didn't answer right away. Instead, he glanced over his shoulder.

Daran kept the column tight, his voice like a whip-crack every few steps, calling cadence the way they used to drill back in the valley. It worked — the survivors moved in lockstep, ragged but steady, like the discipline itself was the brace holding their bodies together. Half of them were gone. Too many faces missing from the ranks. More than a few who remained bore bandaged stumps where arms or legs had been. Some leaned on spears like crutches, their shields slung useless at their sides.

But still, they marched.

Behind them padded Hal, his presence anchoring the entire procession. The Greater Frost Wolf's bulk carried cold authority, frost curling in the air around him. On either side walked the Ashen Pair, their mottled coats shifting strangely in the daylight, eyes fixed outward like bodyguards who would never blink.

Just behind came the Frost Wolf pack leaders, heavier now with the power of their evolutions, holding themselves tall. Their presence pressed outward, corralling the dozens of lesser wolves who padded in their wake, ears sharp, tails low but proud. Among them, shadows bled and stitched together as the Shadow Wolf slipped from form to form, keeping pace unseen until he wanted to be noticed.

Harold looked back to Marroween, voice level but hoarse. "They are confused about what we are doing… but they're standing. That's what matters. Dead or broken, they all paid more than I asked. The ones left know it. And they'll hold the line until I don't ask anymore. They will be rewarded for their service on this Calamity."

Marroween let her crimson gaze sweep her own ranks, silent as the crowd's whispers pressed in on either side.

The levies — gone, mostly. A scattering of ash and broken shields was all that remained of hundreds. Her retainers had fared little better, half of them dead, and those who still lived bore wounds that would take months, if not years, to mend. And her Barons… nine gone. Nine. She felt each absence like a hollow in her marrow, the bloodline's thread thinned until it ached in her very bones.

What was left of her house marched now, but not with pride. They moved under her command alone, their heads bent, eyes hooded, steps kept in rhythm because her blood bound them to obey. Cordial enough, on the surface, to march beside these mortals and wolves, but only because she willed it. Without her strength pressing into their veins, they would sooner spit than march beside a Calamity's mongrel band.

For the first time since the battle, she admitted the truth to herself. Her family was greatly diminished. Not broken, not yet—but the line had frayed, and the Calamity walking beside her was the only reason it hadn't snapped.

She shifted her gaze back to Harold, studying the way his people kept their step even while bleeding, even while missing limbs, even while half their number was gone. Different from hers. Bound not by bloodline compulsion but by something harder to define, and harder to break.

Harold caught the flick of her gaze, the weight she carried as her eyes lingered on the empty spaces in her line. He didn't need to pry; he knew what she was counting. Who she was counting.

"You're looking at the ones gone," he said quietly, his voice steady over the crunch of boots on cobblestone. "But look again. The ones still beside you? They're not here because you forced them. Not anymore. After everything, they still choose to stand with you. That's rarer than numbers, rarer than blood."

He let the words settle before adding, softer, "Family isn't the ones who follow because they're bound. It's the ones who stay when every reason says they shouldn't."

For a moment the only sound was the clatter of Rysa's cart and the low rumble of Hal's breath behind them. Harold didn't push further—just left it there, an offering, and turned his eyes forward toward the rising spires of Lionheart.

Marroween's lips curved, the faintest tilt, more acknowledgment than smile. "Spoken like someone who's never had to hold a bloodline in place," she murmured. Then, after a beat, her tone shifted, heavier. "You're right, though. Choice… it does not come easily for my kind. Not when obedience is built into the marrow."

Her gaze drifted briefly over her diminished retinue, crimson eyes hardening. "Slaughtering family with my own hand was harder still. But necessary. Those who decided not to honor my decision bound us all to weakness."

She looked forward again, though her eyes flickered sideways, settling on Daran marching a few paces ahead, sword strapped to his back, his stride deceptively casual. "That one," she said, voice low and even, "is a terror. Even at my level of power, he could injure me. Perhaps even worse if I misstep."

Harold's jaw tightened, following her eyes to the old warrior. He didn't argue the point. Daran was exactly that. Of the nine Barons that died he killed five of them. Then two others from Auren and Ferin's ambush. The two of them killed one other during the siege. Then the Matriarch killed another when he decided not to side with her when given the choice.

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Harold's question hung between them, sharp and cold. Marroween slowed, the cadence of the march thinning as the city tightened around them like a fist. She turned, the light catching on her helm, and for a long moment there was no jest in her face—only the iron patience of someone who had long ago learned to hide the worst decisions from herself.

"He is not my blood," she said finally, each word measured. "He was a retainer once. A man who earned his place at my side by loyalty and blade. I made him what he is when the line needed men who would not fail. He repaid that mercy with appetite. He has grown lazy in his comforts, vicious where mercy should live, and refuses the discipline this family exacts."

Her fingers flexed against her vambrace. "I have considered his end for some time. This duel is his reckoning. It is to the death—no theater, no loopholes for him to use. If he wins, I take the Boon. The family will rise, but the cost is exile; we will have to move our seat. This place cannot hold what we would become if we seize that power. The status quo will end. If you win, his life will be forfeit and my house will stand with you—willing, not bound. We will come under your command, and earn our place in the world by labor and honor rather than by fear."

She met Harold's eyes, the old mother and the cold commander braided together in one expression. "Either way, I win something. If he dies, the family sheds a parasite and gains purpose. If he lives and I fall, you gain strength and we gain a future where our children are not whispered threats in the city markets. I have weighed both and am ready to be carried by either result."

Harold nodded slowly, the plan knitting itself into something brutal and simple. "So the terms are clear: to the death, public, with witnesses and the city's square as the stage. No interference, no hidden sorceries beyond those agreed and witnessed. The Boon and the politics of exile or alliance hang on that blade." He let the sentence finish and added, quieter, "You say he's a sacrifice you've contemplated. We will ensure it is not a murder made in private, but a judgement given openly. If this is to be your purge, make it so the world can see why you chose it."

Marroween inclined her head once, and the small motion felt like an answer and an agreement both. Around them the city drew breath; beyond the walls a wolf padded, unseen but like a promise. They moved on toward the square—two parties bound now by oath and gamble—each step taking them closer to a metal verdict that would mark the city and, perhaps, rewrite what either of them could call a home.