Part I: The Market#
Reyneese moves through the morning market, satchel heavy with engineering components. Copper wire. Arcanite shavings. Three vials of volatile flux Brass told her to handle “like they’re your own eyeballs.”
She’s been building. Ever since Brass taught her the goblin philosophy—build systems that work without you—she’s been different. Less meditation, more mechanics. Less praying to the Light, more soldering by lamplight.
The market bustles around her. Vendors hawking spices, armor, enchantments. Children chasing each other between stalls. A normal day in a city that doesn’t know what’s coming.
Reyneese (to herself, examining a gear assembly): “Brass says the third actuator needs to be titansteel, not truesilver. Something about tensile strength under stress.”
She pauses at a stall, picks up an engineering manual with a cover depicting a goblin riding an explosion.
Reyneese: “Stress. Yes. I know about stress.”
She hasn’t slept well since the last encounter. Since Yreneese.
The name sits in her chest like a bruise that won’t heal.
Part II: The Blind Sister#
She feels it before she sees it.
A shift in the crowd. Bodies moving aside. Not panic—unease. The way a herd parts when a predator approaches.
A figure stands at the far end of the market lane.
Blindfolded. Twin warglaives on her back. Fel tattoos glowing faintly, pulsing with an unsteady rhythm—brighter, dimmer, brighter. Not the controlled burn of a demon hunter in command. Something is wrong.
Yreneese stands swaying, head tilted, like a wolf trying to catch a scent.
Her spectral sight flickers. The world through fel-burned eyes is a landscape of auras and heat signatures—souls as colors, intentions as shapes. But today the vision gutters like a candle in wind. She can see crowds. She can see something familiar at the end of the lane—a spiritual signature she knows in her bones.
But she can’t see clearly.
Yreneese (to herself, voice tight): “She’s here. The informant said she’d be here. I can feel her. The same Light-and-Shadow signature. The same…” (spectral sight flickers) “…I can’t SEE you. I can never see you clearly.”
Inside her mind, the inner demon stirs—the price every demon hunter pays. A voice not hers, hungry and hateful.
Inner Demon (whispering): She forgot you. She compressed you into nothing. Ten thousand years of nothingness. You KNOW it’s her. Strike. STRIKE.
Yreneese (gripping her own arms, trembling): “Shut up. I need to be sure. I need to—”
Inner Demon: You’ll never be sure. You can’t see. You’ll never see again. That’s what you traded. Your eyes for truth, and the truth is she forgot you.
Yreneese takes a step forward. Then another. The crowd parts wider.
Part III: The Confrontation#
Reyneese turns.
The engineering manual falls from her hands.
Reyneese (breath catching): “Yreneese…”
Twenty paces apart. The morning light falls between them like a blade.
Yreneese stops. Her head turns toward the voice—tracking it, locking onto it. The spectral sight surges for one moment and she sees: a tall figure wreathed in Light and Shadow, silver-white hair, the unmistakable spiritual weight of ten millennia.
Then it blurs. Gone. Just shapes and heat again.
Yreneese (voice cracking, louder than intended): “Is that you? IS THAT YOU?”
Reyneese (stepping forward, hands open): “It’s me. Yreneese, it’s me. I’m here.”
Yreneese (recoiling): “Don’t come closer! I can’t—I can’t see you properly. I can FEEL you but I can’t SEE you. Ten thousand years and I burned out my own eyes and I STILL can’t see your face!”
Tears streak from under the blindfold. Fel-green. Burning her cheeks like acid.
Yreneese: “The informant said you’d be here. Buying goblin parts. Living your life. Like nothing happened. Like I never existed.”
Reyneese (careful, pained): “Who told you I’d be here? What informant?”
Yreneese (shakes her head, confused): “I don’t—someone. A message. A whisper. It doesn’t matter! What matters is you’re HERE and I’m HERE and you FORGOT ME!”
Inner Demon: Yes. Let the rage come. Let it burn. She deserves it.
Yreneese (clutching her head): “Stop talking! BOTH of you, stop talking!”
Reyneese (alarmed): “I’m not—Yreneese, who are you hearing?”
Yreneese (bitter laugh): “My demon. The one I swallowed to gain the power to protect our people. The sacrifice YOU never had to make. It whispers. It always whispers. And right now it’s telling me to kill you.” (voice drops to whisper) “And I’m so tired of telling it no.”
Part IV: The Break#
Reyneese moves closer. A mistake.
Yreneese’s spectral sight flares—she reads the movement as aggression. The inner demon screams.
Yreneese (warglaives snapping free): “DON’T!”
The first warglaive arcs through the air. Not aimed to kill—aimed to drive back. But the force is enormous. A market stall explodes into splinters.
Screams. Civilians scattering.
Reyneese (deflecting debris with a Shadow shield): “Yreneese, STOP! I don’t want to fight you!”
Yreneese (spinning, disoriented, lashing out): “You don’t get to WANT! You don’t get to choose what happens between us! You chose temples and tea and a NEW FAMILY and you left me in the dark for TEN THOUSAND YEARS!”
A second strike. Reyneese raises both hands—Light from the right, Shadow from the left—absorbing the impact. The shockwave cracks cobblestones.
They’re fighting now. Not choreographed. Not elegant. Messy, emotional, half-held-back. Yreneese swinging wild, guided more by rage and spiritual sense than sight. Reyneese blocking, never striking back, tears streaming.
Yreneese (between swings, sobbing): “I remember EVERYTHING! Your voice when you sang! The way you held my hand when I was scared! The day I LEFT and you didn’t FOLLOW!”
Reyneese (absorbing another blow): “I wanted to follow! I wanted—”
Yreneese: “Then WHY DIDN’T YOU?!”
A warglaive catches Reyneese’s shoulder. Blood. Not deep, but real.
Reyneese (gasping, hand to wound): “Because I was afraid. I was afraid of the path you chose. And I was wrong. I was wrong to let you go alone.”
Yreneese freezes mid-strike. The admission hanging between them.
Yreneese (barely audible): “You were… afraid?”
Reyneese: “Of losing you to the darkness. And I lost you anyway. To time. To memory. To my own failure.”
Part V: Avel Runs#
Across the market, a flash of silver plate and cobalt cape.
Avelreese has seen everything.
She’d come to the market for simple supplies. Instead she’s watching her eldest warband sister bleed while a demon hunter weeps and destroys the square.
Avel (internal): “No. No no no.”
She turns. Sprints. Full armor clanking, cape streaming behind her. Knocking past civilians, vaulting over an overturned cart.
Avel (running, shouting into communication crystal): “WARBAND! All hands! Market square NOW! Rey is under attack—it’s the demon hunter! The sister! MOVE!”
Part VI: The Hooded Figure#
On a rooftop overlooking the market, a figure watches.
Hooded. Still. Patient.
One hand extends from dark robes. The fingers are long, marked with carved sigils. Fel-green flame crackles between them—not demon hunter fel, something different. Deeper. More deliberate. The controlled fire of someone who commands demons rather than consumes them.
The figure watches Yreneese and Reyneese with the calm detachment of someone watching pieces move on a board.
The hooded figure (whispered, to no one): “Good. The blind one fights. The wise one bleeds. Now… the catalyst.”
The figure raises both hands. Fel energy spirals upward. Ancient words in Eredun—demonic tongue—pour from lips hidden in shadow.
A summoning. Not small. Not subtle.
A rift in reality begins to tear open above the market square.
Part VII: The Portal#
Yreneese and Reyneese both feel it at the same time.
The air cracks. Temperature drops. Then spikes. A sound like the world tearing at the seams—a bass rumble that vibrates in the bones.
Yreneese (spectral sight flooding with fel energy): “What—that’s not me. That’s not MY—”
Reyneese (looking up): “Oh no.”
The sky splits open.
A portal—massive, fifty feet across, rimmed with green-black fire and screaming faces of lesser demons consumed in its creation. The kind of portal that hasn’t been seen since the Legion wars. The kind that means something enormous is coming through.
And something does.
A hand first. Then a hoof. Then the full monstrosity pulls itself through the rift—
A Pit Lord.
Forty feet of volcanic rage and annihilan fury. Massive hooked tusks. Wings of torn membrane. Volcanic cracks running across obsidian skin, glowing with internal hellfire. One fist grips a polearm the size of a small tree. The other drags across the market, carving a trench of molten stone.
The pit lord lands. The impact craters the market square. Buildings crack. Stalls disintegrate.
It roars.
The sound shatters every window within three blocks. Civilians who hadn’t yet fled are thrown to the ground. Fire erupts from between the cobblestones.
Reyneese (shielding her face from the heat): “A pit lord… Someone summoned a PIT LORD into a civilian market!”
Yreneese (backing away, spectral sight overwhelmed by the demon’s aura): “This wasn’t me. This wasn’t— I didn’t do this!”
Inner Demon (screaming now): RUN. THAT THING WILL CONSUME US. RUN!
For once, the inner demon and Yreneese agree.
Part VIII: Taken#
Before Yreneese can move—
Dark magic wraps around her.
Not the pit lord’s. Something else. Thin tendrils of shadow and fel, reaching from behind her, from a direction she wasn’t watching. The magic is precise, surgical, nothing like the brute force of the pit lord.
Yreneese (screaming): “WHAT—LET GO! LET GO OF ME!”
She slashes at the tendrils with her warglaives. They reform instantly. More wrap around her arms, her legs, her wings.
Reyneese (reaching for her): “YRENEESE!”
Their hands almost touch. Almost.
Yreneese (being pulled backward, dragged toward a smaller portal forming behind her): “REY! REY, I DIDN’T DO THIS! I DIDN’T—”
The smaller portal swallows her.
Silence where she stood. Just scorched stone and the lingering echo of her scream.
Reyneese stands alone. Bleeding. The pit lord looming before her. Her sister gone.
Reyneese (whispered): “Someone took her. Someone planned all of this.”
The pit lord raises its polearm.
No time to grieve. No time to think.
Survive.
Part IX: The Warband Arrives#
THUNDERING HOOVES. BATTLE CRIES. THE CRASH OF METAL.
Avelreese charges in first—shield raised, holy light blazing. She interposes between Reyneese and the descending polearm. The impact drives her to one knee. Cobblestones crater beneath her boots. But she holds.
Avel (teeth gritted): “Not. Today.”
Vyrneese next—erupting into dracthyr form mid-sprint, scales blazing crimson. She slams into the pit lord’s flank like a living battering ram. It staggers. One step.
Vyrneese: “BY THE FORBIDDEN REACH, THAT THING IS BIG!”
Zyneese from the right—frost magic spiraling, ice forming barriers to protect fleeing civilians, then lancing toward the pit lord’s joints. Precise. Calculated. Freezing the volcanic cracks shut.
Zyneese (adjusting glasses that somehow survived the sprint): “Its core temperature is—forget it. Hit it until it stops moving!”
Brasskeese from somewhere behind cover—crossbow bolts tracking weak points, shouting coordinates.
Brass: “Eyes on the kneecaps! Structural weak point! And someone keep that tail from—”
The pit lord’s tail sweeps. A building loses its front wall.
Brass: “—that.”
Lulureese (racing in, shifting between forms): “NEW FRIEND! VERY BIG VERY ANGRY NEW—okay NOT a friend!”
She shifts into tree form, roots erupting from cracked stone, healing energy pulsing toward the warband. Green light washes over wounds.
The warband fights. Together. Like they always do.
But the pit lord is too much.
Avel’s shield cracks deeper. Vyrneese is swatted aside, crashing through a building. Zyneese’s ice shatters against hellfire. Lulu’s healing can’t keep pace with the damage. Brass runs out of specialty bolts.
Reyneese channels everything she has. Light from her right hand—golden, searing. Shadow from her left—purple-black, devouring. She hits the pit lord with everything. Ten thousand years of power.
It shrugs off the assault. Barely a scratch on obsidian skin.
Reyneese (staggering, mana depleting): “It’s resistant. Light AND Shadow. I can’t—my magic isn’t—”
Brass (from behind a collapsed wall): “Rey! Your magic isn’t WORKING! It’s like that elemental all over again!”
The pit lord raises both fists. The killing blow.
Reyneese looks at her warband. Broken. Bleeding. Still fighting. Still standing. Still here.
Reyneese (quiet): “Magic isn’t enough. It’s never enough.”
She reaches into her satchel. Past the copper wire. Past the arcanite shavings. Past the volatile flux.
To the thing she built with her own hands. Following Brass’s blueprints. Using the engineering Brass taught her. The alchemy she learned for Vyrneese’s Thunderfury. The method she chose over magic.
A small brass device. Compact. Covered in goblin warning labels. Her first real invention.
Brass (seeing it, eyes wide): “Rey… is that—”
Reyneese (hands shaking): “You told me to build systems that work when I don’t. You told me to trust the method.”
Brass: “I said use it OUTSIDE! We’re in a MARKET SQUARE!”
Reyneese: “Close enough.”
She sets it on the cracked stone. Steps back.
The pit lord’s fists descend.
Reyneese closes her eyes and speaks the activation phrase:
Reyneese (clear, firm): “DEUS EX MACHINA.”
Part X: The Machine God#
The device CLICKS.
Then WHIRRS.
Then SCREAMS with mechanical violence.
AN EXPLOSION OF GOLDEN LIGHT AND STEAM.
The ground fractures. Plates of Titan-forged metal erupt upward, assembling themselves mid-air with impossible precision—limbs locking into joints, plating folding over framework, an Arcanite core igniting in the chest cavity like a newborn star.
When the light fades—
A HUMANOID WAR MACHINE stands in the destroyed market square.
Twenty feet tall. Bipedal. Upright. The OC-91 Chariot—a Titan-forged mechsuit rebuilt with goblin engineering guts. Golden plating scarred with brass weld-lines where Reyneese modified the original design. Two massive arms ending in reinforced fists, one mounted with a rotating barrel, the other with healing mist dispensers. Thick armored legs planted wide, cracking the cobblestones beneath their weight. Rocket boosters bolted across the shoulders and back. And a face—a smooth helm with two glowing optical sensors that swivel, lock onto the pit lord, and pulse red.
The cockpit hatch in the chest stands open. Waiting for a pilot.
MECHANICAL VOICE: “OC-91 CHARIOT ACTIVATED. SCANNING FOR THREATS.”
The pit lord pauses. Even a forty-foot demon lord can be startled by a twenty-foot humanoid war machine materializing from a pocket device.
Zyneese (stunned): “Rey… what the FUCK is that?”
Reyneese (exhausted, bleeding): “Goblin engineering meets Titan tech. I built it myself. Brass showed me the principles.”
Brass (staring at the mechsuit, voice breaking): “You… you actually built it. From my blueprints. You actually…”
Lulureese (delighted despite everything): “BIG METAL FRIEND!”
OC-91: “THREAT DETECTED. DISPENSING FRIENDSHIP.”
Its shoulder-mounted rockets swivel toward the pit lord. The barrel arm SPINS UP.
Thruster jets IGNITE.
The OC-91 Chariot takes one thundering step forward. Then another. Then it CHARGES THE PIT LORD, twenty feet of Titan-forged fury slamming a reinforced fist into obsidian demon hide with a concussive BOOM that shatters every remaining window in the square.
Part XI: Fight and Flight#
The OC-91 trades blows with the pit lord—twenty feet of Titan-forged engineering against forty feet of annihilan rage. The mechsuit’s reinforced fists crack against obsidian hide. Rockets fire from shoulder mounts at point-blank range. The healing mist dispensers on the left arm activate, spraying emerald fog across the warband.
The pit lord stumbles. Actually stumbles. Not from damage—from the sheer audacity of a machine standing toe-to-toe with a demon lord.
Reyneese: “GET IN! NOW!”
Avel: “Get in the ROBOT?!”
Reyneese: “IT HAS A CHARIOT HARNESS!”
Sure enough—the OC-91’s back opens into a reinforced passenger frame with harness points for six. Reyneese designed them herself, welded onto the original Titan chassis. One for each warband member. Because Brass said: build for the team, not just yourself.
The warband scrambles up the mechsuit’s legs and into the harness. Vyrneese pulling Brass. Avel hauling Lulu. Zyneese climbing with dignity she does not feel.
OC-91: “PASSENGERS DETECTED. INITIATING EVACUATION PROTOCOL.”
Brass (strapping in): “That’s not what I put in the— did you MODIFY my evacuation code?!”
Reyneese: “I added redundancies. Like you taught me.”
OC-91: “OVERRIDE ENGAGED. DEUS EX MACHINA MODE: ACTIVE.”
The shoulder and back thrusters ROAR TO LIFE.
Everyone: “WAIT—”
The OC-91 Chariot LAUNCHES INTO THE AIR, twenty feet of humanoid war machine carrying six screaming warriors strapped to its back. The pit lord’s fist crashes down on empty ground where they stood a heartbeat ago.
They’re flying. On a giant golden mechsuit. Above a burning market square. Away from a pit lord.
Lulureese (laughing hysterically): “WE’RE FLYING! ON A ROBOT!”
Zyneese (glasses askew, gripping the harness for life): “I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS!”
Vyrneese (confused but grinning): “IS THIS NORMAL?!”
Avel (pale): “I have a FLYING MOUNT. Why am I strapped to a GOBLIN ROBOT?!”
Reyneese (gripping the harness, wind in her hair, blood on her shoulder): “Because the Chariot WORKED when my magic didn’t!”
WARNING KLAXON.
OC-91: “FUEL CELLS AT 20%. CATASTROPHIC FAILURE IMMINENT IN T-MINUS 90 SECONDS.”
Brass (deadpan): “There it is.”
Brass: “It’s goblin engineering! Of COURSE it’s going to explode! Everyone—Vyrneese, pull that lever! Avel, hold that wire! Zy, channel frost into the cooling system! Lulu, grow something structural! Rey, Light into the Arcanite core—STABILIZE!”
OC-91: “60 seconds to detonation.”
They work. Together. Brass directing. Vyrneese pulling mechanisms. Avel bracing structural supports. Zyneese freezing overheating cores. Lulu growing vines through joints. Reyneese channeling Light into the heart of the machine.
Brass: “On three! ONE… TWO…”
OC-91: “30 seconds—”
Brass: “THREE!”
They pull. Push. Channel. Stabilize.
Silence.
The klaxon stops.
OC-91: “Systems stabilized. Fuel cells at 15%. Thank you for choosing Brasskeese Engineering Solutions.”
The OC-91 Chariot descends toward a clearing outside the city walls, its massive legs absorbing the landing impact with a shuddering thoom.
Part XII: Aftermath#
They dismount. Shaking. Burned. Cut. Bruised. But alive.
Behind them, the city guard is mobilizing. The pit lord is still raging in the market square—smaller portals are closing, lesser demons being cut down. The main portal is collapsing without its summoner.
The warband sits in the grass. Breathing. Processing.
Vyrneese (patting the OC-91’s leg, looking up at the towering mechsuit): “Good… machine?”
Lulureese (hugging its massive ankle joint): “BEST FRIEND! Can we keep it forever?!”
Zyneese (adjusting cracked glasses): “I need every drink in this city.”
Avel (sitting on the ground): “We just evacuated a pit lord fight. Strapped to a giant robot. A robot that Rey BUILT.”
Everyone looks at Reyneese.
She’s sitting apart, staring at her hands. One still faintly glowing with Light. One wisping with Shadow. Both oil-stained from months of engineering.
Brass (approaches quietly, sits beside her): “You built it.”
Reyneese: “I built it.”
Brass: “From my blueprints. But you modified the hell out of them. The passenger harness. The healing mist array. The stabilization redundancy. The Titan plating integration. Those weren’t mine.”
Reyneese (quiet): “You taught me to build systems that work without me. I tried to build one that works with all of us.”
Brass (voice unsteady, which never happens): “Rey. I’ve been an engineer for 58 years. And that’s the best damn thing anyone’s ever built from my blueprints. You took goblin engineering and Titan tech and made them work together. That’s not just engineering. That’s art.”
Reyneese (tears forming): “It’s a twenty-foot robot that almost exploded.”
Brass (grins): “Best engineering. Loud. Reckless. Almost blew up. But it WORKED.”
Part XIII: The Truth#
The warband gathers. The adrenaline fades. The questions come.
Vyrneese: “Rey… what happened? That demon hunter—your sister—she was there?”
Reyneese (nods slowly): “She came to confront me. But she was… different. Not like last time. She was confused. Blind—more blind than usual. Her spectral sight was failing. She was crying.” (voice breaks) “She said someone told her I’d be at the market. An informant.”
Zyneese (sharp): “An informant. And then a pit lord appears? Through a summoning portal?”
Brass (connecting dots): “Someone set this up. Sent the demon hunter to fight Rey. Then dropped a pit lord on them while they were distracted.”
Avel: “But who? Who has the power to summon a pit lord AND knows enough about both sisters to manipulate them?”
Reyneese: “And who took Yreneese. She was pulled away. By magic that wasn’t the pit lord’s. Something precise. Deliberate.”
Vyrneese: “She didn’t want to go. I heard her scream.”
Silence.
Reyneese (stands, looking back toward the city): “This wasn’t just my sister’s rage. Someone is using her. Using BOTH of us. The portal, the timing, the informant who told her exactly where I’d be. This was orchestrated.”
Brass: “By who?”
Reyneese: “I don’t know. But they were there. Watching. I could feel it—a presence on the rooftops. Fel energy, but not demon hunter fel. Something colder. More controlled.”
Zyneese (quiet, analytical): “A warlock. Someone who commands demons rather than consumes them. Different discipline entirely.”
Reyneese: “Yes.”
Part XIV: The Resolve#
Night falls. The warband camps under stars, the OC-91 Chariot standing guard in low-power mode, its optical sensors dimly sweeping the treeline.
Reyneese sits apart, looking at the distant city glow. Fires still burning where the market was.
Vyrneese (appears beside her): “Can’t sleep?”
Reyneese: “My sister is out there. Taken by someone. Used as bait. And I couldn’t save her.”
Vyrneese: “You saved US.”
Reyneese (looks at her): “With a robot.”
Vyrneese (small smile): “Best robot.”
Pause.
Vyrneese: “What are you going to do?”
Reyneese (looks at her hands—Light, Shadow, oil stains): “I’m going to find who did this. Not just for us. For Yreneese. She came to that market blind and broken and someone USED that. Someone fed her information. Someone wanted us to fight. And when we did, they dropped a demon on us and stole her.”
Vyrneese: “That’s not a simple task. That’s a war.”
Reyneese: “Then it’s a war. But not the kind I’ve fought before. Not with just power. With method. With systems. With a warband that holds together when everything falls apart.”
Vyrneese: “Even in a mechsuit?”
Reyneese (quiet laugh that becomes something harder, something resolved): “Even in a mechsuit.”
She looks at the stars.
Reyneese (internal monologue):
Ten thousand years. I’ve survived the Sundering, the Long Vigil, wars beyond counting. I chose Shadow when Light wasn’t enough. I chose engineering when magic wasn’t enough. I built a family when solitude wasn’t enough.
And now someone is trying to burn it all down.
They used my sister. The one I forgot. The one I failed. They turned her grief into a weapon and aimed her at me. And when that wasn’t enough, they dropped a pit lord on a civilian market.
I don’t know who you are. Not yet.
But I know this: you made a mistake. You showed me that Yreneese isn’t my enemy. She’s your victim, same as me.
And you showed me something else. When you summoned that demon and my magic failed—my warband held. My engineering held. The OC-91 held.
Loud. Reckless. Almost exploded. But it worked.
Brass was right. Build systems. Build for the team. Build what survives when you can’t.
Whoever you are, hiding in your hood with your fel-green flames and your pit lord summons—I’m coming for you. Not alone. Not with just magic. With my warband. With my methods. With every tool and potion and Titan-forged mechsuit I can build.
Because I have ten thousand years of surviving the impossible.
And I have the Chariot.
Epilogue: The Watcher#
Far from the burning city. A hilltop shrouded in shadow.
The hooded figure stands alone. The wind pulls at dark robes but the figure doesn’t move.
In one hand: a communication crystal, still warm from the pit lord summoning.
In the other: a chain of shadow that trails into the darkness behind, connected to something—someone—bound and unconscious in the shadows.
Yreneese. Blindfold torn. Fel-green tears dried on her cheeks. Breathing, but not awake.
The hooded figure looks back toward the distant fires.
Hooded Figure (voice low, calm, almost amused): “The elder sister survived. Interesting. That machine was… unexpected.”
A pause.
Hooded Figure: “No matter. The blind one served her purpose. And now…”
The figure looks down at Yreneese’s unconscious form.
Hooded Figure: “…now I have a demon hunter. And the priestess has questions that will lead her exactly where I need her to go.”
The figure turns away. The shadows deepen.
Hooded Figure (final whisper): “The Starveil sisters. Both so powerful. Both so breakable. This is going to be beautiful.”
The figure vanishes into darkness, dragging Yreneese’s bound form behind.
The stars watch.
They remember everything.
Even when the people below forget.
The End of Arc One#
What was lost:
- A market square
- Reyneese’s certainty that she could handle this alone
- Yreneese’s freedom
- The illusion that the sisters’ conflict was private
What was gained:
- Proof that the warband holds under impossible pressure
- Proof that engineering works when magic doesn’t
- The knowledge that someone else is pulling the strings
- A Titan-forged mechsuit called the OC-91 Chariot
What remains:
- A hooded figure with fel fire and a captured demon hunter
- Questions without answers
- A warband forged harder in the fire
- And Reyneese—ten thousand years old, ancient and tired and bleeding—who now knows the truth:
This isn’t just about memory and forgetting.
Someone wants the Starveil sisters destroyed.
And they almost succeeded.
Almost.
Author’s Note#
This is the sixth and final chronicle in the first arc of the Reyneese series. What began as a meditation on memory became a story of confrontation, sacrifice, and a Titan-forged war machine. The threads planted across all six chronicles—memory compression, Shadow and Light, goblin engineering, the blurred face, the found family—come together here.
The hooded figure remains unnamed. Their identity is a thread for the next arc. But attentive readers may find clues in the character roster.
Yreneese is not the villain of this story. She never was. She’s a victim of ten thousand years of pain—and now, someone else’s pawn.
The Warband of Starveil Weavers endures. On magic. On method. On each other.
And on the OC-91 Chariot.
Arc One Complete.
Read the full series: #1: The First Forgetting | #2: When Shadows Rise | #3: The Methodical Mind | #4: The Face in the Blur | #5: The Stranger’s Dance | All Warband Stories
Content Warning: This story contains themes of demonic violence, family conflict, emotional manipulation, civilian endangerment, and the psychological cost of being used as a weapon.