Queen of Damnation: The House of Souls

---Leon PoV---

Things were going well.

God, were they going well.

Every morning I woke up stronger than the night before I could feel it, that slow accumulation of stolen power settling into my bones like iron being poured into a mold. Ever since I learned to absorb the essence of the fallen, something had cracked open inside me. A hunger. Raw and insatiable, feeding itself with every battle, every kill, every pulse of life force flooding my veins like something divine. I wasn't just getting stronger. I was becoming something else entirely.

And I wanted more.

My nights with Elvnia ease up some tension, such a cute play thing. But even that was beginning to feel secondary a pleasant distraction from the real addiction. The power. The feeling right after a fight when the world shrank beneath my feet and I felt infinite. Untouchable. Like the rules that governed everyone else simply didn't apply to me anymore.

I found myself grinning constantly not the easy grin of someone content, but the restless, hungry smile of someone always calculating the next step. Nothing could slow me down. Nothing could touch me. And once I got home?

I almost laughed thinking about it. Basketball. I used to lie awake dreaming about basketball. Scholarships. Coaches. A crowd on their feet for me. It felt like a child's drawing now, something I'd outgrown without even noticing. Why chase a contract when I could command armies? Why be celebrated when I could be feared?

Jammi and I would have a wonderful life together. Jammi my childhood best friend, my girlfriend. God, I missed her.

The thought flickered through me and was gone just as quickly.

Then a white-hot pain shattered behind my eyes.

I drove my fingers into my temples, riding the throbbing until the world stopped blurring, teeth clenched, jaw tight. When it finally ebbed I straightened slowly and rolled my shoulders.

Why limit myself to Jammi?

The thought surfaced like something rising from deep water slow, inevitable, and certain. With this strength, any woman lay within my reach. Clinging to one seemed almost naive now. Small thinking for a smaller version of myself that no longer existed.

A flicker of something grazed me guilt, maybe, or the ghost of it. Some vital detail slipping just out of reach at the edge of my memory.

Then it was gone, swallowed effortlessly beneath the weight of everything I was becoming.

Merchants and travelers had been disappearing along one of the major roads. Scouts sent to investigate returned with disturbing reports a trail leading into the mountains, drag marks in the earth vanishing into the mouth of a cavern.

We set out immediately.

The moment we crossed the threshold, something cold ran the length of my spine. Thick webs coated every surface grey and damp, pressing against the walls and ceiling like a second skin grown over stone. The air carried the low, persistent stench of decay. Something about the place settled wrong in the bones before the mind could explain it. The kind of wrong you feel before you understand.

Tina slashed through the sticky strands, her daggers flashing in the dim light. Then Dante let out a high-pitched screech that spun us all around. He stood completely rigid, eyes blown wide, staring at his own arm.

"A spider was on me." He shuddered violently.

"For someone your size," Tina started, giving him a nudge, "scared of a little "

She didn't finish.

A shadow consumed the light above us. We looked up.

A spider larger than a temple descended from the darkness in absolute silence, its legs unfolding one by one like a nightmare patiently assembling itself.

"Look up," Alex said quietly. He was already looking.

Silk cocoons hung from the ceiling in bundled clusters familiar shapes trembling faintly inside their wrappings. Long past struggling. We had found them.

"Weapons out." Alex's voice was calm and exact. "Dante, right flank. Tina, left. Siera, find cover and heal as needed stay hidden unless called. Elvnia, circle above."

"Don't tell me what to do," Elvnia snapped, already gone with her bow in hand.

I crouched low, sword tucked tight under my arm, then launched forward aiming straight for the spider's legs as it lunged toward us. My blade sang through the air and connected with nothing but web. No gash. Not even a scratch on the thing.

Damn.

Elvnia's arrows rained from above while Tina flanked the creature, hurling poison-tipped daggers at its joints. The spider swung one massive leg down toward me Dante threw himself between us and absorbed the blow, the impact folding him sideways, all the air punched out of him at once.

"Leon, get it together!" Alex shouted.

I tightened my grip. Magic missiles. I conjured a hundred glowing bolts in a single breath and slammed my palm forward, watching them tear across the spider's face in rapid succession. The creature collapsed sideways into the cavern wall with a screech that burrowed deep into the dark.

Alex was already moving cards fanning from his deck and arcing into the air, forming a glowing ring that flooded the cavern with cold white light.

"Fate of Unbroken Shield!"

A dome of energy surged outward. Dante caught it with a grin and launched himself off it directly into the spider's torso, the impact staggering the creature backward.

"Fate of Last Arrow!"

Alex rolled a card between his fingers and sent it skyward. A wind-charged arrow materialized above Elvnia she released without hesitation, severing one of the spider's legs clean from its body.

Alex drew his next card. His hand slowed.

"Fate of Burning Flames."

The inferno card.

"What are you waiting for?" I shouted over the noise. "Use it!"

He shook his head, jaw tight. "I can't. Fire will incinerate the spider and every survivor still in those webs."

"I don't give a damn, Alex. Use it."

The spider reared back and spewed a torrent of venom thick and reeking, flooding the cavern with a suffocating miasma that burned the inside of my lungs.

"ALEX. USE IT."

He shuffled frantically through his remaining cards, sweat cutting down his temple, every second stretching thin as wire. Then he stopped. Drew one card slowly and stared at it.

"Fate Card of Severed Threads."

"This one is... new," he breathed.

"Stop staring at it and use it."

He flicked it into the air.

A thin spectral line shot outward and snapped like a thread pulled past its limit finally giving way. The cavern fell silent all at once. The spider froze mid-lunge, its legs dissolving beneath it, the massive body crashing to the stone with a sound that shook the walls to their roots. The poison dissolved into harmless mist. The cocoons dropped free from the ceiling, their contents stirring weakly.

We stood in the ringing quiet, staring at each other.

"Alex," Tina finally whispered. "What was that?"

He exhaled slowly, something between awe and terror moving through his expression. "I think we were supposed to die. But the card changed our fate."

I crossed the cavern in three strides and drove him against the wall, my fist knotted in his collar.

"You listen when I speak." My voice came out quieter than intended. Somehow that made it worse. "Do you understand me?"

Elvnia stepped between us immediately, arms raised. "Hey. We survived."

I held Alex's gaze a moment longer then released him and stepped back. "Barely," I said, and turned away.

Those cards. I turned the thought over the entire walk back, unable to set it down. Give them to me. I'd show everyone exactly what they can do.

The next morning I reported to the church. I recounted everything in careful detail including how Alex's hesitation had nearly buried us all in that cavern. The High Priest listened in complete silence, hands folded behind his back. When I finished he turned, retrieved a scroll from the shelves behind him, and placed it into my hands without ceremony.

"What is this?" I asked.

"The Scroll of Divine Fate," he said. "It details the relic Alex carries."

He began to pace, his voice low and unhurried the voice of a man who had thought about this for a very long time.

"When an individual is chosen by the gods, they rarely receive a traditional relic. It is granted directly through divine will. When Alex awakened, the entire church turned gold. Cards unfolded around him like a second sky." A pause. "I remember it as though it were yesterday."

His gaze darkened at the edges.

"We attempted to examine them once. Even touching them felt wrong as though life itself was being drawn out through the fingertips. Whoever granted those cards does not tolerate interference." He folded his hands deliberately. "The cards are not the source of his power. They are conduits. They respond to intent. Whatever he desires strength, wealth, love, dominion it obeys."

He let the silence hold for a moment.

"You could rule. Live forever. Bring back the dead."

Something tightened deep in my chest something I didn't have a name for and didn't reach for.

The priest's hand came to rest on my shoulder.

"That," he said quietly, "is why he must be removed."

I looked at him steadily. "Removed."

"Yes. But it will not be simple. The cards sense direct malice they protect him from it instinctively. If you want them, you cannot be the one to strike."

He leaned in slightly, voice dropping further still.

"You must turn someone he trusts."

I thought it through. "Tina? His girlfriend?" I shook my head. "She loves him. He's planning to propose."

The priest gave a small, patient shrug. "Young love is fragile. Threaten what she cannot protect her family and she will fracture."

A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth before I could think to stop it. "Threaten her family."

"She is lowborn. Her family funded everything her education, her training, every opportunity she has ever had. If she refuses " He didn't complete the thought. He didn't need to.

Silence settled between us like sediment.

Something in my chest felt heavy. A distant unease, like a warning arriving too faint to fully hear.

"Do you have something against Alex personally?" I asked.

"No," the priest said simply. "Not personally. But power that goes unexercised is wasteful." His eyes drifted upward toward the vaulted ceiling almost reverent, as though he could already see something the rest of us couldn't. "You don't yet understand what those cards truly are. They do not only alter the bearer's fate they reshape the fate of everything within his reach, according to his will alone. Imagine a world without death. Without war. A kingdom built entirely in your own image." A soft exhale, unhurried and certain. "Even godhood within your grasp."

He slid a folded parchment across the table toward me.

"This contains everything you need to know about Tina. Her family. Her village. Her vulnerabilities." He met my eyes. "I trust you will do what is necessary."

I picked it up slowly. Held it for a moment.

It was a sadistic, twisted thing he was asking of me. A line that, once crossed, could not be walked back.

I slipped it into my pocket.

And felt a smile pull at my lips anyway.