Infinity: Reborn

Lilith sat upon the Umbral Throne, violet eyes fixed on the translucent recording crystal hovering before her. The three-dimensional image displayed Mathias crossing the Solarian border during a thunderstorm, water streaming down his travel-worn cloak as he presented papers to the checkpoint guards.

She’d watched this particular moment three times now.

Nyssa perched on the throne’s armrest, her tiny form radiating pride. “I recorded everything significant from the moment he left Umbra. The family he met, the merchants, the branded heretics—all of it.”

Lilith let the crystal continue playing, watching Mathias pause at the border’s far side, looking back toward the Wastelands with an expression she couldn’t quite decipher. Guilt? Regret? The resolution of someone who’d made a difficult choice?

“Engrave Memory,” she murmured, turning the phrase over in her mind. The spell had come to her as naturally as breathing when Nyssa first mentioned it, knowledge flooding her consciousness the moment she needed it. Third circle divination magic that captured reality itself, preserving it in crystalline form.

The game’s replay function, translated into actual magic. Another piece of Infinity’s mechanics made flesh.

“Your work was excellent,” Lilith said, dismissing the recording with a gesture. The crystal dissolved into purple motes that faded into nothing.

Nyssa practically vibrated with joy, her dark wings fluttering so rapidly they blurred. “Thank you, Mistress! I followed him for four days, staying in shadows the whole time. He never detected me once, though he seemed to sense something watching him.”

“I noticed that in the recordings.” Lilith leaned back against the obsidian throne, considering the implications. A Solarian spy, operating under their noses for weeks. Training Seraphina in swordplay. Gathering intelligence about their defences, their numbers, their leadership structure.

The irony wasn’t lost on her. She’d been so focused on consolidating power among demon lords that she’d overlooked the more mundane threat of espionage.

Not that stopping Mathias would have changed much. There were almost certainly other spies embedded among the human cultists and refugees who’d joined Umbra’s growing population. You couldn’t prevent rumours from spreading across an entire region, couldn’t catch every set of eyes reporting back to foreign powers.

Still. Mathias being a spy was a shame.

The man had seemed genuinely kind to Seraphina, patient with his instruction, protective during the tunnel attack. Either he was an exceptional actor, or his feelings for Sera had been real despite his ulterior motives. Perhaps both could be true simultaneously.

Lilith’s fingers drummed against the throne’s armrest. Should she tell Seraphina? The truth could devastate her. She’d trusted Mathias, opened up to him, allowed herself to hope for genuine friendship—maybe more.

No. Let Sera live in ignorance. At least for now.

The cruelty of revealing Mathias’s betrayal would serve no purpose except satisfying some abstract principle about truth. Better to let Sera believe he’d simply left for some research and might return someday. The disappointment of abandonment would hurt less than the sharp blade of deliberate deception.

“Mistress?” Nyssa’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “What should we do about the information he’s carrying?”

“Assume the Solarian Empire already knows everything important.” Lilith stood, stretching wings that had grown stiff from sitting. “I expected this, honestly. The moment we started consolidating territory and recruiting followers, intelligence was bound to reach human kingdoms. I’d hoped for more time before it became official knowledge, but—” She shrugged. “We work with what we have.”

The recordings had shown Mathias encountering demon families fleeing Solarian persecution, merchants optimistic about trade opportunities, branded heretics seeking refuge. Whether or not he reported those details to his handlers, the broader truth remained inescapable: Nocturne was rising again, and the human powers would need to respond.

Which meant she needed to consolidate the Wastelands as quickly as possible.

Seventy-two demon lords, according to the intelligence she’d gathered. Most were minor powers controlling a settlement or two, but several commanded significant territories and military forces. So far, she’d secured direct allegiance from Paimon, Dantalian, Belial, Bael, and Eligos. Valac’s former holdings were being absorbed into her expanding domain. But the others still remained uncommitted.

It was quite funny, actually, how all these demon lords bore names from the Lesser Key of Solomon. The synchronicity was too precise to be coincidence. She wondered if it had something to do with her old in-game friend Solomon—the human Demonologist who’d helped her design some of Umbras more elaborate structures.

Had he somehow influenced this world’s formation? Were the demon lords named after his character’s summons, or had the cosmic event that brought her here drawn from game’s lore and shaped history accordingly?

Questions for another time. She had more immediate concerns.

Lilith waved the speculation away, focusing on Nyssa’s beaming face. The fairy was still practically glowing from her earlier praise, dark wings trembling with barely contained delight.

“Right.” Lilith made her voice firm but not unkind. “I need you to summon everyone for a special conference. All the generals, our allied demon lords if they’re still in Umbra, Vespera, and the senior officers.”

Nyssa saluted with exaggerated formality. “At once, Mistress! Should I prepare the War Room or the Throne Room?”

“War Room. This is strategic planning, not a formal audience.”

The fairy launched herself into the air, already heading for the exit.

“Nyssa?”

She paused mid-flight, looking back expectantly.

“Truly excellent work.” Lilith allowed a genuine smile. “Your surveillance skills are remarkable.”

The fairy’s entire body seemed to ignite with pure joy before she zipped out of the throne room, moving so fast she left a trail of dark sparkles in her wake.

Lilith watched her go, then turned back to the empty air where the recording crystal had floated.

Time to consolidate power before the storm arrived.

* * *

The conversation with Father Gallivan circled through Mathias’s mind as he walked through Kelmar’s Rest. Each word replayed itself, examining edges he’d tried to ignore during their discussion. But something fundamental had shifted. The crushing weight that had settled across his shoulders during his first day in Umbra—watching demons go about their lives with the same mundane concerns as any human settlement—had lifted.

Gallivan was right. He’d already known the answer.

Perhaps since that first time Sera smiled at him, genuine and unguarded, asking if he wanted company while exploring the city.

Or maybe he’d known from the very beginning and simply refused to acknowledge it. The truth was too terrifying to confront: everything he’d built his existence upon was a fabrication. Every justification he’d clung to while carrying out orders, every rationalization for the screams and the blood and the burning, all of it constructed on foundations of sand.

The humans and demons he’d killed in Solaris’s name—how many had truly deserved that fate? How many had simply been living, trying to survive, protecting families or pursuing livelihoods?

Without the hatred that had defined his existence, there was nothing left to shield him from the guilt.

His feet carried him along familiar streets. He’d walked these paths countless times during his childhood, though never toward the destination pulling at him now. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the cobblestones as he passed the marketplace, the temple, the fountain where he’d once helped younger orphans fetch water.

It was too late to turn back. The knowledge couldn’t be unlearned, the awareness couldn’t be suppressed. Gallivan had spoken of two choices, but Mathias understood he’d already made his decision. The moment he’d accepted Sera’s friendship despite knowing what she was—what he was—the course had been set.

Which meant he could no longer remain in the Purifying Flame.

The thought should have terrified him more than it did. Perhaps he’d exhausted his capacity for fear somewhere between watching Sera defend wounded demons and kneeling before Solaris’s altar in Light’s Beacon, finding only silence where divine certainty should have been.

But leaving an organization that permitted retirement only through death presented challenges he hadn’t yet fully contemplated. Later. He’d face that impossible equation later.

First, there was something else he needed to do. Somewhere he should have visited decades ago. A place his hatred and disdain had prevented him from acknowledging existed.

The monastery’s cemetery lay behind the main building, a peaceful plot of land where priests and favoured patrons rested beneath simple stone markers. Gallivan’s influence extended even to death, it seemed, granting dignity to those the empire might otherwise have denied.

Mathias passed through the iron gates, his steps slowing as he moved deeper into the rows of graves. He’d memorised the location from records he’d once glimpsed in Gallivan’s office, information he’d deliberately ignored for years.

There. Third row, seventh stone from the left.

Valerian Whitefield

Beloved Soul, Taken Too Soon

May Solaris Grant Mercy Where Men Could Not

The inscription was simple, the stone weathered by two decades of rain and sun. No mention of his crime, no condemnation. Just Gallivan’s quiet defiance carved into granite.

Mathias’s knees hit the ground before he’d consciously decided to kneel. The grass was soft beneath him, well-tended like everything else in the monastery. Of course Gallivan would maintain even this grave with care, despite what it represented.

His mother had no marker. Demons received no burial rites in Solarian territory, their bodies burned and scattered to prevent any possibility of corruption. As though her essence hadn’t already been consumed by the flames that killed her.

But his father rested here. The human merchant who’d loved her despite—or perhaps because of—what she was.

“Father.” The word felt strange on his tongue. He’d never called Valerian that, not consciously. The man existed only as an abstract concept in his mind: the fool corrupted by demonic influence, the weakness that created his cursed bloodline.

“I should have come sooner.” His voice cracked. “I should have…”

What? What should he have done? As a child, he’d been too traumatised and indoctrinated to question anything. As a young man, too committed to proving his worth through zealotry. And later, too deep in the machinery of violence to risk examining the foundations.

“Forgive me.” The words came roughly. “For taking so long. For hating you. For hating her. For believing…”

He couldn’t finish. Couldn’t articulate the full weight of his betrayal—of them, of himself, of every person he’d condemned using their execution as justification.

The cemetery remained silent except for bird song and distant sounds from the monastery. No divine voice offered absolution. No ghostly presence granted forgiveness.

Just Mathias kneeling before a stone marker, finally acknowledging what he’d spent forty-one years denying: that his parents had loved each other, that their love had created him, and that perhaps—perhaps—there had been nothing inherently corrupt about any of it.

* * *

Mathias didn’t know how long he knelt there. Long enough for his legs to go numb, for the sun to shift lower, painting the cemetery in amber light. He told them everything—about Sera, about the demon children, about finally understanding what they must have felt, loving across the divide the empire forbade.

When he finally stood, his knees protested the movement. He steadied himself against the headstone, fingers resting on his father’s name one last time.

Now came the impossible part.

The Purifying Flame wouldn’t wait forever. He’d been gone nearly two weeks already. Soon they’d expect contact, a report, something to justify his absence from active rotation.

Twenty years of service bought him some credibility despite his heritage, but not infinite patience. They’d trained him too well in their methods not to recognise the patterns of compromise. If he gave false reports and returned to Umbra, they’d realise the truth when other intelligence arrived. Then he’d be branded traitor—officially, irrevocably.

That meant assassins. Not the ordinary kind, but specialists who knew his capabilities, his training, his weaknesses. Former colleagues who’d hunt him without mercy.

He could simply disappear, never report back at all. Let them assume he’d died or gone missing during his reconnaissance. But that bought limited time before they sent someone to investigate. Eventually they’d piece together his movements, find witnesses who’d seen him crossing back into imperial territory alive and whole.

Going rogue would only delay the inevitable.

Perhaps the best choice was to give his report and then return to Umbra while pretending continued loyalty. Play the long game, feed them carefully curated intelligence while trying to mitigate the damage. At least that way he could warn Sera when the hammer finally fell.

His stomach tightened. He’d gathered enough intelligence during his weeks in Umbra to understand what the Empress was building. Impressive, yes. Unprecedented organisation for demon territories. But the Purifying Flame commanded resources he’d witnessed first hand—divine magic, blessed weaponry, legions of zealots convinced demonic extinction served holy purpose.

And Sera would be there when they came. He knew her well enough to understand that certainty. She wouldn’t abandon Umbra, wouldn’t flee to safety while others fought. The city meant too much—represented everything she’d spent dreaming about.

The thought of trying to convince her otherwise was almost laughable. She’d look at him with those amber eyes that shifted red when emotional, and she’d refuse. Politely, firmly, without room for argument.

Which meant he had to succeed. Had to maintain his cover long enough to make a difference when the assault came.

But that created its own problem: how would he convince Lilith he wasn’t still working for the Flame?

She wasn’t stupid. The Empress had demonstrated tactical brilliance during the siege, had somehow recruited demon lords who’d fought against her days before. She’d read his deception easily enough, see through any protestations of changed loyalty.

And why should she believe him? A Purifying Flame operative who’d gathered intelligence under false pretences, now claiming sudden conversion? It sounded absurd even to his own ears.

Yet staying with the Flame, continuing to serve the organisation that had built itself on lies about demonic corruption, felt impossible now. The weight of those twenty years pressed against his chest like physical mass.

Mathias turned from his father’s grave, walking back through the cemetery gates. The monastery bells rang for evening prayers, their sound carrying across the grounds where he’d once felt safe.

That safety had been built on ignorance, he understood now. Comfortable certainty purchased through refusing to examine the foundations.

No simple path forward existed. Only choices between different versions of betrayal, different calculations of harm.

He needed time to think. To plan. To figure out which impossible option might somehow lead to survival.