Nyx pressed her palm against the half-built wall and felt the souls trapped inside scream. The hall was not yet complete, but already it served its purpose. Each soul she bound into the stone made the hollow ache in her chest fade, if only for a moment. She would fill every inch of these walls with the broken and the guilty. A shadow moved in the torchlight. Not her shadow. This one twisted against the light instead of fleeing from it, pooling in the center of the hall like spilled ink. Nyx stepped back from the wall and watched it grow. The darkness coiled upward, forming shapes that suggested wings, claws, teeth. Then it settled into stillness. Someone had sent this thing to mark her hall. Someone who knew what she was building and wanted her to know they were coming to destroy it. Nyx touched the knife at her belt and smiled. Let them come. She needed more souls anyway. She left the hall and walked the frozen ground outside, dragging skulls from the collection she kept for moments like this. The enemy thought they could frighten her with shadows and threats. She would show them what real warning looked like. One by one, she stacked the bones into a pile taller than a man, arranging skulls to face outward in every direction. Blood from her latest work still stained them red. When she stepped back, the message was clear: power had not protected these people, and it would not protect whoever was coming for her hall. The monument stood ready. So did she. But the monument alone was not enough. Nyx returned to her hall and pulled one of her oldest prizes from storage. The statue depicted her work exactly as it was meant to be seen: a figure harvesting souls from those who had once thought themselves untouchable. She dragged it outside and planted it before the bone pile, positioning it so anyone approaching would see it first. The souls trapped in the statue's base writhed in eternal agony, their faces frozen in the moment they realized their power meant nothing. Nyx traced her fingers along the statue's edge and felt the familiar pulse of satisfaction. Her hall had been noticed. Her work had drawn out exactly the kind of enemy she wanted. The hunt was no longer one-sided.

The cold changed. Nyx felt it the moment she stepped outside the hall. The air no longer cut with simple winter bite. It moved wrong, pulling toward the walls like breath drawn in. She turned back to see frost forming patterns on the unfinished stone, spreading faster than ice should. The wraiths came through the north wall first. Nyx heard the crack before she saw the fissure split the stone. Green light spilled from the breach, and the wraiths poured through like smoke finding air. They ignored her completely. Their attention fixed on the souls trapped in the walls, drawn to that specific agony the way carrion birds find death. Nyx raised her hands and spoke the binding words, feeling dark magic coil from her fingertips. The tendrils caught the edges of the fissure and pulled, forcing the broken stone to hold together even as more wraiths tore through. The magic wouldn't last forever. She needed something permanent. She walked the perimeter of her hall, marking each breach with blood from her knife. Where the wraiths clawed through, she would build containment. Not walls to replace what broke, but structures designed to hold the damage itself. The fissures would become doorways she controlled, bound by magic that fed on the same pain that drew the wraiths here. They wanted her souls. She would make them work for it, and every attempt would only strengthen what she built. The hall was no longer just a monument. It was becoming a trap. By dawn, Nyx had raised the archway at the hall's northern edge. Gothic spires stretched toward the gray sky, their dark stone carved with symbols that pulsed with violet light. The wraiths hit the barrier and recoiled, their forms scattering like ash in wind. Some tried to circle around, but the archway's magic spread in both directions, creating an invisible wall that burned them when they touched it. Nyx stood beneath the arch and watched them gather on the other side, pressing against the barrier but unable to cross. The souls in the walls still called to them, still drew them close, but now they could only reach through the paths Nyx allowed. She touched the archway's center stone and felt it pulse in rhythm with her heartbeat. The wraiths had shown her the weakness in her design. She had turned that weakness into control. The hall would never be finished, but it would grow stronger with every threat that came for it.

They moved to the war table, the onyx and crimson surface spread with maps Vladmir had drawn across the southern territories. Red markers showed settlements where resistance had collapsed. Black ones marked places where defenders still held ground. Nyx studied the patterns, tracking the flow of souls each conquest would bring. She picked up a pencil and circled three locations—a prison, a workhouse, a court building. "Here," she said. "These places create the souls I need. People who broke others and think themselves justified." Vladmir leaned over the table, his hand covering hers. "The prison will cost us. They have defensive wards." Nyx pulled her hand away and drew a line connecting the prison to the workhouse. "Then we take the workhouse first. Break their supply chain. Let them starve before we strike." She was thinking differently now, selecting targets not for territory but for the specific suffering they would yield. The hall had taught her to be precise. Vladmir straightened and moved to the cauldron, stirring the remaining energy with a long iron rod. The flames shifted from red to violet, casting strange shadows across the chamber walls. "You're changing the strategy," he said. It wasn't a question. Nyx traced the map's northern edge where the rift pulsed with cold power. "The hall needs different materials now. Souls that fight. Souls that hate what they've become but can't escape it." She looked up at him. "Can you find those, or do I need to harvest them myself?" The question hung between them, not quite a challenge but close. Vladmir had brought her willing souls, and she needed him to understand why that wouldn't work. He met her eyes, and something shifted in his expression—recognition, maybe respect. "I can find them," he said. "But it will take longer. Weeks, not days." Nyx turned back to the table and marked the prison with a different symbol, one that indicated priority. The hall would grow slower now, but it would grow stronger. Each soul she added would carry the weight she needed—eternal resistance, eternal punishment. "Take the time," she said. "I'd rather wait for the right ones than fill the walls with ghosts who've already given up." She felt the weight of that decision settle in her chest, not quite pain but something close to it. The quick relief of binding willing souls had been empty, a false comfort that wouldn't last. Better to feel the full weight of her unnamed loss and build something that could actually bear it. Vladmir nodded and began gathering the maps, rolling them with careful precision. "I'll start tomorrow," he said. "The prison first, like you said. We'll break them slowly." The council chamber fell quiet except for the crackle of flames in the cauldron. Nyx looked at the walls where the new souls had settled, their peaceful presence a reminder of what she didn't want. She had learned to distinguish between suffering that served her purpose and suffering that simply filled space. That knowledge would shape every decision moving forward—every conquest, every soul, every addition to her hall. The work would take longer now, but it would be precise. Permanent. She touched the war table's edge and felt the cold stone beneath her fingers. The hall wasn't just a monument anymore. It was becoming exactly what she needed it to be: a place where the powerful learned that nothing could save them, where their screams would echo forever through walls that refused to break. And she would build it one carefully chosen soul at a time.