*24 May, year 1548, Sky City Academy, Professors’ District*

The silence of the room was broken only by the whistling of the wind against the crystal panes of the floating academy. Dyana Donoghan was sitting on the edge of her bed, her slender fingers clenched on the purple silk sheets. She stared into the void, her mind still clouded by memories of Kaiser’s skin against hers, a sensation that seemed to be the only real thing in her existence as a fallen duchess.

There was a knock at the door. A messenger entered, his face deathly pale, his hands trembling so hard that the wax seal on the letter he carried seemed on the verge of breaking.

"Madam Duchess... reports have just arrived..." the man began in a choked voice.

Dyana did not move. She felt an icy pressure settle in her chest.

"Paragon County... it has been attacked by the forces of the Spectrum... it has been completely destroyed. Nothing remains, madam..." the messenger continued in a breath.

Dyana felt the ground give way beneath her feet. Her mind refused to grasp the scale of the disaster. The county destroyed? Kaiser?

"No... Do not tell me that..." she murmured, her voice dying in her throat.

"It is Lord Kaiser, madam... the conclusions indicate that there are no survivors... his remains have probably been reduced to ashes among the flames..."

At that precise moment, Dyana Donoghan’s face froze completely, losing all trace of human warmth. Her features became a mask of cold marble as a deathly silence settled in the room. The messenger, terrified by this lack of reaction, hastened to add useless details.

"The Lancaster family is suspected of having led the assault in secret... Katrina Lancaster is said to have been seen with demonic mana residues..."

Dyana was no longer listening. A crack had just spread through her soul, shattering the last remnants of her already fragile mental health and giving the demonic princess of madness a flaw to possess a suitable vessel. Kaiser was dead. Her Kaiser, the one she loved more than her own life, had been killed by that Lancaster vermin.

A shockwave of mana suddenly exploded around her, making the stone walls of the academy vibrate. Her amber eyes turned to ebony, an abyssal black that seemed to suck in the light. Without a word for the messenger who collapsed to the floor, crushed by the pressure, she rushed to the window and leaped into the air.

...

The sky above the Lancaster lands was low, laden with black clouds that seemed to announce the end of the world. Dyana floated, motionless, overlooking the main city. She looked down with a demented and fixed smile on her lips. The county guards finally noticed her silhouette.

"Look! Up there! A figure is floating above the castle!" shouted a captain, pointing his sword toward the sky.

The aura emanating from Dyana no longer had anything noble about it. It was pure malevolence, a murderous intent that froze the blood of the soldiers.

"You have taken my happiness..." she murmured, her voice carried by the wind to the ears of the terrified. "In return... I will extinguish your world."

She raised her right hand. Her ninth-circle mana resonated with her Metal attribute.

< Metal Lances >

In a flash, thousands of steel tips materialized in the air and rained down at the speed of sound. The massacre was surgical and total. The tips pierced plate armors as if they were paper. A guard trying to take shelter saw a lance pierce his skull, literally nailing him to the ground before his head burst under the kinetic pressure. Blood gushed in fountains, repainting the courtyard slabs in scarlet red.

Dyana descended slowly, her feet barely brushing the ground strewn with corpses. Everywhere she passed, spikes burst from the earth to impale the fugitives from below. It was at this moment that Dyana Donoghan became possessed by the demonic princess of madness, Mammon.

The next day...

Dyana nevertheless returned to the duchy of her husband. Her appearance was neglected, her clothes stained with dried blood, and her gaze haunted by moving shadows. She entered the great hall where Duke Randal was waiting for her, his face red with anger.

"Where have you been?" Randal asked in a cold voice. He advanced toward her, no longer tolerating her repeated absences. "I knew it! I knew you were a whore, but not to this extent!" he yelled in front of the few servants present.

In a fit of rage, Randal advanced and raised his hand to slap her, as he had already done during Isabella’s funeral. But this time, the movement did not reach its target. Dyana seized the duke’s wrist. Her fingers sank into the flesh as thick black demonic mana began to pour out of her.

"How is it that you possess demonic mana, you filthy whore?" swore the duke, surprise momentarily replacing his fury. "Do you want to drag us into your affairs with the Holy Cathedral?"

Randal tried to free himself but nothing could be done.

"You have never understood..." murmured Dyana, her voice overlapping with that of Mammon.

As Randal prepared to shout again, Dyana was seized by a mad rage. Without even realizing it, she used blood magic. The blood in the duke’s veins instantly began to boil. In a fraction of a second, the internal pressure became unbearable.

Duke Randal’s body exploded in a terrible sound of torn meat. Shreds of flesh and bone fragments came to coat the walls of the hall. Dyana remained motionless, covered in the remains of the man she had just pulverized. She remained a moment surprised by what she had just done, observing her red hands.

After the duke’s death, she suddenly became very agitated. Seized by fear in the face of her own anger, she completely lost her reason. She began to kill all the servants of the duchy one after the other. It was a carnage...

When she felt that the Holy Cathedral had been alerted by the demonic mana emanations, she fled. She knew that there was only one place where the paladins would hesitate to follow her immediately: Babylon.

***

*June 1548, Kingdom of Babylon*

Babylon was renowned for its hostility toward the holy cathedral. It was the ideal place to hide. However, upon her arrival, Dyana found no compassion. For the dark elves of the city, she was only a human, an inferior and despised species. This contempt quickly turned into open persecution, especially since the kingdom was already in turmoil because of an epidemic of possessed.

Dyana had settled in a low-class inn, trying to blend into the crowd, but her mental instability betrayed her. One evening, under the pressure of mockery and insults from the elf customers, she let herself be consumed by Mammon’s madness.

The massacre began in the inn. Dyana killed everyone, using her metal lances to turn the building into a meat grinder. Then she continued in the streets, massacring civilians and sorcerers indiscriminately. In her dementia, she headed toward the center of power and attacked the great tower. She killed two of its great leaders as well as many occupants who tried to block her path. She finally settled at the top of one of the towers.

Her demonic mana, now more powerful, modified the environment of the city. The sky became a permanent blood red. The survivors of her massacre did not all die; the corruption emanating from her transformed them into low-rank or intermediate-rank demons, according to their previous strength. Her power was so intense that it also created new hybrid monsters in the surroundings.

Her actions pushed the few survivors who had escaped to name her the Lady of the Scarlet Night.