No More Chances for the Damned

No More Chances for the Damned

30th Day of November, the Year of Our Source 2025

Tonight, my hand is steady, though my mind still simmers like a banked coal waiting for the right breath to bloom into flame. I sent the cease and desist to Naty Damiano earlier in the evening—a courtesy, really, the kind a ruler extends when she is still pretending diplomacy might be possible. But the moment Morrigan and I sat down to speak, the illusion snapped clean. She told me, without hesitation, that she had already sent word to the Hounds of Alastor the instant she learned of the threat against Mari. That alone told me everything I needed to know—my Regent does not move lightly. She felt the danger, recognized the pattern, and acted before the smoke could thicken.

We were both remembering the same thing: this was not Naty’s first threat, nor her second, nor her third. We’d granted her a last chance long ago, back when she snarled at our people and tried to intimidate them like some petulant monarch of a cardboard kingdom. I should have known then that she would never change. Drama is her native tongue, paranoia her religion, tantrums her sacrament.

It is a strange pathology she carries—this obsession with abandonment. The moment someone tires of her ceaseless conflict and flees her House of Twisted Flame, she becomes a storm, shrieking accusation into the wind. Everyone is a traitor to her. Everyone is disloyal. Everyone is an enemy except the sycophants who lie to her face just to avoid becoming the next target. I have seen it for centuries in our kind: a vampire so terrified of being insignificant that they build their entire identity from imagined insults and phantom threats. And when reality refuses to play along, they manufacture the danger themselves.

But tonight she took aim at Mari—my kin, Morrigan’s childe, a woman who has never once raised a hand to her. And that… no. No, that was the pivot. The line. The moment where the last thread of mercy burned away.

Morrigan didn’t even need to finish her sentence. I saw it in her eyes—cold stormlight, the kind that used to make warriors drop their swords and run for the hills. The Regent had already put the Hounds on alert; I merely aligned the law behind the instinct. We were done pretending. Done offering grace to someone who only ever used it as a stage on which to perform her martyrdom. The decision crystallized between us like frost on steel.

The order went out.

Kill on Sight.

Not just Naty. Her entire House of Twisted Flame.

I can already hear the whispering that will ripple through the Realm tomorrow—oh, Zoe has finally lost patience, Zoe has turned ruthless, Zoe has chosen war. Let them talk. Let them dance with their own shadows trying to interpret my steps. They will miss the truth as they always do.

This was not rage.

This was justice.

Justice for the patterns she refuses to end. Justice for the ones she threatened before. Justice for the constant discord she vomits into every corner of the Realm. Justice for the harm she would have done if we had, once again, given her the indulgence of pretending she might behave differently someday.

I have ruled long enough to know when a creature is a danger to the peace we build.
And sometimes, to preserve the whole, you burn out the rot.

Tonight, I feel no remorse. Only clarity.

The kind Morrigan and I share—the kind that hums between us when the world needs a blade instead of a balm.

And in that clarity, I wrote the order myself.

Let the Twisted Flame scatter ash to the wind.

Let this be the last tantrum she ever throws.

Tomorrow, the Realm will breathe easier.