“What is a Devil?”

  My mother never expected a question like that to come from one of her own flesh and blood.

  “Akmenos! You’re too young to be concerning yourself with the likes of Devils!” She always had the kindest and softest eyes but, in that instance, she could have glared daggers into me.

  “I’m not, Mama, I just heard some other kids talking about it.”

  My Father, who had been preparing a fire in the hearth, turned to me and stood. “Akmenos, are those kids calling you names again?”

  I don’t remember what I said but I do remember not being able to look him in the eye. Instead, I fidgeted with the small horns protruding from my head. “Not… exactly. My horns and red skin remind them of something called a Devil in one of the stories their parents told them. Is it… a bad thing?”

  Looking back on it, I could tell he was ready to grab his axe and storm over to their houses. In reality, he let out a long exhale and knelt down to put a hand on my shoulder. “A Devil isn’t a thing, it’s a mindset. Do you do bad things or wish bad things upon others?”

  “No, Father.”

  “Good. Then that means you’re not a Devil.”

  Everyone always said I was the spitting image of my father, so I chose to believe him. Otherwise, that’d make him a Devil too and, now knowing the things I do, he could never do the things I’ve seen Devils do.

  “What is a Devil?”

  The class remained silent as a few hands were raised. “A being from the Nine Hells?”

  “Good, Mari, but it’s more than that. Anyone else?”

  I raised my hand. “They’re evil beings who just want destruction.”

  The professor laid the chalk on the ledge under the board. “Not quite. While, yes, a devil is considered to be the supreme evil being and direct adversary of good, celestials, and deities, they are also orderly beings. They do not wish for death and destruction for the sake of death and destruction. Despite being malicious and corrupt, they strictly adhere to lawful concepts. Often, they forge, force, or deceive mortals and other beings into pacts and contracts in order to secure wealth, power, and whatever whims guide the devil.”

  It struck me as reminiscent of politicians.

  She continued, “As a Hellrider, while not necessarily common, there may come a day where you deal with a Devil or, at the very least, something of Infernal nature. It is imperative you understand what makes a Devil in order to understand how to deal with the Infernal.”

  If only I had taken my classes more seriously back then.

  “My name is Akmenos, a HellRider of Elturel.”

  The man across the fire from me shifts on his log. “A Hellrider, huh? I’m sure you got some stories to tell.”

  “You have no idea.”

  And neither did I.

  They say memory is a fire. Some embers burn low and soft. Faces, laughs, the smell of old leather. Others flare like a sword catching the sun, too bright to look at directly. Then there are the ones that don't fade or burn out. The ones that simmer under your skin until they become part of you. Scars that don't show on the outside.

  This one, the one I'm about to tell you, still smolders. You see, before the world tipped sideways, before Devils crawled through cracks in the ground and dragged cities screaming into the dark, I was proud. Not of my horns or the blood in my veins. That was never safe to be proud of in Elturel. But I was proud of the cloak I wore. The banner I served under. The name Hellrider.

  It meant something once. I was young. Not green, not by then, but young enough to still believe that some things were sacred. That if you rode hard enough, fought clean enough, bled honest enough, the world would respond in kind. That justice wasn’t something you prayed for. It was something you earned, upheld by rules older than any one rider. Oaths mattered. Chains of command mattered. If everyone held their place, the darkness would break against us and fail.

  That was the ideal they fed us in the training halls: Light in darkness. Steel against the void.

  It wasn't just words back then. It was gospel. We were stationed just outside the city proper, near the banks of the Chionthar River. From the ridgeline, you could see the towers of High Hall catching the morning sun, and the Companion, Elturel's holy second sun, blazing above the city like a divine brand. Every time I looked at it, I felt small, but in the way a sword feels small before it's lifted. My squad was everything to me. We called ourselves "The Spoked Shield", not official, just a name we gave ourselves.

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  A symbol of unity. Every Hellrider squad had one. Ours meant six riders around a common purpose, each of us a spoke in something greater than ourselves.

  Reyna was our second, though anyone with sense deferred to her judgment first. Dark hair cropped short, eyes like cold steel, a scar down her left cheek that I swear would get bigger when she was angry or calculating, sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. She didn't say much, but when she did, you listened. She had the kind of voice that didn't shout, just commanded. She'd served longer than any of us, a veteran from the Hill Wars. She could read terrain like a map and devils like a book. No one ever bested her in drills, not once that I saw. I trusted her more than I trusted most priests.

  Mari was our light. Half-elf, freckled, wide smile that somehow survived blood and mud and loss. She had a way of speaking to people that made them listen. Maybe that's why her music was so captivating. Not because she demanded it, but because she believed in what she was saying so completely that it became contagious. Her weapons were quick and sharp, shortswords she kept strapped at her lower back, and she fought close, fast, precise. But she didn't love fighting. She loved saving. She was the only one of us who could kill something and still grieve for it five minutes later. She called me "Hothead" the first day we met. The name stuck longer than I wanted.

  Tarnik Stonebrew was our iron. He used to pretend he hated horses, but I caught him feeding mine sugar cubes when he thought no one was looking.

  Kessia, our scout, was a whisper in the wind. A wood elf with long fingers and long silences. She barely spoke above a hush, moved like a shadow between trees, and always seemed to know when something wasn't right. Her bow was an extension of her reach, and her sense for danger kept us alive more than once. She slept high in trees or on rooftops, rarely where the rest of us did. She never said why.

  Loram... Gods. Loram was a kid. Nineteen, maybe. Curly hair, soft hands, and a satchel of prayer scrolls that rattled whenever he ran. He wasn't supposed to be with us, was still training at the chapel when they pulled him early. We needed a field medic, and he volunteered. Said he wanted to "see what the gods saw." He'd take notes after every battle, sitting by the fire with a bandage half-wrapped around his arm, writing about what he saw, what we said, who we lost. I think he wanted to make a book someday. Something to remind people that we were more than just names on a monument. We were his protectors, and he was our conscience.

  That was the squad, the family.

  We drilled together, ate together, watched each other's backs through goblin ambushes, plague-born cultists, and one regrettable encounter with a green dragon hatchling that Tarnik tried to reason with. That dragon bit his boot clean off and flew away laughing. I swear it laughed.

  We didn't talk about blood much, not where we came from, not who we were before the saddle. That was the unspoken law of the Hellriders. You earned your place with sweat, not stories. My horns were enough to remind people where I stood in Elturel's hierarchy. Tieflings weren't hated, but they weren't trusted, either. Reyna never treated me differently. Neither did Mari or the others. That mattered more than they knew.

  Sometimes, we'd ride the ridge at night just to feel the wind and watch the stars over the Companion's glow. Mari would hum a lullaby her mother taught her. Tarnik would grumble, but his eyes always softened. Kessia would stay near the rear, eyes fixed on something distant. And Loram would ask too many questions, always scribbling. And me? I was just trying to hold onto the feeling, that sense of rightness. We were doing something good. We were protectors. Champions. Hellriders. We'd ride into the dark, and the world would sleep easier for it.

  We believed evil announced itself with fire and screams. None of us thought to fear something that followed the rules.

  That was before the ground cracked. Before the light turned red. Before the bells of High Hall stopped ringing and Elturel began to fall.

  The Great Bell marked time. Dawn. Dusk. Order made audible. As long as it rang, the city knew where it stood.

  You could ask every single person in and around the city how it started but you'd never get the same answer. For us, It started with the light. A flicker, just a flicker, atop the Companion. The second sun of Elturel, our divine ward, our holy beacon... stuttered. I remember it clear as day. I was in the courtyard, oiling my saddle. Reyna was going over the latest deployment schedule with the quartermaster.

  Mari and Kessia were bickering over the new route postings. Tarnik had just taken a swing from a jug of something that should've been used to strip rust, not drink. And then everything stopped. The Companion pulsed, a flicker of red at the core. Like a coal choking under ash. Just for a second. And then it returned to its brilliant white, steady and blinding.

  We didn't know it then, but that was the first sign. At first, the Overseers told us it was a blessing. That the light had "shifted its gaze." That Elturel was evolving, ascending. There were sermons, declarations, public displays of faith. All the while, behind closed doors, the High Hall was locked tighter than a dwarven vault. Orders were relayed, but the Overseer himself, Thavius Kreeg, was nowhere to be seen.

  Whispers started to grow in the barracks. About the strange visitors arriving cloaked in black, entering through the back gates under nightfall. About a Devil that had been seen walking openly near the chapel. About contracts, binding ones, being signed in blood.

  And then, the Companion pulsed again. Brighter this time. But wrong.

  Loram came to my bunk that night, pale and shaking. Said he had seen something in his prayers. Something vast and burning. Something with wings of fire and eyes like coals. He said it wasn't a dream, it was a warning. He begged me to listen. I didn't. Not like I should have. I thought if something were wrong, someone above me would act. We trusted the Overseers because that was how the system worked. Questions moved upward. Orders moved down. You didn’t doubt the structure, you fulfilled your role within it.

  The next day, the bells stopped. It was a sound we were used to, comforting in its consistency. The Great Bell of High Hall tolled every morning at dawn, every evening at dusk. It marked time. Order. Faith. That morning, it didn't ring. Order didn’t fail us. Order was the weapon.

  The city grew restless. Shops opened late. Merchants whispered to guards. Refugees crossing the river paused and looked skyward. And then, just past noon, the ground shook.