(So, since I have not uploaded a new chapter for nearly a year now (shame on me, but I intend to finally finish the story, I promise), I have a short summary dealing with what has happened previously. Because let's be real, all we remember is that Arkady is a pretty twink with lavender eyes, weird magic and an even weirder crush on our girl Bela :'D

After being exiled to fight in the Caucasus as a consequence of his liberal beliefs, young lieutenant Arkady Bessmertny, illegitimate son of count Bessmertny, has the absolute worst time of his life.
Not only is his roommate a gambler and alcoholic, the first thing his tyrannical and extremely imperialist superior does is sentence Arkady to oversee the guards. While doing it, he nearly gets devoured by a monster and can only save himself with the help of the enemy, a Circassian warrior of mysterious origin and standing named Bela.

Wounded and at his wit's end, he drags himself back into the fortress, where he is stationed)

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Dawn did not want to come.

The night swallowed Lovushka as Arkady limped through its hallways and courtyards.
Every step made pain jolt through his bandaged leg.
He sucked in desperate breaths as the dark towers and walls of the fortress watched him struggle with every move.

It was only the panic in his heart that stopped him from collapsing on the floor.
He did not know where he was going but there was nowhere safe to flee.
Icy wilderness or cursed walls?
Arkady wanted to close his eyes and forget.
Petritsky.  He had to get to Petritsky. Or even Krassotkin.... He just did not want to be alone.

Finally, his eyes caught sight of a familiar wooden door. Their room.
He thought about Petritsky's wine and tobacco. Arkady wanted to drown himself in it. Now, the cheapest alcohol appeared like ambrosia.
So he put his hands against the wood and stumbled into the dark chamber.

"Petritsky?", Arkady whispered, but only silence answered.
The bed on the right side of the room laid abandoned.
His heart sank.
No. No. No.
He was going mad. He was going mad. He was going-

He remembered Bela's voice, the dark pools of her eyes and the steel of her weapon pressed tightly against his flesh.
As he touched the soft skin of his throat, he could still feel the dried blood.

Arkady managed to tumble on step forward until he collapsed on the cold floor.
As he lifted his gaze, he looked straight into the eyes of the mother of god.
The artist had given the icon striking blue eyes, matching with her veil.
Theotokos.
Arkady had seen the Virgin of Vladimir in Moscow, but no icon had ever been as beautiful as this one, wooden and painted, plain and simple.
Instinctively, he thought about the young officer who had lived and died here before him. Oh, the poor fool had searched for refuge in religion and divine lies.
But now, kneeling on the floor, shaking from not only the cold, the warm embrace of the virgin Mary remained the only merciful thing inside of this coffin of stone they called a fortress.

He clasped his hands as if to pray, but there were no words in his head. He would have liked to light a candle in her honor. Still, he knew that the darkness in this fortress would not allow light. Not in this night. The shadow was ravenous. All-consuming.

The door behind him creaked open and a cold gust washed into his room.

Arkady stiffened. He did not dare to turn around.
Was this how the man he had found dead in the forest had felt? Helpless, a silent prayer on his lips because only a miracle could save him now?

The thing did not have footsteps, yet it was coming closer. He could feel it.
It did not arrive with screams and claws, but with a cold shadow that befell Arkady from behind.
He let out a shaky breath.
Run, he heard a voice whisper in his head, but he could not. He was hurt. And tired. 

Arkady closed his eyes. His hands were trembling.
Something cold touched his shoulder. 

Fear pulsed through his veins and he spun around, still on his knees.
He looked straight up to Krassotkin's figure towering above him.

"Bessmertny", he simply said. His eyes pale as ice. Still, a hint of surprise robbed his scarred face of its sharpness. "You are still here."

Arkady's lips quivered, and he let out a sob.  If the captain was phased by the emotions or desolate appearance of his subordinate, he did not show it. There was only the same detestation etched on his face Arkady had seen before. Now,  seemed like the safest harbor in this world.
And yet....You are still here.

Arkady cleared his throat and brushed his eyes with the sleeves of his uniform.
"Where should I have been instead, Sir, if not here?"

Something in Krassotkin's face twitched.
"Go to sleep, Bessmertny. This is no time for stupid boys."

"Petritsky-" He wanted to object, yet Krassotkin interrupted him.

"In a drunken stupor, probably. Ungraceful as always. There are more things to worry about. So close your eyes and forget this world until tomorrow." 

For just a second - so briefly that Arkady nearly doubted whether it happened at all- Krassotkin touched his cheeks. As if to check if Arkady was truly real. 
Then, he turned around on the spot and disappeared into the dark corridor.

Arkady did not sleep this night. He only sat there under the watchful eyes of the mother of god.

-

It was the stench of smoke that made Arkady snap out of his trance.
His eyes flew upon. He saw a ray of red light flooding his room.
The red of dawn. The red of fire.

Arkady jumped to his feed.
He nearly expected to hear screams, but there were none. It was completely quiet. Only his heart hammered loudly in his chest.
Nevertheless, dread did not have time to bury its fangs into his flesh, for he saw the plume of smoke rising behind  Lovushka's dark towers.
Only now did the wind carry distant cries through the cracks in the walls.

Arkady spun around and rushed out of his room, down the corridor and down the staris.
An attack? But on what? Its origins were not in the fortress.  A forest fire? But it was winter. Or was it more?
With a cold shudder he remembered last night - and he remembered the wound that should still ignite his flesh.
Pain. The pain in his leg was missing.
A dream, he told himself. This night was just a bad feverdream, a mad imagination of his and-
But as he touched his trousers as he ran, he felt the gash in the fabric where the claws of the drekavac had torn it apart  and the black cloth was stiff with dried blood. Still, there was no wound.
His throat went dry.

In the same moment, Arkady stepped onto the battlement and the blood soaked morning embraced him.
The first thing he saw was the dark silhouette of Krassotkin's back set against the stark red of the horizon. And the commander was... laughing?

"Kapitan", the young noble called out. "What has happened. I-"

"Oh, how delicious", Krassotkin purred and half-turn ed to Arkady. "The mouse has finally crawled out of its hole to witness."

Arkady stopped a few meters behind him.
"Witness?", he echoed. "Witness what, Sir?"

Arkady's word made Krassotkin's mouth twich. The scarred half of his face was illuminated in red by the distant flames.
"They say we should send them to hell, but it is so much easier to bring hell to them."

"I- I'm afraid I don't understand."
Deep down, he did. The terror of knowing already befell him, yet it did not prepare him for the following words.

"The barbarian mountaineers of course. The Circassians. I set their settlement to the torch. As revenge."

Arkady paled in seconds.
"Revenge?" he croaked. "For what?"

Krassotkin barely raised a brow as he explained:
"We found a corpse of one of our men only two hours ago. We found him in a guard tower - torn to pieces and brutally maimed. Surely a raid of these Circassian bandits."

It finally dawned upon Arkady. Immediately, his heart rate picked up.
The soldier that was with him yesterday night. The one he could not wake up. The one he had left to die.
It was his fault.
He thought of dead bodies strewn across a glade, their bodies charred and finger bones lifted in a silent plea.

For a moment, his superior turned away.
"Kozlov!" The kapitan barked. "Refreshments."
A young, boyish man hurried towards him and handed his commander a glass of Georgian wine. Krassotkin did not show gratitude as he picked the glass up, he only shood him away.

"But- You can't! This-", Arkady wanted to protest but the words died on his lips.
It was no raid, it was a monster. A being of old. It nearly ate me, did not sound too convincing.
Still he objected:
"But it - It is inhuman! It is cruel."

Krassotkin took an unimpressed sip. A drop of wine ran down from the corner of his lips. It looked like blood.
"Yes, it would be inhuman to anyone else." He drew every word out as if Arkady was a toddler. "But you can't be inhuman to them. These people are animals. Less than that."

Arkady paled a bit.
Of course  he knew the stories. The stories about men like Colonel Grigory Zass. A man so horrible that the Circassians called him Shaytan. Satan.
He came and burned their villages, butchering every man, woman and child until no one was left. No matter whether peaceful or hostile. Some even claimed that he paid his Cossacks to bring him the heads of murdered Circassians so that he could put then on spikes in front of his tent.
But  they had been that: Stories.
Now, there was no privilege that granted Arkady protection from the cruelty of reality.
He thought about this Bela.
If she had not been there... Maybe Arkady would have already been digested. But maybe, because of him, her body was now devoured by flames.

"Please", Arkady begged. "You have to stop this. We can't win this war by calling it peace and leaving a desert!"

Krassotkin snorted and his lips were thin in disgust.
"How rotten must St. Petersburg be if the youth it produces is scum like yo-"

It was not Arkady that interrupted him.
Instead, it was the bang of a body falling out of a cart.
Both Arkady and Krassotkin turned around to see an officer lying face down on the cobblestone.

But as the man hit the ground, his limps already quivered again.
In the next second, he was on his feed, stumbled two steps forward and one to the left, and looked at them with confusion in his bloodshot eyes.
Still, his body was shrouded in an unmistakable cloud of alcohol and sweet tabacco.
Petritsky, Arkady regocnized with the sweetest kind of relief and wanted to sob- just in the moment Petristky tumbled and threw up on Krassotkin's neat uniform.