Almung was forced to join the Children of Darkness

Armand’s forced admission into the Children of Darkness is a coerced initiation that follows the destruction of his life with Marius. To escape the coven’s threat, he submits to its demands and accepts its blood; yet he cannot disclose the secret it wants, because Marius never entrusted it to him. The coven makes him one of its own, while the secret remains beyond its reach.

Capture and the demand for allegiance

The episode is recalled through Armand’s account of the coven’s violence. Marius’s death and the destruction of the mortal creations Armand loved leave him in a state of terror and grief. The coven makes survival conditional: Armand must renounce his former master’s influence, serve Satan, and abandon the use of his powers for mortal purposes. Its demands are not a free choice between competing beliefs but terms imposed on a captive who fears further suffering.

The coven’s interrogation also reveals the limits of its power. Its members demand that Armand disclose the location and nature of Those Who Must Be Kept, treating the knowledge as a secret Marius has concealed. Armand answers that he knows nothing and urges them to search his mind. He is not withholding the answer: Marius had never told him what the phrase meant or where those beings were.

The forced initiation

Armand’s agreement to serve is followed by the coven’s demand that he use his supernatural powers only to seduce, terrify, and destroy, rather than to make art or entertain mortals. He gives the answers the coven requires, but when pressed about Those Who Must Be Kept, he can offer no revelation. The distinction matters: he submits to the vows under duress, yet the secret is protected not by a successful act of resistance but by his actual ignorance. Marius had been careful not to give him knowledge that could be taken from him against his will.

Once the coven accepts that Armand has told the truth, its members do not kill him. They give him blood, which he accepts as the pain and terror of the ordeal recede, and announce that he is to join the Children of Darkness. The initiation thus changes his immediate status from captive under threat to member of the group that held him, without undoing the loss of Marius or making his consent voluntary.

Acceptance and aftermath

The ceremony carries Armand into the coven’s company before dawn. A group of its members surrounds and comforts him, then leads him down a staircase into the earth. Their care follows the interrogation and coercion rather than replacing them: the same community that forced his submission now provides the blood and welcome that complete his admission.

In the months afterward, Armand dreams that Marius survived. In the dream, Marius has fallen from a roof into a canal, lives in the mountains of northern Italy, and calls Armand to join him at the sanctuary of Those Who Must Be Kept. The imagined rescue preserves Armand’s attachment to his former master and gives the withheld secret a place within his hopes, but it is presented as a dream, not as evidence that Marius escaped.

Significance of the preserved secret

The episode sets two forms of power against each other: the coven can compel Armand’s outward allegiance, but it cannot extract knowledge he does not possess. Marius’s secrecy therefore survives his death and Armand’s capture through the limits of what Armand was told. The forced initiation establishes Armand among the Children of Darkness while leaving his earlier bond to Marius active in memory and dream, so admission into the coven marks a change of affiliation without a clean break from the past.