The war room sounded like a city dying.
Voices crashed against stone and oak, generals and councilors leaning over a table flooded with maps. Ink-stained fingers pointed at borders. Carved tokens crowded every edge of the kingdom—warlord banners, mercenary crests, the colors of "friends" who had already begun to circle.
'...they're on every road—"
'...if the marsh forts fall, the coast is exposed—"
'...better the coast than the grain belt, you damned fool—"
'...you'd trade the harbors that feed us for a few barns full of wheat?"
Steel hissed half an inch free of a scabbard as one man jabbed at the map.
"Eight thousand," another snapped. "We have eight thousand under arms. They bring sixty-six thousand. We can't meet that in the field."
"Then we stay behind the walls—"
"And starve when they ring us in."
"If we offer terms—"
"You'd bow the knee to carrion? They smell age and think it's weakness, not wisdom."
The words piled up, toppled, climbed over each other. Fear wore the mask of strategy. Pride wore the mask of anger.
At the head of the table, the king did not move.
He sat in a high chair of plain dark wood. No lions carved in the arms, no gold. Just a tall back framing the man who'd taken it.
White drapes fell from his shoulders, layered and clean, hiding whatever armor and bone lay underneath. A heavier white cloak rested over them, fastened with an iron catch gone dull with years of use.
His face was a mask.
Red metal. Smoothed and glossy, polished so the braziers' flames crawled over it like oil. No crown, no engraving—just the faint outline of cheek, brow, and the narrow slits of shadowed eyes.
The old king.
Some in that room had been born under his banners. Some had once marched against him. All knew the stories. None dared repeat them aloud.
He hadn't spoken since the council began.
He didn't need to. Men subtly shifted their bodies without thinking, never quite turning their backs to the red mask and white cloak.
On his right sat a woman in deep blue, veil thrown back. Grey threaded her hair, but not her smile. She watched the arguing like someone observing a familiar storm rolling over old hills.
She watched her brother most of all.
...'we can't ask him to ride again," a younger officer said, words tumbling out before he could stop them. "He's ninety. We must be realistic. The age of charging from the front is over."
The room flinched as if struck by an invisible nerve.
Maps froze in their holders. Frowns deepened. No one spoke, but the air grew sharp.
The king lifted one hand from the arm of his chair.
All voices fell silent.
Even the fire seemed to draw in.
A general on his left started to rise, hand half-extended as if to help him.
The red mask shifted slightly.
"No," the king said.
It was just one word, but it carried the weight of a campaign.
The man sat down so fast his chair scraped the stones.
Slowly, the old king pushed himself to his feet.
It was not graceful. He moved like a long-rooted tree—stiff, careful, effort hidden where he could hide it, yet still evident in the tension of arm and shoulder. The white cloth whispered as he straightened. The cloak fell straight down his back.
He stood without aid.
The red mask turned, taking in every face. No one could see his eyes. Everyone felt them.
"Whoever wishes to flee," he said, "or make a deal..."
His voice was rough stone dragged over older stone. Not loud, but it resonated in every ear.
"...you can leave this meeting."
The doors were just a few steps away.
No one moved.
"Whatever I am about to say," he went on, "does not concern you."
Silence thickened. A few men glanced sideways at the exits, then fixed their eyes back on the table. No boots scraped, no chair legs groaned.
"When I was a boy," the king said, "I knew nothing. I was nothing."
The mask dipped slightly, as if looking past the map, through it, into an older, smaller room only he could see.
"My father was a soldier. My mother, a farmer, with two children and a patch of dirt that never yielded enough. One day he marched away under someone else's banner and never came back. No letter. No grave. Just his empty spot at the table."
A few of the older captains looked down at their own hands.
"My mother worked," he said. "Bent her back until it cracked. Sold tools. Sold cloth. Sold anything that wasn't a child. And when that was still not enough, she sold what was left."
His gloved fingers flexed once on the table.
"Her body," he said. "Her time. Her pride. And when that wasn't enough, she bought vials of not-here, not-now. Bitter little dreams poured over the hole in her life until she didn't see it anymore."
Everyone in the room understood the kind of draughts he meant and what they did to a mind.
"She wasn't there," he said softly. "Not where it mattered. So I had to be."
The mask lifted.
"From shit cleaner," he said, "to boot cleaner. From boot cleaner to corpse washer. To stable boy. To camp rat with a stolen knife. To soldier. To the fool who somehow did not die when better men did. To the one they sent when they wanted people to die for a reason instead of out of habit."
A dry, thin humor ran under his words—the old habit of a man who had learned to spit in fate's eye because punching it hadn't worked.
"After enough victories, I thought: if blood is coin, I should buy something with it." He spread his hand over the crowded map. "So I bought a little land nobody wanted. I dug ditches. I set stakes. I stacked stone. I told men I'd bled with and men I'd bled against: 'Come. Live close enough to cut each other, but keep your blades pointed outward.'"
His hand tapped once.
"This is what grew."
The council chamber felt smaller around them.
"My mother died sad," he said. "Sad and small in a bed I built for her with my own coin. Her mind never climbed out of those fields or those bottles." The mask turned toward the woman on his right. "But I made her one promise."
She smiled, eyes bright.
"That my sister would be safe," he said. "And happy."
His hand pointed, slow and steady, at the woman in blue. Every gaze followed: the little lift of her chin, the amused curve of her mouth, the complete lack of fear in her eyes.
"So," the king said, mask turning back to them, "tell me, men."
He did not raise his voice. Something else rose instead.
"You think I would run..."
The air around him thickened.
"...from mere men..."
The braziers' flames leaned toward him, as if drawn by an unseen wind.
"...who think I am weak?"
His aura uncoiled.
Not in a wild flare. It seeped, slow and heavy, into the stone, into the table, into the ribs of every man in that room. The taste of metal crept onto tongues. Old scars itched under armor.
"From the mountains in the north," he said, "to the forests in the south..."
The carved stones on the map rattled faintly.
"...from the plains in the east..."
The floor felt deeper. Boots seemed to weigh more. Breathing became something you had to remember to do.
"...to the swamp and coast and sea in the west," he continued. "I have faced every force that came for me. All in the open. None have broken me."
The Ōi pressure climbed—true Sovereignty, the kind that did not ask for respect but defined it. Knees wanted to bend and did not. Teeth clenched against the urge.
"From ambushes and traps," the king said, "to single challenges in the dust. I have walked away from all of them."
He took a single step along the table's edge.
The weight shifted with him. Men tilted without meaning to, making room.
"Am I not the Dragonslayer?" he asked.
No one in that room wanted to remember the night that name had been earned. They remembered anyway.
"Am I not the Witch Hunter?" he continued. "The one who went where no lamps burn and came back walking and sane enough to speak of it?"
A few men crossed themselves, unconsciously.
"Am I not the one who has walked with gods when others kneel?" His head tilted slightly. "The Beast of Dumas. The One Man Army. The God Cleaver. The Iron Shadow."
He did not explain any of them. He didn't need to. Each title was a scar battered into the room.
"I," he said, "am your king."
The Ōi surged one last time, pushing aside stray thoughts, leaving only the shared knowledge that an old man with a red mask and white cloak stood before them, who had refused to die when given every chance.
The words that followed were unplanned.
"OUR KING!" someone shouted.
"OUR KING!" another answered.
Then it rolled over them all.
"Our king! Our king! Our king!"
Fists pounded chests. Hands smacked the table. Boots hammered the floor. The titles spun around the room, thrown at him and each other:
"Dragonslayer!"
"Witch Hunter!"
"Iron Shadow!"
"God Cleaver!"
They didn't need to give him a name.
They didn't have to.
He lifted one hand.
The sound stopped, cut off in mid-chant.
His aura folded back into his bones, leaving the room lighter and emptier than it had been a heartbeat before.
"Prepare for battle," he said.
That was all.
Chairs scraped back. Men moved—not to argue but to work. Orders tore free of throats. Runners ran. Scribes scrambled to catch new commands. The chaos had a spine now.
The old king stood as the room transformed around him.
A touch brushed his arm.
His sister leaned in, so close only he could hear.
"Nice job, Arthur," she whispered. "That's how you pull the dead out of their graves."
He didn't turn. But his shoulders loosened, the smallest fraction.
Behind the red metal, he smiled.
The gates opened at first light.
Dawn crawled over the highest stones, painting the walls with pale gold. Banners shook themselves awake in the wind—rough cloth, simple marks, colors borrowed from clans and merged into something like a single crest.
The city watched from ramparts and windows as the army marched out.
Eight thousand.
Not shining knights from ballads. Mail with mismatched rings, leather armor hardened by oil and sweat, shields bearing a dozen different painted beasts and symbols—some worn almost blank by use.
But the line was straight.
Their step was steady.
And the air around them was not empty.
It trembled.
Aura rose from eight thousand bodies in a slow, rolling tide—fear hammered into resolve, anger narrowed to a point, loyalty pulled tight as a bowstring. From the walls, it looked like heat shimmer over stone, a distortion following the column.
An aura field, thick and low, pressed into the earth with every step.
At the front rode a white horse, mane braided with red cloth.
The rider wore white matching the walls, cloak falling in clean lines over plain armor. His face was the same red metal, glossy and unreadable.
He didn't look back at the city.
His sister rode a little behind, banner fixed in her stirrup, blue cloak snapping in the cold wind.
They passed beyond bowshot of their walls.
The world opened.
The enemy waited on the plains.
Their numbers blurred at distance—a dark mass broken by flickers of metal and color. Rows of spears. Lines of shields. Banners from all directions: mountain clans, river lords, coastal raiders, "allies" who had come to divide the carcass instead of defend the body.
Sixty-six thousand, whispered the scouts.
Enough that the ground would shudder when they advanced.
From a low rise beyond the last ditch, the old king could see both lines clearly.
His eight thousand stretched out on either side—thin compared to the black sea ahead, but unbroken. Behind him, he could feel them more than hear them: eight thousand threads of will tied loosely to his own.
In front, the enemy camp simmered.
The wind carried their noise in scraps—the clatter of armor, the rumble of men, the creak of wagons. The smell of too many fires.
The horse shifted under him.
He set his hand lightly on the pommel at his hip and let his aura rise again—this time not to crush, but to sharpen.
It flowed back over his own men, quiet and precise, strengthening grips on spear shafts, easing the shake in young legs, turning the buzz of fear into a clear, clean edge.
He took in the field.
The sky. The sun's angle. The dips and rises.
He breathed.
"Let's have fun," he said softly, just loud enough for the horse's ears. "One more time, Arthur."
No one else heard.
Behind the mask, the old man smiled like a boy about to start a fight he knew he'd enjoy.
He lifted his hand.
Eight thousand men tightened ranks.
Far away, the great dark line began to stir.
And in an age so far back that later generations would only speak of it in half-remembered legends, an unnamed king in a red mask rode out with his small army to meet a host eight times its size, as if the numbers themselves were an insult.
The bards who survived that age would give him many names.
One of them, much later, would be Maximilian.