Part 1: The Red Wake
The name "Elara" did not merely echo in the vast, vaulted silence of the Throne Room; it detonated. It was a frequency that shattered the glass of Alaric's paralysis, a sonic key that unlocked a door the Blood Hag had been scratching at for a year.
For twelve months, Alaric had been a passenger in his own body, a consciousness adrift in a suffocating sea of red static and muffled screams. He had been a vessel, a tool of meat and iron driven by the Blood Hag's insatiable, ancient hunger and a vague, burning sense of retribution that had no face, only a direction. He had been a weapon, moving from one slaughter to the next with the cold, unthinking efficiency of a hurricane, crossing names off a mental ledger he barely understood. But the revelation—the specific, agonizingly sharp image of Elara dying alone in their bedchamber, coughing up black blood onto the wedding sheets while Leonus stood by the door, checking his pocket watch, waiting for the "obstacle" to remove itself—shattered the barrier between the host and the parasite. It gave the hunger a face. It gave the rage a name. It gave the monster a soul, and that soul was screaming in a frequency that cracked the stone floor.
The paralysis that Leonus had inflicted with his "Checkmate" strike was absolute. The spinal cord was severed cleanly at the base of the neck, a surgical disconnection of the brain from the war machine. The connection between the mind and the nerves was gone. By all the laws of anatomy, biology, and physics, Alaric should have been a statue, a trapped mind screaming in a dead cage, his war finally, mercifully over. The Sanguine flow should have stagnated, the moss withering without the central command of the brain.
But the Sanguine Depravity did not obey the laws of anatomy. It obeyed the laws of hate. And hate, unlike bone or steel, has no breaking point. It is the only perpetual motion machine in the universe.
Inside the ruined, dented chassis of the armor, the grey, dormant moss that lined Alaric's interior—a parasitic flora harvested from the deepest, darkest roots of the Copper Grove, a plant that fed on sorrow—suddenly convulsed. It didn't bloom like a flower; it throbbed like a heart in tachycardia, beating against the cold iron of the breastplate. The color shifted instantly from the grey of dead ash to a deep, wet crimson, so dark it was almost black—the color of oxygenated blood spilling onto fresh snow under a moonless sky. It glistened with a slick, oily sheen, sweating ancient magic that smelled of copper, salt, and old graves opened in the rain.
The severed nerve endings at the base of Alaric's neck didn't spark or fizzle like dying wires. Instead, they erupted. Thick, worm-like tendrils of Sanguine matter shot out from the upper spine, lashing blindly across the gap in the vertebrae like seeking vipers. They were wet, slick with biological slime, and they moved with a frantic, desperate intelligence. They weren't repairing the bone; they were bypassing it. They wove themselves into a new, grotesque nervous system, knitting the head back to the shoulders with a lattice of raw, magical muscle that pulsed with a dark bioluminescence. It was a crude, brutal surgery performed in milliseconds by a parasite that refused to let its host die before the meal was finished.
SQUELCH. CRACK. GRIND.
The sound was nauseating—wet meat slapping together, fluids rushing under high pressure, and bone grinding against iron as the structure forcibly realigned itself. The sound echoed off the high vaulted ceilings, bouncing between the pillars of the Nineteen Kings, amplified by the sudden, terrified silence of the man who thought he had won.
Leonus, who had been standing over the corpse in triumph, wiping the black ichor from his hands onto his ruined golden faulds, froze. The manic, drug-induced smile died on his charred face. He took a step back, his golden boots slipping in the pool of fluids leaking from Alaric's armor. The silence of the room was suddenly heavier, charged with a static pressure that made the hairs on his arms stand up and the air taste of ozone and rot. It was the feeling of air being sucked out of a room before a firestorm, the drop in pressure before the tsunami hits.
"No," Leonus whispered, his voice trembling, the sound swallowed by the vastness of the ruined hall. He looked at his own hands, the hands that had delivered the killing blow. "I severed it. I felt it snap. I felt the life go out. You're dead. I won. The story is over."
Alaric didn't answer. He didn't breathe. He didn't offer a witty retort or a condemnation. The time for words had passed with the breaking of his spine. The time for humanity had passed when he walked into the swamp.
He simply rose.
He didn't use his hands to push himself up. He didn't scramble for purchase on the slick tiles. He was lifted by the sheer, pressurized force of the aura exploding from his core.
It wasn't a shadow. It wasn't smoke. It was a mist of atomized blood, a heavy, metallic fog that poured from the vents of his armor and pooled on the floor like dry ice. It rolled over the debris, coating the shattered mosaics in a glistening red dew. It smelled of a slaughterhouse left to rot in the high noon sun. It was thick, viscous, and suffocating. The very light in the room seemed to bend around him, terrified to touch the rusted metal of his casing. The moonlight streaming from the shattered ceiling turned red as it passed through the mist, casting long, bloody shadows against the walls.
The temperature in the room plummeted, but it wasn't the clean, crisp cold of winter. It was the damp, penetrating chill of a crypt, the kind of cold that seeps into the marrow and promises that the sun will never rise again.
Alaric stood. His head snapped forward with a sickening pop as the new Sanguine ligaments tightened, locking his skull into place. The faceplate of his helmet was gone, melted away in the previous battle with the Holy Essence, dripping like wax onto his gorget.
For the first time in a year, Leonus looked into the naked face of his brother.
It was a ruin. The skin was grey, translucent, and pulled tight over the skull like parchment over a drum. The veins beneath were black and pulsing, carrying a fluid that was no longer human blood, but the concentrated essence of the swamp. The jaw was exposed muscle, wet and twitching. But the eyes... the eyes were the worst. They were no longer the mechanical red lenses Leonus had mocked as "toys." They were pits of deep, swirling crimson, burning with a biological luminescence. They looked like open wounds in the fabric of reality, bleeding light into the dark.
There was no recognition in those eyes. There was no brotherly love, no conflict, no hesitation. There was only the event horizon of a black hole. Alaric was gone. The Shield was gone. Only the Consequence remained.
Leonus raised his hands. The Holy Essence was gone, burned out of his system, leaving him a hollow, charred husk of a man. His skin was blistering, his muscles tearing from the strain of his previous power. He tried to summon the authority of the Crown, the one shield he had left, the one illusion that had kept him safe his entire life.
"Stay back!" Leonus shrieked, his voice cracking into a high, desperate wail that echoed off the vaulted ceiling. "I am the King! I command you to lie down! Die, damn you! Die like a good dog! Obey your master!"
Alaric didn't flinch. He didn't blink. He took a step. The heavy iron boot hit the stone, cracking the tile.
THUD.
The sound was like a gavel striking a block. The blood mist swirled around him, reacting to his mood. It lashed out like whips, scarring the stone floor, dissolving the marble where it touched. The very environment was rejecting him, crumbling under the weight of his unnatural existence.
"I gave you a purpose!" Leonus yelled, backing away until his heels hit the debris of the Sun King's Throne. "I gave you a life! You were nothing before me! You were a muddy orphan at the gate with a rusted sword! I made you the Shield of Gaan! I made you the Pillar! I gave you a name!"
Alaric continued to advance. His stride was uneven, jerky, the movements of a corpse being puppeteered by something angry. But it was relentless. It was the walk of a glacier, slow, grinding, and utterly unstoppable.
Leonus scrambled backward, tripping over the charred dragon bone of the throne. He fell hard, scraping his hands on the sharp obsidian shards. He looked up, terrified, as the massive, rusted bulk of Alaric loomed over him. The red aura blotted out the moonlight, casting the King in a crimson shadow that smelled of death.
"I did what I had to do!" Leonus pleaded, crawling backward crab-like, his dignity forgotten, his crown lost in the rubble. "The Kingdom needed an heir! The Pope was threatening to excommunicate us! Benedictus was watching us in the chapel, remember? I needed a nephew to secure the alliance with the South! She was barren, Alaric! She was a dead end! She was killing our future! I had to cut the dead weight! It was politics! It wasn't personal!"
Alaric stopped. He looked down at the pathetic creature groveling in the dust—the man he had worshipped, the man he had sacrificed his humanity for, the man he had called brother.
Alaric remained silent. The only sound from him was the wet gurgle of the Sanguine fluid cycling through his armor, a sound like drowning. He did not debate the politics of succession. He did not argue the morality of the act. He simply existed as the counter-argument to Leonus's entire life.
He didn't use magic. He didn't fire a beam of energy. He simply reached down.
His hand, encased in the rusted, blood-slicked gauntlet, closed around Leonus's ankle.
The grip was absolute. It was the grip of a hydraulic press made of bone and rage. The gold greaves of Leonus's armor, softened by the earlier heat of the Holy Essence, crumpled like tin foil. The tibia and fibula beneath snapped instantly.
CRACK.
Leonus screamed—a sound that tore his throat raw, a sound stripped of all nobility, all pretense of kingship. It was the scream of a prey animal caught in a trap, realizing that the hunter has arrived.
Alaric didn't pause. He didn't savor the scream. He simply pulled.
He whipped the King of Gaan into the air like a wet rag. He slammed him into the floor with enough force to shake the dust from the ceiling rafters fifty feet above.
BOOM.
The impact cratered the stone. Leonus lay in the center of the spiderweb fracture, gasping, blood bubbling on his lips, his eyes rolling back in his head.
Alaric stood over him. The Sanguine moss pulsed in his neck, visible and obscenely alive, pumping black fluid into his brain to sustain the rage.
He raised his heavy iron boot.
He brought it down on Leonus's knee.
SNAP.
The joint shattered completely. Bone fragments tore through the skin and the fused gold armor.
Leonus wailed, a high, thin sound of absolute agony.
Alaric watched. He tilted his head, his crimson eyes burning. He was silent. He was the executioner who had forgotten the language of mercy. He was the Dog who had finally realized that the hand feeding him was made of meat.
Part 2: The Crushing of the Lion
The violence that followed was not a duel. It was not a fight. It was a dismantling. It was the systematic deconstruction of a symbol.
It was intimate, slow, and horrifyingly quiet on Alaric's part. He did not grunt with exertion. He did not roar with triumph. The only sounds in the room were the wet thuds of impact, the crunch of bone, the tearing of metal, and the screaming of the King.
Alaric reached down and grabbed Leonus by the fused, melted gold of his breastplate. The metal was still hot from the Holy Essence, searing to the touch, blistering the skin beneath, but Alaric didn't feel it. His nerves were burned out, replaced by the Sanguine weave that knew only the objective: Destroy.
He lifted the King off the ground with one hand. His biceps bulged with Sanguine power, the rusted metal of his pauldrons grinding together like millstones. He held Leonus eye-to-eye, inches from his own ruined, skeletal face.
Leonus dangled there, his legs useless, hanging at sickening angles, swinging limply with the motion. His face was a mask of soot, blood, and tears. The gold of his "divine" armor was now just a cage fusing to his dying flesh. He looked small. He looked like the boy who used to hide during thunderstorms, the boy Alaric had sworn to protect in the mud of the courtyard all those years ago. The majesty was gone. The "Sun" was extinguished.
"Please," Leonus wheezed, pawing weakly at Alaric's arm with fused, golden fingers. His eyes searched Alaric's face for a shred of the brother he knew, for the "Shield" he had relied on for twenty years. "Alaric... stop... it's me. It's Leo. I'm your brother. Remember the garden? Remember the oath? You swore... you swore you would hold the roof up."
Alaric didn't blink. The red vortex in his eyes flared, spinning with hypnotic slowness. There was no recognition. There was no brother inside the helm anymore. There was only the image of Elara dying, superimposed over the face of the man begging for his life. There was only the memory of the wedding day, of Leonus telling him he was the "Pillar," the object that existed only to hold up the King's glory. The Pillar was moving now, and the roof was coming down.
Alaric pulled his other arm back. The Sanguine moss coiled, tightening the muscles like a winch, storing kinetic energy.
He punched Leonus in the gut.
WHAM.
It wasn't a punch meant to kill immediately. It was a punch meant to rupture. Alaric felt the abdominal muscles tear under his knuckles. He felt the internal organs bruise and burst. He felt the diaphragm spasm and collapse. The force of the blow traveled through Leonus's body, snapping his head forward.
Leonus vomited black bile and blood onto Alaric's armor. His eyes rolled back, fluttering. He went limp in Alaric's grip.
Alaric shook him. Violent, jarring shakes that rattled the King's teeth. He wouldn't let him pass out. He wouldn't let him escape into the dark of unconsciousness. Not yet. The debt was not paid. The balance sheet still showed red.
Leonus groaned, his eyes fluttering open, filled with a hazy, drugged panic. He tried to focus, but all he could see was the red light of the monster's eyes.
Alaric turned. He walked toward the nearest stone pillar—one of the massive supports that held up the roof of the palace, the very symbols of Gaan's strength, carved with the faces of the ancestors. He dragged the King through the air as if he weighed nothing.
He slammed Leonus into the granite.
THUD.
The impact knocked the wind out of the King again. Ribs cracked. The sound was dry and brittle, like dead wood being stepped on.
Alaric pulled him back and slammed him again.
THUD.
And again.
THUD.
With every impact, the Sanguine mist grew thicker, swirling around them in a frenzy of excitement. The entity was feeding. The Hag was gorging herself on the King's suffering, funneling the energy back into Alaric to repair his own broken chassis. The King was being reduced to a stain on the history he cherished.
Alaric finally let go.
Leonus slid down the pillar, leaving a streak of bright red blood on the white stone, marring the carving of the First King. He collapsed at the base, a broken heap of gold and misery. He tried to crawl, his fingers scrabbling uselessly against the smooth floor, leaving bloody streaks on the tiles.
"Valerius..." Leonus whimpered, his mind fracturing under the pain, retreating into childhood fantasies of rescue. "Where is the Wolf? You said... you said the Wolf would come... you said he would save the Kingdom... Cousin... help me..."
Alaric walked toward him. He moved with a heavy, inevitable cadence. Clang. Clang. Clang.
He reached the King. He planted a heavy iron boot on Leonus's chest, pinning him to the floor. The weight was crushing. Leonus could feel his sternum bowing inward, the shards of bone pressing dangerously close to his heart. The air was squeezed out of his lungs, replaced by the metallic taste of blood.
Alaric knelt. The metal of his knees cracked the stone dais. He leaned over the King, his massive shadow swallowing the last of the light, creating a private world of darkness for the two of them.
He placed his hands around Leonus's throat.
The fused gold of the gorget groaned under the pressure. Alaric began to squeeze. He didn't use his full strength immediately. He increased the pressure incrementally, millimeter by millimeter.
He watched Leonus's face turn red, then purple. He watched the veins in the King's forehead bulge, threatening to burst. He watched the panic in Leonus's eyes turn to the primal, animal terror of a creature realizing it is about to cease to exist.
Alaric's face remained a mask of grey, dead skin. No anger. No joy. Just the work. Just the final entry in a ledger that had been open for too long. He was the accountant of pain, and he was balancing the books.
Leonus thrashed. His hands beat futilely against Alaric's armored arms, scratching at the rust, breaking his fingernails on the iron. He opened his mouth to scream, to beg, to order, but his windpipe was crushed. Only a wet, whistling sound escaped, like air leaving a punctured tire.
Alaric tightened his grip. The cartilage of the larynx snapped with a wet pop.
Leonus's struggles grew weaker. His hands fell away, thumping against the stone. His eyes began to glaze over, the pupils dilating as the brain starved for oxygen. The light of the "Sun King" was flickering out, suffocated by the shadow of his own Shield.
It was time.
Alaric prepared to finish it. He shifted his grip. He was going to crush the throat completely, collapse the cervical spine, and tear the head from the shoulders. He raised his fist for the final strike. The Sanguine moss pulsed, gathering every ounce of strength into his arm, hardening the limb into a piston of absolute destruction. The red light in his eyes flared to blinding intensity, illuminating the horror on Leonus's face.
The fist came down.
It never landed.
Part 3: The Wolf at the Door
The wall of the Throne Room didn't just break; it evaporated.
There was no warning. No sound of footsteps approaching. No shout of challenge. No gathering of magical energy that the Sanguine moss could taste or anticipate. The air didn't crackle with mana; it didn't smell of ozone.
There was only a singular, deafening CRACK, like a thunderbolt striking the earth directly inside the room.
The entire western wall of the chamber—twenty feet of solid granite reinforced with ancient wards that had stood for five hundred years, runes carved by the first mages of Gaan—exploded inward.
It wasn't magic. It was kinetic force. Pure, unadulterated impact.
Debris, dust, and massive blocks of stone blasted across the room with the force of a hurricane. The air pressure in the room spiked so sharply that the remaining stained glass windows blew outward, showering the courtyard below in a rain of colored shards. The tapestry of the Great Hunt was ripped from the wall and shredded into confetti.
Alaric was hit by the shockwave. It was a physical wall of air and stone that knocked him sideways, lifting his massive, armored bulk—which weighed nearly a ton with the Sanguine density—and throwing him ten feet away from the dying King. He tumbled across the floor, his claws gouging deep furrows in the stone as he fought to regain his balance. The kill was interrupted. The execution was halted.
He stood up immediately, shaking the dust from his armor, his red eyes snapping to the hole in the wall. A low, feral growl built in his chest, vibrating through the iron plates. The Sanguine mist swirled violently, agitated by the intrusion, forming spiked tendrils that whipped the air, sensing a new, massive threat.
The dust settled slowly, swirling in the draft from the exposed night.
Standing in the breach was a man.
He was massive. He stood nearly seven feet tall, dwarfing the ordinary soldiers of Gaan. He wore armor made of a dark, dull metal that seemed to absorb the moonlight rather than reflect it. It was unadorned, scarred from a thousand battles, functional and terrifying. It wasn't ceremonial armor like Leonus's; it was war-gear, thick and heavy. A cloak made from the pelt of a monstrous grey direwolf hung from his shoulders, the beast's head resting on his pauldron, its glass eyes staring lifelessly ahead.
He held no shield. In his right hand, resting casually on his shoulder as if it weighed nothing, was a greatsword of black iron. It was a weapon that should have been too heavy for a human to lift, a slab of metal meant for a giant, its edge chipped and brutal.
Ragnaur. The Wolf of Dolbey. The cousin Leonus had feared and envied. The monster in human skin. The man who had decimated the Hill Tribes single-handedly while Alaric watched from the mud.
He stepped into the room. The floor seemed to shudder under his weight. He didn't look at Alaric. He didn't look at the ruins of the throne or the blood-mist filling the air. He didn't seem impressed by the Sanguine horror standing before him. He looked at the broken, wheezing form of Leonus on the floor.
"Messy," Ragnaur rumbled. His voice was deep, a bass note that vibrated in the chest. It sounded like stones grinding in a quarry. It was a voice that commanded simply by existing. "I expected better from a King. Even a weak one."
Alaric roared.
It wasn't a word. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated hate. The interruption, the denial of his kill, the presence of another "master" in his domain—it sent the Sanguine rage into overdrive. The Hag screamed in his blood, demanding blood for the interruption. The red mist flared, turning the room into a slaughterhouse.
Alaric didn't hesitate. He didn't assess the threat. He didn't pause to wonder how a man could knock down a castle wall with physical force alone. He launched himself at Ragnaur.
He moved with the speed of a feral beast, a blur of red mist and rusted iron. He closed the distance in a heartbeat, his fist drawn back to deliver a blow that would shatter a castle gate. He put everything he had into it—every ounce of Sanguine power, every drop of hate.
Ragnaur didn't even raise his sword.
He simply turned his head, his eyes—pale grey, devoid of warmth, devoid of fear—locking onto Alaric.
Alaric swung.
Ragnaur caught the fist.
CLANG.
The sound was absolute. It was the sound of an unstoppable force hitting an immovable object. It rang like a church bell signaling the end of the world.
Alaric's fist, charged with the full might of the Sanguine Depravity, stopped dead in Ragnaur's open palm. The impact created a shockwave that blew the dust away from their feet in a perfect circle, stripping the remaining tapestries from the walls and knocking over the heavy iron candelabras.
But Ragnaur didn't slide back an inch. He stood rooted like a mountain. His arm didn't even tremble. He absorbed the force that should have liquified his bones as if it were a gentle breeze.
Alaric stared at his captured hand. The red light in his eyes flickered in confusion. He tried to pull back. He couldn't move. Ragnaur's grip was iron. It was stronger than the Sanguine moss. It was stronger than the Curse. It was the strength of something that transcended humanity.
"You're loud," Ragnaur said, sounding bored, as if he were dealing with a noisy drunk in a tavern. "And you smell like rot."
Ragnaur squeezed.
CRUNCH.
The metal of Alaric's gauntlet collapsed. The bones of his hand, which had just been knitted together by the Sanguine moss, shattered again. The pain was blinding white light.
Alaric roared in pain and fury, swinging his other fist—a haymaker aimed at Ragnaur's temple.
Ragnaur didn't block it. He didn't dodge.
He headbutted Alaric.
KRACK.
The impact was devastating. Ragnaur's forehead slammed into Alaric's faceplate (or what remained of it). Alaric's head snapped back. He felt his neck trauma re-open. His vision went white. He stumbled backward, dazed, his equilibrium shattered. The Sanguine moss in his neck strained to keep his head attached.
Ragnaur didn't give him time to recover. He dropped his sword—letting the massive blade clang to the floor—and stepped in.
He grabbed Alaric by the throat and the waist.
"Up you go," Ragnaur grunted.
With a heave of terrifying, god-like strength, Ragnaur lifted Alaric—three hundred pounds of man and armor—over his head. He held him there for a second, like a trophy, exposing the rusted underbelly of the beast to the moonlight.
He threw him.
Alaric sailed through the air like a toy. He smashed into the floor ten paces away, bouncing once before skidding to a halt against the far wall.
Alaric tried to rise immediately. The Sanguine aura flared, desperate to repair the damage. He lashed out with claws of blood, trying to cut Ragnaur from a distance. The red tendrils whipped across the room, slicing through stone.
Ragnaur walked through them. The blood-whips struck his armor and dissipated. He didn't even flinch. He walked through the magic as if it were cobwebs.
He reached Alaric before the Revenant could get to his feet.
It wasn't a fight. It was a dismantling. Ragnaur didn't use magic. He didn't use technique. He used brute, overwhelming violence.
He kicked Alaric in the ribs.
CRUNCH.
The breastplate caved in. The Sanguine moss beneath was crushed to paste. Alaric slid across the floor, crashing into the podium.
Alaric scrambled up, one arm dangling uselessly. He didn't care about his own safety. He only cared about getting past Ragnaur to get to Leonus. He lunged to the side, trying to flank the Wolf.
Ragnaur moved faster. For a man of his size, his speed was unnatural. He cut off the angle.
He grabbed Alaric's remaining good arm. He twisted.
SNAP.
The arm broke at the elbow, bending the wrong way.
Alaric screamed—a sound of pure rage and agony, a sound that had no words, only hate. He tried to bite Ragnaur. He tried to headbutt him.
Ragnaur drove a fist into Alaric's solar plexus. The armor shattered. The blow went deep, bruising the spine from the front.
Alaric folded. He fell to his knees.
Ragnaur grabbed the back of Alaric's neck. He forced the monster's face into the stone floor.
SLAM.
"Stay down," Ragnaur ordered.
Alaric pushed back. The Sanguine moss was screaming, burning through his reserves to knit bone and muscle. He pushed against Ragnaur's hand. He began to lift his head, defying the Titan.
Ragnaur looked impressed, for a microsecond. Then he looked annoyed.
He lifted his boot and stomped on Alaric's back.
CRACK.
The spine broke again.
Alaric collapsed flat. The connection was severed again. The moss frantically tried to bridge the gap, but the damage was too severe, too fast.
"RETREAT!" the Blood Hag shrieked in his mind, her voice filled with a sudden, genuine fear that Alaric had never heard before. "He is not human! He is a Titan! Run, you fool! Run back to the water! We cannot beat him!"
Alaric ignored her. He couldn't run. Leonus was right there.
Ragnaur stepped off him. He turned his back on the monster. He didn't care if Alaric was dead or alive. To him, Alaric was just an obstacle he had removed. A piece of furniture he had broken.
Ragnaur walked over to Leonus.
The King was barely breathing. His chest was a mess of broken bone. His throat was crushed. He was drowning in his own blood.
Ragnaur knelt. He looked at the dying King with a mixture of pity and annoyance.
"You made a mess of this, cousin," Ragnaur muttered. "I told Valdemar you weren't strong enough to hold the leash. Now look at you. Broken by your own pet."
He reached down and scooped Leonus up in his arms. The massive Wolf cradled the broken Lion as easily as if he were a child.
Ragnaur stood up. He looked at the pile of rubble where Alaric lay twitching. He waited a beat to see if the monster would rise.
The red light in Alaric's eyes flickered, dimming.
"Done," Ragnaur stated.
He turned to leave, carrying the King toward the hole in the wall he had created.
This was the end of the line for the Dog. He had hunted, he had bitten, but he had run into a Wolf.