Part 1: The Architecture of Silence
The Dolbey Iron Crematorium was more than a municipal facility; it was a grim geographical landmark, a black stain of soot and brick that marred the western skyline of the capital. It was a cathedral dedicated to the industrial efficiency of death, a sprawling, brutalist complex of soot-stained masonry and riveted iron that served as the kingdom's final digestive tract. For over a century, the four colossal smokestacks—each wide enough to drive a carriage through—had dominated the district, belching thick, greasy plumes of particulate matter into the sky day and night.
The citizens of Dolbey had grown accustomed to the smell. It was a unique, inescapable bouquet of sulfur, burning coal, and the faint, sweet coppery tang of organic matter returning to carbon. It was the scent of pragmatism. Unlike their neighbors in Gaan, who buried their dead in marble tombs with weeping statues and paid priests to sing songs of ascension, Dolbey burned them. Space was limited, disease was a constant threat from the surrounding marshes, and the philosophy of the Iron Kingdom was simple: what is no longer useful must be removed to make way for the living. The dead did not need land; they needed to be forgotten so the living could work.
Usually, the building vibrated with life—or the destruction of it. The massive subterranean bellows that fed oxygen to the fireboxes created a constant, low-frequency thrum that could be felt through the soles of one's boots three streets away. The roar of the forced-air vents was the city's white noise, a reminder that the machine was working. It was a comforting sound to the soldiers in the nearby barracks—the sound of order, of sanitation, of a kingdom that kept its house clean.
But tonight, the machine had died.
The silence that draped over the facility was not merely the absence of noise; it was a physical weight, a pressurized vacuum that pressed against the eardrums. The rhythmic clanking of the conveyor belts that carried the gurneys had ceased. The roar of the vents had been strangled. Even the ambient heat, which usually radiated from the brickwork for blocks around, melting the winter snow before it could settle, had been sucked away.
In its place was a profound, unnatural cold. It was a biting, aggressive chill that caused the moisture in the air to freeze instantly, creating intricate, jagged patterns of black frost on the iron doors and heavy glass windows. It was a cold that ignored fur and wool, sinking straight into the bone.
Torren, the senior warden of the night shift, rubbed his gloved hands together as he walked the perimeter of the main processing floor. He was a big man, thick around the middle from years of drinking stout, but he knew this building better than he knew his own home. His breath puffed out in heavy white clouds that fell to the floor rather than rising, a phenomenon that made the hair on his arms stand up.
"It's freezing in here," Torren grumbled, the sound of his voice echoing too loudly in the cavernous space. "Check the gauges again, Jarek. The fires can't be out. We just loaded a ton of coal at sunset. I signed the manifest myself."
Jarek, a younger guard with a nervous twitch and a face scarred by teenage pox, tapped the glass of the pressure gauge on Furnace Three. "Zero, sir. It reads zero heat. Zero pressure. The needle isn't even twitching. It's like the fire just... stopped existing."
"Fires don't just stop," Torren snapped, though a shiver walked down his spine that had nothing to do with the temperature. "The vents must be clogged. If the gas backed up, we could be sitting on a bomb. One spark and this whole district goes up."
"Where is Silas?" Jarek asked, looking around into the gloom. The emergency gaslights were sputtering, casting long, dancing shadows that seemed to grab at their ankles. "He went to check the loading bay ten minutes ago."
"Silas!" Torren shouted. "Report!"
There was no answer. Only the echo of his own voice bouncing off the cold iron vats and the towering incinerators. Silas... Silas... Silas...
"Come on," Torren said, unholstering his heavy baton, a length of ironwood wrapped in leather. "Let's check the main firebox. Keep your eyes open. Maybe a scavenger got in."
The two guards walked toward the center of the room, their boots clanking rhythmically on the metal grating. The processing floor was a vast, open space lined with rows of metal gurneys. Dozens of bodies lay there, stiff and pale under the dim, flickering lights. There were soldiers of the Home Guard who had died of winter fever, their chests sunken and grey. There were beggars who had frozen in the alleys of the lower city, their limbs twisted in rigor mortis. There were the carcasses of livestock—sheep and cattle culled to prevent the spread of rot. Under normal circumstances, the machinery would be moving them, feeding them into the incinerators to be turned into inert, sterile ash.
But tonight, the dead were waiting. They seemed more present than usual, their stillness heavy with anticipation.
They approached the central furnace. It was a massive iron beast, the heart of the facility, capable of turning a warhorse to dust in minutes. The door, a slab of iron weighing half a ton, was hanging open.
Sitting on the lip of the open furnace, perched on a heavy iron grate he had dragged from the cooling floor, was a figure.
Torren stopped dead, throwing his arm out to stop Jarek. "Halt! Identify yourself!"
The figure did not move. It sat with legs crossed, posture regal yet terrifyingly alien. It was clad in armor that looked like it had been salvaged from the heart of a volcano. The plates were fused, blackened gold, running with veins of pulsing purple light like jagged lightning. A tattered cloak of what looked like smoke hung from its shoulders, moving even though there was no breeze.
"I said identify yourself!" Torren barked, stepping forward, though his legs felt like lead. "This is a restricted military facility! You are trespassing on Crown property!"
The figure turned its head slowly.
Torren's breath caught in his throat. His baton slipped in his sweaty palm.
It was Leonus.
But it wasn't the King he had seen in paintings or on the coins in his pocket. It wasn't the golden boy of the headlines. This was a husk. The face was a mask of grey death, the skin tight against the skull, highlighting the bone structure in a grotesque relief. The jaw hung slack, slightly unhinged. There was no hair, only a charred scalp scarred by divine fire. And the eyes... the eyes were twin voids of absolute darkness, rimmed with a violet corona that pulsed with the rhythm of a dead star.
"The King..." Jarek whispered, dropping his baton. It clattered loudly on the floor. "It's the Sun King. He's... he's supposed to be dead."
"No," the entity whispered.
The voice was a horror. It sounded like dry leaves skittering across a stone floor, a rasping whisper that carried no moisture, no warmth, and no humanity. It bypassed the ears and vibrated directly in the teeth, setting Torren's nerves on fire.
"The Sun set hours ago," the entity rasped. "I am what comes after."
Leonus looked at the two guards. He didn't see men. He didn't see loyal subjects. He saw containers. He saw hearts pumping warm, disgusting blood. He saw fear, which tasted like sour milk in the air. He saw the frantic electrical impulses of their brains, firing in panic.
"Where is Silas?" Torren demanded, his courage born of sheer panic. He gripped his baton with both hands, shaking. "What have you done with him?"
Leonus raised a hand. His fingers, fused into sharp, metallic talons, pointed to the floor at the base of the furnace.
Lying in the shadows was a pile of armor. It was Silas's uniform—the heavy breastplate, the greaves, the helmet. But it was empty. There was no body inside. Just a dusting of grey powder spilling out of the neck hole and the cuffs.
"He was heavy," Leonus said, tilting his head. "He carried so much worry. I made him light."
Torren stared at the pile of armor. His mind couldn't process it. Silas was a big man. He couldn't just vanish.
"You monster!" Torren roared. His mind snapped. He couldn't process the supernatural horror standing before him, so it defaulted to violence. He raised his baton and charged. It was a suicide run, a desperate attempt to assert the laws of physics in a room that had abandoned them.
He swung the ironwood club with all his strength, aiming for the King's head.
Leonus didn't flinch. He didn't draw a weapon. He simply exerted his Will.
The air in the room solidified.
Torren stopped in mid-stride, frozen as if trapped in amber. The baton hung in the air inches from Leonus's face. Torren strained, his muscles bulging, veins popping in his neck, but he couldn't move. He couldn't blink. The pressure on his chest was immense, like being crushed at the bottom of the ocean.
"You are loud," Leonus whispered, standing up from his grate. He floated slightly, his feet hovering an inch above the iron. "Discipline requires silence."
He looked at the open furnace behind him. Inside, there were no coals. There was only a swirling vortex of purple and black energy—Void Fire. It burned without heat. It consumed without fuel. It was the antithesis of creation. It was the entropy that waited at the end of the universe.
"The fire is hungry," Leonus murmured to the frozen guard. "And the larder is full."
He raised both hands. The violet veins in his armor flared brighter, illuminating the cavernous room with a sickly, pulsating glow.
Jarek, who was still standing by the entrance, whimpered as he saw the movement behind the King.
The bodies on the gurneys began to move.
It started with a scrape. Then a slide. Dragged by an invisible tide, the dead soldiers and beggars tumbled off the metal tables. They hit the floor with wet thuds, but they didn't stop. They were pulled across the concrete, limbs tangling, heads lolling. They didn't walk; they flowed. They were pulled inexorably toward the open maw of the furnace like iron filings to a magnet.
They piled into the firebox. Human, animal, soldier, beggar—it didn't matter. To the Void, biomass was biomass. The distinctions of rank and species ended at the threshold of the fire.
The purple fire flared.
It didn't burn them. It unmade them.
There was no smell of cooking meat, no crackle of fat, no screaming of escaping steam. The Void Fire stripped the moisture from the cells instantly. It pulverized the bone structure. It disintegrated the flesh. In seconds, the bodies were reduced to their most elemental form.
Ash.
But this was not the inert, grey dust of a wood fire. This ash was heavy. It was dark, sparkling with a faint, malevolent glitter. It didn't settle on the floor of the furnace. It swirled. It moved. It retained the ghostly imprint of the life that had once inhabited the bodies. It was the physical residue of the soul, stripped of memory but retaining the capacity for movement. It was death made particulate.
Leonus inhaled deeply. He drank the release of energy. The sensation was cold and sharp, like swallowing ice water on a hot day. It filled the hollow spaces in his soul where his humanity used to be. It numbed the phantom pain of his flayed skin.
He turned his gaze back to Torren and Jarek.
"You are not dead," Leonus observed, tilting his head as if studying a curiosity. "That is a problem. The living are messy. They have doubts. They have fear. They require sleep."
The cloud of living ash poured out of the furnace. It flowed like a grey river, defying gravity, spiraling around the King's throne in a thick, choking cloud. It hissed as it moved, the friction of the particles sounding like a thousand whispering voices.
"But I can fix you," Leonus promised.
He flicked his finger.
The ash cloud surged. It lunged at the two guards.
Torren tried to scream, but the ash forced its way into his mouth. It tasted of ancient dust and iron. It filled his nose, his throat, his lungs. He clawed at his face, but the ash was relentless. It poured into the gaps of his armor. It seeped into his pores.
It wasn't just suffocating him. It was eating him.
Inside the armor, the ash consumed the soft tissue. It dissolved the muscles. It wrapped around the bones, fusing with the calcium, turning the skeleton into a framework for the magic. It rewired the nervous system, replacing electrical impulses with necrotic commands.
Torren's struggles ceased. Jarek fell silent, collapsing to his knees as the ash filled him.
They stood there for a moment, swaying slightly. Their armor was now full. But not with flesh.
They were Ash Walkers.
Leonus walked down the steps of the furnace. He approached Torren. He reached out and lifted the visor of the guard's helmet.
There was no face. Only a swirling darkness of dust and violet light.
"Can you hear me?" Leonus whispered.
The Ash Walker nodded. A slow, mechanical grind of metal on metal.
"Good," Leonus said. "Do you remember fear?"
The Ash Walker shook its head.
"Do you remember pain?"
The Ash Walker shook its head.
"Do you remember your King?"
The Ash Walker knelt. Jarek knelt beside him.
Leonus smiled. It was a rictus grin, stretching the grey skin of his face.
"A King needs a court," Leonus murmured. "And a court needs an army."
He walked to the wall where the facility's manifest was pinned. He ran a claw down the list of storage vaults.
Vault B: Plague Victims (400 count).
Vault C: War Dead - Battle of the Parches (1,200 count).
Vault D: Ancestral Urns (Uncounted).
The Crematorium sat atop a goldmine of death. Dolbey had stored its dead here for generations. The foundations of the building were quite literally built on the bones of the past. Every urn, every corpse, every forgotten soldier was a soldier waiting to be drafted.
From the shadows of the high catwalks, the Hooded Envoy watched.
The entity had no physical form, merely a silhouette cut from the fabric of reality, a walking absence of light wrapped in a cloak of vantablack. It stood perfectly still, observing the creature it had saved from the peace of death. It saw the violet light pulsing in Leonus's chest. It saw the absolute submission of the constructs. It saw the potential for a chaos that would rival the Gods themselves.
The Envoy did not speak, but its thoughts rippled through the ether, touching Leonus's mind like a cold drop of water.
The Wolf is at the door, Little Sun, the Envoy's thought whispered. He guards the house, but he forgot to lock the basement.
Leonus turned to look at the shadow. He nodded.
"The Wolf thinks he owns the pack," Leonus replied to the empty air. "But the pack belongs to the one who feeds it."
He turned to his new Praetorian Guard—Torren, Jarek, and the remains of Silas.
"Open the vaults," Leonus commanded. His voice boomed, shaking the dust from the rafters. "Bring me the dust of this kingdom. Bring me the plague. Bring me the war. I will build an army that does not eat, does not sleep, and does not stop."
The three Ash Walkers stood in unison. They turned and marched toward the heavy freight elevators that led to the crypts. They moved with a synchronized, mechanical perfection that was far more terrifying than any shambling horde. They were machines of soot and steel.
Leonus walked to the main window. He wiped the frost away with his claw.
He looked out at the sleeping city of Dolbey. He could see the lights of the castle on the hill, where his uncle, King Valdemar, slept.
"Sleep well, Uncle," Leonus whispered to the glass, his breath leaving a patch of black frost. "Dream of your borders. Dream of your taxes. Because when you wake up... the sun will be black, and the ground will be ash."
He turned back to the furnace, the violet light casting long, monstrous shadows against the wall.
The night was young. And the harvest had just begun.
Part 2: The Suffocation of the Barracks
The Dolbey Home Guard Barracks stood as a testament to the kingdom's philosophy of stone-faced endurance. It was a fortress of pragmatism, a squat, rectangular block of grey quarried granite that sat adjacent to the Crematorium. The two buildings were separated only by a high brick wall topped with iron spikes and a narrow, cobblestoned alleyway typically used for waste disposal carts. While the Crematorium was the city's digestive tract, the Barracks was its shield—housing the two hundred men of the Reserve Battalion.
These were not the fresh recruits or the glory-seeking vanguard who had marched east with Ragnaur to sack the ruins of Gaan. These were the veterans. The Home Guard consisted of men who had aged out of the expeditionary forces, men with grey in their beards and old scars on their knuckles. They were the "Iron Roots" of the capital, tasked with the unglamorous job of maintaining order, guarding the treasury, and ensuring that while the Wolf was away hunting, the den remained safe. They were men who believed in steel, stone, and the King. They did not believe in ghosts.
It was the deep, dead hour of the night—the Wolf's Hour, as the northerners called it. The moon had been strangled by a thick layer of cloud cover, plunging the military district into an absolute, inky darkness broken only by the sporadic, flickering gas lamps that lined the perimeter wall. The city of Dolbey slept the sleep of the righteous, confident in its walls and its warriors.
Inside the barracks, the atmosphere was usually one of disciplined comfort. The air was typically filled with the sounds of sleeping men—the low rumble of snoring, the shifting of wool blankets on cots, the murmur of dreamers reliving old battles. It was a warm, human humidity, smelling of leather polish, sweat, oil, and pipe tobacco. It was the smell of safety.
But tonight, the air was changing.
It started with a drop in temperature that defied the season. The warmth was sucked out of the stone walls as if a vacuum had been applied to the building. The heat radiating from the sleeping bodies dissipated instantly, replaced by a permeating chill that caused the condensation on the windows to freeze into black, fractal patterns. The sounds of the city outside—the distant barking of dogs, the rattle of night carts, the wind in the eaves—were dampened, as if a heavy, suffocating blanket had been thrown over the world.
Commander Halian lay in his private quarters on the second floor.
Halian was a man of fifty winters, a relic of the Border Wars against the Frost Giants. He was a man defined by his scars; a jagged white line ran from his left ear to his jaw, a souvenir from an ice-axe that should have killed him twenty years ago. He was a soldier's soldier, a man who slept with a dagger taped to the underside of his nightstand and whose instincts were honed to a razor's edge. He did not fear men. He did not fear beasts. He had stared down charging mammoths and held the line when younger men had fled.
But tonight, in the safety of his own bed, wrapped in the linen of his homeland, he was afraid.
He was dreaming of drowning.
In the dream, he was back on the frozen lakes of the North. He had fallen through the ice during a patrol. He was trapped under a sheet of glass, looking up at the distorted, pale light of the sun. He pounded his fists against the ceiling of his prison, but it wouldn't break. The water filling his lungs wasn't cold; it was dry. It tasted of soot and sulfur. It filled his throat with grit, grinding against his teeth, filling his sinuses with the dust of dead things.
Halian woke with a violent, convulsive spasm.
He sat up in bed, his sheets tangled around his legs like binding ropes. His hands flew to his throat, clawing at his own skin, leaving red welts. He gasped, his mouth opening wide, expecting to pull in a lungful of cool night air.
Instead, he choked.
The air in the room was wrong. It was thick, opaque, and heavy. It wasn't smoke—there was no smell of burning wood or melting fabric, no crackle of flames to indicate a fire. It smelled of ancient, undisturbed crypts. It tasted of iron filings and stagnant water. It was an air that had been breathed a thousand times by dead men and then exhaled into his room.
Fog.
A dense, roiling carpet of purple-grey fog covered the floor of his quarters. It was waist-high and rising. It poured under the crack of his door like pressurized water from a burst dam, hissing softly as it entered. It didn't drift aimlessly like natural mist; it coiled. It moved with a serpentine intelligence, exploring the corners of the room, climbing the legs of his bed, seeking the heat of his body.
Halian coughed, a wet, hacking sound that rattled his ribs. He forced his lungs to draw in the tainted air. It burned going down, coating his throat in a fine layer of ash. His eyes watered, stinging from the particulates.
"Alarm..." he tried to shout. He wanted to bellow the command that would wake the battalion, the roar that had rallied men on the frozen tundra.
But his voice was a pathetic rasp. The fog swallowed the sound, dampening the vibration before it could leave his lips. It was as if the room itself was silencing him, absorbing the noise into the damp walls.
He swung his legs out of bed. His bare feet touched the fog, and he recoiled instantly. It was freezing—absolute zero. It felt like stepping into a snowdrift, a biting cold that numbed his skin instantly and sent shooting pains up his shins.
"Gods," Halian hissed, grabbing his boots and jamming his feet into them, shivering violently.
He grabbed his sword from the rack on the wall. The hilt was cold and slick with condensation. He stumbled to the window, his vision swimming with black spots from the lack of oxygen. He threw the heavy wooden shutters open, desperate for fresh air, desperate to see the familiar lights of the city and reassure himself that the world was still there.
There was no relief.
The courtyard below was submerged. The fog had swallowed the entire barracks complex. It rolled off the roof of the Crematorium next door in massive, silent waves, a tsunami of exhaust that was slowly drowning the district. The sentries at the gate were gone, swallowed by the mist. The world outside was a monochrome nightmare of violet and grey. The streetlamps were merely dim halos struggling against the gloom, looking like dying stars in a nebula.
"We are under attack," Halian whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "Gas. It's poison gas from Gaan. Or the Iron Horde."
He turned back to the door. He had to get to the alarm bell in the hallway. He had to wake the men. If this was a chemical attack, they were sitting ducks. They would die in their beds without ever drawing steel.
The door handle turned.
It wasn't the frantic rattling of a soldier coming to warn him. It wasn't the banging of a panic-stricken recruit seeking orders. It was a slow, deliberate twist. The mechanism clicked with a mechanical precision that made Halian's blood run cold.
The door creaked open.
Standing in the doorway, framed by the swirling violet fog of the hallway, was a figure.
It was a soldier of the Home Guard. He wore the full plate armor of the heavy infantry—the pride of Dolbey. But the armor was wrong. It was dull, covered in a layer of grey soot that absorbed the little light remaining in the room. The metal didn't shine; it seemed to eat the light. The visor of the helm was down.
"Soldier!" Halian barked, the adrenaline finally cutting through the fear. He assumed a command stance, leveling his sword at the intruder. "Report! Is the building on fire? Why haven't you sounded the bell? Speak, man!"
The soldier didn't answer. He didn't salute. He stepped into the room.
Then another stepped in behind him. And another.
Three of them. They moved in perfect, terrifying unison. Their heavy iron boots made no sound on the wooden floorboards. They didn't bob or sway as they walked; they glided, as if suspended by strings from the ceiling. They crowded into the small room, blocking the exit, creating a wall of dirty steel.
"Identify yourselves!" Halian shouted, his voice cracking. "I am your Commander! Stand down or I will cut you down! This is treason!"
The lead soldier stopped three paces away. The faint violet light from the window reflected off the dark steel of his pauldron.
Slowly, mechanically, the soldier raised his gauntleted hands to his helmet. The movement was stiff, grinding, lacking the fluidity of living muscle. He unlatched the gorget with a stiff click. He lifted the helm.
Halian braced himself. He expected to see the face of a traitor, perhaps a spy from the Horde. Or perhaps the face of a plague victim, ravaged by disease, eyes bleeding. He prepared himself to see anything human.
The helmet came off.
Halian's sword tip wavered. His breath caught in his throat. His mind tried to process the visual information and failed, stuttering over the impossibility of what he was seeing.
There was no head.
Where the neck should have been, there was only a swirling vortex of dense, grey ash. It spun inside the collar of the armor like a miniature tornado contained within a glass jar. Two points of malevolent violet light burned in the center of the dust cloud, staring at Halian with a gaze that felt older than the stone of the barracks.
"What..." Halian breathed, stepping back until his spine hit the window frame. "What in the name of the Light..."
The helmetless Ash Walker dropped the helm. It hit the floor with a heavy, dull thud that vibrated through the boards.
The creature lunged.
It moved with a speed that defied physics. It didn't need to gather its muscles or shift its weight. It was propelled by the Void. It closed the distance in a blur of grey motion.
Halian reacted on instinct—twenty years of combat training taking over where his sanity failed. He swung his sword. It was a clean, powerful strike, a downward diagonal cut aimed at the gap between the pauldron and the breastplate—a killing blow that would sever the subclavian artery of a living man.
The blade connected. It cleaved through the metal and bit deep into the chest cavity.
But there was no resistance.
There was no crunch of bone. No spray of hot blood. No scream of pain. The sword simply passed through the metal and the ash inside, sticking harmlessly in the torso as if he had stabbed a sack of flour. The ash swirled around the blade, gripping it, sucking the heat from the steel.
The Ash Walker didn't even flinch. It stepped forward, sliding its body up the length of the blade, closing the distance.
It grabbed Halian by the throat.
The grip was absolute. The gauntlet felt like it had been cooled in liquid nitrogen. The cold burned Halian's skin, searing the flesh with frost. It was an immovable object clamping onto his windpipe.
Halian released his sword. He punched the creature in the chest with his bare hand, putting his hips into the blow. His fist sank into the soot-filled armor. It felt like punching a sandbag filled with crushed glass. The impact jarred his wrist, but the creature didn't move an inch.
The other two Walkers moved in. They didn't draw weapons. They didn't need to. They grabbed his arms. They pinned him against the wall.
Halian struggled. He kicked. He twisted. He roared in defiance. But their strength was hydraulic, unyielding. He was a child fighting statues of iron. They held him there, feet dangling inches off the floor, staring into the swirling vortex of the headless leader.
Then, the fog in the center of the room began to coalesce.
It thickened. It darkened. It swirled into a tight cyclone, rising from the floor like a reverse waterspout.
It took the shape of a man. A tall, imposing figure clad in armor of fused, blackened gold.
Leonus stepped out of the fog.
He brought the silence with him. The struggling sounds of Halian's breathing seemed to dampen. The wind outside died. The world narrowed down to the black voids of the King's eyes.
Leonus looked at the Commander. He looked at the pinned man with the detached curiosity of a scientist examining a specimen in a jar.
"You are loud, Commander," Leonus whispered. His voice was a vibration in the bones, a sound that bypassed the ears entirely. "Discipline requires silence."
"King... Valdemar..." Halian gasped, his vision spotting from the lack of air, his brain grasping for any authority that could make sense of this. "Help..."
"Valdemar is sleeping," Leonus said softly. "Let him sleep. He has earned his rest. He is a man of the old world, terrified of borders and coins. But you... you have work to do."
Leonus walked forward. He stopped inches from Halian's face. The cold radiating from the Lich was intense enough to crack the skin on Halian's lips. The smell was overwhelming—ozone, void, and the deep, dusty scent of a crematorium.
"Do not fear the dark, Halian," Leonus said, his voice strangely soothing. "The dark is patient. The dark is heavy. The dark is safe. In the dark, you do not have to worry about the border. You do not have to worry about the cold. You do not have to worry about dying, because the worst has already happened. The struggle is over."
He raised his hand. The talons of the Lion's Heart armor glinted purple in the gloom.
He placed his hand over Halian's face.
"Accept the peace."
Leonus activated the Void.
He didn't kill Halian. He didn't turn him into an Ash Walker. Ash Walkers were blunt instruments, good for killing and carrying, but they lacked nuance. They lacked tactical knowledge. Leonus needed officers. He needed intelligence. He needed a bridge between the living and the dead.
He pushed his will into Halian's mind.
It was an invasive, violent flood of psychic pressure. It felt like a drill boring into Halian's frontal lobe.
Leonus walked through the Commander's mind. He found the memories of Halian's wife, waiting for him in a cottage in the hills, smelling of baked bread. Leonus touched them, and they turned to ash, crumbling away into nothingness.
He found the loyalty to Dolbey, the oath sworn to King Valdemar on bended knee twenty years ago. Leonus replaced it with a vacuum, a black hole of obedience that answered only to the Void.
He found the fear—the primal terror of death that drove every soldier. Leonus filled it with the cold static of the Crematorium. He numbed it. He excised the capacity for panic.
He hollowed him out.
Halian convulsed violently against the wall. His back arched. His eyes rolled back in his head, the whites turning entirely black as the capillaries burst and filled with necrotic fluid. Veins of purple light shot across his face like a road map of corruption. He opened his mouth to scream, but the scream was swallowed by the King's hand, reabsorbed into the void.
Then, he went limp.
The Ash Walkers released him.
Halian stood there, swaying slightly. He didn't fall. He blinked, once, twice.
His eyes were no longer human. They were flat, black pools reflecting the violet light of his master. The scar on his jaw pulsed with a faint purple light.
"Commander," Leonus said, stepping back, observing his handiwork.
"My King," Halian replied.
His voice was flat. Mechanical. Devoid of soul. It was the voice of a man speaking from the bottom of a well.
"The barracks," Leonus said, gesturing to the floorboards. "Two hundred men are sleeping below us. They are dreaming of petty things. Of pay. Of women. Of glory. They are wasting their potential."
Leonus walked to the door and looked out into the foggy hallway.
"Wake them," Leonus commanded. "Show them the new truth."
"Yes, my King."
"Do not kill them," Leonus instructed. "Hollow them. Like I hollowed you. I want a Legion by dawn. And I want them silent."
Halian bowed stiffly. He turned and walked out of the room. He picked up his helmet from the table—the helmet of a Commander of Dolbey—and placed it on his head. He looked like a soldier. He walked like a soldier. But he was empty. A shell driven by a dark signal.
He marched into the foggy hallway, followed by the three Ash Walkers. Their boots clanged on the stairs as they descended to the main sleeping quarters.
Leonus walked to the window. He wiped the frost away with his claw.
He looked out over the military district. The purple fog was spreading, rolling down the streets, drowning the city in silence. It curled around the guard towers and seeped into the stables.
He could feel the minds of the sleeping soldiers below. Two hundred souls, pulsing like little candle flames in the dark.
He felt Halian enter the main dormitory. He felt the fog enter the room.
One by one, the candles began to flicker.
One by one, the soldiers woke up choking.
One by one, the Light was snuffed out, replaced by the cold efficiency of the Void.
There would be no battle. There would be no alarm bells. There would be no frantic defense of the capital. The Dolbey Home Guard would simply wake up, put on their armor, and serve a new master.
"The Wolf guards the gate," Leonus whispered to the night, a smile touching his ruined lips. "But the rats are already in the pantry."
He turned back into the fog and vanished, dissolving into mist to return to his throne of iron, leaving the barracks to its silent transformation.
Part 3: The Weight of Gold
The Trade Road to the Iron Coast of Korum was a lifeline carved through the dense, ancient forests of Eastern Gaan. It was a wide track of packed dirt and gravel, a marvel of civil engineering that usually teemed with merchants carrying spices, silk, grain, and the gossip of the coast. But tonight, under the suffocating gloom of a moonless sky, the road was a lonely, desolate place. The war had scared the travelers away. The rumors of the Red Beast tearing down the palace and the Iron Horde burning the fields had turned the forest into a place of ghosts, where the silence was broken only by the wind rattling the dry branches of the pines and the occasional hoot of an owl hunting in the dark.
Except for one traveler.
Alaric moved through the tree line running parallel to the road.
He was no longer the broken thing that had crawled out of the sewer mere hours ago, leaking fluids and dragging a shattered spine through the muck. He was a siege engine made of meat.
The consumption of the Orc Warlord, Gorrog, in the cisterns beneath the city had changed him fundamentally. The Sanguine moss had not just repaired him; it had evolved him. He was larger now, standing nearly seven feet tall. His frame had expanded laterally to accommodate the dense, unnatural biomass he had absorbed. His armor was a grotesque patchwork—the blackened, fused plates of his original Gaanish gear were now bolted together with the jagged, crude iron of the Orcish scrap he had integrated into his chassis. The metal groaned with every step, straining to contain the swelling muscle beneath.
His left arm, which had been severed by Ragnaur in the Throne Room, was now a massive, three-fingered claw of black bone and wet muscle, dripping with Sanguine fluid. It was not a hand for holding a sword; it was a tool for tearing down walls. It twitched with a mind of its own, the fingers curling and uncurling as if grasping for a throat that wasn't there.
He didn't run like a man. He loped. He moved on two legs, but his posture was hunched, predatory, his center of gravity low to the ground. He crashed through the heavy underbrush, snapping saplings like twigs, his heavy breath steaming in the cold night air like the exhaust of a locomotive. His footsteps were heavy, thudding impacts that left deep, clawed impressions in the forest floor, crushing roots and stones alike.
"Faster," the Blood Hag urged him. Her voice was a constant presence in the back of his skull, a jockey whipping a horse. "The scent is strong, my pet. Can you smell it? Gold. Greed. It tastes like copper on the tongue. It tastes like salt and sweat."
Alaric grunted, a wet, guttural sound, pushing himself harder. The new muscles in his legs burned with power. He felt heavy, solid. The fragility that had cost him the fight in the Throne Room—the human weakness of bone and tendon—was gone. He felt like he was carved from stone.
But the hunger remained. It was a cavernous void in his gut, a black hole that demanded to be filled. The Orc had been a snack. A protein shake. It wasn't enough to fuel the fire that Ragnaur had tried to stomp out. The memory of the Titan's boot was still etched into his chest, a phantom pressure that demanded he get stronger, heavier, denser.
"Why this man?" Alaric growled, his voice a deep, resonant bass that vibrated in his own chest cavity. "Why Midas? There are soldiers closer. There are patrols on the river. Why run this far for a merchant?"
"Because soldiers are lean," the Hag explained, weaving the lesson into his mind as he ran, projecting images of burning calories and thinning souls. "Soldiers spend their lives. They burn their energy fighting, marching, worrying about orders. Their souls are tough, stringy meat. They satisfy the stomach, Alaric, but they do not feed the spirit. You consume a soldier, and you gain his fatigue. You gain his trauma."
She laughed softly, a sound like wind whistling through dry grass.
"But a Merchant Prince... ah, Alaric. That is a different meal entirely. You think gold is just metal? You think it is just shiny rocks dug from the earth? Fool. Gold is the material manifestation of desire. It is crystallized life."
Alaric leaped over a fallen log, his claw digging into the bark for leverage, shredding the wood into splinters. He kept moving, his pace relentless.
"Think about it," the Hag whispered. "A peasant works fifty years to fill a small pouch. He pours his sweat, his time, his missed moments with his children into those coins. Then he gives them to a merchant. The merchant takes that life. He hoards it. He stacks it in a vault. He absorbs the intent of everyone who touched those coins."
Alaric could smell it now—not the gold itself, but the miasma of greed that surrounded the convoy ahead. It smelled sweet and rotting, like overripe fruit left in the sun, cloying and thick.
"A man who hoards gold hoards gravity," the Hag continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "His soul becomes dense. Heavy. Nutritious. Eating a peasant is like eating grass. Eating a Merchant Prince... that is like eating a star. And you, my little puppy, are starving. You need mass to fight the Wolf. You need weight to crush the Titan. You cannot beat Ragnaur by being faster. You must be heavier."
Alaric crested a rocky ridge. He stopped, his iron boots grinding into the stone, creating sparks. He looked down at the road below, illuminated by the flickering light of torches.
There it was.
Lord Midas's Convoy.
It wasn't a caravan. It was a moving fortress.
Six massive, iron-reinforced wagons rumbled down the road, their wheels churning the dirt into mud. They were pulled by teams of six draft horses each, beasts bred for strength rather than speed, their flanks heaving in the cold air. The wagons were enclosed, their sides fitted with loopholes for crossbows, painted in the gaudy colors of House Midas—gold and azure. They carried the wealth of Korum, intended to buy the ruins of Gaan at a discount.
Flanking the wagons were fifty mercenaries on horseback. They were not the ragtag deserters or city watchmen Alaric had seen in the city. These were professionals. They wore polished silver armor that caught the torchlight, and their helmets were painted to resemble grinning skulls.
The Silver Skulls. A mercenary company from the coast known for two things: their absolute brutality and their exorbitant price. They did not fight for loyalty; they fought for the highest bidder. And Midas paid well. They carried torches, creating a river of fire that cut through the dark woods, pushing the shadows back with aggressive light.
In the center of the formation was Midas's personal carriage. It was a monstrosity of gilded wood and steel, twice the size of the supply wagons. It didn't just look expensive; it looked dangerous. Faint, shimmering blue runes etched into the wood glowed in the darkness—protective wards bought from the high mages of Zuth or the Sorcerers of the East.
"Look at it," the Hag whispered, her voice dripping with venom. "He brings that gold to Gaan to buy the ruins. He wants to purchase the land from under the feet of the dead. He wants to own the graveyard. He thinks he can buy the apocalypse."
Alaric felt the hate rise. It wasn't just the Hag's influence this time. It was his own. These men were vultures coming to pick the eyes out of his city. They were the same kind of men as the Council he had eaten—parasites who profited from suffering, men who looked at a burning house and calculated the value of the ash.
"How do I take it?" Alaric asked, assessing the tactical situation. "Fifty riders. Warded carriage. Crossbows. They are formed in a phalanx. I am one."
"You are not a knight anymore, Alaric," the Hag chided gently. "Knights charge. Knights have honor. Knights die in straight lines. Beasts ambush. Beasts use the dark. Beasts fight unfair. Break the wheel, and the snake stops moving."
Alaric scanned the road ahead. About a mile down, the road passed through a narrow cut between two rocky outcrops—a natural choke point where the trees pressed in close to the gravel.
He moved.
He scrambled down the slope, moving ahead of the convoy. He didn't try to be silent. He was too big for silence. He was speed and violence. He tore through the brush, ignoring the branches whipping against his armor, moving faster than the heavy wagons could hope to match.
He reached the pass. He stood in the middle of the road.
He dug his iron boots into the dirt, anchoring himself. He flared his Sanguine Aura. The red moss on his armor glowed, cutting through the darkness like a beacon of blood. He opened the steam vents on his shoulders, releasing a cloud of black, alchemical smog that obscured his silhouette.
He waited.
Five minutes later, the vanguard of the Silver Skulls rounded the bend.
The lead horse whinnied in terror, smelling the predator before it saw him. It bucked, eyes rolling white, nearly throwing its rider. The scent of Alaric—a mix of old blood, wet rust, and necrotic magic—was primal.
"Halt!" the lead mercenary shouted, struggling to control his mount. "Hold the line! Obstruction ahead!"
The convoy ground to a halt, the wagons screeching as heavy iron brakes were applied. The mercenaries drew their weapons, the ring of steel filling the air. Torches were raised high, casting long, dancing shadows against the rocks.
"What is it?" a voice called from the gilded carriage—a voice smooth, oily, and annoyed. Lord Midas. "Why have we stopped? Time is money, Captain! If we are late to the auction, I will deduct it from your pay!"
"A man on the road, My Lord," the mercenary captain shouted back. He trotted his horse forward, peering into the gloom. He was a scarred man with a nose that had been broken three times. "Big bastard. Standing right in the center. Looks like a bandit, or a deserter from the Legion."
The captain lowered his lance, pointing the steel tip at Alaric. He was a confident man, clad in fine plate, used to peasants scattering at the sight of his banner.
"Move, peasant!" the captain barked. "This is the property of Lord Midas! Make way or be trampled underfoot!"
Alaric looked up. His single red eye burned in the dark, a baleful star in the mist. The Sanguine steam hissed around him, sounding like a nest of snakes.
"Your toll..." Alaric rumbled. His voice was so deep it shook the leaves on the trees, a sound that vibrated in the chests of the riders. "...is due."
The captain laughed. It was a nervous, harsh sound. "Toll? You want a toll? Kill him, boys. Run him down."
Three riders broke from the formation. They spurred their horses. Lances lowered. Hooves thundering on the packed dirt. They expected the man to run. Or to die. They were used to peasants fleeing at the sight of the Skulls.
Alaric didn't flinch. He didn't draw a weapon. He stood his ground, a statue of rusted iron.
He waited until the last second. Until he could smell the horse's breath. Until he could see the whites of the rider's eyes.
Then he moved.
He caught the first lance with his human hand. The wood splintered under the impact, but he held the shaft. He didn't let go. He yanked it backwards with supernatural force, pulling the rider straight out of the saddle. The mercenary flew through the air, screaming, before Alaric caught him by the ankle.
He used the man as a flail.
He swung the screaming mercenary into the path of the second rider. The armored bodies collided with a sickening crunch of metal and bone. The second rider was knocked from his horse, tumbling into the dirt in a heap of tangled limbs.
The third rider tried to veer away, realizing too late that this was no peasant. But Alaric was too fast. He lunged, his massive Orcish claw swiping out.
He didn't aim for the rider. He aimed for the mount.
He tore the horse's legs out from under it.
The beast screamed as it collapsed, flipping forward and crushing the rider beneath a thousand pounds of horseflesh.
Chaos erupted.
"Attack!" the captain screamed, his voice cracking. "Circle him! Fire at will! Put him down!"
Crossbow bolts whistled through the air from the wagons. They struck Alaric, pinging off his mismatched armor, sparking against the Orcish iron. Some found the Sanguine moss, burying themselves in the wet tissue, but Alaric didn't slow down. The pain was distant, irrelevant. It was just information telling him where the enemies were.
He charged the line.
He wasn't fighting a duel. He was a bowling ball hitting pins. He smashed into the wall of horses, overturning them with brute strength. He grabbed mercenaries by their breastplates and ripped them from their saddles, crushing them against the ground. He grabbed a horse by the bridle and threw it—physically threw the animal—into the lead wagon.
CRASH.
The lead wagon overturned, blocking the road. The convoy was trapped.
The Silver Skulls tried to fight back. They stabbed at him with swords and spears, but Alaric was too dense. A sword strike to his shoulder plate didn't cut; it just vibrated the attacker's arm. He was moving with the momentum of a landslide.
Alaric tore the door off a supply wagon and used it as a massive shield, deflecting lance thrusts. He gutted men with his claw. He drank the blood spray in the air, fueling his regeneration instantly. Every wound the mercenaries inflicted closed seconds later, stitched together by black moss.
The morale of the Silver Skulls broke. They were professionals, but they were paid to fight men, not demons. They saw their comrades torn apart. They saw the red eye glowing in the smoke. They saw a monster that healed faster than they could kill it.
"Fall back!" someone screamed. "It's the Beast! It's the Red Beast of Gaan!"
Alaric ignored the fleeing soldiers. He didn't chase them. They were lean meat. He had eyes only for the center.
He reached the gilded carriage.
The blue wards etched into the wood flared to life. Arcs of magical lightning lashed out, striking Alaric's chest.
ZZZTTT.
It burned. It cooked his flesh inside the armor. Smoke rose from his joints. The smell of burning ozone filled the air. The magic was designed to stop armies, to repel siege weapons. It hissed against his Sanguine aura, trying to repel the corruption.
But Alaric didn't stop. He roared, a sound of pure defiance, channeling the pain into rage. He grabbed the carriage with both hands, his fingers digging into the expensive wood.
"Open!" he bellowed.
He punched the ward.
SHATTER.
The magical barrier broke like glass under the weight of the Sanguine Depravity. The sheer density of his hate overwhelmed the delicate lattice of the spell.
Alaric ripped the roof off the carriage. Wood splintered and steel bent like parchment.
Lord Midas sat inside. He was huddled in the corner, clutching a chest of diamonds to his chest as if it could protect him. He was a fat man, draped in silks that cost more than a village, smelling of expensive perfume and terror. His face was pale, sweat dripping down his multiple chins.
"I can pay you!" Midas squealed, his voice high and pitchy. He held up a handful of gems, thrusting them toward the monster. "Take it! Take it all! I have millions! I have accounts in Zuth! I can make you a King!"
Alaric reached in. He didn't take the gems. He slapped the chest out of Midas's hands, sending diamonds scattering into the dirt and mud.
He grabbed Midas by the front of his silk robes.
He lifted the Merchant Prince into the air. Midas dangled like a doll, his feet kicking uselessly, his expensive slippers falling off.
"Gold is heavy," Alaric rasped, repeating the Hag's lesson, the words tasting like iron in his mouth.
He opened his helm.
Sanguine mist poured out, enveloping Midas in a red fog. The merchant coughed, choking on the metallic taste of the aura.
"Let's see how much you weigh," Alaric whispered.
He activated the Depravity.
This wasn't like the rat in the sewer. It wasn't like the Orc in the cistern.
When Alaric bit into Midas's soul, it was like biting into a lightning bolt.
The greed. The accumulated life-force of the wealth. The sheer density of the man's avarice. It flooded into Alaric. It wasn't just energy; it was information.
He saw visions.
He saw Midas evicting widows in the winter. He saw Midas selling grain to starving villages at triple the price. He saw Midas bribing judges to hang innocent men. He saw the cold, golden vaults where Midas kept his heart. He tasted the lives Midas had ruined to get his gold. He tasted the starvation of peasants, the cold calculations of interest rates, the joy of possession. He tasted the heavy, metallic tang of coins that had been hoarded in dark vaults.
Midas screamed. It was a sound that tore his throat apart. His soul—fat, heavy, and golden—was ripped from his body. It flowed into Alaric like molten lead. It was thick, viscous, and incredibly powerful.
Alaric drank.
It was a feast.
He felt his bones hardening, turning from calcium to something metallic. He felt his Sanguine moss expanding, growing thicker, denser, darker. His armor began to shift, the metal flowing like wax to accommodate his growing bulk. He felt gravity pulling on him harder, as if he had suddenly gained the mass of a statue. His spine elongated, his shoulders broadened, and the Orcish iron he had scavenged fused seamlessly with the Gaanish steel.
He dropped the husk of the Merchant Prince.
Midas hit the ground. He was no longer a fat man. He was a withered, grey shell, skin draped loosely over bone. His eyes were open, staring at nothing, emptied of the light he had hoarded for so long.
Alaric stood amidst the burning convoy. The mercenaries were dead or fled. The gold lay scattered in the dirt, glittering uselessly in the firelight.
Alaric looked at his hands. They were trembling, not with weakness, but with power. He felt heavy. He felt anchored to the world in a way he never had before. He flexed his claw, and the air hummed.
"Yes," the Hag purred in his mind, her voice sounding satiated for the first time in centuries. "Do you feel it? The weight? That is what a Wolf feels. That is what a Titan feels."
Alaric roared at the moon. The sound shattered the remaining silence of the forest. It wasn't a howl of pain. It was a declaration.
The Puppy was growing up. The Runt had eaten the rich.
And he was still hungry.