The mid sized city of Velthurien had always stood with quiet pride beneath the alabaster spires of the Northern Verranate. With its temple lined pronades and mural washed aqueducts, it had served as both sanctuary and garrison. Ho to over twelve minor shrines and a population well versed in reverence and regulation alike.
So when the southern gate watch spotted a marching column of five hundred Purifiers cloaked in crimson sashes and accompanied by priestly silhouettes they didn’t hesitate.
The gates opened before the bell tower even sounded.
"Blessed be the Fla," one of the guards whispered, eyes watering with relief. "They ca."
He wasn’t alone. The past week had been a procession of dread. Towns turned to silence. Forts razed overnight. So said they’d seen ghosts wielding broken banners. Others whispered that the gods had finally abandoned them.
Pure heresy, thought the guard.
But he had no ti to chasten the thought. Among the center of the crimson wave, a single figure of an elf walked with unsettling calm. A tall and broad elf, with silver white hair and a serene smile soft as it was foreign.
"Strange sort," the second guard muttered, stepping forward to greet one of the approaching soldiers.
The blade entered his mouth before the sentence could finish.
It exited cleanly through the top of his skull, spraying the archway in a soft fan of red.
The other guard never saw his end.
"Seal the gates," Corvin said without raising his voice.
Imdiately, his troops obeyed. The outer rings of the city locked down. Alleys barred. Courtyards chained. Like a noose tightening in reverse, from the outside in.
Then, the slaughter began.
But not indiscriminately.
Corvin walked with intent. His blade danced in his right hand, while arcs of ice and wind rippled from his left fingertips like spectral claws. One mont he was a duelist, spinning, parrying, and slashing through chainmail with surgical cruelty and the next, he was a storm given form. A thought shattered a defender’s shield in a burst of jagged ice. A whisper drew lightning from his hands, threading down in white laced arcs that incinerated four Purifiers as they tried to regroup behind the statue of a Saint.
The wind twisted around him, bladed, razer thin and howling, carving through helts and faces alike. He used earth as anchor and hamr. Columns rose from beneath the feet of would be heroes, launching them skyward like broken toys, then dropped them with terminal finality onto their own allies. He moved through fire, letting sword swings pass inches from his hairline, only to return with a cut so fast it left afterimages. Bodies fell around him in heaps, shocked, scorched, sundered.
One Purifier lunged from a staircase, war mace overhead. Corvin caught the haft with telekinesis, pivoted his hips, and slamd the flat of his blade into the man’s spine. The impact folded him in half, armor groaning, lungs emptying in a wheeze that didn’t end. Before the body hit the stone, Corvin had already vanished into a blink stride and reappeared behind another cluster of troops, leaving frozen silhouettes in his wake.
Across the square, Bob thundered through a trio of defenders. His clawed gauntlets cracked stone with each stride. One soldier tried to brace with a halberd, Bob simply caught it mid charge and used the shaft to fling the man into a cathedral wall. He shattered glass, a lovely fresco, and spine with the sa impact.
A second tried to flank him with a blessed spear. Bob sidestep with uncanny speed thank the enhancnts his master blessed him with. he roared, then ripped the shaft out of the attacker’s grip and drove it clean through the man’s chest, pinning him to a prayer statue.
A third scread and ran. Bob let him. There was no art in that kill.
Then ca the heavy infantry. Twelve n in plated gold, holy script burning along their gauntlets. Bob dropped low, surged forward, and took out the first by shattering his knees with a tackle. The second t a hamr blow that snapped his helt like dried bark brain matter silled from the cracks. The rest managed to wound him, barely. Dents. Scratches. Marks.
Bob would’ve welcod pain like an old friend if he was still alive. Only thing keeping him going was his master.
Corvin summoned two of his enhanced elven undead, their fingers already glowing with molten runes. Fla licked the edges of their robes, fire, controlled rather than flung. They moved in patterns. Glyph laced steps designed to sow confusion.
A cluster of defenders tried to hold the northern courtyard.
They burned screaming, locked in silence, mortifying the onlookers. The flas did not spread. They targeted, leapt, cut around innocents, and dove straight for anyone bearing sanctified insignias.
Behind the slaughter, Corvin walked through the inner streets. Every ti a door opened, every ti a woman pulled a child behind her, he lifted one hand.
The mory shattered before it ford.
A mother found herself in a sealed storeroom, holding her child and shaking. But there was no fear on her face. She didn’t rember why.
A boy stood next to his parents, blinking at the sun. His house had no windows anymore. Just ash. He looked down and thought maybe he had wandered too far. His mories rewound to before the screaming started.
Corvin did not touch the unard. He did not raise steel against mothers or children. But he erased the knowledge. That, he believed, was rcy.
A knight captain ca for him, his blade glowing with spell fire, a relic blessed by a cathedral no longer standing. Corvin didn’t move until the last second, then sidestepped, dragging his left hand through the air as if painting. The knight froze while swinging as a wall of jagged ice surged upward, skewering him from calf to collar. His blood glazed the sculpture, Corvin turned toward the next wave of attackers without pause.
He spun on his heel as another Purifier charged, sword etched with holy light.
"You killed my..."
Corvin parried with a single motion and opened the man’s throat. "I’ve killed many," he said calmly. "Be specific."
The Feralis shock troops, each enhanced, tore through formations like avalanches in armor. Lionkin slamd through wooden barricades. Jackalkin skirmishers danced up balconies and tossed down fire balls into gathering retreats. One bear kin took a spear through the lung and kept moving until his claws had disemboweled the thrower. Others dragged Purifiers into side streets, where only the cracking of ribs and snapping of steel was heard.
Corvin stood atop the bell tower by after few hours.
Velthurien no longer rang.
It echoed.
With blood. With silence. With mory that would never form.
His army now numbered over two thousand.
And this was only the beginning.
--
Nefrath bled fire.
The wastes had beco a theater of madness, volcanic dust covered the sky, the sa skies split by infernal lightning, rivers of molten stone boiling with dismbered limbs, and air thick with screams not ant for mortal lungs. Demons clashed in storms of fury: fiends gnashing bone and fang, horned brutes pumling each other with fists like siege boulders, and dreadlords casting sorceries that ruptured the earth beneath them.
There was no order. Only hunger. Only fury.
Two banners flew amidst the chaos, one bearing the spiral brand of Korvath the Proud, the other a glyph stained clawmark of Velkoth the Envious.
Korvath roared from atop a spire of basalt, his obsidian blade slashing arcs of red across the battlefield.
"VELKOTH!" he bellowed, voice shaking the sky. "Crawl from your pit and face , worm born traitor!"
His personal guard of crimson plated juggernauts tore through the oncoming swarm. Each blow snapping spines and shredding sinew. Behind him, fla slicked dreadmares screeched across the plain, trampling everything without banner or command. They were not soldiers. They were forces of war.
Velkoth’s horde answered in kind. Abominations leapt into the air, trailing tendrils of poison. Sorcery warped the field, storms detonating mid air, acid lted living flesh. One dark soverign split skull of a dreadlord gnashing teeth that devoured a line of Velkoth’s elite before vomiting up their armor in pieces.
Between them, Ravathos moved like a silent wind with claws.
The Dark Sovereigns, lieutenants of Velkoth, once proud in title and wrath now were his prey.
He didn’t announce himself. He didn’t duel.
He hunted.
One by one, he cornered them in the shadows cast by burning siege towers or broken iron ziggurats. He struck before they knew they were being watched. Fangs into throats, claws through ribs, A feast rising behind in front of him like the jaws of an old god.
Each kill made him stronger.
For a demon to ascend, two things were needed: devour and ti.
Ravathos was done waiting. He was devouring.
He tore the spine from a Sovereign who still begged for fealty. He drank the marrow of a shrieking brute. He severed an enchantress mid ritual and fed her soul to the soil.
Soon, he would surpass what they all thought was his limit. And if the shadowspawn who started all this was still alive, he would see what chaos looks like when it grows teeth and wants more.
Ravathos turned toward the next horizon.
He smiled.
Then ripped another demon’s heart out through its back.
--
Duchess Yvanna Vellgard sat frozen on the throne of Gilded dominion, surrounded not by generals or councilors but by paper. Parchnt after parchnt. Letter after sealed report, each one bearing the discreet watermark of the ’rchant Guild.’
These weren’t traders. They were spies, entitled, embedded, and expertly trained to gather intelligence without drawing the blade of suspicion. Their words ca wrapped in pleasantries, but she could feel the dread bleeding through every line, every ink stain that refused to dry.
Her hands trembled as she opened the next dispatch. Her breath was already short, her lips parted with the silent gasp of a woman preparing for bad news and receiving worse.
Velthurien. Gone.
Not conquered. Gone.
The report stated the streets were lined with corpses, hundreds in uniform. Purifiers. Clergy. City watch. None of the citizens rembered a thing. Not one. The only signs of intrusion were sealed gates, scorched insignias, and blood still steaming where it pooled. It was as if a ghost had passed through the city, wearing the flesh of a thousand soldiers and leaving behind only bones and confusion.
Another letter. Another horror.
Halberreach, burned to the foundation. Thornvault, collapsed into itself like a dying lung. Saint Edrin’s Hold, cleansed by sothing that erased minds along with lives. Churches silenced. Holy flas extinguished before their embers could protest. The crimson robed agents she’d funded herself were returning half mad or not at all.
Even her asly border patrols could have conquered what remained of the Holy Verranate. That’s how broken the church was. A colossus before re days, a crumbled husk now. And not from an army. From an elf.
Her coronation was in three days.
Three days until the banners flew. Three days until the nobles of Argyll and her enemies alike watched her step onto the dais and claim power. Three days to smile with dignity while the walls of faith fell around her.
And the one man she had ’invited’ to secure this coronation, the one who she had unknowingly called for help warned her of this before leaving had been right all along.
Raven.
Not Corvin. Not an elf. Not even a Synod agent.
Raven.
She had given him a fief. One of her ancestral holdings. Fertile, resource rich, and symbolically central to her bloodline’s legacy. She had offered it not out of generosity, but strategy. She thought she could contain him.. bind the monster with parchnt and ribbon.
Instead, she had unshackled him.
She had welcod him behind her gates and gave him a place to stand. And he had unleashed horror upon her enemy with unheard cruelty.
She swallowed, but the motion scraped like gravel down her throat.
Her voice did not obey her. Her fingers gripped the table’s edge until her knuckles blanched, and her shoulders locked so tightly she feared she might never move again.
Her soul felt colder than the stone beneath her boots. Even the tapestries, stitched with the lineage of her house seed to shrink away from her, as though ashad.
The torches flickered.
The silence in the chamber thickened.
She closed her eyes in silent despair, heartbeat pounding behind her eyes.
And whispered the only words her mind could form.
"What have I done?"
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