The sound that followed was indescribable: a rusted door groaning, a banshee's scream, a mother's grief, all layered into one.
The air vibrated with sickening resonance. The light that erupted was so blinding that Kai shielded his face with his arm, fearing his sight would burn away.
Then the light dimd.
[Fusion Successful. Undead Ancient Oga Wyvern. Stats Unknown. Sentience Achieved.]
The thing that unfurled before him was enormous, its serpentine tail coiling like a living shadow, its wings black lattices of bone and mbrane. The skull bore horns like a crown of knives. Its presence filled the room with a palpable pressure, as though a storm had gathered indoors.
"Incredible. Surely even Ebonbrand would be impressed. This trumps even his undead dragon for sure."
Kai looked at it in awe.
It opened its mouth, rows of jagged teeth glinting, and spoke with a voice like distant thunder.
"Master. My previous parts thank you for creating ."
Kai's eyes narrowed, but his pulse quickened.
'It spoke? Not in broken thought, either!'
"Your loyalty, Wyvern?" Kai asked.
"To you, my liege."
"Good," he said softly. "What can you do?"
"I am unsure. As far as I know, I am the first of my kind."
Kai's lips curled into a thin smile. "The first of your kind? Then you'll need a na."
"I have no need of a na," the wyvern rumbled, lowering its massive skull toward him, "but if you would grant one, I would be honored."
"Ancient… Oga…" Kai muttered. "An honored wyvern. First of its kind… How about Wivre. It's what a wyvern used to be called in an older language. One known to my people. The first na."
"If that is the na you honor with," the creature said, bowing its massive horned head, "I will accept it."
"Go, for now. I'll have need of you later, I'm sure."
Kai opened up his shadow space and absorbed Wivre.
Kai felt the corners of his mouth twitch upward. He had built soldiers, knights, mages, and now sothing more.
Sothing more unique.
This wasn't an army anymore.
This would be a legacy.
With nothing but the occasional clattering of bones from his undead minions, the manor felt like it's purpose was yet to be fulfilled.
'Lets fix that, then.'
Kai laid out his knights and archmages in rows and began the work of tempering: hardening forearms with sigils of endurance, etching potency sigils into the rib cages of the archmages to make their arcane potential greater, and applying a generalised version of his own sigil to strengthen them even furher.
He spent days teaching them, Alongside Rhea, to move in battle more easily.
To pivot and lunge, feint and riposte, and use any dirty tricks in the book to win.
Without much knowledge of controlling magic other than his own, he instructed Ralts to teach the archmages how to use their abilities to their maximum potential.
He watched their mimicry like a sculptor watching clay take shape and felt sothing like pride and sothing else, sothing colder, thread through him.
Power.
He experinted with combinations: a skeleton magister with a tiny, trapped shard of a soul inside and sigils for channeling extra magic from that soul fragnt.
A veteran skeleton knight with layered strengthening runes across its spine.
An archer skeleton whose sockets housed tiny sigils to steady aim and increase accuracy.
Each ti, he paid the price of life essence, careful not to overdraw it.
Even as he laboured and shaped, Kai kept an ear tuned to the thread he'd left with Seyrel.
The link had been weakened, but not severed entirely; he could still send a probing thought.
He resisted the pull to dive back in.
He had only one advantage here: ti to prepare. Wasting it on watching his friends get tortured would be nothing more than that.
A waste of ti.
The manor was a brittle bastion, a small island of darkness and the low hum of freshly penned sigils. He used it as shelter and workshop.
As long as the demons couldn't find him, he'd continue.
During the nights, he walked the ruined streets in his cloak, feeling the stake air press against him, listening for the thin sounds that told him another force had not discovered him.
He thought about his friends screams until his teeth ached.
'Surely Orlin's laughter was one of defiance, and not the result of being a torturer. It's improbable, but the magic of the gods could probably turn even my friends against one another.'
He imagined their faces. Vepice's pallor, Orlin's empty sockets smiling, and Seyren's anguish.
The knot of irritation and frustration tightened in his gut and beca sothing else. Sothing that hardened his resolve.
Kai finished his prototype cohort late on the third day.
The newest line ford into ranks:
They moved awkwardly at first, a chorus of wooden soldiers, but under his command they conford into order.
Kai stood before them with bone chalk stained on his fingers, life-essence ward behind his ribs, and the forge's low chant like heartbeat.
He thought of the things he could not do yet, the Crown's tug on his mind and how it threatened to consu him, the untangled past of Orlin's and Deris' shadow, the unresolved fight with the Devourer, and the friends he left behind.
But then he looked at the skeletons and thought of Seyrel's torture and Vepice's screams, and the decision was made in the broken silence.
"Ti to build a stronger, smaller, more elite army," he said to himself, flat and certain.
He would not yet call in the vast thousands of stray corpses across the continent like he desired.
He would not fling himself at the Godspoken and the church of the citadel headlong.
He would carve sothing lean and sharp: tempered units, fused with minor souls where tolerance allowed, bound with sigils that made them faster and stronger.
He would experint with his Covenant Wraith, and see just what havoc he could wreak. He would finally make use of his undead to use as spies throughout the entire country and not just the areas around him.
Any moves his enemies make, he'll be ready for.
He would practice, temper, and await any weakness he could exploit.
Outside the manor, the village slept in its long death.
Inside, Kai drew a layout on the table: squads and specialties, sigil arrays for field formation, contingency routes to reach Seyrel's last-known location.
He sketched grids of the citadel in his head and plotted the smallest, fastest strike that might break through an army of overpowered individuals and free the people he owed his life to.
He worked through the night, and when the candles guttered low he finally let himself breathe.
He was tired in a way that crawled into his bones, but his hands were steady.
'Soon... I'll find a way back to Iria without bringing in hordes of demons.'
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