Year 249, Age of the Hero.

  Thundering hooves shook the field, driving deep into the mire in a heavy, almost funereal rhythm.

  Shouts echoed across the vast plain—scattered, directionless—while muted commands drifted through rising smoke columns that clawed at the sky. Flies droned without pause, smothering the silence the battle had left behind. Rotting flesh fouled the air, mingling with suspended ash.

  A war had been fought here.

  No glory remained.

  Only extermination.

  A hundred riders pressed forward through corpse-littered mire and twisted steel, scanning the devastation with measured caution—men searching for something they dreaded to find.

  Among them rode a knight astride a black warhorse.

  Neither the tallest nor the most ornate among them, his armor bore no gilded reliefs, no decorative etchings. Yet the farther he advanced, the more the others yielded him space, respect widening the gap without a word spoken.

  Scars carved his face—not trophies of defeat, but proof of survival.

  Dark hollows framed his eyes. No fatigue lingered there. Only cold vigilance, sharp and constant—killing readiness held in restraint.

  A forest-heart green cloak draped over dull steel, heavy and unadorned. The fabric stirred in the wind as he rode at the center of ruin.

  Something about him unsettled the others—something they could not name.

  Around him, silver-armored knights gleamed too brightly for a field like this. Polished steel clashed against mud and blood.

  They had arrived late.

  Or they had waited.

  One knight recoiled as worms began to feast upon a cooling corpse.

  “This wasn’t a battle…” he muttered, swallowing bile. “It was a massacre.”

  “Even the Xarias couldn’t hold…” another said, disbelief cracking through his composure. “That’s impossible.”

  The murmur spread, subtle as a fault line.

  The knight in green did not turn. He already knew their thoughts—knew the words they feared to give voice.

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  At last, he spoke.

  “Knights.”

  Not a shout.

  A judgment.

  The murmuring died.

  “Our comrades will not gather themselves.”

  No one answered.

  They dismounted and set to work. Mud swallowed boots and bodies alike. Lifting the fallen tore loose limbs with wet, dreadful sounds. An arm remained behind. A leg slid back into the blood-thick mire.

  One knight bent and vomited.

  The sound mingled with groaning leather and strained steel.

  No one mocked him.

  Through the ruin, an elderly knight approached the man in green, soot and dried blood caking his armor. Each step looked painful.

  He had fought here.

  “Commander Niles Hastings?” came the quiet question, asked without turning.

  The old knight halted, surprise flashing across his face before he bowed.

  “Your Majesty… I am Niles Hastings, Lord Commander of the Order of the Knights of Eva.”

  Several soldiers stiffened at the title.

  Turning slightly, the man revealed eyes that failed to reflect the daylight.

  “Rise, my lord. You will explain what happened.”

  With effort, Niles straightened.

  They moved aside from the others, boots sinking into darker, thicker mud.

  “Forgive me, Your Highness… you are…?”

  “The Mage King of Dotts. Lev Valerius.”

  The name struck like a stone dropped into still water.

  Color drained from Niles’s face.

  “But… the ritual… it was said none would survive—”

  “I was the only one who did.”

  A hand settled on his sword hilt. A chill clung to the air around him.

  “Survival is not always a privilege.”

  Silence thickened.

  “We tried to hold them back,” Niles continued, voice rasping. “They outnumbered us twenty to one. No formation could withstand it. We might as well have tried to dam the tide with bare hands.”

  Lev spat into the mud.

  “For us, perhaps. Not for the Xarias.”

  Niles lowered his gaze.

  “When we arrived… they were already dead.”

  Wind swept harder across the plain, as though the land itself exhaled.

  “No matter how vast the demonic horde,” Lev murmured, lifting his eyes, “the Xarias were this world’s wall.”

  His gaze hardened.

  “That they should fall now… that is the true tragedy.”

  Greater than any defeat.

  Greater than any kingdom.

  “There are too many questions,” he said softly. “And no answers.”

  Then the air shifted.

  Not wind.

  The world.

  The flies fell silent.

  Horses sidestepped, uneasy.

  A sepulchral stillness settled over the field. Even the smoke seemed to hang motionless in the sky.

  “Your Majesty!” Niles shouted.

  A thunderous roar split the heavens—not lightning, but something deeper, as though the sky itself had been torn open from within.

  And then they saw it.

  Not descending.

  Not falling.

  A black blade tore across the firmament at impossible speed, carving through clouds as though they were cloth.

  It did not shine.

  It devoured the light.

  Shadows stretched toward it across the field, drawn in recognition.

  Several knights flinched.

  “What… is that?”

  Lev did not look away.

  His pupils widened.

  Not fear.

  Recognition.

  A faint smile touched his lips.

  “So… they have finally arrived.”

  “Your Majesty, that is—!”

  The name no one dared speak weighed upon the air.

  For decades it had been a whisper.

  A warning.

  A heresy.

  Lev closed his eyes for a single breath.

  “So… our death has come.”

  When he opened them again, doubt no longer existed there.

  “The Demon King has returned.”

  And this time—

  No Xarias remained to stop him.

  The wind died.

  The Field of Mireya fell into absolute silence, as though the world itself held its breath.

  High above, the black blade continued its path.

  Searching.