"Move! Move out of the way, you maggots! I bring news from the North!"
The cry cracked across the wind like a lash. Moments later, hoofbeats thundered through the parched land, each strike hammering the earth with primal force, as though the land itself recoiled from the rider's approach.
He came like a storm—black armor reflecting the harsh midday light, face hidden beneath a battered helm. Dust trailed behind him in a ragged plume as he tore down the road, his presence impossible to ignore.
And beneath him was no ordinary beast.
The horse—if it could be called that—was a nightmare given flesh. Jet-black from mane to hoof, its muscles rippled beneath its obsidian hide. Twin points of crimson glowed from its eyes, radiating a baleful, otherworldly intelligence. There was no mistaking its lineage. This was a warbeast bred for death, not travel.
With every gallop, the ground cracked beneath it, as though even the land feared to touch it for too long. Its speed was unnatural. Its fury, barely contained. It did not run. It charged, like a predator chasing blood.
Ahead, the black fortress rose from the horizon.
Massive and merciless, the structure seemed carved from a single slab of obsidian. Jagged battlements crowned the walls like a row of teeth ready to bite the sky. The fortress loomed like a wound upon the land—eternal, unyielding, hungry.
Guards lined the ramparts, their dark armor glinting like beetle shells in the sunlight. Each carried a halberd crusted with old, dried blood. Their silence was heavy, their posture exact. These were not green recruits, nor mindless killers. These were soldiers of discipline and steel, their cruelty honed to a fine edge.
From atop the central watchtower, a figure stepped into view.
Senior Captain Ulric, eyes sharp as spearheads, adjusted his grip on the railing. He tracked the rider's dust plume with growing suspicion, lips thinning beneath a trimmed beard. The fortress rarely received visitors who came bearing speed and fury.
"Tch."From atop the tower, the man clicked his tongue, his expression curling with disdain. What kind of fool shouts like that so close to the Black Fangs' walls?
Below, the courtyard stirred. Guards paused in their routines. Some turned with thinly veiled annoyance, others with cold amusement. The shouting rider barked like a wild dog, as if sheer volume might shake stone or bend steel.
But here, in the fortress of the Black Fangs, noise alone didn't command respect.
Not among wolves dressed as men.
Then, a runner appeared from the side tower, breathless and pale, sweat trailing down his temple. A scroll was clutched tight in his hand.
The senior guard met him halfway. No words exchanged. The scroll was passed, unfolded with a sharp flick.
What the guard saw melted the sneer from his face.
"…Vice Captain of the Scout Regiment?" he muttered, voice low, eyes narrowing. He glanced back over the battlements at the figure below—the rider, still circling like a trapped beast before the gate, hands clenched white around the reins.
A chill passed through the watchtower.
The Scout Regiment was no mere border patrol. They were the first wall against the Beasts of the South—veterans of blood and shadow, forged in the wilderness where laws meant nothing and survival was never guaranteed. Their vice captain wasn't some pampered noble's errand boy.
He was a predator.
He didn't shout. He didn't beg.
And yet here he was—yelling like a madman, face pale, voice cracking.
Something was wrong. Deeply wrong.
The senior guard felt a knot of unease begin to twist in his gut. A thread of fear coiled beneath his ribs, quiet but sharp. His hesitation turned brittle, ready to snap.
And still, below, the gates stayed shut.
The vice captain stared up, his chest heaving, red-veined eyes burning beneath his helm. The guards—still unmoved—watched with suspicion.
As if this were some farce.
The rider's jaw clenched. Hands tightened on the reins.
There's no more time to waste.
"MARTHENA HAS FALLEN!"
The words crashed like a warhammer against the fortress walls.
Silence devoured the ramparts.
A chill swept through the air like a winter gale, stealing the breath from every soldier's lungs. Grips faltered. One guard's halberd clattered against the stone with a sharp clang, forgotten. The name Marthena was more than a city. It was a pillar—an economic lifeline along the Empire's northern frontier, a bulwark of civilization.
And now… it was gone.
The senior guard stumbled back, color draining from his face.
"OPEN THE GATES, DAMN IT!!" the rider roared again, desperation clawing at his throat.
Battle-honed instincts snapped the senior guard from his stupor. He bellowed, voice slicing through the stillness like a blade:
"OPEN THE GATES! QUICK, OPEN THE GATES!"
The command broke the spell.
Men leapt into motion. Gears screeched, chains rattled, and the massive black gates groaned as they began to open.
The rider didn't wait.
The moment a gap appeared, he urged his steed forward, vanishing into the city's shadow like a specter chased by death itself.
From above, the senior guard stared after him, breath shallow.
"To fell Marthena this quickly…" he muttered, voice cracking with disbelief. "What kind of demon is marching toward the Empire?"
His gaze turned inward, toward the inner guard detail. His expression hardened like hammered iron.
"Listen closely," he said, voice cold and sharp. "From this moment on, not one word. Not to your comrades, not to your wives. Not even to your gods. If this leaks before the Duke hears it, I'll have every loose tongue buried beneath this wall. Do you understand me?"
The soldiers stood frozen, but they understood.
He exhaled. A long, slow breath.
"…And may the Empire help us all if it's already too late."
"Too late… it's too late to react now."
The voice was brittle, aged like parchment left too long in the sun. It came from an old man in a servant's robe, posture hunched but presence unnervingly calm. His eyes—dimmed by years yet still sharp as glass—settled on the figure before him.
A man in black armor, caked in dried blood and mud, stood hunched as if gravity itself had turned against him. His breaths came in rasps, each one dragged from a body pushed far past its limit. His mount was gone—ridden to death, no doubt.
The servant's head slowly turned.
Across the chamber, a young noble stood frozen. Robes of royal blue wrapped his lean frame, and a scroll trembled in his hands.
"How is this even possible, Father?" the boy whispered, eyes wide with disbelief—and dread.
No one answered.
At the heart of the mountain-keep chamber, beside a tall arched window that overlooked jagged cliffs and storm-gray skies, stood a man.
He was neither young nor yet old, but carried the weight of both upon his shoulders.
One eye was blind, scarred and sealed shut by an old wound, but the other gleamed like polished steel. His beard was coarse and unstyled—not due to neglect, but because beasts had no need for refinement. His presence was carved from years of war and command, shaped by both victories and betrayals.
It pressed in from all sides, smothering sound and breath alike.
It wasn't unlike standing near Kael when his fury burned.
But this?
This was colder. Older. Infinitely more dangerous.
At last, the man turned.
The servant straightened. The son held his breath.
He didn't speak. Not immediately.
The silence grew taut, held in suspension, until he reached the great chair at the center of the room. A throne of black iron and dark wood, carved with quiet savagery and cloaked in the pelt of something monstrous.
He sat.
And the room exhaled.
The old servant stepped forward, as he had countless times before, and lit a thick, dark cigar. No words were needed. The man took it, inhaled deeply, and let the smoke curl from his lips like ghosts leaving a battlefield.
Only then did his single eye fully open.
His voice, when it came, was low and steady.
A war drum in the deep.
"To crush a rebellion in just two weeks… rebuild the wreckage with his own hands… reignite an economy in a land we'd all marked as lost…"
He paused, smoke curling upward, his gaze unfocused—as though he were watching each of those feats unfold before him.
"…Then to seize a province, rout the Steelclad Order, and slay a Beast Lord we hadn't even known crossed the border."
Another pause. Another breath.
"He's not just sending a message. He's giving the Empire every reason to turn on us. Every excuse to question our relevance… our loyalty… our place."
And then—so faint it might've been imagined—a smile.
Just a flicker.
"It seems His Majesty has taken to strangling me with silk."
The servant stepped forward again. His worn boots made no sound on the stone floor. He didn't look the Duke in the eye. Not out of fear—no—but reverence, carved by decades of shared wars and scars.
"No, my Lord," he said quietly.
"He isn't just strangling you."
He turned, pouring clear tea from a kettle into bone-white porcelain.
"He's tightening a noose around the entire realm."
The steam rose in ghostly wisps.
"You just happen to be the last one to feel the rope."
The words lingered.
Then—
"Ha."
A dry bark of a laugh. Half amusement, half lament.
The Duke leaned back.