The black fog of the Rumbling parted like a festering wound as the six-armed Maiju servant dragged the broken form of Veynar Umbros back to the obsidian monolith that served as the Pact's mobile command. His purple robes were scorched into his skin, and his breath came in wet, rattling gasps.
At the base of the monolith, the remaining members of the Pact of Obsidian waited.
Kaelthorn, the Soul Butcher, was the first to speak. A low, wheezing sound erupted from behind his iron mask—a laugh that sounded like dry leaves skittering over a grave.
"Look at our 'Shadow God,'" Kaelthorn mocked, poking Veynar's charred ribs with the tip of a jagged hook. "Humbled by a man who carries a scrapbook. A mere Commander of a dying kingdom has plucked the feathers from the crow."
Graven, the Bonewright, tilted his head, his hollow eyes glowing with clinical amusement. "His mana-vascular system is shattered. How embarrassing, Veynar. You promised us the soul of a Saint, and all you brought back was the scent of your own failure."
Even Dartivus Vaderius did not offer a hand. He looked down at Veynar with a cold, terrifying indifference. "The boy Wan has done us a favor. He has shown us that mercy is a waste of time. If a single Commander can stall our vanguard, then we have been too gentle."
Veynar tried to snarl, but only blood bubbled from his lips.
"Enough games," Vaderius commanded, his voice vibrating with a frequency that made the nearby Maiju whimper. "The 'Rumbling' is the hammer, but we are the blade. Let us show Gonaya what happens when they manage to irritate a God."
THE HARVEST OF SORROW
The First Defense Line of the Gonaya East Gate was held by the 3rd Silver-Spear Battalion. These were not legends like Redhardt or saints like Wan. They were ordinary men and women—fathers, daughters, and sons who had spent years training to defend their homes.
When the Pact of Obsidian stepped onto the field, the air temperature dropped forty degrees.
"Please... no..." a young knight whimpered, his spear shaking so violently the iron tip rattled against his shield.
Kaelthorn moved first. He didn't run; he glided. His Suture-Chains erupted from his sleeves like vipers made of black glass. With a flick of his wrist, the chains threaded through the armor of the front row of knights.
"Mercy?" Kaelthorn whispered, leaning close to a knight whose eyes were wide with terror. "Mercy is for those who still have a soul to save. I'm going to turn yours into a necklace."
He yanked the chains. There was a sound of rending metal and snapping bone as the knights were pulled together into a screaming, tangled mass of flesh. They begged for their lives, crying out for their mothers, for the Emperor, for anyone—but the only response was the wet thwip of more chains.
Beside him, Graven raised his staff. He didn't strike the soldiers. He struck the ground.
"Osteomancy: The Forest of Ribs."
From beneath the feet of the retreating knights, massive, jagged bone-spikes erupted. They didn't just kill; they impaled. Men were hoisted ten feet into the air, their bodies twitching as the bone-spikes slowly expanded inside them. The battlefield became a garden of white calcium and red gore.
One knight, a veteran with silver hair, fell to his knees, throwing his sword away. "Have pity! We are already defeated! Just let us go!"
Dartivus Vaderius walked past him, the sheer weight of his aura crushing the knight's lungs until he was gasping for air like a fish on dry land.
"You chose to stand in the way of the New World," Vaderius said, not even looking at the man. "In the new world, there is no room for the weak. Your death is the only contribution you have left to make."
Vaderius raised his hand, and a sphere of Obsidian Gravity collapsed over the remaining battalion. There was no battle. There was only the sound of armor being crushed into spheres of scrap metal, and the chilling, final silence of a thousand lives extinguished in a single heartbeat.
THE BLOODY PATH TO UKYO
The Pact stood amidst the ruins of the 3rd Battalion. The grass was no longer green; it was a dark, sticky crimson. The "Horrifying Glory" of the Pact was written in the broken bodies that littered the path to the capital.
"The East is open," Graven noted, stepping over a severed hand that was still clutching a locket. "The Emperor's 'rage' seems remarkably quiet now."
"Veynar," Vaderius turned to the servant who was still carrying the broken shadow-mage. "Since you failed to kill the Commander, you will oversee the deployment of the Grotesque Maiju. Release the Iron Juggernaut and the Silk Widow. I want the gates of Ukyo to be paved with the bones of their own children."
Veynar, his eyes burning with a manic, renewed hatred, nodded slowly. "They will... pay... every... single... one..."
The Pact of Obsidian began their march again, leaving behind a graveyard of those who had begged for a mercy that would never come. On the walls of Ukyo, the lookouts watched in frozen horror as the black-robed figures approached, walking calmly through a storm of fire and blood.
The massacre had begun.
[TO BE CONTINUED]