The black sun hung low behind a veil of smoke, casting its scorched hue across the shattered plains before the capital. Once-verdant fields now lay twisted beneath curses and ash, warped by decades of tyranny and a blood-soaked crown. The cursed king's stronghold loomed at the horizon—a fortress of black iron and broken hopes.
The army stood at its edge, ragged but resolute. Farmers, healers, outcast knights, wind-callers, stonebinders, and those bound not by birthright but by a single unyielding truth: they would not allow the shadow to consume what remained of Cindermoor's soul.
At their head stood Caelum—still cloaked in his false humanity, though the fire of judgment stirred within him. The memory of the visions—slaughter, rape, and innocent cries unanswered—burned fresh in his chest. He had not asked for the gift that awoke within him, but it pulsed now, a silent judge tethered to his godly origin.
"Let them come," he whispered, and as if the land had waited for his word, the gates of the black city groaned open.
The cursed king's army spilled forth—soldiers twisted by decades of foul magic and broken oaths. Their armor was fused with flesh, their eyes void of reason. Weapons glistened with unnatural ichor. This was no army—it was a tide of the damned.
The battlefield screamed.
Kaelen, once a hunter, now a commander by necessity, barked orders through the din.
"Hold the line! Earthbinders to the front! Archers, stagger your shots—wait for my signal!"
He ducked under a corrupted blade and drove his dagger into a soldier's throat. It made no human sound—only a gurgled hiss as it collapsed.
Behind him, Mira, the waterweaver, darted through the chaos, her palms glowing with liquid light. She hurled coiling streams at allies' wounds, closing rents in flesh and knitting torn muscle.
"I can't keep up!" she gasped, glancing at the field. Too many wounded. Too few healers.
Still, she pressed on.
At the left flank, Tarn, the half-giant smith, waded into battle with a hammer the size of a tree trunk. Each swing shattered two or three foes. His armor glinted with runes etched in sorrow—the names of his children carved across his chest.
One enemy, faster than the others, slipped through and slashed at his thigh. He roared, blood mixing with black mud.
"I'll bleed gladly," he growled, "if it buys the others time."
Amid the chaos, Elaren, the quiet scholar-turned-seer, stood trembling, her staff raised to the sky. Eyes rolled white, she channeled visions to Caelum.
"They're pushing toward the heart. Toward you. They know."
Caelum nodded. "Then we end it here."
He stepped forward—and time bent.
The battlefield's noise dropped away. The air tightened. The gift—the curse—awoke. His eyes shimmered with light not of this world, and in a sudden hush, he saw.
Not just the battle. But their souls.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Some were hollow.
But others… some still flickered.
And among them was Aleron.
He moved as the others did, blade raised, eyes dead. But his strikes lacked precision. His steps wavered. He faltered before killing blows. Something clung to him—memory.
Caelum stepped into his path.
Their blades met—but Caelum held fast. "You remember," he said.
Aleron froze. His sword trembled in Caelum's grip.
"I… don't…" he stammered. "I'm not… him."
"You are."
Images poured into Caelum's mind. A younger Aleron, laughing beside comrades. Kneeling in gold-plated armor. Then fire. Screams. A village burned on orders he didn't understand. His hands wet with blood not earned but commanded.
"I watched children burn…" Aleron whispered. "And I… obeyed."
Tears streamed from corrupted eyes.
"You can be more," Caelum said. "But you must choose now."
Around them, blades clashed. Blood soaked the ground. But in this narrow pause, the war trembled on a hinge.
Aleron screamed—not in rage, but in agony—and drove his sword into the earth.
"I am Aleron, son of Gren. Soldier. Traitor. And I will not be this monster."
The curse buckled.
His armor cracked like shell, shards falling to reveal the scarred, gaunt man beneath. The light in his eyes returned—dim, but real.
Caelum reached for him. "There's still time."
Aleron shook his head. "Not for me. But… I can hold them. Buy the others a chance. You reach the king."
The tide surged again.
Aleron turned, now fighting with the fury of one reborn. No longer cursed—but not free either. He swung with brutal grace, blocking the path to the others.
Mira stumbled past, eyes wide. "That's one of them—!"
"No longer," Caelum said.
Tarn's hammer crashed beside them. "Then let's honor him. Forward!"
They advanced—and Aleron stood his ground.
A corrupted behemoth lunged, blade like a cleaver. Aleron dodged left, sliced through tendon, rolled under the falling corpse. He didn't look back. Only forward. Every strike was a prayer. Every block, a penance.
One blade found his side. Another struck deep into his shoulder. But still he stood.
As the army passed, Caelum turned once.
Aleron looked at him.
And smiled.
Then he vanished beneath the wave of cursed soldiers—his final stand a wall between light and shadow.
The battle churned for hours.
Mira's hands blistered. Kaelen had taken a spear through the calf but limped onward. Tarn's hammer was shattered, and he fought bare-fisted, his roar shaking the very bones of the enemy.
Elaren collapsed mid-vision, the toll too great.
And Caelum? Caelum burned.
His judgment now fully awakened, he cast light upon the battlefield. With every corrupted soul he touched, he saw them—what they were, and what they had become.
Some he felled.
Some he spared.
Others… he transformed.
Not into death. But into penance.
A cursed woman who had laughed as she cut innocents—he made her see, feel every cry, every life ended. She wept, then turned her blade against her own cursed kin.
Another, a young man, broken by years of forced war, was struck by Caelum's light and dropped to his knees, whispering thanks.
Not all were saved.
But enough.
When the cursed army broke, it did so like ice cracking under pressure—sudden, jagged, final.
The survivors stood in silence.
Tarn knelt, bloodied, beside Mira. "Did we… win?"
Kaelen limped to Caelum's side, face grim. "The gate's open. The king waits."
They turned toward the towering fortress.
Behind them, the battlefield was a graveyard—and among the fallen, a space of silence where Aleron had made his stand.
Elaren, barely conscious, touched Caelum's arm. "He was the first to choose redemption. Others will follow."
Caelum looked toward the black spires.
"And one day," he said, "so will the last."
Titel: Siege of Shadow