Ash rained from the sky that day. Ash, casting the atmosphere dark, weightless, and relentless. It drifted like a funeral shroud, soft at first glance but heavy with what it meant. The wind carried it in slow, spiraling flurries, each flake a ghost of something lost.
A village burned below the cliffs, its rooftops gutted and sagging inward, skeletal beams glowing red beneath their own collapse. The bell tower, once proud, now stood cracked and charred, its spire half-gone, as if some great hand had snapped it mid-prayer. Smoke coiled upward like the last breath of a dying god. And above it all, on the jagged overlook of a ruined fortress, he stood, a lone figure against the dying sky, watching the world burn beneath him.
Drayce Vortalis.
No crown adorned his head here, no banners flanked his sides. Just the wind, shrieking through the ruins as if it belonged to him alone. As if it were telling the tale of his vicious victory. His presence spoke louder than any battle cry, bleeding the warmth from the air and replacing it with something colder than fear.
His black coat whipped behind him, trailing behind him like a banner of ruin, it's hem etched with silver-threaded sigils and marked with bloodstains both old and fresh. Beneath the shadow of his dark fringe, his golden eyes glinted. Not warm like sunlit amber, but sharp, reflective, like something watching you from the bottom of hell.
A commander approached him, his armor was dulled by soot, ash and heavy with the weight of smoke and blood. He stopped a few paces behind the figure on the ridge. His voice suddenly broke through Drayce's wandering thoughts.
"Your orders, your Majesty?"
Drayce didn't turn towards him. His gaze remained fixed on the valley below, where the last spire of the village crumbled into the inferno. Flames danced in his golden pupils flickering like whispers of chaos but his face remained unchanged not divulging anyone anything.
"Let them run," he said, voice low, smooth, and absolute. "Fear spreads farther than corpses."
The commander bowed without question and vanished into the smoke, his silhouette was swallowed by flame-lit haze.
Behind him, four chained prisoners knelt in the mud, their chains heavy, their clothes torn and muddied beyond recognition. Trembling, nobles, generals, priests whatever they had once been, it meant nothing now. One of them lifted his head and dared to speak:
"You can't kill us all…" he rasped. "The kingdom—"
Drayce walked toward him. His golden eyes now fixed on him. Like death in no hurry.
He stopped before the man not even drawing his sword and looked down at him with quiet finality.
"I don't care about the kingdom," he said, in a voice cutting and cold. "I care about what happens after it stops existing, when I mold its remains in my own taste, to serve its new master."
"You fucking...you will go to hell," the man spat.
"Oh? Remind me what do you people named me." Dracye said in amusement.
"Ah, right. I am the devil's own shroud. Then hell will be my refuge." he ended with a cold smile.
Then he raised a single gloved hand, and snapped his fingers.
The guards obeyed without question.
As screams echoed behind him, but Drayce turned his gaze to the north to the untouched kingdoms that still hadn't fallen. Unaware that their time was running out. The wind stirred the ash around his boots like smoke curling at a pyre. And then —
He smiled. Like a man who already saw their end.
***
The war banners of Ilvaran were still burning, their rich velvet reduced to smoldering scraps. The scent of scorched cloth and ash hung heavy in the night air, curling through the darkness like the last breath of a dying kingdom.
Just beyond the broken skeleton of the conquered palace, Drayce walked through the cold moonlight toward his command tent. His long black coat billowed behind him like a dark flag in the wind, and the firelight caught the glint in his lethal golden eyes.
Around him, his commanders and ministers trailed him standing on the edge of their newly won empire. They surrounded him as he approached the tents, voices rising one after another with reports and questions.
"Your Majesty, the Ilvaran capital's treasury has been secured. The mint awaits your seal to begin conversion of currency." said a man, thin and pale with ink-stained fingers.
Drayce gaze flickered towards the finance minister. "Finance Minister, it isn't the first kingdom we've captured."
"Ah—of course, Your Majesty. Then I'll proceed with standard protocols." the minister replied.
"Your Majesty, the surviving nobles have been contained in the southern wing," another minister reported. "They request an audience."
The Finance Minister looked up, genuinely puzzled. "Why? Are they requesting an audience for terms of surrender?"
Minister Two leaned closer to the finance minister, lowering his voice. "They want to pledge loyalty to join His Majesty."
"Ah! Right," the Finance Minister murmured, nodding earnestly. "His Majesty will show mercy, then!"
"In his mercy, His Majesty kept one alive for bookkeeping skills; otherwise he would already have been executed for his running words." murmured someone from the back of the ministers, earning a few muffled chuckles.
Drayce's voice cut through the surrounding, silencing the murmurs, "Execute them. Quietly. Replace them with those who already swore fealty; the ones who helped with intel."
"As you say, Your Majesty," came the response.
The Finance Minister, standing slightly back, inclined his head and asked, genuinely shocked, "Why? Wouldn't some of them be useful for administrative purposes?"
It was his first time on a battlefield. Drayce had instructed and called them to set up the new kingdom quickly; otherwise, the Finance Minister would normally arrive later, once all the political groundwork was settled, to handle the finances.
"They were too loyal to Ilvaran once," Minister two replied, easing his confusion. "Accepting them can lead to they plotting in the paperwork. Better to neutralize the risk. We have enough capable man to replace them."
Drayce added, "Keep an eye on the new ones. Once they betray, they'll do it again. Give them low posts, nothing important." confusing the finance minister more from the political calculus.
"Then why keep traitors at all?" he asked his companion.
"Haa...because replacing them with foreign nobles from the start would spark protest," Minister helped him smoothly. "And because punishing them outright looks weak. We need to strip them of influence slowly, letting them rot in mediocrity while we tighten control."
"Ah," said the thin man with ink in his hand as if understanding his liege.
"Ah," said the thin man, ink still on his fingers, as if he finally understood his liege.
They entered Drayce's command tent and the ministers resumed their reports without missing a beat."The eastern ports remain unstable," another officer said. "With the capital fallen, they may revolt. Shall we send the Third Battalion, Your Majesty?"
Drayce moved to the centre of the tent, where maps and war plans lay spread across the table. He leaned over them, tracing a finger along the coast. "Send the head of their prime minister with the Fifth Battalion—fear will make them—"
Then he stopped mid-sentence.
**
"It's missing, your Majesty. From your tent. We believe it was taken during the eastern tower's collapse. The chaos in the withdrawal gave someone cover."
Another, braver or more foolish, tried to soften the weight of the news but failed:
"Perhaps it's good luck, your Majesty. In Ilvaran tradition, a stolen item at departure means misfortune leaves with it."
But Drayce instead of responding glared and watched them through his eyes that passed over each officer.
After a short while though Drayce tilted his head. Just slightly,
"Is that so?" he said quietly. Too quietly.
He turned toward the table his eyes flicking over the battle plans and tokens and then he stopped. He refused to even stir just stared, his gaze dropped. And there, resting on the black cloth on the table where it hadn't been moments ago, lay a small silver pendant. Exactly where it shouldn't have been a second ago.
"Found it."
One of the men exhaled in relief.
"There it is. Seems it was misplaced after all—"
"No," Drayce said, interrupting. His voice was calm, but now ice-cracked.
"It wasn't misplaced. It was touched." The air thinned, the temperature seeming to drop with the words.
He moved and picked up the pendant, turning it slowly between his gloved fingers. Then, without a flicker of expression, he closed his fist around it like snapping a trap shut.
"It doesn't matter that I found it." his voice became brittle.
"It matters that someone thought they could take it."
The officers gulped, with sinking realization in their throats. Someone had drawn their liege's attention and not in a way that promised mercy. After the long war, he usually rests, letting the world smolder around him, but this… this incident promised a cruelty far sharper than whatever passed in the battlegrounds before.