Chapter 1: The Era of Rot
The war did not have a name. Not anymore.
In the beginning, the historians called it the War of the Three Crowns. Then, a decade later, the Border Conflict of the Silver Pass. But as the years dragged into decades, and the decades bled toward a half-century, the names fell away. Names implied a story, and stories implied an ending.
This war had no ending. It was simply the state of the world—a permanent grey sky hanging over the continent, raining steel and ash.
To be born in the Kingdom of Westvale was to hate the mountains of Northwatch. To be born in the crags of Northwatch was to despise the fat, fertile plains of Westvale.
It was a cycle fed by blood, turning the soil into a graveyard that stretched for three hundred miles.
General Kaelen of Westvale knew this better than most.
He sat atop his heavy charger, the rain drumming a rhythmic, metallic beat against his plate armor. He was a man of forty years, which made him an ancient in this era. He had survived the skirmishes of the Riverlands and the Sieges of the Low Forts. He was a man who understood the geometry of death.
But tonight, looking across the mist-choked valley known as the Breaking Grounds, he did not feel like a general. He felt like prey.
"Steady the line!" Kaelen barked, though his voice was swallowed by the howling wind.
Around him, three thousand Westvale heavy infantrymen stood in a defensive phalanx. They were good men.
Well-fed on the grain of the western plains, armored in polished steel, and drilled by the finest tacticians Queen Elsbeth could afford.
They outnumbered the Northwatch remnants trapped in this valley five to one.
It should have been a slaughter. It should have been a victory toast and a march home.
"Sir," his lieutenant whispered, reigning his horse closer. The young man's face was pale, his eyes wide and darting toward the treeline ahead. "The scouts... they haven't reported back."
"The Northwatch dogs are likely dead or fled," Kaelen said, though he didn't believe it. "They were broken at the last ridge."
"It's not the Northwatch army I fear, sir," the lieutenant stammered. "It's the rumors. The survivors from the outpost... they said he was with them."
Kaelen stiffened. He knew who the boy meant.
Every soldier in the three kingdoms knew the stories. They started as whispers in tavern backrooms and grew into terrified screams on the battlefield.
They spoke of a knight from the savage North who didn't fight like a man, but like a natural disaster. A creature who wore armor that was never polished, for it was permanently stained a deep, rusted crimson.
"Superstition," Kaelen snapped, gripping his reins until his leather gloves creaked. "One man does not turn the tide of a war that has lasted fifty years. One man is just meat waiting for a spear."
The wind suddenly died. The rain slowed to a drizzle.
From the darkened treeline ahead, a sound emerged. It wasn't a war horn. It wasn't a battle cry. It was the rhythmic, heavy clanking of metal steps.
Clank. Squelch. Clank. Squelch.
A single figure walked out of the gloom.
He was massive, though it was hard to tell where the man ended and the metal began.
He wore plate armor that looked as if it had been scavenged from a hundred dead men and beaten into shape by a mad blacksmith. It was jagged, scarred, and ugly. But what caught the eye was the color.
It wasn't painted red. Paint chipped. Paint faded. This red was organic. It was layer upon layer of dried vitality, a lacquer of violence that had turned the steel into a dark, crimson husk.
The Red Warhound.
He stood alone, two hundred yards from the Westvale line. He held a greatsword that looked too heavy for a human to lift, the tip resting in the bloody mud.
"Archers!" Kaelen roared, panic flaring in his chest. "Loose!"
Two hundred arrows hissed through the air. A black cloud of death.
The figure didn't flinch. He didn't raise a shield—he didn't even carry one. He simply tilted his head. The arrows struck. Most glanced off the heavy, angled plates.
Others caught in the gaps of his mail but seemed to hit nothing vital, or perhaps the man simply didn't care about pain. He stood there, a pincushion of shafts, and then he took another step.
"Charge him!" the lieutenant screamed, his composure shattering. "Ride him down!"
A squad of heavy cavalry, eager for glory, spurred their horses forward. The earth shook as twelve tons of horse and man thundered toward the lone figure. It was physics; it was inevitability.
A lone infantryman could not survive a cavalry charge.
The Warhound didn't brace himself. He began to run.
He ran toward the horses.
It happened so fast Kaelen's mind struggled to process it. Just as the lead lance dipped to skew him, the Warhound slid through the mud, going low. The greatsword swung in a horrific, upward arc.
Metal sheared. Bone snapped.
The lead horse collapsed, its front legs severed, sending the rider cartwheeling into the mud. Before the knight could stand, the Warhound was upon him. There was no duel. No exchange of technique.
The Warhound simply stomped on the knight's breastplate with a greave-clad boot,
crushing the chest cavity, while swinging the greatsword backward to decapitate the next rider passing by.
It was efficient. It was brutal. It was devoid of honor.
The Warhound roared then—a sound that wasn't human. It was the sound of fifty years of frustration, of fifty years of children dying in the mud, of fifty years of kings playing chess with human lives.
"Forward!" Kaelen screamed, drawing his own sword, though his hand trembled. "Kill the beast!"
But as the Westvale lines surged forward to meet the one man, the Warhound didn't slow. He carved a path through the phalanx like a scythe through wheat. He wasn't fighting a battle; he was dismantling an army, piece by piece.
In the chaos, as men screamed and lines broke, Kaelen realized the truth.
The legends were wrong. This wasn't a hero. This wasn't a knight.
This was the result of the world they had created.
The Northwatch mountains didn't breed monsters. The war did. The war took innocence, ground it into dust, mixed it with blood, and baked it in the fires of trauma until only iron remained.
As the Warhound's eyes—burning with a cold, dead light behind his visor—locked onto Kaelen, the General had one final thought before the end.
Who were you? Kaelen wondered. Who were you before the world broke you?