The dawn over the Blackwood Estate was a lie. It arrived with a pale, sickly light that struggled to pierce the morning mist, casting long, distorted shadows across the manicured courtyard. It was a place built for the vanity of the Council—marble fountains carved into the likeness of weeping saints, cobblestones scrubbed daily by servants, and the scent of jasmine hanging heavy in the air.
That scent was gone now. In its place was the iron-heavy stench of a butcher's shop.
Sir Kaelen of Gaan, the man the commoners called the "Sun-Touched Knight," coughed. Each breath was a wet, rattling struggle. He slumped against the base of a fountain, his white-and-gold surcoat—the colors of King Leonus's elite guard—now a sodden, heavy mess of crimson.
He looked up, his vision blurring. "Why?" he wheezed. "Leonus... he told us... he told us you died for the Cure..."
Ten paces away, the monster that used to be Alaric the Faithful stood motionless.
Alaric didn't look like a man anymore. He looked like a grave that had been dug up and forced to walk. His silver armor, once the pride of the Gaan Royal Guard, was a blackened, rusted husk. The holy etchings had been violently gouged out, replaced by a film of dried, dark ichor that seemed to pulse with a life of its own. He wore no cloak; it had been shredded long ago in the Hag's grove. In its place, a faint, red vapor hissed from the gaps in his plate armor, smelling of old copper and rot.
Above him, suspended in the air by a tether of shadow that defied the wind, was the Eye.
It was a wet, muscular orb the size of a man's head, its surface a network of throbbing blue veins. The single, dilated red iris swiveled with mechanical precision, zooming in on Kaelen's shattered face.
"Look at him, Alaric," the Blood Hag's voice echoed directly into the marrow of Alaric's bones. It was a voice of dry thorns and cold mud. "Look at the little lion cub. He wears your colors. He sleeps in your barracks. He probably even drinks from your favorite cup. Doesn't that make your blood... boil?"
Alaric's head tilted slightly. Within the dark slit of his visor, a baleful red glow flared—a heartbeat of pure malice. He didn't speak. He didn't have to. The Hag's "leash" was a constant, searing heat at the base of his skull, a reminder that his soul was no longer his own. He was a weapon. A tool. A dog.
Alaric stepped forward. His boots, heavy and caked in gore, made a wet squelch on the pristine marble.
"Stay back!" Kaelen roared, his voice breaking. He grabbed the hilt of his claymore—a consecrated blade gifted by the Pope of the Church of Dawn. "By the Light of the Sun, I cast you out, traitor!"
Kaelen swung with the desperation of a dying animal. The blade caught the morning light, erupting in a brilliant, holy gold. In the old world, this strike would have cleaved a demon in two. It was the power of Faith.
Alaric didn't move to dodge. He didn't even raise his arms.
The golden blade slammed into Alaric's shoulder. There was no sound of metal on metal. Instead, there was the sound of a hot iron being quenched in oil. The red vapor hissing from Alaric's armor surged, wrapping around the holy sword like a parasitic vine. The gold light screamed, flickered, and died.
Kaelen's eyes widened. He watched in horror as the blood-red mist turned the consecrated steel into a brittle, rusted scrap in a matter of seconds.
Alaric reached out. His gauntlet, slick with the blood of Kaelen's squires, closed around the blade. With a single, effortless twist of his wrist, the "holy" sword shattered into a dozen pieces.
Alaric's hand didn't stop. He grabbed Kaelen by the throat, lifting the armored knight off the ground with one hand.
"He's so heavy with 'justice,' isn't he, my pet?" the Hag giggled through the Eye. "Lighten his load."
Alaric's grip tightened. He didn't use a knife. He didn't need one. He reached into the invisible currents of the air, tapping into the Sanguine Depravity.
The blood that had pooled around the fountain—the blood of the men Alaric had already slaughtered—began to tremble. It rose from the cracks in the cobblestones like a legion of red snakes. They slithered toward Kaelen, drawn to the heat of his living body.
"Alaric... brother..." Kaelen choked out, his face turning purple.
"Brother... is dead," Alaric rasped. The voice was a ruin, a sound of grinding stones.
Alaric made a jagged gesture with his free hand.
The rising blood suddenly hardened, turning into four massive, obsidian-black spikes of congealed gore. They hovered for a fraction of a second, vibrating with a low, humming dread.
Then, they lunged.
The first spike drove through Kaelen's stomach, pinning him against the air as Alaric let go of his throat. The second and third lanced through his palms, the sound of metal and bone tearing echoing through the silent courtyard. The fourth spike shot upward, entering through the soft tissue under the chin and erupting through the top of the helmet, silencing the knight's gurgling pleas forever.
But Alaric wasn't finished. The Hag demanded a message.
He grabbed the horizontal cross-beam of the blood-spikes. With a violent, guttural growl, he wrenched the entire structure. The wet, sickening crunch of a spine being pulverized rang out like a bell.
He flipped the cross.
Now, Sir Kaelen hung upside down. His blood, pulled by the dark gravity of the spell, began to flow in reverse—streaming out of his mouth and nose, drenching the white-and-gold surcoat until it was a solid, dripping red. The inverted cross stood as a monolith of blasphemy in the center of the Baron's estate.
Alaric stepped back, his chest heaving. He watched as two smaller splinters of blood-glass shot forward, lancing directly into Kaelen's dead, open eyes, sealing them in crimson crystal.
"Exquisite," the Hag whispered. The Eye zoomed in, the red iris dilating until it nearly filled the orb. "A martyr for the mud. The King will see this. The Pope will see this. They will know that their property has returned to claim the debt."
Alaric looked at the inverted corpse. He felt no satisfaction. He felt no relief. He only felt the cold, gnawing void where his heart used to be, and the burning thirst for the next name on his list.
He reached down and picked up a scrap of Kaelen's surcoat that hadn't been fully soaked yet. He wiped the gore from his visor with a slow, deliberate motion.
"One," he said.
He turned his back on the estate, walking into the mist as the first true rays of the sun hit the courtyard. The light did nothing to warm the stone.
Behind him, the Eye followed, dripping ichor onto the marble, marking the path of the Lap Dog.
The Baron's Discovery and the Herald of Rot
The mist did not lift with the rising sun; instead, it curdled, turning a sickly yellow as it mixed with the smoke of the estate's extinguished torches.
Baron Valin, a man whose belly was as wide as his influence in the Council of Elders, stepped onto the balcony of his manor. He held a crystal flute of imported wine, ready to toast the successful departure of his son's scouting party. They were the King's "Hero Champions," the elite who would supposedly secure the kingdom's safety.
The glass slipped from his fingers. It didn't shatter; it thudded into the thick, velvet rug, staining it deep purple.
"Kaelen?" the Baron whispered.
There was no sound from the courtyard but the rhythmic, wet drip... drip... drip... of liquid hitting marble. Valin stumbled down the grand staircase, his silk robes fluttering behind him like the wings of a panicked moth. He burst through the oak doors, his personal guard scrambling to keep pace.
They stopped ten feet from the fountain. Two guards vomited instantly. Another fell to his knees, frantically tracing the sign of the Dawn across his chest.
"What is this sacrilege?" the Baron shrieked, his voice hitting a glass-shattering register. "Who did this?!"
Before him hung the inversion of everything Gaan stood for. Kaelen, his pride and joy, was no longer a man. He was a gruesome signpost. The inverted cross of solidified blood groaned under its own weight. The young knight's head hung inches from the ground, his hair matted with the gore that had drained from his body. Those crystal-sealed eyes seemed to stare directly into the Baron's soul, frozen in an eternal expression of betrayal.
"My Lord..." a captain of the guard stammered, pointing at the manor's white stone wall. "Look."
Written in broad, violent strokes of drying ichor was a message that spanned the entire length of the courtyard. It wasn't written in the elegant script of a scholar. It looked as though a beast had dipped its claws in a wound and dragged them across the stone.
THE FAITHFUL IS DEAD.
THE DOG HAS RETURNED FOR HIS LEASH.
"Alaric," the Baron breathed, the name tasting like ash. "But... the King said... Leonus swore he died a hero..."
High above, hidden within the swirling yellow mist, the crimson Eye narrowed. It zoomed in on the Baron's trembling jowls, capturing the exact moment pure, unadulterated terror took root in his heart.
"Look at his face, Alaric," the Hag's voice hissed in the back of the knight's mind, miles away. "That is the look of a man who realizes his gold cannot buy a shield against the dark. Do you feel it? The spark of their fear? It's better than wine, isn't it?"
Part 3: The Kennel of the Damned
Hours later, far from the civilized spires of Gaan, the landscape turned into a nightmare of weeping trees and black water. This was the Copper Grove, a place where the sun never touched the ground and the air tasted of old pennies.
Alaric moved through the knee-deep muck with the mechanical persistence of a golem. His armor hissed as the swamp water touched the "Blood Heat" still radiating from his plates. Every joint in his body ached with a dull, throbbing fire. Sanguine magic was not a gift; it was a loan, and the interest was paid in the user's own vitality.
He reached the center of the grove, where a massive, gnarled willow tree stood, its leaves replaced by long, dripping strands of red moss.
At the base of the tree sat the Blood Hag.
She did not look like the monsters from the stories. She sat upon a throne of bleached elk bone, draped in silks that looked like flayed skin. Her skin was the color of a drowned corpse, and her hair was a tangled nest of black briars. She was holding a small, silver bowl, watching the reflections within it—reflections provided by the Eye that still hovered near the Baron's estate.
"Come here, my pet," she said, her voice a melodic rasp.
Alaric didn't hesitate. The "Straightforward" man he had been was gone, but the habit of obedience remained. It had simply found a darker master. He dropped to his knees in the black mud at her feet, his heavy armor clanking.
"The tithe is paid," Alaric rasped.
The Hag reached out with a hand that ended in long, obsidian-sharp nails. She didn't strike him. She stroked the side of his rusted helmet, a gesture that was terrifyingly maternal.
"One 'Hero' down. Forty-nine to go," she murmured. "Leonus is panicking, Alaric. He thinks he can appease the Gods by offering them the souls of his friends. But he forgot one thing."
She leaned down, her face inches from the dark slit of his visor. Her breath smelled of wild sage and iron.
"The Gods only love the taste of 'Faith.' And you... you have none left. You are a void in their feast. A hole in their world. And that makes you the only thing they cannot eat."
She pulled a heavy, iron collar from her side. It was etched with runes that glowed with a faint, nauseating violet light. Without a word, she snapped it around the neck of Alaric's armor. It didn't choke him, but he felt his dark power stabilize, pinned to his soul like a moth to a board.
"You did well today, Lap Dog," she whispered. "Now, crawl into your corner. Sleep. Dream of the Princess. Dream of the King's throat. Tomorrow, we hunt the Church."
Alaric didn't argue. He crawled to the hollowed-out root of the willow tree—his "kennel." As he collapsed into the cold mud, his vision began to fade. The last thing he saw was the Hag peering into her bowl of blood, laughing softly as the bells of the Gaan capital began to toll in the distance, announcing the death of their "Sun-Touched Knight."
The war had truly begun.