The capital woke to rumors before it woke to blood.
That, Aldir learned, was how fear truly spread—not through screams, but through whispers that could not be confirmed or dismissed.
A body found drained of warmth but unmarked. A guard discovered kneeling at his post, eyes open, breath gone, sword still sheathed. A drunkard swore he saw a corpse walking along the riverbank and was beaten for his trouble.
By noon, the bells rang.
Not the celebratory chimes of festival or prayer, but the low, measured toll reserved for calamity. Aldir heard them from the upper levels of an abandoned tenement overlooking the eastern district. He sat in the shadows, cloak drawn tight, listening.
Each bell was a question.
Each echo demanded an answer.
"They know," he murmured.
Below him, the city moved like a disturbed hive. Guards doubled their patrols. Priests lined the streets, radiant symbols burning brighter than usual. Incense choked the air, heavy with sanctification rites meant to ward off what they did not understand.
Aldir felt those rites scrape against him like dull knives.
They did not harm him.
They announced him.
The devils' presence stirred faintly in his mind, attentive but silent. This was his lesson to learn alone.
By dusk, the order came
Every gate sealed.
Every mercenary company recalled. The Undead Decree—unused for centuries—was invoked by trembling hands in the High Court. Aldir did not hear the proclamation, but he felt its intent ripple through the city like a shockwave.
He was no longer a rumor.
He was a target.
Aldir descended into the streets as night fell.
Not running. Not hiding.
Walking.
He moved with deliberate slowness, learning the limits of his new existence. His body did not tire. His breath did not hitch. Pain existed, but it no longer commanded him—it reported.
He passed a patrol of six guards at a crossroads. Their lanterns flickered as he approached.
"Halt," one called. "Curfew—"
Aldir stopped.
Their eyes slid over him at first. Then lingered. Then narrowed.
"You," the captain said slowly. "Show your face."
Aldir lowered his hood.
Recognition did not come immediately. Then it did.
Color drained.
"That's—" someone whispered.
Aldir did not wait for orders.
He extended his will.
The street beneath their feet answered.
Hands burst from the cobblestones—rotted, skeletal, clutching ankles and greaves. The guards screamed, stumbling as the dead pulled themselves free with wet, scraping sounds. These were old bodies, forgotten burials beneath the city's foundations.
They rose confused but obedient.
The captain swung his sword wildly, severing an arm that did not bleed.
"By the gods—kill it! Kill—"
Aldir stepped forward and drove his fingers into the man's chest.
Not stabbing.
Commanding.
The heart stopped.
The body sagged.
And then—after a heartbeat that never came—it straightened again.
The remaining guards broke.
They ran screaming into the night, armor clattering, sanity unraveling.
Aldir stood amid the risen dead, lantern light flickering over hollow eyes and broken mouths. He felt them—each one tethered to his intent. They were not thinking. Not suffering.
They were tools.
The realization settled without resistance.
"Follow," he said.
They did.
Word spread faster than fire.
By midnight, the capital was hunting him openly. Sanctified hunters with silver-inlaid weapons. Battle-priests chanting litanies that made Aldir's skin buzz unpleasantly. Mage-seals flared on rooftops, tracking disturbances in death-energy like scent.
Aldir adapted.
He stopped moving through streets and began moving under them.
The catacombs beneath Asteria were vast—older than the kingdom, older than the gods it worshipped. Aldir descended into them through a collapsed sewer grate, the dead following silently behind him like an honor guard.
There, in the dark, he began to organize.
He learned quickly.
Some corpses were useless—too decayed, too shattered. Others were pristine, buried with care, their bones strong, their joints intact. He sorted them by instinct, assigning roles without conscious thought.
Front line. Support. Watchers.
The devils stirred again, faint approval threading their presence.
Pattern is power, they conveyed.
Aldir sat among the dead and listened—not to whispers, but to memory. Each corpse carried fragments: not thoughts, but impressions. Fear. Duty. Regret. He filtered them out ruthlessly.
Emotion weakened cohesion.
By the third night, he commanded thirty-seven.
By the fourth, sixty.
By the fifth, the capital burned.
Not everywhere. Not chaotically.
Selectively.
Supply depots collapsed when their guards fell and rose again to turn on their own. Watchtowers went silent. Courthouses were emptied, their clerks fleeing as skeletons marched through marble halls.
Aldir did not attack civilians.
Not out of mercy.
Out of calculation.
The city needed to choose to fear him.
They did.
The High Court convened in panic. Priests argued. Generals demanded scorched earth. Mages warned of escalation.
And somewhere beneath the city, Aldir Frost listened, unmoving, as his undead army stood at rest.
He no longer flinched when killing.
That truth arrived quietly, like a bruise discovered too late.
The first kill had shaken him. The second had disturbed him less. By the tenth, his thoughts had begun to wander during the act. By the fiftieth, it was routine.
Efficient. Necessary.
Clean.
He told himself this was survival.
The devils did not correct him.
On the seventh night, they sent champions.
Sanctifiers—elite warriors wrapped in holy sigils, their bodies reinforced by divine rites. They descended into the catacombs with blazing symbols and voices loud with certainty.
Aldir met them head-on.
The battle was brutal. Holy fire tore through undead ranks. Bone shattered. Tethers snapped. Aldir felt each loss like a pulled tooth—sharp, unpleasant, but bearable.
He adjusted.
He sacrificed three undead to bind one Sanctifier.
When the holy warrior fell, screaming prayers as his blood pooled on ancient stone, Aldir hesitated.
This man believed.
That used to matter to him.
Now, it was simply another variable.
Aldir placed his hand on the dying man's forehead.
"Rest," he said.
Then he took him.
The Sanctifier rose, symbols flickering weakly before extinguishing entirely.
Silence followed.
The remaining holy warriors fled.
Aldir stood amid ruin, cloak torn, hands blackened with ash and blood that no longer warmed him. His army—reduced but refined—waited.
He realized something then.
He was no longer being hunted.
He was winning
And the thought did not thrill him.
It settled him.
That was worse.
Aboveground, the capital trembled.
Below, Aldir Frost—the executed, the discarded, the undead—tightened his grip on the city's throat and felt nothing but focus.
This was what erosion looked like.
Not madness.
Not cruelty.
Just the steady replacement of hesitation with resolve.
The dead stood ready.
And Aldir, at last, knew what he would become.