The warfront had become a charred husk of its former self. Hills were now hollowed craters steaming with molten fissures. Rivers once flowing with muddy water ran thick with liquefied bone and blood.
Ash clung to the sky like a ceiling of mourning, black and unbroken. And at the center of it all stood the Butcher—Egmund, wrapped in Aden Vasco's flesh.
Flames coiled from his fingertips like serpents, hissing against the wind. His presence distorted the air itself, warping heat and gravity in waves that made soldiers drop to their knees, vomiting, weeping, or simply going blind.
Every step he took left behind a brand on the earth—a smoldering hoof-print, demonic and deep.
The storm above Dahaka cracked open like a wailing throat. Thunder wasn't thunder anymore. It screamed. Bolts of sickly violet lightning split the mountains, revealing crawling silhouettes embedded in stone—ancient horrors, once sealed, now stirred by Egmund's wrath.
Corpses littered the valley, stacked high like sacrificial altars. Some were fused together by the waist, grotesque totems of pain. Others writhed even in death, twitching as if begging to be released from some invisible torment.
Every few moments, one of them rose, not as undead—but as twisted mockeries of the living. Their limbs contorted backwards. Their faces split open, revealing not bone—but tongues that whispered in languages the wind refused to carry.
The line between man and monster was collapsing.
Egmund raised his hand. Firestorms burst to life, coiling down like divine punishment. Entire formations of liches—once mighty spellcasters—were reduced to carbon statues, still standing for a breath before collapsing into piles of black dust.
But it was the living who suffered worse.
Some tried to flee. A young sergeant screamed the order—"Fall back! Regroup! He's out of control!"—before a jagged lance of obsidian tore through his skull from above. The weapon had not been thrown. It had grown—forced into shape by Egmund's sheer will, sculpted from the man's own shadow.
Others simply dropped their weapons and curled into fetal positions, rocking in the mud. Prayers meant for gods fell limp from their lips, swallowed by the silence that followed each scream.
Egmund's laughter—Aden's voice twisted beyond recognition—rattled across the scorched valley. He moved like a phantom, a blur of heat and malice. He cut down a squadron of knights by cleaving the ground in two beneath them.
Lava surged upward, devouring their bodies mid-fall. Their screams, cut short, echoed unnaturally, as though recorded and played back through shattered glass.
And then, from the heart of the flame, Egmund began to shape the land.
He wasn't content with mere destruction. No. He was claiming Dahaka.
The earth quaked violently. Cracks split outward from his position like a spider's web. Towering structures erupted—pillars of bone adorned with screaming visages, twisting upward like trees made from pain itself.
A forest of agony. Between them, arches formed—bridges of muscle and black sinew, lined with the melted armor of the fallen. This was no longer a battlefield.
It was becoming a domain.
A fortress of the damned.
And then, the true horror began.
With one sharp motion, Egmund drove his hand into the chest of a dying high lich. He pulled free the core—a pulsating organ of light and soul—and crushed it in his fist. The explosion rocked the terrain, but instead of obliteration, a ripple of green-black energy sank into the earth. A moment passed.
Then the dead began to whisper.
Soldiers who had fallen minutes ago rose with trembling legs. Their bodies still broken, their armor melted, their eyes cloudy—but their mouths moved. Whispering names. Pleading. Calling to their comrades with the voices they once owned.
"Roa... help me... I can't see..."
"Captain Arlen... please... I'm scared..."
The living recoiled in horror. A mage stumbled back from the corpse of her brother, who now knelt before her with entrails dragging like ropes, whispering, "Sister... don't leave me again..."
It was a trap of the cruelest kind. Egmund had forged weapons from grief itself.
Panic fractured what remained of the Twelfth Pillar. Some fought back. Others hesitated. Many just froze—unable to strike the familiar faces of those they had trained beside.
Egmund stood amidst the chaos, arms wide as if embracing the firestorm. "Do you see it now?" he bellowed. "War is not about right or wrong. It's about who can smile longer while burning alive."
From afar, Rhea watched with hollow eyes. Her sword arm hung limp. She clutched her shoulder, bleeding, yet could not tear her gaze from the monster wearing Aden's skin.
"That's not him," she whispered, more to herself than anyone else. "That... thing isn't Aden Vasco."
Above them, the corrupted sun pulsated—its corona black, its light acidic. From its edges, tendrils of flame reached down like fingers dragging the sky into the dirt.
And in the distance, the Bone Citadel murmured—responding to the presence it had long awaited.
Something deeper was stirring.
The devil had awoken—but what it had summoned in turn... had not yet shown its face.