He stepped past the weeping woman, letting the suffocating twilight of the Ashen Veil swallow the execution grounds .

  "The Hero is dead."

  __________

  The morning sun offered no warmth. It barely pierced the thick layer of ash settling over the capital's rooftops.

  The execution plaza was completely locked down. A perimeter of Vanguard knights encircled the square. These were the kingdom's most hardened veterans, yet their gauntlets violently shook as they gripped their halberds. They kept a wide, terrified berth from the massive, pitch-black dome suffocating the city center.

  Thirty elite mages from the Ivory Tower, summoned this morning, stood inches from the Ashen Veil. Several of them were actively bleeding from the nose.

  A senior spellcaster pulled his trembling hand away from the dark energy. His glove had burnt from the fingertips by merely touching the Veil.

  "It's not a barrier," the senior mage rasped, wiping dark blood from his upper lip. "It isn't anything! It's eating my mana!"

  A younger mage staggered backward, clutching his chest as he desperately tried to take in air. "This is not like any CONCEPT magic I have studied. There is no mana signature. It feels like..." He swallowed hard, his eyes wide with panic. "It feels like absolute nothingness. When I try to anchor a spell to it, it tries to pull my mind into the void."

  "Do not cast near it again," the senior mage ordered, his voice deep and commanding. "This is a corrupted CONCEPT. Send a rider to Grand Mage Orlon immediately."

  CRACCKKK.

  Jagged veins spiderwebbed across the pitch-black dome. Dark smoke violently hissed from each fracture. The barrier was collapsing on its own.

  "M-MAGES!" the senior mage yelled over the screeching energy. "TIER-A AND ABOVE SHIELDS TO THE FRONT!"

  Fifteen spellcasters surged ahead. They dropped to one knee, thrusting their trembling hands toward the fracturing dome.

  "IGNIS MYTH: SALVARE!"

  Fifteen towering walls of roaring flame erupted from the cobblestones, locking together into a massive barricade. The mages and the Vanguard knights grit their teeth, bracing for the shockwave.

  "Any moment now..." The Senior Mage held his hand high, his heart hammering against his ribs.

  The Ashen Veil crumbled.

  Millions of dead, grey flakes cascaded onto the execution grounds, dissolving into dark particles. The morning wind caught the dark particles, carrying them away across the capital. There was no explosion or flash.

  The senior mage lowered his hand, his eyes wide with caution.

  "Shields out!"

  The massive barricade of roaring fire extinguished. The searing heat vanished, leaving the execution plaza completely exposed to the morning wind. The only thing covering it now were the side-barriers. The mages had placed them to stop the public from running inside.

  The Vanguard took the lead, their iron gauntlets gripping their halberds tight. The mages trailed closely behind them. The air immediately assaulted their lungs, thick with the suffocating stench of rusted iron and rapid decay.

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  They stepped forward into the execution grounds.

  Their heavy boots broke through a thick layer of grey ash settling over the cobblestones. Ahead of them stood the raised wooden scaffold.

  The wooden stairs leading up to the chopping block were entirely pristine. Spotless. A young mage swallowed hard, his throat clicking in the dead silence. No one from the panicked crowd had even made it to the steps.

  The senior mage pressed a trembling hand to his silver cross pendant. He kissed the metal, then motioned for the Vanguard to move past the scaffold and examine the plaza floor.

  The Vanguard stepped past the wooden scaffold.

  The air turned cold as the smell of death and decay pierced their nostrils.

  A veteran knight dropped his iron halberd. His heavy greaves slammed into the cobblestones as his legs completely gave out. He curled into a fetal position in the ash, his breath hitching in pure, unfiltered panic.

  Behind him, The senior mage doubled over. He violently retched, his breakfast splattering against the grey ash. In his decades of training and wars, he had never witnessed anything like this.

  This was not a battlefield. It was a showcase of malice.

  Thousands of bodies were piled into grotesque, impossible mounds of shattered flesh. Vanguard knights in full heavy plate lay scattered across the stone, their chests compressed completely flat by localized gravity. The steel was flattened like stamped coins, with pulverized bone and thick, dark blood violently extruded from the seams of the armor.

  Nobles and peasants alike were reduced to twisted shapes. Their limbs had been caught in gravitational shears, spun like wet threads until the skin tore and the white bone spiraled outward. Their necks were snapped at sickening, inverted angles.

  Those who had stood in the front row to cheer the execution were left staring at the sky. Their eye sockets were entirely hollow. They were weeping thick streams of dark blood where the eyes had been flawlessly plucked from their skulls.

  The Hero had vanished, along with the corpse of Emilia.

  Three days later, on a quiet evening, a figure was seen walking alone. It was a young boy, probably around fifteen years old. He was wearing a dark green traveller's cloak. The hood had been pulled low, covering the eyes.

  He was walking towards the forest, heading straight to the borders. Far away, a mountain was visible under a blood red sky.

  _________

  "Lwastik. Something is approaching us."

  Malakor, the Demon Queen, sat rigidly on her throne of obsidian. The grand hall was carved from jagged volcanic rock, the air naturally suffocating and hot. A stone slab beside her held untouched raw meat and dark wine.

  Lwastik, her towering right-hand general, bowed stiffly. "Something, Your Majesty? The perimeter is heavily warded. Every mana string is tethered directly to your core."

  He straightened his massive shoulders. "Rest assured, I will alert the outer gates at once."

  The temperature in the throne room violently plummeted. The burning red magical orbs illuminating the hall shattered into dust.

  Lwastik collapsed to the scorching floor. His claws tore frantically at his own throat.

  "I-IT CAN'T B—" he rasped, fighting a losing battle to force air into his crushing lungs.

  Malakor threw her hands toward the entrance. Her crimson mana flared, flooding the invisible wards to reinforce the heavy iron doors.

  The heavy iron doors flattened with an explosion. Crushing upon themselves into the floor.

  Eila walked straight up the obsidian steps. He bypassed the suffocating general and stopped directly before the Queen.

  For the first time in a thousand years, Malakor felt a cold sweat prickle the back of her neck. The boy standing before her was undeniably the human weapon she had watched decimate her armies, but his ethereal, almost divine aura had vanished.

  He possessed a dark, pulverizing presence that dwarfed even her own malevolent energy. His eyes were long dead of emotion. Malakor felt as if the void in them was staring directly through her soul.

  "What are—" Malakor, the ancient Queen of Demons, stood up from her obsidian throne.

  Eila reached into his blood-stained cloak and tossed a crumpled piece of parchment onto the scorching floor at her feet. It was a highly detailed, tactical map of Oakhaven, one of Aethelgard's largest, most prosperous fortress cities.

  "The northern gates are heavily fortified, but the eastern wall has a blind spot in the mana warding network," Eila stated, his voice completely dead and hollow.

  Malakor stared at the map. Her crimson eyes flared. Red mana swelled around her hands, threatening to violently collapse the throne room, yet her fingers trembled.

  "O Hero of Mortals, you dare mock the Queen of Demons?" she demanded, forcing her chin high to maintain authority. "You dare set a trap for me, O foolish one? What is this?"

  "It is a permission," Eila replied, turning his back on her and walking methodically toward the ruined iron doors. "Do whatever you want to that city. Burn it. Eat them. I do not care. I am not the Hero anymore."

  The Queen dropped her arms, utterly paralyzed by the absolute apathy of his decree.

  Eila paused at the threshold. He glanced over his shoulder, the pitch-black void of his left eye swallowing even the mana.

  "Just make sure it hurts."