The world below the Dominion of Ash burned. Trench lines cut through blackened plains. Artillery craters pocked the ground in overlapping rings. Shield towers flickered and failed in distant rows, their collapse marked by brief flares of pale light before the smoke swallowed them. Thousands fought across the open flats, not a single one of them was over level 150. All weak. Foreign weapons went through throats. Fire cut through armour seams. Cultivators fell screaming, hands still raised, essence spilling out into the mud as their comrades stepped on their corpses to gain purchase. Someone was even dual wielding what seemed to be gatling guns. The sky was full of streaks, drones, flares, and the occasional long-arc technique that promised victory and delivered another crater. On paper, the Dominion’s commanders had the skill. On the ground, they showed their weakness. These servants were green.

  The shadow arrived before the ship did. A wide, pitch-black shape slid across the battlefield and the fighting stuttered in places where men couldn’t help but stare. Engines rolled into hearing a second later, a deep mechanical growl that flattened chatter and drowned out screams. The landing platform at the centre of the warzone was meant to be secure, ringed by friendly armour and shield lines, yet enemy fire still reached it, still bit into the stone, still drew blood from Dominion troops trying to pretend they had things under control. The vessel descended through smoke and ash, settled with finality, and the ramp opened on a scene that should have been a triumph. Instead it looked like incompetence wearing a uniform.

  He stepped out and the air changed around him. Obsidian armour caught no light. Conquest marks carved into the plates held faint heat from old battles. The greatsword across his back was taller than a man, its edge too clean for something that had killed worlds. Below the ramp, Dominion officers knelt fast, heads pressed low, hands flat to the platform as if the stone might save them. Across the field, enemy formations shouted, rallied, fired, and pushed harder because they understood opportunity when they saw it. The Cosmic Tyrant watched them and then looked down at the kneeling commanders with a disgust that had nothing to do with morality and everything to do with wasted time.

  “You had one task,” he said. His voice carried across the platform and out into the battlefield without effort, threaded through systems the locals could not name. “Hold the line. Break their centre. End the war before I arrived.” He turned his head slightly and the nearest officer flinched so hard his forehead cracked against the stone. “Instead, you gave me a spectacle. Look at this mess. Look at the resource loss.”

  A lieutenant dared to speak, words scraping out between trembling teeth. “My lord, the enemy’s elite arrived through an untracked corridor, we were forced to redeploy and the—”

  The Tyrant lifted a hand and the man’s voice died. His head just vanished… There wasn’t even any blood as the corpse stood for a moment before the tyrant made another gesture and the body was flung into the crowds below. He stepped off the ramp and rose into the air, boots leaving the platform as easily as if gravity didn’t exist. Smoke curled around him and pulled away. The battlefield below continued to fight in patches, but the majority just looked on in horror.

  He drew the greatsword.

  It left the sheath with a single clean sound and the sky seemed to dim. He swung once, a lazy horizontal cut delivered with one arm, as casual as clearing dust from a table. A line of black force travelled outward at waist height. It crossed the battlefield and everything it touched exploded, creating havoc. Enemy ranks folded into a red mist of blood and gore. Dominion ranks fared no better. Magical weapons of war, shields, towers. Nothing stood in the way of the crescent wave consuming the planet. Thousands died in the space of seconds. The line continued until it reached beyond the horizon, a fresh canyon through stone, then faded as if it had never existed.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Silence arrived. Not a single person within the wave was left alive.

  The Tyrant hovered for a moment and looked down at the cleared field, eyes calm, expression bored. “There,” he said. “The war is over. For those who remained useful enough to still be alive, learn from it. Your enemy is not the army across from you. Your enemy is your own weakness. I only use you because I can’t be everywhere at once.” His voice spread through the ears of everyone around, as loud as any megaphone, but as soft as a whisper. He let the sword rest across his shoulder and drifted down to the platform again, boots touching stone without sound.

  The surviving Dominion commanders bowed deeper than before, their bodies shaking with terror. Enemy survivors, the few who had been outside the cut, dropped weapons and knelt as well… what else could they do against absolute power. The Tyrant walked through both groups without distinguishing them. To him, allegiance was natural. Obedience was the only language that mattered.

  A local leader was dragged forward, robes scorched, face streaked with ash and blood. He tried to speak. His mouth opened and closed on words that could have been a plea or a proclamation. The Tyrant did not wait to find out. Steel whispered. The head rolled. It struck the stone, bounced once, and came to rest beside a Dominion officer’s knee. The officer stared at it with wide eyes and then slammed his forehead back to the platform as if he could erase what he had witnessed.

  Another leader was pushed forward, this one from the Dominion’s own appointed chain of command, the man who had promised victory reports and delivered a stalemate. The Tyrant looked at him for half a second. “Promotions,” he said, voice mild, “are rewards for competence. You treated them as decorations.” Steel whispered again. The body collapsed later. No one asked what the crime was. They already understood the rule.

  Minutes passed. Orders were issued. Control snapped into place. Supply lines were redirected. Surviving units were reorganised into clean columns. The battlefield became an inventory. The Tyrant returned to his throne of blue steel within his vessel and the view changed from burning plains to a star-map spread across the void, each captured world marked with the Dominion’s sigil. One point remained dimmed and sealed, a quiet absence in the middle of a region that should have been ordinary.

  SOL.

  Earth sat behind a concealment field so absolute it turned scans into lies and routes into dead ends. The Tyrant received nothing from it. No reports. No signals. No System notices whispering through the dark. The world was sealed and protected, a prize locked in glass, and that only made it more irritating.

  He stared at the surrounding systems and dragged a line through them with a gauntleted finger, selecting everything within reach that could ever become a corridor. Alpha Centauri, taken and stabilised. Barnard’s Star, in progress. Tau Ceti, contested. Each mark was an incursion point waiting to happen. Each would be occupied, stripped, trained, and chained into his logistics spine. When the seal broke, the world behind it would open into a cage he already owned.

  He leaned back on the throne and exhaled, slow, weary, annoyed in the way only the truly powerful could afford to be.

  “My underlings keep bringing me wars,” he said to the empty chamber. “Little ones. Messy ones. Everyone begging to be special. Everyone convinced their suffering deserves a witness.” His lips curled into a faint smile that carried no warmth. “If they want to die, they can do it neatly. If they want to live, they can do it usefully.”

  His gaze rested on the sealed point again, irritation sharpening into anticipation. “Earth… You’ll be mine soon,” he murmured. “Think of all the cultivation resources from a newly integrated planet. I can even make a push.” He tapped the map once, a deliberate touch that sent command rippling outward through his dominion. “Take the next world. Strip everything from here to Sol clean. Let it be known far and wide this section of the galaxy now belongs to The Dominion of Ash. Train every border hard. When that seal cracks, I want them to look up and realise they opened into my shadow.”

  He stood, black energy rolling off his armour in slow coils, and the greatsword locked into place across his back.

  “Onto the next one,” he said, and sat down on his Blue Obsidian throne.