In the abyssal depths of Tartarus, where primal fire licked like wounded dragons, stood a throne of blackest obsidian, carved from the bones of warriors across all realm and the infernal metals of the Pit. Shrieking winds bore the cries of damned souls, while whirlpools of blood churned like the waking eyes of ancient fiends.
Upon this throne sat Azraelis, his shadow merging with the eternal gloom, his eyes twin embers blazing within a sepulcher of sulfur.
And thus it was inscribed in the Celestial Scrolls of all creation.
From the chasms of Tartarus shall malevolence rise a second time. There, beneath heavens fractured by molten rock, the Shadow Sovereign wove the doom of mankind—a race walking in an illusion of tranquility, heedless of their fate being threaded by a cold and merciless hand...
Azraelis rose from his throne, his voice rumbling like quakes in the world's roots.
"Behold, creatures of the abyss! Humanity revels in ignorant bliss like lambs in green pastures! They worship false light. Forgotten are the true terrors of night! This day—as shadows lengthen like the breath of Tartarus—we shall rend their veil of peace! Every scream shall become our hymn! Every ruin, a verse in our eternal anthem.
His clawed hand—skeletal fingers tipped with dagger-black nails—scattered darkness across the blood pool, conjuring visions of human cities.
"Witness! Their fragile palaces, their arrogant citadels built upon the bones of their own kind—all shall crumble like sandcastles before the tides of black ocean!"
And from the chasm of doom emerged three figures—three eras incarnate.
Nekron. His armor wrought of cursed thorns, the gargantuan sword Breath-Stealer gleaming upon his back. Where he trod, death-soot bloomed like black flowers, each step cracking the earth with grave-cold fury.
Zephiron. A body honed like a razor's shadow, twin blades A Somber Wind hissing with blood-thirst. Eyes glinted—twin frozen crystals, unblinking and pitiless.
Belial. A walking mountain of malice, the warhammer Soul Breaker in his fist weeping captive spirits whose screams frayed the air, begging for oblivion.
Nekron knelt before the Tartarus-King, his voice grinding the air like coarse stone.
"Brother! What command shall we fulfil? Let our weapons be the pens that write the final verse of mankind's hymn!"
Azraelis extended his hand, iron claws shredding the vision of human cities—vanishing in an instant.
"Nekron! Storm their citadels! Shatter walls built upon hollow pride! Let every rubble-cry proclaim... Human arrogance is but dust!"
"Zephiron! Slaughter their knights upon the battlefield! Show their vaunted speed is tortoise-slowness before the death-eagle! Let their blood irrigate the soil—the drown it!"
"Belial! Shatter the temples they call holy! Pulverize their false gods' statues with your hammer! Make them know... Only darkness endures in this world!"
Thus departed the three generals—like hell-forged arrows loosed from the bow of apocalypse.
Tartarus trembled at their passing; rivers of lava sang death-anthems. Azraelis smiled, ebony fingers clenching over a vision of the mortal world now become a sea of fire.
"Go" he whispered to the sulfur-scented gloom,
"and write their end-time in letters of ash and blood."
A figure emerged from the shadows—a fourth general, lesser known yet far more cunning. Moriana, the Weaver of Fate. Her form shifted like smoke, a tapestry of interconnected souls trailing from her shoulders.
"The Calestial Scrolls foretell resistance, my Lord," she whispered, offering a parchment woven from the skin of warriors across realms."The Assassin has made his move. The traitors Danteus and Hector gather strength in Elysion."
Azraelis laughed—a sound like mountains crumbling.
"Let them. Their hope will make their despair taste sweeter."
_ _ _
While Tartarus plotted its malice, Elysion slumbered—though not in peace.
King Gaius stood atop the Sun Spire, his eyes sweeping the horizon where the sky bled from orange to deep violet. The air smelled of jasmine and the coming rain, yet he tasted the distant tang of acid lightning—a flavor that reminded him of the Ash War three centuries past.
"They are coming", a voice whispered beside him.
Danteus—the Inferno figure—stood shrouded in mortal-spun robes, his eyes, which held the coldness of hell, gleamed with deep regret.
"Azraelis has unleashed his generals. Nekron will strike within a fortnight."Azraelis has unleashed his generals. Nekron will strike within a fortnight."
Gaius's grip tightened on the rusted sword he had kept since his first war alongside his people.
"And the Assassin?"
"He wacthes from the shadows. Even i can't fully trace him
...But he will fight—not for you, but for them." Danteus nodded toward the sleeping city below, where children dreamed unaware, and bakers were already kneading dough for dawn's bread.
"For the innocent," Gaius understood. "The only cause worth dying for."
Suddenly—a flicker of white cloth on a distant rooftop. A figure so swift it might have been a trick of the light.
He had heard them.
And he had vanished.
_ _ _
Nekron did not simply march—he unmade the earth with every step. His armor, forged from the thorns of the Tree of Torments, whispered curses to those who dared near. Breath-Stealer—his blade—was not sheathed but suspended in a vortex of stolen sighs, each one a life he'd extinguished.
"Remember the Scouring of Meridian?"
He polished his twin blades with ash gathered from the ashes of a Luminaries. "How they begged? Their prayers tasted like sweet wine."
Belial grunted, hefting Soul-Breaker. The hammer's head was a cage of tormented spirits, their faces pressing against the ethereal bars.
"Prayers are empty noise. Bones cracking—that is a true hymn."
They paused at the Gates of Abandonment—a fissure in reality leading to the mortal realm. Here, Moriana awaited them, holding three vials of liquid shadow.
"A gift from our lord. Drink, and the mortal realm will not reject you presence. But be warned—their world will fight you. The very air will try to expel you. You have three lunar cycles. Fail, and become ghosts in a realm that hates you."
Nekron drank first.
"We are not here to conquer. We are here to erase."
As they stepped through, the gate screamed—and the first human village came into view. Smoke rose from chimneys. A child laughed.
Nekron smiled.
"Let the erasure begin."
STONEHOLD: The Border of Elysion
The sky was no longer blue. Instead, it was torn, screaming in agony, gaping like an ancient wound ripped open once more. From the fissure streamed not light, but rivers of fire and eternal wails—a sound that was not mere noise, but a devastating tremor that shook the very soul, shattered bones, and thickened the air with the acrid stench of ozone and scorched metal.
From the heart of this chaos, three terrifying forms descended. They did not walk—they manifested like embodied storms. Each step they took was an earthquake. Ancient oak trees, silent witnesses to the birth of kingdoms, splintered like dry twigs beneath their feet. The air hissed, trembled, and swelled with a heat unlike any known to this world—a heat that annihilated, a heat that transcended hell.
Nekron the Slayer landed first. His terrifying spiked greave slammed into the earth, and the ground yielded. A half-mile-long fissure split open, gaping like a starved leviathan's maw, exhaling the cold breath of death and stone dust. His armor was not ordinary iron—it was a living mass of throbbing spikes, each barb whispering curses in a forgotten tongue.
To his left, Zephiron the Whisperer hovered. His feet did not touch the ground. He floated, shrouded in a self-aware black mist that licked away light and life. Where he passed, grass withered to ash, stones blackened and cracked, as though ages passed in an instant. He was a walking void, a breathing emptiness.
To his right, Belial the Grave-Sunderer slammed down Soul Breaker. The earth shuddered violently. The massive hammer, forged from the skull of a titan and the spine of a dragon, chained the souls of all it had slain—screaming for freedom—igniting emerald-green firenetworks across the ground. The flames spread, siphoning all life—grass wilted, insects died instantly, fertile soil turned into a barren gray wasteland.
From behind the flaming portal came the legions of Tartarus.
The rift vomited its horrific contents. Thousands of creatures with branched horns, lava-scaled skin, and ember-glowing eyes surged forth. Their stench preceded them—a mix of boiling sulfur, rotting flesh, and searing iron—tainting the air, rendering it unfit for mortal lungs.
They needed no command. Humanity's border city—Stonehold, an arrogant fortress with granite walls three centuries old—became their first target.
The thirty-meter-high walls did not crumble. They melted like sugar in rain, the granite dissolving into fine dust under demonic warhammers and corrosive acid.
Soldiers on the ramparts, who had just sworn to defend the city to their last breath, now screamed hysterically. Winged creatures snatched them from above, hurling them onto jagged rocks below. The sound of their impact was a terrible crunch, followed by an even more terrifying silence.
Those who survived the fall met a worse fate. Gored by horned beasts, torn apart by claws, or thrown alive into boiling, flaming sulfur pits.
Nekron roared. His voice was a shockwave that shattered eardrums. He charged the last cavalry line—mighty warhorses now terrified, eyes rolling white, trying to flee but stomped into a pulp of flesh and steel under his stride.
Breath-Stealer, his jet-black blade, swept through the air. It did not cut—it erased.
One swing.
Twenty soldiers were cleaved in two at the waist. Their upper halves remained standing for a moment, faces confused, before collapsing. Entrails and blood geysered into the sky, forming a horrific crimson fountain, raining redness upon the land.
Gaius, far away in Elysion—his hands trembled as he watched from the tower window, witnessing the distant chaos veiled by nature's mantle.
"I asked the borderlands to join us… they refused me outright…" Gaius muttered to Danteus, who stood behind him. "And now… that turmoil at the edge… it feels unnatural."
A captain in golden armor stepped forward, his sword glowing faintly.
"FOR THE LIGHT PROTECTOR—!"
Nekron sneered. "Not today, fool!" His massive hand clamped around the captain's torso. The golden armor crushed like crumpled paper. Then Breath-Stealer struck—shattering armor, bone, heart—detonating the body from within like overripe fruit. A crown of blood and gore erupted three meters into the air.
"You tax your people just to wear this rotten metal?! Arrogant swine!"
"Hear me, maggots!" Nekron roared, grinding the captain's shattered skull under his heel. "The light you worship is false! Just like the ones you call Gods! If they exist, where are they now as we slaughter their creations?!" He seized another soldier, choking him with his black claws until blood drenched the ground. "And know this—nothing in this world is eternal… except the darkness of Tartarus!"
Meanwhile, Zephiron moved with the calm of flowing water. He was an artist where Nekron was a butcher. Grass withered in his wake. His hellfire eyes scanned the carnage, settling on a group of priests and refugees hiding in a temple.
"Ah… the pious," he hissed, his voice like blades scraping bone. One slender finger pointed. A young guard screamed—his skin blistered, his hair ignited, his eyes boiled in their sockets. He writhed on the ground, clawing at his melting face, still attempting to pray.
"Behold, Slayer!" Zephiron called out, smiling. "They believe prayers can save them! How amusing!" His forked tongue tasted the air. "This is exhilarating... Give me more... I'm hungry!"
Belial stood silent. His hammer had spoken. Its strike split the earth, unleashing black fissures that vomited forth skeletal hands and shambling corpses. They dragged families from hiding, snatched infants from their mothers' arms, hung farmers from trees with their own intestines.
Belial raised his fist. The newly slain—pierced by arrows, burned, hacked apart—rose. Their eyes were empty, their mouths foaming. They picked up weapons and hunted their former brethren.
The sky grew darker. Clouds twisted into screaming faces of torment. In the distance, the spires of Elysion still glowed, unaware of the approaching doom.
Nekron raised Breath-Stealer high. The blade was now smeared and humming.
"ENOUGH OF THESE VERMIN!" his roar thundered. "TO ELYSION NOW! LET THEM KNOW—HELL IS COMING!"
The Tartarus legions answered with a unified shriek that made the skies bleed.
Zephiron laughed—a sound like thousands of scorpions chasing prey.
Belial wrenched his hammer free, and the earth groaned in response.
They turned, leaving behind an ocean of corpses, a city in ruins, and rivers of congealing blood. The true march had begun.
And Elysion…
Would they learn the meaning of despair?
WHEN THE MIST SPEAKS,
HELL BLEEDS