Before the calamity of destruction unleashed by Vael. Gruk and Aamon had been relentlessly pursuing Morbelith through the twisting rooftops and narrow alleys of the Ironclad Kingdom. Their coordinated assault left little room for escape. Aamon's black lightning crackled like living serpents from his blade, striking with precision and leaving scorched trails in the stone. Gruk charged with feral glee, his grotesque regeneration shrugging off hellfire arrows and toxic flames that erupted from the ground beneath him. Poisonous vapors hissed into the air, yet the demon prince's flesh simply bubbled, knitted, and reformed as if the attacks were nothing more than irritating rain.
As the demon prince and his ally closed in, Morbelith still disguised in the elegant form of Haldir, with flowing silver hair and refined features spun mid-leap across a narrow gap between buildings. Her breath came in sharp gasps. She shouted desperately toward Raymond and his companions below, her voice cutting through the chaos like a blade.
"Help! They're after me!"
The heroes turned sharply in the direction of her cry. Haldir pointed accusingly at her pursuers, her expression a perfect blend of fear and righteous fury that masked her true demonic nature. "Gruk and Aamon tried to steal the Divine Sword! They're demons both of them!"
Right at that moment, the world darkened.
A suffocating shadow swept over the streets as roiling black clouds churned violently across the sky, swallowing the daylight in greedy gulps. Every soul in the Ironclad Kingdom felt the terrifying phenomenon: an immense, oppressive aura pressing down like an invisible mountain, heavy enough to bow shoulders, quicken breaths, and make knees tremble. The air grew thick with the sharp scent of ozone and distant thunder, carrying an undercurrent of something far darker pure, unfiltered killing intent.
The heroes below Raymond, Beatrice, Kufa, Darius, and Elara froze, weapons half-raised. Aamon's confident smirk faltered for a split second, his eyes narrowing. Gruk's feral grin widened with recognition even as his muscles tensed like coiled springs. Even Morbelith, bound by the faint, malevolent glow of Aamon's Demonic Chain on the back of her hand, felt her limbs grow heavier, the invisible shackles tightening as chills raced down her spine like icy fingers.
None of them could immediately pinpoint the exact source of the suffocating presence. Yet it sent primal fear rippling through the city. Whispers among civilians turned to panicked shouts. Guards scrambled along the walls, horns blaring in alarm. The ground itself seemed to tremble under the weight of unseen power, as if the very fabric of fate was straining against its chains.
"Boss is pissed," Gruk muttered, cracking his knuckles with anticipation. The sound was low and wet, like breaking bones.
At that exact moment, far outside the main gate, the system overpowered Vael's burning resistance and forced his teleportation. He materialized directly in the path of a massive undead horde thousands of rotting elves with twisted limbs, hulking tauren with exposed ribs, and savage orcs dragging rusted weapons charging forward in a mindless, moaning wave of decay.
Vael's lips curled into a snarl of pure fury. His eyes burned with decades of accumulated hatred and the weight of rewritten pages. Without hesitation, he slammed his powerful fist downward into the earth.
BOOM.
The impact was cataclysmic. A devastating shockwave erupted outward from the point of contact, ripping through the air with the force of a thunderclap amplified a thousandfold. The ground shattered across a huge radius, jagged fissures racing outward like cracks in broken glass. Undead bodies caught in the blast were obliterated instantly, reduced to scattering bone fragments, black mist, and sprays of corrupted ichor. The force generated a violent gale that howled through the open gate like the roar of an enraged dragon, smashing large sections of the city wall entrance into flying rubble and twisted metal.
Even the shimmering protective shield covering Miraleth's grand residence, the King's Castle, and the top officials' quarters cracked audibly under the immense pressure. Spiderweb fractures spread across its once-impenetrable surface with a sound like fracturing ice, sending ripples of failing magic across the skyline.
Thick clouds of heavy dust billowed outward in choking waves, engulfing both sides of the gate and turning the battlefield into a hazy nightmare. For a heartbeat, everything went eerily silent, as if the world itself held its breath.
Inside the city, the heroes and nearby guild members clutched their heads as the deafening blast slammed into them. A high-pitched ringing exploded in their ears, followed by a sudden temporary threshold shift the world suddenly muffled and distant, as if submerged underwater. Sounds became warped and far away; voices turned into indistinct murmurs. Their balance wavered, hearts pounding in the unnatural quiet while dust choked their throats and debris rained down like gray hail. Some staggered, dropping weapons as disorientation hit them hard.
Raymond staggered to his feet, head still ringing painfully. His vision swam for a moment before clearing. His eyes landed on the Divine Sword lying discarded near Haldir's feet, its blade gleaming faintly even in the dimmed light. Confusion clouded his mind what in the hells had just happened? The sky had turned black, the air felt wrong, and now this deafening silence pressed on him like a physical weight.
He reached down and picked up the sword, its familiar weight grounding him slightly. That was when he noticed the faint, malevolent glow of the Demonic Chain mark on the back of Haldir's hand a intricate, pulsing pattern of dark runes that seemed to writhe like living chains.
His thoughts raced, memories of his own unfinished manuscript flooding back unbidden. I wrote about this… The Demonic Chain only works between demons. It binds their kind specifically. If he's marked, then he…
Raymond's grip tightened on the Divine Sword until his knuckles turned white. He raised it without hesitation, the blade humming with holy light as he prepared to strike down the disguised demon..
"Don't let them escape!" Kufa shouted, her voice cutting through the lingering ring in everyone's ears. She pointed sharply at Aamon and Gruk.
Hundreds of guild members surged forward from the surrounding streets and alleys, weapons drawn and spells charging. They quickly surrounded the two demons in a tightening circle of steel and magic. Aamon's expression darkened into cold calculation, his hand tightening on his lightning-wreathed blade. Gruk, however, threw his head back and laughed openly, the sound booming and wild, clearly reveling in the escalating chaos.
Meanwhile, Darius, Beatrice, and Elara had stepped through the broken remnants of the gate into the dust-choked battlefield outside. They froze in utter shock. Thousands of soldiers who had been guarding the entrance lay wiped out not by the claws or blades of the undead horde, but by the raw, overwhelming force of the shockwave moments earlier. Bodies were scattered like broken dolls amid the rubble, armor crumpled, limbs twisted at unnatural angles.
Through the swirling, acrid dust, a single figure stood tall in the center of the devastation unmoving, radiating an aura that made the air itself seem to warp.
Suddenly, the fallen undead orcs, tauren, and elves began to stir. Wet, squelching sounds filled the haze as corrupted flesh knitted itself back together. At the same time, Darius, Beatrice, and Elara heard faint, unsettling movements all around them in the thick dust: the scrape of bone against stone, the wet pop of reforming joints, the low groan of rising corpses. They couldn't see the source clearly through the choking clouds, but the sounds sent ice racing down their spines.
Then the dead soldiers who had just been killed by the impact started rising as well. Their broken bodies twitched, bones cracked back into place, and torn flesh crawled and sealed with grotesque, unnatural regeneration. Empty eyes flickered with unholy light once more, turning toward the living with mindless hunger.
The three heroes stood frozen in horror, weapons trembling slightly in their hands. "What… has this become?" Beatrice whispered, her voice barely audible through the fading ring in her ears. Darius cursed under his breath, while Elara's face paled, her usual composure cracking.
At that moment, a blue system window appeared directly in front of Vael's face, glowing with cold, indifferent light:
[Quest Pending]
[Collect the Souls of the Slain Corpses]