Emperor Cailan Gravis did not even spare Prince Balek a glance. The young prince's defiance was like the buzzing of a gnat—irritating, but inconsequential. His gaze swept across the trembling ranks of imperial soldiers. Their grips tightened on their spears, yet their eyes betrayed fear. Fear of death. Fear of betrayal. Fear of choosing wrong.
Cailan's voice rolled across the battlefield like thunder, commanding silence.
"Lay down your arms," he said, his tone deceptively calm, yet edged with steel. "I do not seek your blood. All I desire… is Groa Aratat. Surrender, and you live. Resist, and you perish like vermin under my boots. Choose wisely."
For a heartbeat, the air held its breath. Then came a ripple—hesitation. A man shifted uneasily. Another lowered his spear a fraction. Doubt had taken root.
Prince Balek's voice cleaved through the stillness like a whip crack, raw with fury and desperation.
"Traitors!" he bellowed. "Hear me well—if you throw down your weapons and side with this dog, you are enemies of the Empire! You and your kin will be hunted like beasts! Even if you crawl out of this slaughter alive, you will be marked forever as deflectors! Your families will hang! Your names will burn in shame!"
His words struck hard, but not deep enough. The soldiers wavered, thoughts swirling like leaves in a storm.
"We're dead either way…" one muttered, despair in his voice.
"The Empire never lifted a finger for us," another spat bitterly.
"Why die the death of fools?"
"Might as well give up…"
The murmurs spread like a plague. Shields dipped. Spears clattered to the ground. One by one, they began to surrender, stepping forward with trembling hands raised high.
Cailan's lips curled—not in mercy, but in mockery. Mercy was a mask he had worn to break their will. His mind had been made long before this day. There would be no survivors.
His voice cracked like a blade leaving its sheath.
"Now."
The word was a death sentence. His army surged forward like a tidal wave of iron and flame. War mages raised their staves, chanting spells that ignited the skies. Firestorms cascaded. Lightning split the heavens. Blades sang through flesh.
The surrendered soldiers—weaponless, kneeling—were torn apart in a single, merciless strike.
Blood sprayed the earth crimson. Screams choked the air. In moments, 586 men lay dead, butchered where they knelt.
The shockwave rippled to the rear ranks. Soldiers who still clung to hope felt it die in their chests. Armor rattled as they scrambled into formation, leaving gaps where their comrades had fallen. Desperation replaced hesitation.
But numbers were a cruel truth. In a single, devastating strike, 586 soldiers were cut down where they stood—slaughtered without lifting a blade. Their blood darkened the earth like spilled ink, pooling around fallen banners that once bore the Empire's pride. Out of the 10,000 imperial troops who had marched under Balek's command, the number had already thinned… and against Emperor Cailan Gravis's vast host of 400,000, the odds—once grim—had now become impossible.
And yet… the war drums thundered on.
"Attack!" The roar tore from Prince Balek's throat like a beast unchained. Fury burned in his eyes, a fire that refused to die even as hope bled away. The command rippled across the ranks like a thunderclap.
The soldiers answered—not with words, but with steel. Fear no longer held them; it had burned away, leaving only raw desperation. They could not surrender. They could not retreat. The only path left was forward—through blood, through fire, through death. If they were to fall, they would carve their names into the bones of their enemies first.
Darke Dean and Adolph Li surged ahead, twin storms of wrath, cutting through the chaos like blades of fate. They crashed into a cluster of twenty Scorpion warriors—men clad in scaled golden brown armor that shimmered like obsidian under the dying sun.
The clash was brutal and immediate. Steel rang against steel, sparks leaping like fireflies in a tempest. Dean and Li moved as though bound by some unspoken oath—back to back, turning, striking, defending, killing.
They had never agreed on anything. Not on strategy. Not on honor. Not even on what victory truly meant. But today—today, they were brothers forged in the furnace of war.
Dean's blade howled as it cleaved through the neck of the first foe, spraying crimson across his armor. He pivoted, his strike carving through another Scorpion warrior's chestplate as if it were parchment. Two kills—clean, merciless.
Li was no less savage. His saber danced like a silver viper, its arcs painting death in the air. He split a soldier from shoulder to hip in a single strike, then whirled to take the head of another who dared approach.
They tore through flesh and iron alike—five kills each in the heartbeat of battle. Armor crumpled like foil under their blows. Screams split the air. The Scorpion soldiers faltered, their confidence shattering as comrades fell like wheat before the scythe.
And still, Dean and Li did not speak. They didn't need to. Their blades did the talking. The clang of steel against steel, the wet sound of tearing flesh, the hiss of blood spraying across the battlefield—this was their language now. The language of survival. The language of slaughter.
But silence could not hold forever. The tide of enemy warriors thickened, a sea of scorpion insignias crashing upon them like an unending storm. Soon, their circle shrank to the size of a coffin. Every swing of the blade grew heavier, every breath tasted of iron and smoke. Their muscles screamed for respite, but the enemy gave none. And gradually, for the first time that day, desperation carved its way into their hearts. The mighty warriors of Nazare Blade Empire—crying for reinforcements.
"Hold!" Dean's voice cracked like a whip between the chaos, though his arms trembled with exhaustion. Li gave no reply, only a sharp nod, before driving his sword through the ribs of a soldier, twisting until bone splintered. But even then, more shadows pressed in, the heat of their snarls and the stink of sweat choking the air. They were drowning.
And somewhere beyond the storm of blades, Emperor Cailan Gravis moved like a god of wrath made flesh.
He did not move alone.
A hundred elite warriors, clad in obsidian armor, surged behind him like a tide of death. They did not run—they thundered forward, synchronized, unstoppable. Each step cracked the blood-soaked ground like the beating of war drums. The Emperor's warhorse snorted clouds of steam in the cold air, its hooves drumming fury into the earth as its rider lowered his spear, eyes fixed upon a single point ahead.
The eldest prince.
Prince Balek.
Cailan's first act of vengeance would be poetic. He would tear the Aratat bloodline apart, starting with the one too stubborn to flee.
But Balek was no lamb awaiting slaughter. No—he stood upon the ridge like a defiant flame against the storm. His armor, dented and blood-streaked, glimmered under the harsh sun, his cloak whipping in the wind like a banner of rebellion. Fifty men flanked him, their loyalty unbroken even as death swept closer. They tightened formation, shields locking with a sound like a closing tomb.
All his siblings had fled—rats abandoning the sinking ship of their dynasty. Balek could have done the same. He could have slipped into the shadows, lived to fight another day. Instead, he stood here. Foolish? Perhaps. But there was a certain glory in defiance, a courage born of doomed ambition. His heart beat like a war drum, echoing the words he'd sworn since boyhood:
If the Aratat line must end, let it end in fire.