The ruined village burned like a giant funeral pyre. Men's bodies lay in the mud, their wounds so barbaric no one would ever know who they had been in life.
But the attackers no longer looked at the corpses.
They were savoring another part of their victory.
Before them, women knelt—naked, caked in dust, scratches, and bruises.
Their eyes were full of terror.
Some wept, trying to cover bare breasts with their hands.
Some simply stared down, unwilling to move at all.
Some shook so hard they couldn't control their own bodies.
They were all dragged to one place—to the one who would decide their fate.
He stood above the rest while terrified women were hauled to his feet like cattle to the slaughter.
He looked them over as if choosing the finest cut of meat.
His face was riven; scars had twisted his smile into something vile and ghastly.
He sighed with satisfaction as the women lowered their heads.
They understood resistance was pointless.
They knew no one would save them.
—"Well then..." he drawled, strolling through the naked bodies trembling from cold, fear, and humiliation.
Several warriors shoved the women's faces into the mud to keep their eyes down.
One of them whispered a prayer through trembling lips.
Worg'tar heard it and laughed.
—"You're praying?"
He crouched beside her, seized her hair, and forced her to look him in the eyes.
—"To whom? The gods? Ha-ha... Where are they? Where is your god when you're standing here, filthy and naked?"
He released her head, and she dropped back into the mud, not daring to rise.
The others stayed silent.
Worg'tar began to pace among the women, inspecting them the way merchants appraise livestock.
He touched faces and necks, stroked bellies, making them flinch with disgust.
If a woman tried to turn away, he grabbed her by the hair or the breasts, forcing her to stand still.
—"Not bad..." he muttered, running his fingers over one woman's chest.
—"Too thin..." He flung another aside like a rag.
—"And this one... Pretty, pretty..."
His eyes gleamed when he finally stopped before three women.
—"These—mine."
The women trembled harder.
They knew what that meant.
But that wasn't the worst of it.
Because then Worg'tar raised his hand and waved to the warriors.
—"The rest—yours."
The women screamed.
No one paid the screams any mind.
The warriors rushed them, grabbing, wrenching them from the mud, shoving one another as they competed for spoils.
Fights broke out over the most beautiful.
Some were dragged by the hair.
Some were hauled along the ground, not given even a moment to stand.
Some were pinned to the charred walls of the houses, from where wild screams rang out.
It wasn't just violence.
It was a game.
It was pleasure they savored.
The women weren't merely raped—they were tormented, inventing ever-new ways to humiliate them.
Some were forced to kneel and beg.
Some were made to say the very words their captors fed them.
Some were beaten for nothing but the sight of them falling and struggling to rise again.
He stood apart, watching it all while his three "chosen" trembled at his feet.
He had no intention of sharing.
These were his personal playthings.
He ran a finger along one woman's face, savoring her flinch.
—"Now you belong to me."
The women wept without lifting their eyes from the ground.
They were no longer people.
They were property.
When it was over, the fire had devoured the last of the houses.
The men were dead.
The women—broken, discarded, herded into cages or shackled.
And Worg'tar sat on a stone with a satisfied smile, as if it were the finest spectacle of his life.
He reached out and picked up the latest letter Lokris had sent him.
Two portraits of women.
"ALIVE. INTACT. The rest—take into slavery."
Worg'tar crumpled the parchment and tossed it into the mud.
—"Another good day."
Another settlement was wiped from the face of the world.
Deep in the heart of the dead city, where the silence was so thick it felt as if time itself had stopped here, something changed.
The darkness stirred.
Not wind, not an earthquake—something else, something ancient, something that had waited too long to wake quickly.
At the center of that gloom stood the Lord.
His gilded armor caught the faint flicker of magic lamps hanging from black chains. But even the light here was cold, dead.
Before him—the Reaper.
Still motionless, like a statue, but the Lord felt him waking.
The Lord slowly opened his palm.
In it lay a large crystal, laced with cracks as if something inside had exploded a million times.
—"Is this enough?" His voice sliced the silence, echoing through the empty halls.
The Reaper did not answer.
But the darkness around him began to move.
At first barely.
Then faster.
The Lord tossed the crystal into the air, and it hung between him and the Reaper.
Its cracks flared with green light.
The Reaper slowly raised his hand, and the shadows around him began to sway.
He reached for the crystal.
The instant his fingers touched the magic surface, something terrible happened.
The darkness detonated.
Jets of green-black energy tore upward, flooding the hall with a cursed glow.
The crystal began to crack harder, then burst, releasing a torrent of wild, uncontrollable power.
The Reaper flung his arms wide.
His cloak of shadows churned like black mist waking to life.
His armor, dark as night, began to change, accreting spikes and plates that seemed to grow, devouring the very space around him.
In his chest a black rift pulsed, spewing green mana.
He whispered.
Not with words—but with the voices of a thousand souls swallowed into eternity.
The Lord watched, unmoving.
He knew that only now was the Reaper becoming true death.
The Reaper took his first step forward.
His scythe, motionless until now, suddenly blazed with green fire.
The stone floor split with cracks beneath his feet.
When he had fully absorbed the crystal's power, his body grew even more immaterial, woven from shadow and dread.
He lifted his head.
His hollow eyes burned with a dead radiance.
He looked at the Lord, and even he felt the room grow colder.
And then the Reaper spoke.
—"More... more."
The Lord smiled.
—"You'll have it. But first—a task."
The Reaper tightened his grip on the scythe.
When he spoke again, his voice sounded like the whisper of a thousand dying throats.
—"Tell me whom... to kill?"
The Lord slowly raised his hand, turning toward the dark halls.
His voice was calm, commanding.
—"The demon king."
The Reaper did not answer.
But the darkness around him surged forward, as if it rejoiced in the command itself.
He dissolved into the gloom.
And from that moment, the world lost its chance to be saved.
The Reaper vanished.
He melted into the dark, and with him the last hope of this world disappeared.
The Lord stood at the center of the hall, feeling the power still swirling in the air after the awakening of his new weapon.
He ran a hand over the metal of his armor as if wiping unseen dust, and moved on.
The corridor before him was long, laid in black stone, with magic lamps above that burned with a cold green fire.
Only the sound of his steps disturbed the absolute silence of this place.
And then...
A shadow slipped out of the wall.
A beastwoman.
Her movements were smooth, silent; her eyes burned with a predatory gleam, and her elongated ears trembled, catching every sound in the corridor.
She did not wait for an order; she spoke at once:
—"Lokris has split from the Horde. He is weaker than ever."
The Lord did not stop, did not even glance at her.
He simply kept walking, making her pace beside him, as if expecting her to know on her own what needed to be done.
But the beastwoman was patient, cunning.
She knew he had already calculated everything.
And so she asked anyway:
—"What shall we do?"
The Lord finally stopped.
His eyes flashed in the dark, and he turned his head toward her.
—"An audience with the demon kings. In three days."
The beastwoman lifted a brow for the first time, but did not allow herself to look surprised.
She understood what that could mean.
—"And what will we tell them?"
The Lord smiled.
His smile was light, unforced, as if this were just another chat about the weather.
—"We'll give them a choice."
His voice grew even softer.
—"They will become part of my army. Voluntarily."
The beastwoman snorted softly.
—"And if not?"
The Lord turned fully, looking straight into her eyes.
—"Then they die."
Silence.
She thought about that.
She knew demons don't submit just like that.
She knew not all would agree.
And so she said plainly:
—"One of them will definitely refuse."
The Lord turned away from her, continuing on.
And this time he smiled wider.
—"Then we'll see what the Reaper can do."
The beastwoman exhaled softly.
She didn't need to ask more.
She already knew this world would soon witness what it had never seen.
And at that thought, her tail gave a small twitch—as if at the scent of a true hunt.