The retreat to the ridge was a rout. The Iron Hegemony Legion, pride of Lord Valerius, scrambled up the rocky slope, leaving a trail of their dead and their abandoned equipment. They were no longer a disciplined army; they were a panicked mob seeking high ground.
Elias let them go. He called his necro-steel golems back with a silent command. The four monstrous avatars, dented and smeared with gore but functionally unharmed, melted back into the shadows of the forest, their purpose served. The sudden cessation of the attack was more unnerving to the soldiers than the attack itself. It was the calculated withdrawal of a predator that knows its prey is trapped.
On the windswept ridge, Lord Valerius rallied the remnants of his force. Of the several hundred who had marched into the clearing, perhaps half remained. They formed a desperate shield wall, their backs to a sheer cliff, and stared down into the silent, waiting forest. The bodies of their comrades littered the field below. The village of Sunstone remained a dark, unmoving tomb. The silence from the woods was a suffocating pressure.
Valerius, his gilded armor now scratched and stained, paced behind his men, his face a thunderous mask of fury and disbelief. He had been utterly, comprehensively out-thought.
As dusk began to settle, casting long, bloody shadows across the field of slaughter, a lone figure emerged from the treeline. It was Elias.
He walked into the center of the clearing, the setting sun at his back, casting him as a long, terrifying silhouette. He did not bring his golems. He came alone, carrying his iron-tipped spear. He stopped over the body of a fallen Hegemony officer and stood there, motionless, a king surveying the cost of his victory.
"Warden!" Lord Valerius's voice boomed from the ridge, amplified by rage. "Face me, demon! If you have the courage to fight without your pets!"
Elias did not respond. He simply waited. This was not a negotiation. It was a lesson.
He reached down and touched the chest of the dead officer. And then he began the final, most terrible part of his sermon.
He drew upon the immense reservoir of Soul Essence he had harvested. Hundreds of lives, a raw, screaming vortex of energy now contained within him. He did not use it to create a great beast or unleash a blast of power. He used it to perform Animate Dead on a scale that should have been impossible.
He did not raise one body. He did not raise ten.
He raised them all.
Across the entire battlefield, the dead of the Iron Hegemony began to stir. With cracking joints and groaning sinew, hundreds of legionaries pushed themselves to their feet. Their wounds still gaped, their armor was still broken, but their eyes glowed with the same faint, malevolent green light as his own creations. They were a silent, shambling army of the dead, turning to face their still-living comrades on the ridge.
The soldiers on the shield wall cried out in horror and disbelief. Some dropped their shields. Some fell to their knees. This was not war. This was sacrilege. They were being made to face their own fallen brothers, their friends, their bunkmates. It was a psychological blow from which there could be no recovery.
Lord Valerius stared, his jaw slack, all the fury draining out of him, replaced by a cold, bottomless dread. He understood now. The Warden had not just defeated his army. He had stolen it.
Elias, the eye of the storm, stood amongst his new, stolen army. He raised his spear. And then he plunged it into the soft earth. The sound was a dull thud, but it echoed across the silent field like a thunderclap.
The undead legionaries did not attack. They simply began to walk. Methodically, silently, they began to collect the hundreds of steel swords, shields, helmets, and armor plates dropped by their living and dead comrades. They piled the weapons and armor into a great, gleaming mound at Elias's feet. A tithe of iron.
The message was brutally clear. Your strength is now my strength. Your dead now serve me. Everything you brought here now belongs to this forest.
When the field was stripped bare of every useful piece of steel, the undead army turned as one and faced Elias. He gave them a final command, not with a word, but with a silent pulse of will. Return to the earth.
As the terrified survivors on the ridge watched, the zombie legionaries simply crumbled. They collapsed into piles of inanimate flesh and bone, their animating energy withdrawn. Their purpose—the ultimate demonstration of the Warden's power—was complete.
Elias was left alone in the clearing, standing before a mountain of captured steel.
He turned his gaze up to the ridge, to Lord Valerius. And for the first time, he spoke to the General, his voice carrying effortlessly across the distance, a sound of ancient power and utter finality.
"You have seen my domain," he called out. "You have witnessed my power. You have paid the tithe in iron and fear. Now take what is left of your broken legion and carry my message back to your Hegemony."
He pointed his spear at the stunned General. "This land is mine. The pact is sealed in the blood your masters chose to spill here. Trespass again, and the next army I raise will not stop at the edge of this forest."
The threat was absolute. He wasn't just defending his territory. He was threatening to export his terrifying power.
Without another glance, Elias turned and walked back into the welcoming darkness of the woods. He left Lord Valerius and the shell-shocked remnants of his army on the ridge, stranded with no supplies, no weapons to speak of, and a story so horrifying that no one in their right mind would ever believe it. They were left with their lives, but their courage, their pride, and their sanity were forfeit, left behind on the battlefield with their dead.
The King had given his final sermon, and the text was written in blood and terror. The Blackwood was his. And all the world would now know to fear its silent, Ashen King.