"No… please…"
The scream tore from Dane's throat, hoarse and broken, as his son dangled above the blood-slick earth—held aloft by a knight clad in blackened steel.
"MERCY!"
The knight didn't move. Didn't flinch. His visor reflected the pale light like a funeral mask, eyes lost behind cold iron. A monument to silence. Death made flesh.
The boy, no older than ten, kicked weakly. His small boots scraped the air. His gaze met his father's—wide, wild, pleading.
Dane clawed at the dirt, crawling through mud and gore, his limbs useless from two straight days of slaughter. His body screamed. His soul begged.
"Please…" he rasped. But there was nothing left. No strength. No power. Only grief on its knees.
The knight dropped the child.
The sound was final.
A snap. A thud. Then silence.
Time stopped. The wind paused. Even the carrion birds circling overhead seemed to hold their breath.
Dane didn't cry. Couldn't. That part of him had died long ago—in fire, in steel, in the screams of burning cities.
But something deeper broke now. Something ancient. Something buried.
Restraint.
His hands curled into fists, nails digging into raw flesh. He rose slowly, like a mountain reawakening—every movement a rebellion against pain.
His voice, when it came, wasn't human.
"You've damned yourself."
The knight turned, unmoved. His task done.
Dane took one step forward, blood dripping from his palms. Then another.
"You'll choke on your own blood. Your kings will crawl through ash to beg for forgiveness, and I'll burn their names from history."
The knight paused. But still said nothing. And walked away.
Big mistake.
Dane knelt beside his son's broken body. His hands trembled—not from sorrow, but from the fury building beneath his skin. A storm centuries old, finally uncaged.
He whispered a name—not a prayer, but a curse.
"By the Seal Eternal…"
A shift in the air. The wind pulled back. The ground trembled.
Dane raised his hand to the sky. Fingers arched like claws. His voice boomed across the silent dead:
"I swear it. I swear vengeance, bound by blood and flame. I am Dane, son of Arkon. General of the Broken Lion Host. And I vow… DEATH."
The sky cracked.
A red pulse exploded outward from his chest—runes burned themselves into his skin, racing up his arms like wildfire. His back arched as the binding took hold.
No scream. Only fury.
From his brow, a brand began to glow—the symbol of the Ten-Year Wraith. A curse older than any empire. A promise no god could break.
"The Iron Eagle Empire will fall. I will not sleep. I will not stop. Until every last soul who follows their banner is dust beneath my boots."
The battlefield watched.
In the distance, the knight paused.
But it was already too late.
The war was over.
Yet vengeance had just begun.
The knight froze.
Something behind him had changed.
He turned—slow, uncertain. Dane's shadow now stretched impossibly long across the ruined stone. The ground beneath his feet cracked in a spiderweb of fractures.
Dane stepped forward.
He was no longer broken.
No longer a man.
He was something else.
Something ancient.
Awake.
The knight sensed it too late. His instincts screamed. His body moved. Sword rising, foot pivoting, a counterattack already forming.
Dane blurred.
And reappeared behind him.
The knight stood, half turned. His blade still raised mid-arc. Then the weight vanished.
Clang.
Half the sword fell to the ground, sliced clean at the diagonal.
A breath later, pain exploded across the knight's ribs—searing through enchanted plate, straight into flesh.
He staggered, blinking. Confused. Not afraid. Just… disoriented.
"Impossible," he muttered, blood thick in his throat.
Golden rings of light spun around his gauntlets—arcane tech, protective runes flaring to life. Shields. Summons. Countermeasures.
But Dane didn't strike.
Not yet.
He stared—silent, calculating. The cursed brand on his forehead glowed dimly, pulsing with steady rhythm. His eyes locked onto the knight's, calm and cold.
There was no rage.
No chaos.
Only intent.
The knight panicked.
He conjured a spear of pure light, hovering mid-air—launched it point-blank toward Dane's chest.
Dane didn't blink.
Didn't flinch.
He stepped aside—not after the spear fired, but just before.
The lance screamed past him, missing by inches. It detonated behind him in a bloom of blinding white. Before the flash faded, Dane was already in motion—through smoke, through light, emerging at the knight's flank like a shadow with a sword.
He struck.
The knight threw up a crystalline shield, just in time. The impact cracked it like glass, the force launching him backward across the shattered courtyard. His armored boots scraped sparks as he skidded, only barely holding his ground.
This wasn't a man. This was a force.
The knight's mind screamed: Run.
He raised a hand. His gauntlet flared again—this time casting a dome of refracted light around him. Wings of radiant energy erupted from his back with a deafening burst, lifting him into the air with the crack of thunder.
Dane leapt after him.
But the knight twisted in midair, unleashing a shattering lattice of mirrored sigils. They fractured space itself, bending light, scattering presence—buying time, buying distance.
Dane slammed into the barrier. It flared. Repelled him.
He landed hard, sliding back across stone, fists clenched tight as the vow screamed inside him for pursuit.
But he stopped.
Not because he couldn't.
Because he chose to.
He watched.
Watched as the knight vanished upward, swallowed by clouds in a trail of molten gold.
He let him go.
Not out of mercy.
But because this wasn't the end.