Greywick had never known such restless nights. After the priest's body was discovered nailed to the chapel doors, sleep became a luxury few could afford. Mothers pulled their children closer in bed, and even the hardest men found themselves checking locks twice before retiring.
When dawn broke, painting the sky in shades of rose and gold that seemed almost mocking, the priest's corpse had already begun to bloat in the summer heat. That silver medallion—the same one he'd worn proudly every Sunday, blessing marriages and baptizing babies—now hung grotesquely through his chest, a perverse mockery of everything sacred. By midday, the metallic stench of blood mixed with the first hints of decay had crept into every corner of the city, seeping through windows that desperate families had sealed shut. By evening, the whispered rumors had crystallized into a terrible certainty that settled in everyone's gut like a stone: their priest had called out to his god in his final moments, and the heavens had remained coldly silent.
The Light—their Light, the one constant in an uncertain world—had abandoned them.
The city sagged under that realization like an old man's shoulders beneath too heavy a burden.
Marcus, who ran the bakery near the market square, found his hands shaking as he counted the day's meager coins. For twenty years, he'd paid the church for blessings on his bread, believing it kept his family fed and his customers healthy. Now he closed his shutters before sunset, jumping at every creak in the settling wood. The mercenaries who usually filled his shop with loud laughter and crude jokes sat hunched over their ale, speaking in hushed tones about the stranger who could kill a man of god without divine retribution striking him down.
Even the Crimson Daggers, the gang that controlled the east quarter and had never backed down from anyone, moved through their territory like ghosts. Their red bandanas—once worn with swagger—now stayed hidden beneath dark cloaks. Fear had a way of making everyone equal.
From his perch on the crumbling steps of the old temple, Blaze observed it all with the detached interest of a chess master studying his board. The irony wasn't lost on him that he now sat where desperate souls had once come to pray. His eyes, touched with an otherworldly crimson glow, tracked the nervous movements of the people below as they hurried through streets that had once bustled with life.
Kael paced nearby like a caged animal, his pointed ears twitching at every sound. The young half-elf had always been quick to violence—it was simpler for him than the complex calculations his master preferred. "They're terrified," he said, dragging a stolen blade across the stone with a sound that set teeth on edge. "We could own this place by morning. Kill the gang leaders while they're cowering. Burn down the mercenary hall. Paint the streets red until every last one of them grovels."
Blaze's mouth quirked upward, the expression somehow both amused and predatory. "Spilled blood dries up and is forgotten. But fear? Fear lives in the mind, grows stronger in the dark, and wakes up fresh every morning."
Kael's brow furrowed with frustration. Strategy had never been his strength—he understood loyalty, violence, and the immediate satisfaction of a blade finding its mark. The subtle art of psychological warfare remained as foreign to him as mercy.
It was Garrick who emerged from the temple's shadowed interior, moving with the careful precision of a man still adjusting to his new existence. The transformation had changed more than just his mortality—his once-weathered skin now held an unsettling pallor, and his eyes carried a faint luminescence that marked him as something no longer entirely human. Yet beneath these supernatural alterations, the disciplined bearing of his years as an adventurer remained intact.
"You understand perfectly, Master," Garrick said, his voice carrying the rasp of death but steady with purpose. "Terror spreads faster than plague. The gangs whisper your name in their hideouts, though most are too frightened to speak it above a breath."
Blaze fixed him with an appraising stare. "And how exactly do you come by this information?"
A ghost of Garrick's old smile flickered across his pale features. "Old habits and older friendships. When an adventurer dies, word travels through every tavern and guild hall in the region. But when one returns from the dead?" He shrugged with dark amusement. "That creates a different kind of reputation entirely. They think I'm cursed—which I suppose I am—but they also think I might be useful. Amazing how quickly fear loosens tongues and opens doors that gold never could."
Blaze leaned back, genuinely impressed despite himself. Garrick had adapted to his new nature with remarkable speed, turning what might have been seen as a limitation into an advantage. That kind of pragmatic intelligence was worth its weight in blood.
"Excellent," Blaze said, approval coloring his tone. "Continue listening. A man who knows the currents of tavern gossip knows the true pulse of a city. And Greywick's pulse is racing toward panic."
Kael bristled, his pride stinging at being overlooked in favor of the newcomer. "Why waste time with whispers and shadows when honest steel could settle this in one night?"
Blaze's gaze snapped toward him with the intensity of a striking serpent. "Because, my eager friend, whispers slip through cracks that steel cannot penetrate. They burrow into minds, into hearts, into the deepest places where a person's will lives. Fear doesn't just conquer the body—it conquers the soul. And broken souls serve far more faithfully than broken bones."
Chastened, Kael lowered his head, though the dagger in his grip continued to tremble with barely restrained bloodlust.
Rising to his full height, Blaze felt the cursed ring pulse against his finger like a second heartbeat. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of absolute certainty. "Greywick has lost its shepherd. The Light that guided them has gone dark. They drift now in shadows—our shadows. And tomorrow, those shadows will deepen."
The firelight from within the ruined temple cast dancing patterns across his face, highlighting the hunger that burned in his inhuman eyes.
"Tomorrow," he murmured, the words carrying the inevitability of a funeral bell, "they will understand that kneeling is their only salvation."
The invitation had never needed words. In a city like Greywick, survival depended on reading the currents that ran beneath the surface—and those currents were screaming.
By the following evening, every pickpocket, fence, and cutthroat in the city's belly had felt the pull. It started with Magnus "Three-Fingers" dropping his dice mid-game at the Broken Anchor, suddenly convinced he needed to be somewhere else. It spread when Sera the smuggler found herself unable to focus on her ledgers, her mind kept drifting to the ruined temple like iron to a lodestone. Even Garrett Thorne, who'd survived fifteen years as a blade-for-hire by trusting his instincts above all else, felt his feet carrying him toward the old ruins before his mind had consciously decided to go.
They all understood the unspoken message: attend and possibly live, or stay home and certainly die.
The gangs arrived first, as they always did—territorial animals marking their presence. Tommy "Scarface" led the Crimson Hand delegation, his weathered leather coat doing little to hide the nervous tremor in his hands. Behind him shuffled the usual suspects: men who'd grown up in Greywick's alleys, who knew which shadows hid knives and which tavern keeps could be bought. They reeked of cheap whiskey and cheaper courage, their neck tattoos telling stories of petty victories in a small pond.
But tonight, even Tommy kept glancing over his shoulder. The Black Scars and Rat's Teeth had sent their lieutenants too—nobody wanted to risk their actual leaders, but nobody could afford to ignore the summons either. Each group eyed the others with the suspicious familiarity of old enemies forced into an uncomfortable truce.
The smugglers came next, salt-stained and paranoid by trade. Old Henrik limped on his bad leg—the one that never healed right after that customs raid three winters back—while his eyes darted between shadows like a man expecting ghosts. These were people who'd made their living by staying invisible, but invisibility meant nothing when the whole city was watching. They'd all heard about what happened to the priest, seen how quickly word spread through their networks. In their line of work, mysterious deaths weren't uncommon, but this felt different. This felt personal.
The mercenaries entered last, and their swagger felt as hollow as an echo in a tomb. These weren't the guild-sanctioned sellswords who wore polished mail and followed contracts to the letter. These were the desperate ones: Marcus "Iron-Tooth" who'd been blacklisted for taking scalps, Sarah the Silent who'd been caught poisoning a client's wine, Willem Brandywine whose drinking had cost him three different companies. They'd learned to project confidence in the face of uncertainty—it was the only currency they had left—but even that was failing them now.
The ruined temple's atmosphere seemed to press against them like a physical weight. The altar still bore dark stains that no amount of rain had washed clean, and the air tasted of copper and something else—something that made their skin crawl without understanding why.
At the chamber's far end, Blaze waited with the patience of a spider in its web. Shadows didn't just surround him; they seemed to emanate from him, pooling at his feet like spilled ink. To his left stood Kael, that nervous energy still radiating from him, his stolen blade catching what little light filtered through the broken roof. But it was Garrick on Blaze's right that truly unsettled the gathering crowd.
Every person in that room knew Garrick's face. Tommy had shared drinks with him at the Rusty Anchor just last month. Henrik had paid him to escort a particularly valuable shipment through bandit territory. Sarah had sparred with him behind the mercenary hall, trading stories of close calls and narrow escapes. Now he stood there like a pale mockery of the man they'd known—familiar features rendered alien by supernatural transformation, eyes glowing with an inner fire that belonged in nightmares, not in the face of someone who'd once laughed at their jokes and complained about the weather.
"Gentlemen," Blaze began, his voice carrying the soft authority of someone who'd never needed to shout to be heard. In the sudden quiet, even the distant sounds of the city seemed to fade. "I believe you all understand why we're here tonight."
The shuffling of nervous feet filled the silence. Finally, Tommy cleared his throat, trying to summon the bravado that had carried him through two decades of street politics. "Right, well... look, mate. We heard about the priest—whole bloody city heard about it. That's stirred things up proper, it has. But priests don't run Greywick's streets." He gestured to encompass the room, his voice gaining false confidence. "We do. Been that way for years. So if you're looking for a piece of the action, we can talk terms. Everyone's got to start somewhere, yeah?"
A few nervous chuckles rippled through the crowd—the kind of laughter that comes from people trying to convince themselves they're still in control.
Blaze tilted his head with the curious expression of a cat watching a mouse. His eyes, touched with that unnatural crimson glow, reflected the torchlight like polished garnets. "Do I strike you as someone who negotiates for scraps?"
The laughter died as surely as if he'd snuffed out a candle.
From the back, Marcus Iron-Tooth pushed forward, emboldened by liquid courage and old resentments. His scarred face twisted into a sneer as he jabbed a thick finger toward Garrick. "And what's this supposed to be? You bring along that turncoat bastard like some kind of prize?" His voice grew louder, feeding off his own momentum. "I've drunk with that man, fought alongside him, trusted him to watch my back in a dozen scrapes. Now he stands there like your trained dog, all pale and wrong-looking." He spat on the broken stone floor. "You think we're going to kneel to a dead man walking? You think we're that bloody stupid?"
The words hung in the air like smoke from a funeral pyre.
Garrick's response was as calm as morning mist—and twice as deadly. He stepped forward with the measured pace of a man who had all the time in the world, each footfall deliberate and final. Marcus, riding high on his own bluster, opened his mouth for another insult—
The crack of breaking bone echoed through the ruins like a church bell tolling midnight.
Marcus's body hit the ground with the wet sound of a dropped sack of grain, his neck twisted at an angle that made several men turn away, hands pressed to their mouths. The bravado that had filled him just moments before leaked out with his final breath.
"That was a kindness," Garrick said conversationally, brushing imaginary dust from his pale hands. His voice carried the same casual tone he'd once used to discuss the weather. "Continue speaking, and I'll demonstrate what cruelty looks like."
The silence that followed was so complete that even the rats in the walls seemed to hold their breath.
When Blaze stepped forward, the very air seemed to grow thicker, pressing down on the assembled criminals like the weight of deep water. His gaze swept across their faces—not hurried, but thorough, the way a farmer might examine his livestock. Each person felt that crimson attention settle on them personally, felt their courage wither under its heat.
"Greywick belongs to me now," he said, and his quiet words carried more authority than any shouted declaration. "Not because I've conquered it. Not because I've fought for it. Because fear has already delivered it into my hands, wrapped up like a gift."
He gestured toward his companions with the casual grace of a lord indicating his servants. "These are my instruments. My will made flesh. Through them, you'll serve me your coin, your blades, your absolute loyalty. In exchange, you'll continue drawing breath. You'll prosper under the shadow of my protection."
From somewhere in the crowd, a voice cracked with barely controlled terror: "And... and if we refuse?"
Blaze's smile was a work of art—beautiful, terrible, and absolutely merciless. "Then you'll serve me anyway. Broken. Bleeding. Like your priest learned to do."
He raised his hand, and the cursed ring caught what little light remained in the chamber, its gem pulsing like a living heart. Something pressed into the room—not seen but felt, not heard but experienced. The shadows grew deeper, the air colder, and every person present felt something fundamental inside them bend, like a tree in a hurricane wind.
Kael's grin was all teeth and anticipation. Garrick simply nodded, a predator acknowledging the natural order of things.
One by one, they knelt.
Tommy first, his scarred hands trembling against the broken stones. Then Henrik, cursing under his breath but lowering his gray head nonetheless. Sarah the Silent went down like she was accepting communion, her movements swift and definitive. Even the other mercenaries—proud, stubborn, violent men who'd sworn they'd die before they bowed—found their knees touching cold stone.
The ruined temple had found its purpose again. Not as a house of worship, but as a throne room.
And Blaze, standing among the broken saints and shattered prayers, had claimed his kingdom one terrified soul at a time.
The silence stretched like a held breath, thick with the weight of broken pride. These were men who had carved their reputations from other men's fear—Tommy had earned his scars in a dozen knife fights, Henrik had watched ships burn rather than pay his smuggling fees, Sarah had left a trail of poisoned corpses across three kingdoms. Now they knelt on cold stone like penitents seeking absolution, and the shame of it burned hotter than any blade.
Blaze let them marinate in that humiliation. He understood that submission wasn't just about the physical act—it was about feeling the weight settle into your bones, about accepting that your old self had died the moment your knees touched the ground. The air grew thick with the acrid smell of fear-sweat and something else—the particular musk that comes from predators suddenly realizing they've become prey.
Some trembled despite themselves. Old Henrik's bad leg gave an involuntary twitch every few seconds, a nervous habit that had started after that customs raid. Willem Brandywine clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached, trying to keep them from chattering like a child afraid of the dark. Even Tommy, who'd stared down charging bulls in the fighting pits, found his hands shaking against the broken stones.
"Look at yourselves," Blaze said finally, his voice carrying the patient disappointment of a teacher addressing slow students. "Gang bosses. Smuggling kings. Mercenary captains." He let each title hang in the air like an accusation. "You style yourselves as wolves prowling Greywick's streets, but what are you really? Rats. Clever, vicious rats, perhaps, but rats nonetheless—scurrying through the sewers for whatever scraps fall from the tables of your betters."
A low rumble of anger moved through the crowd like distant thunder. Tommy's scarred face flushed red, and Sarah's hand twitched toward the poisoned pin hidden in her collar. But none of them spoke. They'd all seen what happened to the last man who'd opened his mouth.
"But I see potential in you," Blaze continued, and his voice carried a different note now—not mockery, but something almost like promise. "Potential wasted on petty territorial squabbles and penny-ante schemes. You've crawled in the mud because no one ever showed you how to soar."
He spread his arms wide, and the shadows seemed to respond like living things, flowing outward from his feet to climb the ruined walls like black ivy. The torches that had been burning steadily suddenly guttered and dimmed, their flames struggling as if something was slowly strangling the light from the room. Several men cursed under their breath, religious oaths learned in childhood and half-forgotten until fear brought them flooding back.
"This city doesn't have to belong to the merchant guilds with their ledgers and their percentages," Blaze said, his voice growing stronger as the shadows deepened. "It doesn't have to bow to nobles who've never felt hunger or known desperation. It doesn't have to genuflect before priests who preach about the next world while ignoring the suffering in this one." His eyes blazed with that unnatural crimson light. "It can belong to us. To people who understand that power isn't inherited—it's taken."
The phrase that came next seemed to write itself in the air: "A Crimson Court."
The words hit the assembled criminals like a physical thing. Tommy felt something stir in his chest—not fear this time, but something hungrier. A court implied structure, hierarchy, respect. These weren't the desperate fantasies of street rats anymore. This was something bigger, something that could make the guild masters sweat and the noble houses look over their shoulders.
Garrick's lips curved in what might have been satisfaction. After years of taking orders from lesser men, of watching incompetent officers lead good soldiers to pointless deaths, the idea of a meritocracy built on strength rather than birthright appealed to something deep in his warrior's soul. Kael's chuckle was sharp with anticipation—he'd always preferred the hunt to the kill, and this promised hunting on a scale he'd never imagined.
Blaze began to pace, his footsteps echoing in the supernatural quiet. Each step seemed to resonate not just in the air but in the chests of the kneeling men, like the beating of a massive heart. "Those who embrace this vision, who commit themselves truly to our cause, will rise higher than their wildest ambitions ever dared reach. Gold will flow like water. Power will be yours to wield. Protection will be yours by right." His gaze fell on Marcus's corpse, still twisted in its final agony. "Those who resist, who cling to old loyalties and petty prejudices... they'll serve anyway. As shells. As puppets dancing to my will."
The threat wasn't subtle, but it didn't need to be. These were practical people who understood cause and effect, action and consequence. They'd all made similar calculations a hundred times before—the only difference was the stakes had never been this high.
"So choose," Blaze said, and his voice carried the finality of a judge pronouncing sentence. "Remain beasts scrabbling in the dirt, or become wolves of the Crimson Court."
The transformation began slowly, like ice cracking on a spring river. Dutch "The Hammer" McNeal—a gang captain who'd earned his nickname by literally hammering his way through a rival's door to settle a debt—rose from both knees to one. It wasn't surrender anymore; it was acknowledgment. A grudging recognition that maybe, just maybe, this madman with the glowing eyes was offering something worth the risk.
Others followed his lead. Henrik's weathered face showed resignation, but also a flicker of something that might have been hope. After forty years of smuggling, of always looking over his shoulder, of never being able to retire because retirement meant vulnerability—maybe it was time to bet everything on one final, magnificent gamble.
The mercenaries were slower to adapt, their professional pride warring with their survival instincts. But even Sarah the Silent, who'd sworn she'd die before she bowed to another master, found herself pressing her fist to her chest in the old soldier's salute. If you were going to serve, better to serve someone who could make emperors tremble than someone who could only make shopkeepers sweat.
Blaze raised his hand, and the oppressive weight in the air seemed to lift slightly. The shadows receded like an outgoing tide, and the torches flared back to their normal intensity. But the change in the room's atmosphere was more than just supernatural—it was psychological. These weren't the same broken men who had knelt in terror moments before. They were something new, something hungrier.
"Excellent," Blaze said, and for the first time since they'd arrived, his voice carried genuine warmth. "From this night forward, you serve the Crimson Court. When others speak of me, they'll use the name Crimson Shadow—let it spread through every tavern and brothel, every guild hall and noble's parlor. Let them whisper it in their prayers and their nightmares."
He turned to address Garrick and Kael directly, his voice becoming crisp and businesslike. "You two will be my right and left hands. Garrick, I want you overseeing gang operations. Keep them competitive—a little internal friction breeds strength—but never let it escalate to the point where it weakens our overall position. Kael, you'll coordinate our smuggling networks. I want gold flowing, but quietly. Nothing flashy enough to bring unwanted attention from the customs houses or the royal navy." His smile turned predatory. "Disappoint me, and you'll join Marcus on the floor."
Both men nodded with the solemnity of generals accepting battlefield commands.
Then Blaze's attention returned to the assembled crowd, and his voice dropped to something almost intimate, almost fatherly. "Your blood, your fear, your absolute loyalty—these things belong to me now. But in return, you'll have something you've never possessed before: a future that extends beyond tomorrow's sunrise."
He lifted the cursed ring high, and its gem pulsed with that same rhythm as a living heart. The shadows around him began to writhe and coalesce, forming the rough outline of a throne carved from midnight itself. For one impossible moment, Blaze looked less like a man and more like a force of nature given human form—beautiful, terrible, and absolutely inevitable.
"Rise, children of the Crimson Court."
And they did rise—not as the broken criminals who had stumbled into these ruins seeking survival, but as something transformed. Tommy felt his spine straighten with newfound purpose. Henrik's limp seemed less pronounced, as if the weight of years had been partially lifted from his shoulders. Sarah smiled for the first time in months, a real smile that had nothing to do with poison or pretense.
The temple, which had stood empty and forgotten for so long, now thrummed with a different kind of devotion. Not the desperate prayers of the faithful seeking mercy from distant gods, but the fierce loyalty of the damned pledging themselves to something immediate and tangible.
Blaze Carter stood at the center of it all, shadows crowned around his head like a dark halo. The same Blaze who had once been summoned like a servant, dismissed like trash, abandoned like a broken tool. But that man was gone now, dissolved in the crucible of absolute power.
The Crimson Court was born, and with it, Greywick's old order began to die.
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Hurray, we are at the end of volume 2. This is the solidification of power for our MC. The next volume will be longer than the previous two. So, get ready for it.