Ash rained from the sky that day. Ash, casting the atmosphere dark, weightless, and relentless. It drifted like a funeral shroud, soft at first glance but heavy with what it meant. The wind carried it in slow, spiraling flurries, each flake a ghost of something lost.
A village burned below the cliffs, its rooftops gutted and sagging inward, skeletal beams glowing red beneath their own collapse. The bell tower, once proud, now stood cracked and charred, its spire half-gone, as if some great hand had snapped it mid-prayer. Smoke coiled upward like the last breath of a dying god. And above it all, on the jagged overlook of a ruined fortress, he stood, a lone figure against the dying sky, watching the world burn beneath him.
Drayce Vortalis.
No crown adorned his head here, no banners flanked his sides. Just the wind, shrieking through the ruins as if it belonged to him alone. As if it were telling the tale of his vicious victory. His presence spoke louder than any battle cry, bleeding the warmth from the air and replacing it with something colder than fear.
His black coat whipped behind him, trailing behind him like a banner of ruin, it's hem etched with silver-threaded sigils and marked with bloodstains both old and fresh. Beneath the shadow of his dark fringe, his golden eyes glinted. Not warm like sunlit amber, but sharp, reflective, like something watching you from the bottom of hell.
A commander approached him, his armor was dulled by soot, ash and heavy with the weight of smoke and blood. He stopped a few paces behind the figure on the ridge. His voice suddenly broke through Drayce's wandering thoughts.
"Your orders, your Majesty?"
Drayce didn't turn towards him. His gaze remained fixed on the valley below, where the last spire of the village crumbled into the inferno. Flames danced in his golden pupils flickering like whispers of chaos but his face remained unchanged not divulging anyone anything.
"Let them run," he said, voice low, smooth, and absolute. "Fear spreads farther than corpses."
The commander bowed without question and vanished into the smoke, his silhouette was swallowed by flame-lit haze.
Behind him, four chained prisoners knelt in the mud, their chains heavy, their clothes torn and muddied beyond recognition. Trembling, nobles, generals, priests whatever they had once been, it meant nothing now. One of them lifted his head and dared to speak:
"You can't kill us all…" he rasped. "The kingdom—"
Drayce walked toward him. His golden eyes now fixed on him. Like death in no hurry.
He stopped before the man not even drawing his sword and looked down at him with quiet finality.
"I don't care about the kingdom," he said, in a voice cutting and cold. "I care about what happens after it stops existing, when I mold its remains in my own taste, to serve its new master."
"You fucking......you will go to hell," the man spat.
"Oh? Remind me what do you people named me." Dracye said in amusement.
"Ah, right. I am the devil's own shroud. Then hell will be my refuge." he ended with a cold smile.
Then he raised a single gloved hand, and snapped his fingers.
The guards obeyed without question.
As screams echoed behind him, but Drayce turned his gaze to the north to the untouched kingdoms that still hadn't fallen. Unaware that their time was running out. The wind stirred the ash around his boots like smoke curling at a pyre. And then —
He smiled. Like a man who already saw their end.
***
The war banners of Ilvaran were still burning, their rich velvet reduced to smoldering scraps. The scent of scorched cloth and ash hung heavy in the night air, curling through the darkness like the last breath of a dying kingdom.
Just beyond the broken skeleton of the conquered palace, Drayce Vortalis stood in the cold moonlit night air outside his command tent. His long black coat, billowed like a dark flag in the wind. The firelight caught the glint in his lethal golden eyes.
Around him, his officers waited in a tense semicircle, still and silent. One of them finally spoke, voice measured but wary.
"It's missing, your Majesty. From your tent. We believe it was taken during the eastern tower's collapse. The chaos in the withdrawal gave someone cover."
Another, braver or more foolish, tried to soften the weight of the news but failed:
"Perhaps it's good luck, your Majesty. In Ilvaran tradition, a stolen item at departure means misfortune leaves with it."
But Drayce instead of responding glared and watched them through his eyes that passed over each officer.
After a short while though Drayce tilted his head. Just slightly,
"Is that so?" he said quietly. Too quietly.
He turned toward the table his eyes flicking over the battle plans and tokens and then he stopped. He refused to even stir just stared, his gaze dropped. And there, resting on the black cloth on the table where it hadn't been moments ago, lay a small silver pendant. Exactly where it shouldn't have been a second ago.
"Found it."
One of the men exhaled in relief.
"There it is. Seems it was misplaced after all—"
"No," Drayce said, interrupting. His voice was calm, but now ice-cracked.
"It wasn't misplaced. It was touched." The air thinned, the temperature seeming to drop with the words.
He moved and picked up the pendant, turning it slowly between his gloved fingers. Then, without a flicker of expression, he closed his fist around it like snapping a trap shut.
"It doesn't matter that I found it." his voice became brittle.
"It matters that someone thought they could take it."
The officers gulped, with sinking realization in their throats. Someone had drawn their liege's attention and not in a way that promised mercy. After the long war, he usually rests, letting the world smolder around him, but this… this incident promised a cruelty far sharper than whatever passed in the battlegrounds before.