The crimson sky wept ash as armies marched toward the Northern Ridge—once a sacred ground where gods and spirits walked among mortals, leaving their blessings upon the land. Now the blessed earth ran black with corruption, and the very air screamed with choking demonic presence.
For the first time in recorded history, the races stood united against the spreading darkness. Orcs with scarred green flesh and lightning tattoos roared beside pale elves whose silver hair caught the ashfall like starlight. Dwarven hammers rang out in defiance, striking alongside human steel, as warriors bore a dozen banners up the desecrated paths.
At their head rode a king whose steady gaze never wavered from the defiled summit above. His golden crown caught no light in that gray dawn, and his purple cloak streamed behind him like a banner of defiance. The soldiers whispered that he had not slept since the demons first appeared—that he bore the weight of every soul in the valleys below.
Beside him marched nine other heroes whose very presence seemed to push back the encroaching dark. In their wake, common soldiers found courage they had never known, hearts steeled against the terror awaiting them on the ridge.
The armies clashed.
Twisted creatures of fang and flame poured down the mountainside like a black tide, meeting steel and spell. Elven battle-songs rose against orc war cries, dwarven hammers shattered demon armor, while human knights fought shoulder-to-shoulder with their ancient enemies. Old grudges fell silent before the greater evil.
The ten heroes carved through the demon ranks like a blade through silk. The golden-haired knight's blazing aura cut down fiends that could rend stone. The gray-bearded wizard bent reality itself, banishing horrors screaming back to the abyss. The dark-haired priest's sacred words burned through demonic flesh, while the silver-haired elf fired arrows like moonlit water, each strike swift and precise.
The red-bearded dwarf's hammer sang as it shattered skulls and armor alike. The battle-scarred orc fought with twin axes, lightning tattoos glowing as he roared his fury. The young bard's voice carried above the din, summoning spectral warriors from the songs of ages past to stand beside the living.
Like a living shadow, the assassin moved unseen, striking where demons faltered. The shapeshifter became beast and terror both, forms changing with every strike. And through it all, the king fought—not for glory, but for every child, farmer, and soul who could not stand here. His blade was steady, his resolve unshaken.
Then the Demon King descended.
He was not the towering monstrosity they expected, but something far more unsettling—a figure of terrible elegance, with pale skin and flowing black hair. Only the curved horns crowning his head and the obsessive hunger burning in his eyes betrayed his true nature. Along his throat ran a thin silver scar, as though something once bound him and had been violently torn away. In his hand he held a long sword that drank the very light from the air.
The ten heroes reformed, meeting him together. Their powers wove into one desperate tapestry—golden barriers, arcane wards, divine flames, and silver moonlight holding the line. The Demon King fought with the grace of a master duelist, his blade parrying and striking with casual arrogance, his cold eyes searching, calculating, always watching.
The duel seemed endless, each heartbeat stretched into eternity. Then the wizard bound him for a precious instant, and the heroes struck together. Wounds opened along the demon's perfect form. For the first time, victory seemed within reach.
But the Demon King only smiled.
With deliberate ceremony, he raised his blade and turned the point toward his own chest.
"If I cannot have this realm," he snarled, voice echoing with hatred, "then let the void devour all creation."
He spoke ancient words in the Netherian tongue:
"Malthen vorth neth'ghul korthul."
The air itself recoiled as the oath bound reality. Then, with cruel precision, he drove the blade into his own heart. His lifeblood spilled into the cracks of existence, offered to the nothing between worlds. Even in death, his lips curved in triumph.
Reality screamed.
A sound like shattering glass spread across the ridge—felt not in the ears but in the soul. Jagged fractures split the sky, revealing not blackness, not emptiness—nothing.
From those wounds in existence spilled horrors without shape or form, wrongness that language could not hold. They were the spaces between thoughts, stretched into endless hunger. Where they touched, earth withered into corruption beyond healing. Where they breathed, light forgot how to shine.
Whispers followed—Voidspeak, drifting like poisonous smoke:
"Null'th veth'un mor'ghul…"
The words reached every soul on the battlefield. Soldiers collapsed, aging decades in moments, their spirits unraveling as if plucked from the weave of creation.
The heroes stood fast.
The orc strode forward, axes gleaming. His clan had battled voidspawn before, in forgotten ages when the world first cracked. Generations of bloodlines had bred resistance into him, and the whispers that killed others only deepened his rage. The shapeshifter's forms faltered, unable to touch things that existed outside nature itself. The assassin struck from shadows, though even shadows began to wither and die.
The wizard raised trembling hands and began the greatest ritual ever woven, threads of light binding the rift as his hair turned white from forbidden knowledge. The priest's voice broke into tongues older than kingdoms, his mortal body igniting with solar fire as divinity itself spoke through him. The elf's silver gaze blazed, her flesh overlaid with a lunar spirit, moonlight incarnate. Together they shone like sun and moon made flesh, their combined brilliance forcing the void to recoil even as it devoured their lives.
The dwarf carved runes into the stone, each strike sealing fragments of reality. The bard's song reached its peak, summoning a host of spectral warriors to stand shoulder to shoulder against the darkness. The orc's final cry split the battlefield like thunder. The assassin struck from every angle until the dying shadows claimed her.
The shapeshifter took one last form—something nameless and magnificent, existing only to buy three more heartbeats .
The king did not seek the frontlines, but turned to his people. Bleeding, he carved wards with his own royal blood, sealing his armies against the void. His last words were not shouted, but whispered:
"I will not let you fall."
Then the knight stepped forward.
His golden aura expanded until it bathed the battlefield in dawn light. As voidspawn surged toward the circle, he did not raise his blade—he opened his soul, pouring his essence into the growing seal until his light was no longer his own, but the world's.
One by one, the heroes fell. Some in battle. Some in sacrifice. All in defiance.
At last, the rift sealed.
Silence smothered the Northern Ridge.
The survivors found themselves in a world forever changed. The demons were gone, but so too were most of those who had stood against them. The united host disbanded, each race carrying fragments of the tale back to their own people. Old grudges returned, but whispers remained—tales of the day the world almost ended.
And somewhere, bound within the seal itself, a knight's soul kept eternal watch—sleepless, vigilant, burning with golden fire that would never be corrupted, never extinguished.
The age of heroes had ended.
But their story was only the beginning.