The silence was the first violation. For months, the world had been a constant, grinding symphony of chaos—the background hum of a billion realities grating against one another, a psychic static that had become the soundtrack to the apocalypse. Now, as Arthur's muddy fingers closed around the silver ring, there was nothing. A perfect, absolute void that felt less like the absence of sound and more like a physical pressure, a fist closing around his skull.
The world bled to grey. Color drained from the rust-red rebar and the bruised-purple sky, leaving a monochrome landscape of ghosts and shadows. The rain, which had been a miserable, steady drizzle, now hung suspended in the air, each drop a frozen bead of crystal. It was a world stripped of life, a photograph of a dead moment.
And he was no longer alone.
A figure coalesced before him, woven from the same ethereal twilight as the rest of the scene. It was an Elf, regal and proud, his features sharp and beautiful in a way that was almost painful to behold. He wore ornate, ghostly armor, and his eyes burned with a cold, blue light, like chips of a winter sky. He was luminous, a specter of forgotten majesty, and his expression was one of profound impatience, as if he had been waiting for a very long time.
Arthur scrambled backward, his heart seizing in his chest. He was on his back in the mud before he realized he had moved. "What... who the hell are you?" he rasped, the words catching in his throat.
The spirit's gaze was imperious, analytical. He looked Arthur over not as a man, but as one might inspect a tool. A sword, perhaps. Checking for cracks in the blade, for weakness in the hilt.
"I am the one who forged this," the spirit said, his voice not a sound, but a thought that resonated directly in Arthur's mind, layered with echoes of hammers on steel and the roar of a great fire. The Elf gestured dismissively at the ring, which now sat innocently on the velvet lining of its box. "And you… you are the vessel. The hand that will wield it. At last."
Arthur pushed himself up on his elbows. Hallucinations. It had to be. Starvation did strange things to the brain. "Get out of my head."
A flicker of annoyance crossed the spirit's face. "Your head? Mortal, you are a cave in which my voice now echoes. Do not mistake the echo for the mountain. I am Celebrimbor. And by the touch of my ring, we are now bound. Our fates, intertwined."
"I didn't agree to anything," Arthur snarled, the fighter's instinct to push back against any perceived cage taking over. He tried to stand, to run, but his legs felt like lead. The grey, silent world held him captive.
"Agreement is a luxury for those with choices," Celebrimbor stated, a cold, hard fact. "You had none. You were a dying ember in a field of ash. I have given you breath. Now, you will be the fire." The spirit drifted closer, circling Arthur like a wolf. "My memory is… incomplete. This shattered world is not my own. The face of my enemy is lost to shadow. But I remember my purpose. The purpose of the Ring. To dominate. To forge an army from the will of others and bring order to chaos. That is our purpose now."
Arthur's mind reeled. Domination. Mind control. He looked at his own hands, calloused and scarred from years of wrapping them, of pounding them against leather and bone. He knew control. The control of his own body, of his own anger. This… this was something else. A violation. "You're insane," he muttered.
"Sanity is a matter of perspective," Celebrimbor replied coolly. "In a world of madmen, the one who seeks to control them is the only sane one present."
The world snapped back into color and sound with a violent lurch. The suspended raindrops fell, the hum of reality returned, and the ghost of Celebrimbor vanished. Arthur was alone again, kneeling in the mud, the silver ring glinting innocently in its box. The headache was still there, a dull, throbbing reminder of the passenger in his skull. But now, it was accompanied by a new, unsettling sensation. A low-level thrum of awareness. He could feel things around him. Not with his ears or eyes, but in his mind.
That's when he heard the crunch of boots.
Arthur dove behind the rusted chassis of a pickup truck, his movements fluid and economical. His boxer's training had never left him; it was a part of his very marrow. Stay low, make yourself a small target.
"Four of them," Celebrimbor's voice noted in his mind. It was different now, quieter, a strategic advisor whispering in his ear. "Clad in iron, but their wills are brittle. They reek of fear and misplaced bravado."
Arthur peered through a gap in the corroded metal. Four soldiers in dark blue uniforms, the red cobra emblem stark on their chests. They were moving like professionals, sweeping the ruins with their rifles. The man in the lead, bulkier than the others, held himself with an air of command.
"That one is their captain," Celebrimbor observed. "His will is the strongest, but it is a crude, unrefined thing. A bludgeon. The others are followers. Sheep."
"They're sheep with automatic weapons," Arthur muttered under his breath. He was a decent fighter in a cage, but this wasn't a cage. There were no rules, no referee. Just four predators and him, the starving prey.
"Sector 7-Gamma is clear," the squad leader reported into his comm. "Minimal resistance."
Suddenly, Celebrimbor's presence intensified. "Look," he commanded. The world flickered, shifting for a second into that grey, ethereal plane. In the Wraith World, the four soldiers glowed with a faint, blue light. Arthur could see them perfectly, their outlines stark against the dead landscape. He could sense their life force, their awareness. The Ring wasn't just a weapon; it was a lens, showing him a dimension of reality he never knew existed.
The vision faded, but the knowledge remained. The soldier on the far right was nervous, his heart rate elevated. The one on the left was overconfident. Details Arthur could never have known were now laid bare.
The squad began to fan out. One of them started moving toward Arthur's hiding place. The methodical crunch of his boots was a countdown. Arthur's hands curled into fists. He could try a rush. Take one down before the others reacted. A desperate, suicidal gambit. It was all he had.
"Your fists are useless here, mortal," Celebrimbor scoffed. "You have a sword. Why would you try to bite them?"
A new sound ripped through the air. A wet, frantic, skittering from the skeletal remains of a nearby house. It was the sound of something deeply wrong.
The C.O.B.R.A. soldiers snapped to attention, their rifles raised. "Contact!"
Something burst from a shadowed doorway. A nightmare of raw, red muscle and exposed bone. It moved with a twitching, insectoid speed that defied its size. No eyes, just a swollen, pulsating brain visible through a thin membrane of flesh. A Licker.
It landed on the closest soldier, and a tongue, long and barbed, shot out and punched through the man's helmet with a sickening crack. The remaining three opened fire, their rifle reports a deafening, panicked roar. The Licker moved like a glitch in reality, bullets tearing through its flesh to little effect. It bounded off the side of the truck where Arthur hid, claws gouging deep furrows in the metal inches from his head.
"It's too fast!" one soldier screamed, just before a scything claw tore his head from his shoulders.
Two left. Back-to-back, firing in disciplined bursts now, their training kicking in. The creature shrieked and scrambled up the side of a collapsed wall, clinging there like a monstrous gargoyle. It was trapped. Arthur was trapped. The soldiers, the monster, and him, all caught in a triangle of death.
The last two soldiers were falling back, their retreat taking them right past Arthur's position. The Licker was gathering itself on the wall, preparing to leap. In a few seconds, they would all be on top of him. He was going to die. Torn apart, shot by a stray bullet, it didn't matter. Dead was dead. The bitter, stubborn part of him, the part that had gotten up from the canvas one too many times, refused to accept it.
"They will all perish," Celebrimbor's voice was cold, pragmatic. "The beast is a mindless engine of hunger. The men are fools. But you… you have the Ring. Their desperation is a key. Their fear is a doorway. Take one of them. Seize his will. NOW!"
The Licker launched itself from the wall. In a final act of cowardice, one of the soldiers shoved his partner forward, into the creature's path. "For Cobra!" he screamed, turning to run. The abandoned man was ripped apart before his partner's body hit the ground.
One soldier left. The coward. He was scrambling backward, his rifle clicking on empty, his face a white mask of terror. He was ten feet from Arthur. The Licker, dripping gore, turned its eyeless face towards the sound of his panicked breathing.
There was no more time. No other choice. It was this or the claws. Arthur closed his eyes, the image of the terrified soldier burned into his mind. He focused on the man's glowing blue essence, that fragile flame of consciousness.
"Focus your will," Celebrimbor commanded, his own ancient, indomitable will lending strength to Arthur's. "See his mind as a fortress. His fear has left the gates wide open. Walk through them, and take the throne."
Arthur gathered every scrap of his existence—the grit, the anger, the bitterness, the desperate, clawing need to simply live—and he pushed.
It wasn't a flood. It was a siege. He felt the soldier's mental defenses, a flimsy wall of training and bravado. He smashed through it. Memories flew like shrapnel: a sterile training room, the sneering face of a mustachioed Commander, a hurried kiss from a woman whose face was already fading. Arthur ignored them. They were chaff, distractions. He drove deeper, toward the core of the man, the seat of his consciousness. He felt the man's will, a terrified, screaming thing, fighting back. Arthur's boxer instincts took over. He weathered the frantic, desperate blows of the man's psyche. He found the opening. And he threw a single, knockout punch with his soul.
The soldier's will shattered like glass.
Arthur opened his eyes. He was himself, behind the truck, a trickle of blood running from his nose. But he was also standing in the open, looking through the soldier's eyes, the world a greenish, data-cluttered tactical display. He saw his own pathetic, hiding form. He felt the heavy, unfamiliar body armor, the useless, empty rifle in his hands. He was inside the man's skin.
And Celebrimbor was there with him, a ghostly, shimmering presence at his side, visible only to him. "His body is clumsy, his mind weak," the Elf-lord sneered. "But it will have to suffice. Now, make him kill."
The Licker shrieked and charged.
The soldier's body wanted to panic, to run. Arthur's will crushed the impulse. He was in command. Drop the rifle, he ordered. The puppet's hands obeyed. Draw the knife. The nine-inch combat blade was in the puppet's hand.
The creature's spiked tongue shot out. Arthur didn't make the soldier dodge. He made him step in, a classic boxer's slip. The puppet's body moved with a grace and speed it did not naturally possess, the Ring amplifying Arthur's own physical instincts and infusing them into his host. The tongue whipped past the soldier's head. As the creature's momentum carried it forward, Arthur drove the puppet's arm up, plunging the blade deep into the Licker's soft throat.
The creature screamed, a gurgling, blood-choked sound, and raked its claws across the soldier's chest. Armor screeched and tore. Arthur felt a phantom agony flare across his own chest, so real he gasped. The puppet stumbled but did not fall. The damage was severe. This body was failing.
"It is wounded. Its rage makes it predictable," Celebrimbor noted calmly. "Finish it before this vessel expires."
The Licker lunged, a frenzy of claws and teeth. Arthur made the soldier plant his feet. He held the knife in a low, reverse grip. No fancy moves. Just brutal efficiency. As the creature leaped, he executed the command. Step into the blow. Turn the hips. Drive the blade up.
The soldier's body moved with the explosive power of a perfectly timed counter-punch. He met the Licker's charge, his shoulder slamming into its chest. The knife, driven by the full force of the body's rotation, slid up through the creature's sternum and into its brain cavity.
The Licker went rigid. Its claws twitched. Then it collapsed, a dead weight, sliding off the knife and onto the mud.
The connection snapped. Arthur was violently thrown back into himself, gasping as if he had just surfaced from a deep dive. He looked up. The C.O.B.R.A. soldier, his puppet, stood motionless for a heartbeat. A thin line of blood trickled from under his silver faceplate. Then, he crumpled, a discarded tool, his purpose served.
Silence. The battle was over. Five dead bodies lay in the mud. He had done this. He had worn a man's skin like a glove and used it to kill. He had felt the man's terror, tasted his memories, and then had him torn apart.
The smell of blood and viscera hit him. His stomach revolted. He crawled out from behind the truck and vomited, great, heaving retches that tore at his throat. He was shaking uncontrollably, his mind scoured raw by the violation of it all. This wasn't fighting. This was monstrous.
He pushed himself to his feet, swaying, his body screaming with exhaustion and phantom pain. He was horrified. He was disgusted. But underneath it all, a cold, hard thought solidified in his mind.
He was alive. And they were dead.
The luminous, ghostly form of Celebrimbor appeared before him, his expression unreadable. He looked at the carnage, then at Arthur, who was wiping vomit from his mouth with the back of a trembling hand.
"You feel disgust," the Elf-lord stated, not as a question, but as a diagnosis of a symptom. "That is a weakness we will have to burn out of you. Spill your stomach now, mortal. There will be no time for such sentiment later."
Celebrimbor drifted towards the center of the bloody scene, his form radiating a cold, terrible power.
"What you call an atrocity, I call a foundation. Rise, Ring-bearer. Our work has just begun."
The revulsion was a physical thing, a sour, coiling knot in his gut. Arthur spat one last time into the mud, trying to rid his mouth of the taste of bile and self-loathing. He was alive. The thought offered no comfort, only a stark, brutal accounting. The price of his life was five others, one of them worn and discarded like a cheap coat.
"They are a resource now," Celebrimbor's voice cut through his thoughts, devoid of sympathy. The Elf's shimmering form stood over the corpse of the C.O.B.R.A. soldier Arthur had puppeteered. "Their folly is your fortune. Do not squander it. Strip them."
"They're men," Arthur rasped, his throat raw.
"They were men," the spirit corrected, his tone sharp as a shard of ice. "Now they are salvage. They carry sustenance. Water. Tools. Their story is over. Ours is beginning. Would you have us starve out of sentiment for the pawns of a petty tyrant who calls himself 'Commander'?"
The mention of the Commander—a memory plucked from the soldier's dying mind—sent a chill down Arthur's spine. The ghost had been inside with him, sifting through the wreckage of another man's life. He was a passenger, but he was also a thief.
The gnawing hunger in his belly was a more potent argument than any the spirit could make. Arthur moved, his limbs stiff and aching. He approached the first body, the one torn apart by the Licker. He averted his eyes from the mangled torso and unclipped a canteen from the soldier's belt. It was full. He drank, the lukewarm, plastic-tasting water the most wonderful thing he'd ever tasted. He unhooked a small, heavy pack. Inside, he found three foil-wrapped C-ration packs, a roll of bandages, and a spare ammunition clip. Gold.
He moved to the next body, then the next, his movements becoming more mechanical, more detached with each one. He was a scavenger now, a carrion bird picking over a fresh kill. He took their water, their food, the sleek, black rifle from the final soldier, and the combat knife, which he wiped clean on the dead man's trousers before sliding it into his own belt. From the squad leader, he took a sidearm, a heavy, blocky pistol that felt alien and dangerous in his hand.
On the last soldier, the one who had been his puppet, he found something else. Tucked into an inner pocket of the man's body armor was a small, laminated photograph. A smiling man—the soldier, younger and without the helmet—with his arm around a woman, a small boy on his shoulders. They were on a beach, under a sun that probably no longer existed.
Arthur stared at the photo. This was the man whose fear he had tasted. This was the life he had shattered. This was the brick Celebrimbor had spoken of. It felt impossibly heavy.
"A ghost," Celebrimbor's voice was dismissive, almost contemptuous. "A memory from a dead world. It has no power here. Only the Ring has power. Only we have power. Are you finished wallowing?"
Arthur shoved the photo into his own pocket, a strange, grim penance. He shouldered the pack and slung the rifle over his back. He felt like a fraud, a child playing dress-up in a dead man's clothes. But he was a child who was armed, fed, and hydrated for the first time in a week.
He found shelter in the collapsed basement of what might have been a library. The air was thick with the smell of mold and decaying paper, but the ceiling of reinforced concrete and rubble was solid. It was a tomb, but it was a safe one. He sat down on a pile of rotted books, the rifle across his lap, and opened one of the C-ration packs. It was a tasteless, high-protein paste, but he devoured it in seconds. The influx of calories was like pouring gasoline on a dying fire. Strength, clarity, and a profound, bone-deep weariness washed over him.
Celebrimbor's form appeared, a faint, luminous outline in the gloom. He watched Arthur with an unblinking, analytical gaze.
"You have questions," the spirit stated.
"That thing… what I did to that soldier…" Arthur began, his voice low. "Can you do that to anyone?"
"We can," Celebrimbor corrected. "What you did was a crude act of desperation. A simple Domination. You reached out with the Ring's power and overwhelmed a weak, terrified will. It is effective for turning rabble against their masters, for creating chaos. But the vessel is temporary. The connection is fragile. The strain of your command burned out his mind as surely as the creature's claws tore his flesh."
"So they just… die?"
"The weak often do when touched by true power," Celebrimbor said without remorse. "But there is another way. A better way. For those with stronger wills—leaders, champions, beasts of great renown—a simple Domination will not suffice. Their minds are fortresses. You cannot overwhelm them from a distance. You must face them. You must break them."
The spirit drifted closer, his ghostly form illuminating the damp, dark space. "You must prove your strength is greater than theirs. And when they are broken, when they are on their knees, you will place your hand upon them. You will mark them. The Ring will forge a bond, shackling their will to yours. They will not be a puppet whose strings you pull. They will retain their mind, their skills, their personality. But they will serve. They will be your captains, your lieutenants. Your Nazgûl."
Arthur recoiled from the word. "I'm not making monsters."
"No," Celebrimbor agreed, a cruel smile touching his lips. "We are making soldiers. An army requires structure. Fodder to be Dominated and thrown at the enemy, and a circle of branded, powerful followers to lead them. That is the path to an empire."
"I don't want an empire," Arthur shot back, his voice rising. "I want to survive. I want to find my daughter. If she's even… if she's still…" He couldn't finish the sentence.
The spirit's expression hardened. The faint warmth of his light grew cold. "You speak of survival as if it is a destination. It is a desperate, fleeting state. You survived today because of me. What about tomorrow, when a greater threat finds you? What about your daughter? You think you can protect her with your bare hands and a bleeding heart? You lost your family once because you were powerless. A cog in a machine that discarded you. The world broke, and now you have been given the chance to build a new machine, with you as its master. You would throw that away to scavenge for scraps in the dirt until something finally eats you?"
The words were a physical blow, striking at the core of his failures. The divorce, the layoff, the quiet, pathetic shrinking of his life. He had been weak. He had lost everything. The anger, the shame, it all came flooding back, a bitter, familiar tide.
"What do you want from me?" Arthur asked, his voice barely a whisper.
"Everything," Celebrimbor replied simply. "Your will. Your body. Your anger. We will forge them into a weapon that will carve out a kingdom in this forsaken reality. And you will never be powerless again."
Their tense silence was broken by a sound from above. The scrape of rock, the crunch of gravel, and then, voices.
"Nothin' here, boss. Just another dead zone."
"Check the basements," a second voice, rougher and deeper, commanded. "People like to crawl into holes to die. Sometimes they leave stuff."
Arthur was on his feet in an instant, the heavy pistol in his hand. His heart hammered against his ribs.
"Scavengers," Celebrimbor noted, a hint of predatory interest in his voice. "Insignificant, but they will serve as a test."
A heavy piece of rubble was shoved aside from the opening above, and a shaft of grey light cut through the darkness. A rope ladder snaked down. One figure, wiry and clad in scavenged leather, descended. He carried a rusty pipe studded with nails. He was followed by another, bigger man, the one who had given the order. The boss. He was a brute, with a shaved head and a cruel, sneering face that looked like it had been punched a few too many times. A Gothamite, Arthur guessed, from the look of him. Behind them, at the top of the opening, Arthur heard a strange, high-pitched yipping and chittering.
The first scavenger landed lightly on the basement floor, his eyes adjusting to the dark. "See? Nothin' but moldy books."
The boss landed with a heavy thud. His eyes were sharper. They locked onto Arthur, standing half-hidden in the shadows. The boss's sneer widened into a grin, revealing several missing teeth. He looked Arthur up and down, his gaze lingering on the C.O.B.R.A. rifle and the pistol.
"Well now, Tim," the boss said to his subordinate. "Looks like somebody already went shopping." He took a step forward, his massive frame radiating a brutish confidence. "Hand it over, old man. The gun, the pack, all of it. Do it nice and easy, and we'll let you keep your kneecaps."
"His will is a muddy puddle," Celebrimbor whispered in Arthur's mind. "Dominate him. Turn him on his master."
Arthur's hand tightened on the pistol, but he hesitated. To violate another mind like that again… the thought made him sick.
"I'm not looking for trouble," Arthur said, his voice level. He fell back into the familiar stance, body angled, hands up in a defensive posture, the pistol held tight.
The boss laughed. "Trouble found you." He nodded to the opening. "Ed? Flinch? Get down here. We got a live one."
Two more figures scrambled down the ladder. They weren't human. They were hunched, bipedal creatures with mangy, grey-brown fur, sloping backs, and long, canine snouts filled with yellowed teeth. Their eyes, beady and intelligent, glowed with a malevolent hunger. They moved with a loping, unnatural gait, giggling and snarling. Reimagined hyenas from a land of talking lions, now feral and monstrous.
Four of them. The boss, the wiry thug, and two beasts.
"Last chance, grandpa," the boss grunted, cracking his knuckles.
"You hesitate," Celebrimbor's voice was laced with contempt. "This sentimentality will be your death. If you will not use the Ring as a scalpel, then you will use it as a hammer. The power is not just for the minds of others. It is for you. Your body is the forge, your fists the hammer. Strike!"
The boss lunged. He was fast for a big man, but sloppy. Arthur had fought a hundred men like him in the ring. He sidestepped the wild haymaker, the wind of it whistling past his ear. He brought the pistol up to use as a club—
"No! Channel it!"
—and a strange instinct took over. He didn't swing the gun. He dropped it. As the boss turned, surprised, Arthur stepped in and threw a short, sharp jab. It was a perfect punch, all his weight behind it, delivered from the balls of his feet. And as his knuckles made contact with the man's fleshy cheek, he did as the voice commanded. He channeled the Ring's power.
His fist flared with a brilliant, ghostly blue light. The world flickered into the grey, silent tones of the Wraith World for a single, heart-stopping instant. The impact made almost no sound, just a dull, wet thud. But the effect was devastating.
The boss didn't just stumble back. He was hurled backward as if hit by a car, a strangled cry escaping his lips. He landed in a heap ten feet away, his body convulsing. But it was his eyes that were the most terrifying. They were wide with a primal horror, staring at something that wasn't there. Arthur hadn't just punched his face; he had punched his soul.
The wiry thug and the two hyena-creatures stared, momentarily stunned.
"Again!" Celebrimbor roared in his mind. "Press the advantage! Break their line!"
Arthur moved. He felt… fast. Lighter. The Ring was coursing through him, a current of spectral energy. He flowed toward the wiry thug, who swung his spiked pipe in a panicked arc. Arthur ducked under it, the movement so fluid it felt less like his own and more like a memory of a more graceful warrior. He came up and threw a right cross. Again, his fist glowed. The blow connected with the thug's ribs. A crunch of bone, and a flash of blue light. The man screamed, a high-pitched shriek of pain and terror, and collapsed, clutching his side, his will to fight utterly shattered.
The two hyena-creatures, driven by a more primal instinct, attacked together. They were fast, a flurry of snapping jaws and raking claws. Arthur was in his element now. This was a dance he knew. Bob and weave. Slip and counter.
One lunged, jaws snapping. Arthur pivoted, letting it rush past, and delivered a spectral hammer-fist to the back of its skull. The creature yelped and crashed into a wall, stunned and whimpering. The second one tried to flank him, and he met it with a vicious, glowing uppercut to the jaw. The impact lifted the beast off its feet and sent it flying onto a pile of rubble, where it lay twitching.
It was over in less than ten seconds. The four of them were down, broken not just by physical force, but by a direct assault on their spirits.
Arthur stood in the center of the basement, his chest heaving, his fists still faintly glowing with a soft, blue light. He felt no disgust this time. Only a terrifying, exhilarating rush of power. He had not just won. He had dominated.
The boss was stirring, groaning as he pushed himself up. His bravado was gone, replaced by a raw, naked fear. He stared at Arthur as if he were a god or a demon.
"He is broken," Celebrimbor's voice was filled with a chilling satisfaction. "His will is shattered. He is ripe for the forging. Mark him. Make him the first stone of your new order."
Arthur walked toward the downed man. The boss scrambled backward, his eyes wide with terror. "What are you?" he whimpered.
Arthur didn't answer. He reached down, grabbed the front of the man's leather jacket, and hauled him to his feet, slamming him against the concrete wall. He was stronger than he should be. The Ring amplified him. He looked into the man's terrified eyes. He saw a life of petty cruelty and bullying, a will built on the fear of others. Now, that fear was his.
Acting on a pure, undeniable instinct, an instruction whispered from the ghost in his mind, Arthur slammed his open palm onto the thug's forehead.
The Ring flared with an intense, brilliant blue light. A ghostly, intricate sigil, the mark of Celebrimbor's hand, burned itself onto the man's skin for a brief second before fading from sight. The man screamed, a raw, soul-tearing sound, his body arching against the wall.
Then, he went limp, his eyes rolling back in his head. Arthur held him there for a moment before letting him slump to the floor.
After a few seconds, the man stirred. He looked up at Arthur, and the fear in his eyes was different now. It was no longer the fear of a victim for his attacker. It was the awe-struck, absolute terror and reverence of a mortal for his god. He was still himself—his memories, his crude personality—but the core of his will had been hollowed out and refilled. He was a vessel, now sworn to a new master.
He struggled to his knees, his head bowed.
"Boss," he rasped, his voice trembling. "What… what are your orders?"
Arthur stared down at his first follower, at the broken man kneeling in the filth and decay. His own hand was still tingling, the phantom sensation of the brand still hot on his palm. He had crossed another line. He was no longer a survivor. He was no longer just a fighter.
Celebrimbor's spectral form appeared beside him, a king surveying his new territory.
"Good," the Elf-lord purred, the sound resonating in Arthur's soul. "Now you have a squire. Every king needs a squire."