Chapter IV: Frostmourne Hungers
(If a hippo and a water buffalo were to fight, who would win?... Anyway, enjoy Chapter IV!)
Format Guide:SpellcastingthoughtsLich King speak or actionflashback
The Palantír's Revelation
The cold stone walls of Ezekiel's personal sanctum within the Great Tomb of Nazarick seemed to breathe with ancient malice, each shadow stretching like grasping fingers across the obsidian floor. Within this fortress of eternal darkness, the once-prince stood before a seeing stone—a palantír whose crystalline surface swirled with phantom mists, reflecting nothing and everything at once.
His fingers, pale as death itself and marked with the same ethereal blue-white glow that pulsed through Frostmourne's runes, hovered above the artifact. The sword itself rested against his throne, its presence a constant whisper at the edge of consciousness: Serve... obey... hunger...
Ezekiel's transformation was complete in ways both terrible and magnificent. Once-human features had taken on an otherworldly cast—sharp, angular, beautiful in the way winter's first killing frost is beautiful. His eyes, those cursed orbs of glacial blue fire, could pierce through flesh and bone to see the very essence of mortal souls. The crown upon his brow was no mere ornament but a cage of frozen screams, each spike a testament to dominion over death itself.
Beside him stood Tichondrius, the Dreadlord who had survived the fall of Archimonde, who had pledged his eternal service to this new Lich King. The demon's bat-like wings remained folded, his clawed hands clasped before him in a mockery of supplication. Where others might see servitude, the nathrezim saw opportunity—for what better vantage point to observe power than from its very shadow?
"The stone resists you, my liege," Tichondrius observed, his voice like silk drawn across razors. "The magics of this world are... different. Alien. Even for one who has transcended mortality."
If I can master the palantír, it will grant us eyes beyond the tomb's walls. Knowledge is power, and power... power is everything.
Ezekiel's thoughts drifted like snowfall over a battlefield, cold and inevitable. His connection to the Scourge had been severed when Nazarick was transported to this new world, but Frostmourne remained. The blade that had damned him. The blade that had made him.
He pressed his will against the stone like a blade against flesh.
The palantír erupted with light.
Images cascaded through its depths—forests and fields, mountains and rivers, all laid bare before the Lich King's gaze. Tichondrius's wings unfurled slightly in approval, crimson eyes gleaming with satisfied malice.
"Well done, your majesty," the Dreadlord purred, each word dripping with honeyed venom. "I knew the stone would yield to one of your... considerable talents."
"Your faith is noted, Tichondrius," Ezekiel replied, his voice carrying that same inhuman resonance that had once commanded legions of undead across the frozen wastes of Northrend. Not loud, but present—as if the very air itself bent to carry his words. "Though we both know you would serve my successor with equal enthusiasm should I fall."
The Dreadlord's smile was all teeth. "But of course, my lord. It is the nature of my kind. Yet I find myself... curious whether such a successor could ever exist."
Ezekiel's attention had already shifted back to the palantír, his enhanced perception drinking in every detail of the landscape below. The vision swept across rolling hills and scattered farmland until it settled upon a small village—primitive, wooden structures clustered together like frightened sheep.
People were running. Screaming.
"A festival, perhaps?" Ezekiel mused, though even as he spoke, the words tasted like ash. He knew celebration when he saw it, and this... this was not celebration.
"Look closer, your majesty."
The image magnified, and reality's true face revealed itself in all its bloody horror. Armored figures—no, thugs in stolen plate and mail—swept through the village like a plague wind. Swords rose and fell with mechanical precision. Blood painted the dirt roads. A woman clutched her child as both were cut down. An old man begged for mercy that would never come.
Ezekiel watched with the same terrible calm he'd possessed when he'd purged Stratholme, when he'd claimed Frostmourne, when he'd murdered his own father. The emotions that should have accompanied such atrocity—horror, rage, disgust—existed somewhere distant, muffled beneath layers of frost and shadow.
How strange. Once, this would have driven me to my knees. I would have wept for them, rushed to their aid without thought of consequence. Now I observe their deaths as one might observe pieces being removed from a game board. Is this strength... or have I truly lost everything that made me human?
Yet something flickered in those glacial eyes. Not warmth—warmth had died in Northrend—but perhaps... memory. The ghost of the prince he'd been, before ambition and desperation had led him down this frozen road.
"Your orders, my lord?" Tichondrius's question cut through his reverie like a knife through silk.
Ezekiel turned from the palantír, his armored form moving with predatory grace. Each piece of his plate bore the marks of the Scourge—skulls and spikes, runes that pulsed with necromantic power, all wrought in steel the color of winter's heart.
"Summon Thane Korth'azz and Sir Zeliek. Have them prepared for immediate deployment."
"You mean to... intervene?" The Dreadlord's surprise was genuine—a rare thing. "My lord, these mortals are nothing to us. Insects whose lives matter less than—"
"I am aware of what they are, Tichondrius." Ezekiel's hand rested on Frostmourne's hilt, and the sword sang at his touch, a chorus of the damned eager for fresh souls. "But I would know the measure of our power in this world. And besides..."
He paused, those terrible eyes reflecting scenes of another massacre, another purge, another choice that had damned him.
"Even the Lich King may choose when to harvest souls."
The Dreadlord bowed, wings spreading in acknowledgment. "As you command, your majesty. Though I confess curiosity—when did the Scourge's master become concerned with the fate of the living?"
"When I remembered," Ezekiel replied softly, "that there are fates worse than death. And I have the power to grant them."
The Summons
The portal ripped reality like claws through flesh, ice-blue energies crackling at its edges as Ezekiel stepped through into the throne room of Ainz Ooal Gown. The sudden cold his presence brought was palpable—not merely physical chill, but something deeper. Existential. As if warmth itself retreated from his proximity.
The Overlord stood before the Mirror of Remote Viewing, his skeletal form draped in robes that spoke of arcane mastery beyond mortal comprehension. The mirror showed the same village, the same slaughter, captured in crystalline clarity.
"Tell me you witnessed it," Ezekiel said without preamble, his voice carrying harmonics that suggested countless others spoke with him. The voice of the Scourge, though its armies were worlds away.
"I did." Ainz turned, his empty sockets regarding his old companion. "Though I fail to see how it concerns the Great Tomb of Nazarick."
The words hit Ezekiel like a physical blow—not because they caused pain, but because they should have. Should have angered him. Should have sparked the righteous fury that once burned in his breast when he was Arthas, Crown Prince of Lordaeron, defender of the innocent.
Instead, there was only cold calculation.
"What?" The single word emerged sharper than intended, edged with frost. "You cannot mean to abandon them."
"Ezekiel, I understand your desire to help, but strategically—"
"Would Touch Me want you to abandon people in need!?"
The name hung in the air like a thunderclap, and Ainz froze mid-gesture. The Mirror of Remote Viewing rippled, its surface disturbed by the weight of memory invoked.
That name. That thrice-damned name that was both anchor and chain, reminder of what they'd been before the game became reality.
Flashback: When Justice Arrived
The digital wastes of YGGDRASIL stretched endlessly, a realm where the strong preyed upon the weak with impunity. Here, in the game's early days, Momonga and Ezekiel had been weak indeed—two fledgling undead players, barely past level 10, struggling to survive in a world that rewarded the powerful and crushed the unwary.
"Damn inhumans!" The hatred in the player's voice was casual, reflexive, born from YGGDRASIL's faction system that pitted heteromorphic races against humanity. "Think you can hide in OUR territory?"
Six of them. All level 40+. Armed and armored with gear that probably cost more real-world money than Ezekiel's monthly rent. They circled like wolves around wounded prey, their weapons gleaming with enchantments that made his basic equipment look like toys.
Ezekiel stepped in front of Momonga without thinking, one skeletal hand outstretched in futile protection. Even in a game, even as an undead horror, some instincts died harder than flesh.
"Stay back," he murmured to his friend. "Maybe I can buy you time to—"
"You think we're gonna let EITHER of you scrubs escape?" The leader—a berserker class with an axe bigger than Ezekiel's entire character model—raised his weapon high. "This is what you get for rolling heteromorphs, you filthy—"
SHING.
The sound of the blade's passage was beautiful—a crystalline note that hung in the air long after the six attackers had vanished in bursts of pixel death. Ezekiel and Momonga stared in shock as a figure materialized before them, his white armor gleaming like a beacon against the dark landscape.
The warrior's stance was textbook perfect, his sword and shield positioned with the kind of precision that spoke of either military training or obsessive study. His cape—because of COURSE he wore a cape—billowed dramatically in a wind that didn't exist, the whole ensemble so righteously heroic it bordered on parody.
"Why?" Momonga's voice trembled slightly. "Why did you save us? We're nobodies. PKers kill low-levels all the time in this game. Why intervene?"
The warrior turned, and even through his helmet's visor, they could sense his smile—genuine, warm, utterly at odds with YGGDRASIL's usual cutthroat culture.
"Because," Touch Me declared, his voice ringing with unironic conviction, "saving those in need is ALWAYS the right thing to do! To stand by while the strong prey upon the weak, to turn away from injustice simply because it's convenient—that is the path of cowards and villains!"
As if summoned by his words, golden letters materialized in the air behind him: "JUSTICE HAS ARRIVED!" complete with sparkles and dramatic musical sting.
Ezekiel stared at this walking anime trope, this living embodiment of every heroic cliché ever conceived. In the real world—the REAL real world, not this digital fantasy—such idealism would be beaten out of you by age twelve. Corporate Japan didn't reward heroes; it rewarded those who kept their heads down, followed orders, and didn't make waves.
And yet...
"Bruh," Ezekiel muttered, the English slang deliberately chosen for maximum dismissive effect.
But he didn't log out. Didn't walk away. Because somewhere beneath the cynicism, beneath the exhaustion of a life spent grinding away at a dead-end job in a dying economy, some part of him remembered what it felt like to believe in heroes.
Some part of him remembered being Prince Arthas, crown prince of a kingdom that existed only in another game, fighting to save his people from a plague that would ultimately damn him.
"Tell me," Touch Me continued, oblivious to or ignoring Ezekiel's sarcasm, "what are your names, friends?"
"I'm Momonga," the skeletal mage replied, still shaken. "And this is—"
"Ezekiel." The name came automatically, the same username he'd carried through a dozen games. "Ezekiel Douglas."
"Well then, Momonga, Ezekiel—welcome to YGGDRASIL's better side. The part where we actually PLAY the game instead of just bullying newbies." Touch Me extended a gauntleted hand. "Interested in joining a guild?"
That was the day Ainz Ooal Gown was born—not as a name, but as an ideal. Nine friends who believed that even in a game, even in a world of monsters and magic, justice still mattered.
Nine friends who forgot that ideals, like men, can die.
Flashback Ends
Ainz Ooal Gown stood motionless, one skeletal hand raised to where his face would have been if flesh still covered bone. The memory played out behind his empty sockets—Touch Me's laugh, his unwavering conviction, his absolute certainty that doing the right thing was its own reward.
Would he approve of what I've become? Of what we've all become in this new world?
"You fight dirty, old friend," Ainz said at last, his voice carrying a weight of bone-deep weariness. "Invoking Touch Me's name... you know I can't refuse after that."
Ezekiel's expression didn't change—the Lich King's face was too far removed from humanity for something as simple as relief or satisfaction. But Frostmourne pulsed once at his hip, the sword tasting victory before blood had even been spilled.
"I fight to win," Ezekiel replied. "As you taught me when we cleared the Tomb of Nazarick for the first time. As Touch Me taught us both when he saved our lives."
"Pragmatic idealism. The most dangerous kind." Ainz turned back to the Mirror of Remote Viewing, watching as a young woman—barely more than a girl, really—took blow after blow meant for her younger sister. "Very well. Consider this a field test of our capabilities. Sebas!"
The dragonoid butler materialized from the shadows, his posture perfect, his expression serene. "Yes, Lord Ainz?"
"Summon Albedo. Full battle gear. We're going hunting."
As Sebas bowed and departed, Ezekiel approached the mirror, his glacial eyes tracking the attackers' movements with tactical precision. Each swing of their swords, each scream of their victims—all data to be processed, analyzed, weaponized.
"The girl shows courage," he observed, watching as Enri Emmot shielded her sister with her own body. "She'll die for it, but... courage nonetheless."
"You sound almost... approving?"
"I was that girl once." The words emerged quiet, contemplative. "Standing between my people and a plague I didn't understand, willing to sacrifice everything to save them. The only difference is that I had power. She has nothing but love."
Ainz tilted his skull-head curiously. "And now? What do you have now, Ezekiel?"
The Lich King's hand rested on Frostmourne's hilt, and the sword's whispers rose to a crescendo—a chorus of the damned, singing songs of slaughter and sacrifice.
"Now? Now I have the power to ensure no one need make the choices I made. To save her before she becomes me." His eyes flared brighter, cold fire dancing in their depths. "Even if I must damn a thousand souls to do it."
"That's not heroism."
"No," Ezekiel agreed, his smile terrible in its serenity. "It's not. But it's what I can offer."
Ainz's staff appeared in his hand, the Guild Weapon of Ainz Ooal Gown pulsing with accumulated magical might. "Then let's offer it together. Besides..." The skull's jaw somehow managed to suggest a grim smile. "I'm curious to see how this world's residents handle tier-ten magic."
"Gate," Ainz intoned, reality rippling at his command.
The portal yawned open like a mouth into the abyss, its edges crackling with energies that made the air taste of ozone and old graves. Through it, they could see the forest clearing where Enri Emmot knelt, arms wrapped around her sister, tears streaming down her face as steel rose to end them both.
"After you, your majesty," Ainz gestured with mock courtesy.
"How kind, your excellency," Ezekiel replied in the same tone, though his voice carried harmonics that made the words sound like a funeral dirge sung by a thousand throats.
Together, the Overlord and the Lich King stepped through.
Enri's Perspective: When Death Comes Calling
Don't look, Nemu. Please, don't look. Don't see what they did to Mother. Don't see Father's blood on the floor. Don't—
"Big sis?" Nemu's voice was so small, so fragile. Like glass about to shatter.
Enri held her sister tighter, her own body shaking not from fear—though gods knew she was terrified—but from the sheer effort of not falling apart. Someone had to be strong. Someone had to protect Nemu. If she broke now, if she let the horror in, then they'd both die, and it would all have been for nothing.
Father died so we could run. Mother died so we could escape. I won't let their sacrifice be meaningless.
The soldiers' laughter echoed through the trees, cruel and casual. These weren't knights. Weren't warriors defending their kingdom or fighting for some noble cause. They were murderers playing dress-up, wearing stolen armor and pretending their atrocities had meaning beyond bloodlust and coin.
"Look at 'em huddle," one jeered, his voice thick with ale and cruelty. "Like rabbits waiting for the fox."
"Not gonna beg?" another asked, sounding almost disappointed. "They always beg at the end."
Enri squeezed her eyes shut, preparing for the blow. Let it be quick. Please, whatever gods are listening, let it be quick. And let Nemu not suffer. Take me first. Take me slow if you must, but let her—
The soldier's laughter died.
Not faded. Not trailed off. Died—cut off as suddenly as if someone had closed a door on sound itself.
Enri's eyes snapped open.
The soldiers had frozen mid-motion, their weapons held aloft, their faces drained of color beneath their helms. They stared past her, over her, at something behind her that made hardened killers look like children who'd stumbled into a wolf's den.
What could terrify men like this?
She turned slowly, dreading what she might see.
A portal hung in the air like a wound in reality itself—not the clean, controlled Gates she'd seen when the pharmacist Nfirea's grandmother had visited the village, but something wrong. Diseased. The edges writhed with purple-black energy that seemed to drain light from the surrounding forest, and through it...
Through it came nightmares made flesh.
The first figure was a skeleton. Not an animated corpse like the undead that sometimes plagued the frontier, but something far more terrible—a being of pure bone draped in robes that suggested imperial majesty, crowned with seven serpents and wielding a staff that made reality itself bend in supplication. Its very presence was an affront to the natural order, as if death itself had learned to walk.
But the second...
Enri's breath caught.
He looked human at first glance. Tall, broad-shouldered, armored in plate the color of winter ice. His face was even handsome in a severe way—high cheekbones, strong jaw, features that suggested nobility and command.
Then he looked at her.
His eyes were wrong. All wrong. Not human eyes, but twin stars of frozen blue fire that saw through flesh and bone to the trembling soul beneath. Eyes that had witnessed the death of nations. Eyes that had commanded legions of the dead. Eyes that knew every secret fear buried in her heart and found them... amusing.
Enri couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Those eyes pinned her like a butterfly to a board, and for one terrible moment, she understood with perfect clarity what it meant to be prey.
He's going to kill us. Not the soldiers—they're already dead, they just don't know it yet. But we're next. We're meat, and he's the butcher, and he's going to—
The Lich King's expression softened.
Not much. The transformation was subtle—a slight easing of the lines around his eyes, a fractional relaxation of his jaw. But in that moment, Enri saw something that shouldn't exist in a creature of undeath: recognition.
Not recognition of her specifically, but recognition of what she was. What she represented. A girl trying to protect her sister. Someone standing between their loved one and death, willing to sacrifice everything for one more moment of life.
He understood. Somehow, this thing wearing human shape understood.
The moment passed. His attention shifted to the soldiers like a spotlight swinging away, and Enri gasped as if surfacing from deep water, her lungs burning with the breath she'd forgotten to take.
"Grasp Heart."
The skeleton's voice was... peculiar. Not deep or booming, but present—as if the universe itself carried his words with reluctant reverence. He gestured casually with one bony hand, and—
The lead soldier's chest exploded.
Not figuratively. Not in some metaphorical sense. His chest armor erupted outward in a spray of metal fragments and pulped flesh, and there, suspended in the skeleton's grip, was his heart. Still beating. Still alive even as its owner collapsed, gurgling and choking on his own blood.
The skeleton closed his fist.
The heart popped like an overripe fruit.
Gods. Oh gods. What ARE these things?
"What sort of person," the skeleton mused conversationally, as if he hadn't just murdered a man with casual contempt, "has the courage to slaughter innocents yet lacks the spine to face true power?"
"Well, here we are," the armored one continued, his voice carrying that same disturbing multi-layered quality—as if a thousand voices spoke in perfect, terrible harmony. "And you're going to help us test our strength in this world whether you like it or not."
The remaining soldier broke. Enri couldn't blame him—she'd nearly broken just from being looked at. He turned to run, feet pounding against the forest floor in blind panic, branches whipping at his face as he fled from—
The armored one was already there.
Enri's mind stuttered trying to process the movement. He hadn't run. Hadn't teleported. One moment he was by the portal, the next he stood directly in the fleeing soldier's path, that terrible smile stretching across his too-perfect face.
"What's your rush?" The words dripped with dark amusement, the tone of a cat playing with a mouse. "We've barely started getting acquainted."
The soldier screamed—a high, piercing sound more animal than human—and thrust his sword forward with desperate strength. The blade should have impaled the armored figure, should have punched through his breastplate and out his back.
Instead, it stopped dead.
The Lich King had caught the blade with his bare hand, his gauntleted fingers wrapped around the steel as easily as one might grasp a child's toy. The sword groaned, metal warping under pressure that shouldn't be possible, that violated every law of physics Enri's simple farmer's understanding could comprehend.
Then his other hand shot forward and gripped the soldier's face.
"FALL TO YOUR KNEES."
The command wasn't loud. Didn't need to be. It bypassed ears entirely and struck directly at the soul, a compulsion so absolute that resistance was literally unthinkable. The soldier's legs folded, bones creaking as he crashed down with enough force to make the earth tremble.
"Who are you people? And why are you attacking this village?"
"AGH!" The soldier's scream was shrill with agony—not physical pain, but something deeper. As if the very act of being questioned by this creature was torture beyond description. "We're from the Slane Theocracy! Just mercenaries, hired to stir up conflict between the Empire and the Kingdom! They paid us to attack border villages, make it look like the other side started it! Please, PLEASE, I've told you everything, just let me—"
CRACK.
The sound of the soldier's skull collapsing under pressure was sickeningly wet, like stepping on a snail. His head imploded beneath the Lich King's grip, blood and brain matter fountaining between steel fingers before the body toppled sideways, twitching.
Enri's stomach heaved. She'd seen death today—gods, she'd seen so much death—but this was different. This wasn't the hot-blooded violence of raiders or the desperate struggle of combat. This was cold. Clinical. Murder committed with the same casual disregard one might show swatting a fly.
The armored figure turned back toward his skeletal companion, casually flicking gore from his gauntlet.
"Slane Theocracy," he reported, voice utterly neutral. "Mercenaries hired to destabilize the region. False flag operation."
"How... tedious." The skeleton somehow managed to sound bored despite lacking lips or facial muscles. "Though useful intelligence, I suppose."
Another portal ripped open, and through it came—
No. Please, no more. I can't—
Two more figures emerged, and if the first pair had been nightmares, these were nightmares' nightmares. The first was a massive orc—no, not an orc, something worse, something that made orcs look like children's toys. Eight feet of muscle and fury wrapped in spiked armor, carrying a mace that looked like it could crush boulders. His eyes glowed with the same unnatural blue fire as his master's, and his grin revealed teeth filed to points.
The second was... wrong. All wrong. He LOOKED like a human knight—gleaming plate armor, holy symbols adorning his shield, a hammer that suggested righteous purpose. But the blue fire in his eyes betrayed him, and the way he moved... jerky, wrong, like a puppet being operated by someone who'd only heard descriptions of how humans walked.
"We await your orders, Lord Douglas," they intoned in unison, kneeling before the Lich King with reverence that suggested worship.
"Kill anyone in the village wearing that armor," the Lich King commanded, gesturing to the corpses at his feet. "But harm no innocents. Am I understood?"
The massive one—Korth'azz, she would later learn—grinned wider. "Oh, we understand, m'lord. Perfectly."
"Leave the screaming ones for me," the corrupted knight added, his voice carrying harmonics of a choir that sang in Hell. "I do so enjoy their prayers."
They vanished toward the village, and Enri could already hear screaming starting anew—but different this time. Not the terrified wails of victims, but the agonized shrieks of murderers realizing they'd become prey.
This is justice? She thought wildly. This is what salvation looks like?
"It took longer than expected to arrive. My apologies, my lords."
The third figure to arrive was perhaps the most disturbing yet, because she looked normal. Beautiful, even—a woman with demon horns and wings, wearing armor that suggested both deadly competence and... was that YELLOW? Yellow dress visible beneath her war-gear?
Her beauty was as deceptive as a rose's—lovely until you noticed the thorns were long enough to pierce through to bone.
"No apology necessary, Albedo," the skeleton replied. "Your timing is impeccable."
The demoness's eyes fell on Enri and Nemu, and her expression curdled into disgust so profound it was almost comical.
"How would you like me to dispose of these pathetic lower lifeforms, my lord?"
Lower—LOWER!? We're not— We didn't do anything! We're just—
"These girls are no threat," the skeleton said mildly. "The soldiers are our enemies, not them."
"Of course, Lord Ainz." Albedo's tone suggested she disagreed but was too well-trained to argue.
The skeleton—Ainz—noticed the wound on Enri's back. The pain had faded to a dull throb, adrenaline momentarily overriding agony, but she felt blood still seeping through her dress, warm and wet and terrifying.
"Hmm. You're bleeding." He produced a vial of red liquid, offering it with the same casual gesture one might use offering tea. "Here. Drink this."
Enri's world tilted.
Blood. It had to be blood. What else could that crimson liquid be? These were undead, monsters, creatures of darkness. They'd killed the soldiers, yes, but that didn't make them good. And now they were offering her—
A blood sacrifice. They're going to make me drink blood to spare Nemu. This is the price. My corruption for her life. I can do this. I can—
"B-Blood!?" The word escaped before she could stop it, and she reached for the vial with shaking hands. "I-If you insist, I'll drink it, but please spare my—"
"No! Don't, Enri!"
Nemu grabbed her arm, eyes wide with terror and determination. Her little sister, so small and scared, still trying to protect her even now.
Gods, I love you so much, Nemu. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry this is your last memory of me—
"HOW DARE YOU INSULT YOUR SAVIORS!?"
Albedo's axe rose high, death gleaming along its edge, and Enri felt her heart stop—
The Lich King's hand fell on Albedo's shoulder.
"Albedo." His voice carried no anger, only quiet command that somehow seemed far more terrifying. "Lower your weapon. You're frightening them."
The axe lowered immediately. "Yes, Lord Douglas."
Then he was kneeling before them, this creature of nightmare and frost, placing himself at eye level with two terrified girls huddled in the dirt. His movements were careful, controlled, designed not to threaten—and somehow, that only made him MORE terrifying, because it meant he was thinking about how to approach them.
Meant he saw them as people, not just obstacles.
He took the vial from his companion's hand and held it out to Enri, his terrible eyes meeting hers. But this time, she saw something in those glacial depths that shouldn't exist in the undead: compassion.
Twisted. Filtered through something fundamentally inhuman. But recognizable nonetheless.
"I assure you," he said gently, and his voice was just his own—not the chorus of the damned, but a single man speaking with quiet sincerity, "this is not blood. It's a healing potion. For your wound."
His smile was small, sad, and utterly sincere.
He means it. Oh gods, he actually means it.
Enri took the vial with trembling hands and drank.
The effect was immediate and profound. The wound on her back—the deep gash that should have taken weeks to heal, that might have festered and killed her slowly in a world without proper medicine—simply... closed. Flesh knit itself together, skin smoothing as if it had never been torn, pain evaporating like morning mist.
She touched her back in wonder, feeling whole, healthy, alive in a way she hadn't been since—
Since when? This morning? This morning when Mother was still alive, when Father still smiled, when the worst thing in her world was whether the crops would yield enough for winter?
That was a lifetime ago. A different world. A different Enri.
"Is the pain gone?" The Lich King asked, and his voice carried genuine concern.
"Y-Yes. It is." Her own voice sounded distant, disconnected. Shock, probably. Or her mind trying to process how her entire understanding of reality had been upended in the span of minutes.
He stood, and one gauntleted hand reached down to ruffle her hair. The gesture was almost brotherly, gentle despite the steel fingers and the aura of death that clung to him like perfume.
"Tell me," Ainz interjected, "have you ever heard of magic before?"
Enri nodded dumbly. "Yes. Our friend Nfirea—he's a pharmacist. Comes to the village sometimes. He can use magic."
"Perfect. Then this isn't difficult to understand." Ainz gestured to himself and his companion. "We are magic casters. Quite powerful ones, as you've just witnessed."
"Well, I sometimes use magic," the Lich King corrected with what might have been amusement, "but I prefer a more... direct approach. Sword. Bow. Dagger. Or simply..." He flexed his hand, and Enri remembered the soldier's skull collapsing. "...this."
Ainz raised his staff, and power gathered—visible even to Enri's untrained eyes, a warping of light and space that suggested forces beyond mortal comprehension.
"Anti-Life Cocoon. Protection from Arrow Wall."
Two shimmering barriers of green energy materialized around Enri and Nemu, humming with protective magic so potent Enri could feel it on her skin like static electricity.
"I've cast two protection spells," Ainz explained patiently, as if this were a lesson rather than a battlefield. "You should be safe as long as you remain within them."
"However," the Lich King added, producing two curved horns from his inventory—simple things, carved from some beast's remains, marked with runes that glowed faintly blue. He tossed them through the barriers, and they landed in the dirt at Enri's feet.
"If you find yourself in danger—true danger, not just normal village problems—blow one of these horns. Goblins will answer. They'll serve you, protect you, fight for you." His smile turned grim. "Consider it... insurance. Against a world that's proven itself hostile."
They turned to leave, master and undead servant and demonic guardian, nightmare made manifest preparing to depart back to whatever hell had birthed them.
"Excuse me!"
Enri's voice surprised even herself. What was she doing? They'd saved her life, yes, but they were still MONSTERS. Undead abominations who'd killed with casual brutality, who commanded creatures of darkness, who—
Who'd been the only ones to help.
"Thank you!" The words tumbled out in a rush, sincere and desperate and grateful beyond measure. "Thank you both so much for saving us! We are forever grateful!"
"Thank you so very much, misters!" Nemu added, her small voice carrying across the clearing.
Both sisters bowed low, pressing their foreheads to the dirt in the traditional gesture of profound gratitude.
"It was no trouble," Ainz replied, sounding almost... embarrassed?
"Yes. No thanks needed." The Lich King's voice carried that same odd awkwardness, as if genuine gratitude was somehow foreign to him.
"Before you go," Enri found herself asking, barely believing her own boldness, "may I please have your names? The names of the men who saved my sister and me?"
The skeleton paused, seeming to consider deeply. When he spoke, his voice rang with theatrical grandeur that suggested this moment mattered, that it would echo through history yet unwritten.
"You shall remember my name well and tell all who will listen of this day. I am Ainz Ooal Gown—Overlord of the Great Tomb of Nazarick!"
The Lich King stepped forward, and Frostmourne sang at his hip—a chorus of the damned harmonizing in terrible beauty.
"And I am Ezekiel Douglas—Lord of the Scourge, Master of the Damned, He Who Walks Between Life and Death." His eyes blazed brighter, and for just a moment, Enri glimpsed the weight of centuries behind them, the accumulated sorrow of ten thousand choices. "Though once, long ago, I was simply Arthas—Crown Prince of Lordaeron."
He smiled then, and it was the saddest thing Enri had ever seen.
"Remember us well, Enri Emmot. And pray we meet again under better circumstances."
Then they were gone, vanishing through their portal of writhing darkness, leaving behind only corpses and two frightened girls who'd just learned that the world was far stranger—and far more terrible—than they'd ever imagined.
The Village Massacre: A Study in Controlled Brutality
"See, mate? THAT'S how you send a tark flying!"
Sir Zeliek's hammer caught the soldier mid-chest with enough force to launch him thirty feet through the air. The body sailed over the village square in a graceful arc, trailing blood like a comet's tail, before smashing into the side of a burning house hard enough to crater the wood.
Thane Korth'azz laughed—a deep, rumbling sound like grinding millstones. "Aye, impressive! Though not all of us have the delicate touch of a Death Knight, you know." His massive hands clenched and unclenched, blood seeping between fingers still slick with the previous soldier's innards. "Still, I'll admit—watching them realize they're outmatched? That's the BEST part!"
The village of Carne had become an abattoir.
Bodies littered the central square—all soldiers, all murderers who'd come here expecting easy prey and found instead something far worse. The villagers themselves huddled together near the well, pressed close but unharmed, watching their attackers be systematically dismantled by creatures that made the soldiers' previous cruelty look like children playing at war.
Korth'azz moved through the carnage like a conductor through an orchestra, each gesture precise despite his bulk. A soldier tried to flee down an alley—the Thane's throwing axe caught him in the back of the skull, the blade bisecting his head with a wet CRUNCH before embedding in the wall beyond.
"FIFTEEN!" Korth'azz bellowed, retrieving his weapon with a satisfied grunt. "You're falling behind, Zeliek!"
"Quality over quantity, friend!" The corrupted knight's voice carried disturbing harmonics—as if the Holy Light he'd once served now screamed its objections through his throat. A soldier charged him with desperate courage, sword raised high. Zeliek didn't dodge. Didn't even flinch.
The sword struck his blessed armor and shattered, fragments of steel spinning away like broken dreams.
"Your devotion is admirable," Zeliek observed, his tone suggesting genuine approval even as his hammer rose. "Futile, but admirable. Take comfort—your soul will serve a greater purpose in death."
CRUNCH.
The hammer came down with enough force to drive the soldier six inches into the dirt, his armor folding like paper around the impact. Blood fountained upward in a grotesque geyser before raining back down, painting Zeliek's white plate crimson.
"SIXTEEN!" The knight called cheerfully. "I believe that puts us even!"
Near the village edge, Captain Belius—the operation's nominal leader, a man who'd killed three villagers personally and laughed while doing it—stared at the carnage with mounting horror.
This can't be happening. This CAN'T be happening. I'm a professional! I've raided dozens of villages, killed hundreds of peasants. How can these... these THINGS be—
"You there!" He turned to his remaining men, voice shrill with panic. "Surround those monsters! Use the villagers as shields if you have to! We can still—"
"Still what, exactly?"
Belius spun. Korth'azz stood directly behind him, having closed the distance with impossible speed for something so massive. The Thane's grin was all teeth and malice, his eyes burning with blue fire that suggested the intelligence behind them was far from human.
"Still escape? Still win? Still pretend you're anything but meat waiting to be processed?" Korth'azz leaned closer, his breath smelling of old iron and older death. "You're NeXt, PiNkSkIn."
The words emerged distorted, layered with harmonics that shouldn't exist—as if multiple voices spoke simultaneously, all at different pitches, all saying the same terrible thing.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
Belius's bladder released. Warm wetness spread down his leg, shameful and terrifying and completely beyond his control. He tried to run, to move, to do ANYTHING—
His legs wouldn't respond. Paralyzed. Not with magic, but with pure, primal terror that shut down higher brain functions and left only the lizard-brain understanding: PREDATOR.
"I-I have money!" The words tumbled out in desperate cascade. "Gold! Lots of gold! Two hundred pieces—no, FIVE HUNDRED! I'll give you five hundred gold pieces! Just let me—"
"Boring," Korth'azz sighed. Then his axe came down.
The first blow caught Belius in the stomach, splitting skin and muscle but deliberately avoiding vital organs. The captain screamed, hands scrabbling at the wound, trying to hold his guts inside even as they tried to spill out.
"DON'T JUST STAND THERE!" Belius shrieked at his remaining soldiers. "HELP ME, PLEASE!"
SHANK.
The second blow opened his ribcage, exposing lungs that pumped frantically, heart that beat visible and vulnerable.
"MONEY!" SHANK. "TAKE IT ALL!" SHANK. "SAVE ME!"
The captain's voice rose to an inhuman pitch, words dissolving into animal sounds—squeals and grunts and wet gasping as blood filled his lungs.
SHANK.
The final blow split him from sternum to groin, and Captain Belius fell apart—literally fell apart, his body separating into distinct halves that toppled in opposite directions, intestines unspooling between them like obscene rope.
The remaining soldiers broke completely.
"NO WAY I CAN DO IT!"
"SCREW THIS!"
"RUN! JUST RUN!"
"Hold steady!" One voice—the lieutenant, a young man who'd joined the Theocracy's covert forces actually believing in their cause, thinking he was serving justice. "Stay strong! We hold our ground, protect each other! Buy time for—"
Zeliek appeared before him mid-sentence, hammer already in motion.
The lieutenant tried to block. His shield—solid steel, reinforced with magic, capable of turning aside a charging warhorse—folded like wet parchment. The hammer continued through, catching him in the chest, and the impact was audible—bones shattering in cascading failure, organs pulping, body crumpling like a tin can.
He dropped to his knees, blood sheeting from his mouth, and looked up at Zeliek with eyes full of betrayed idealism.
"Why?" The word emerged on a bubble of blood. "We were... supposed to be... heroes..."
Zeliek knelt, bringing himself to eye level, and when he spoke his voice carried genuine sympathy.
"You were pawns, child. Expendable pieces in a game played by those who'll never set foot on this battlefield." The corrupted knight's flaming eyes dimmed slightly, something almost like regret flickering in their depths. "But take comfort—at least your death means something. At least you'll serve a purpose in the end."
His gauntleted hand closed around the lieutenant's head almost gently.
CRACK.
The neck snapped cleanly, and the light faded from those young, betrayed eyes.
"Seventeen," Zeliek murmured, lowering the body with surprising care. "May the Light you served show you more mercy than it showed me."
The Revelation
"STOP, YOU TWO. YOU HAVE SERVED WELL."
The command rolled across the village like thunder, and Korth'azz and Zeliek froze instantly—not because they feared punishment, but because millennia of service had made obedience instinctive. They knelt immediately, weapons planted in the blood-soaked earth.
Three figures descended from above, defying gravity with casual contempt. Ainz Ooal Gown's robes billowed dramatically despite the lack of wind. Albedo landed with predatory grace, her wings folding behind her like a cloak. And between them—
Ezekiel Douglas, the Lich King, touched down without sound or ceremony. Frostmourne hung at his hip, the blade singing softly—a lullaby for the damned, promising rest that would never come.
The remaining soldiers—perhaps a dozen—pressed together like frightened cattle, their weapons hanging useless from nerveless fingers.
"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance," Ainz began, his voice carrying across the square with perfect clarity despite its conversational tone. "I am Ainz Ooal Gown. You may call me Ainz."
Ezekiel stepped forward, and the temperature dropped perceptibly, frost forming on nearby surfaces despite the summer heat.
"And I am Ezekiel Douglas—though some knew me as Arthas, others as the Lich King." His eyes swept across the soldiers, and several actually collapsed from the weight of his gaze alone. "You have already met my Death Knights—Thane Korth'azz and Sir Zeliek."
He gestured to each respectively. The two warriors stood, and their combined presence suggested violence barely restrained—tigers on leashes made of paper and prayer.
"Do not fear them," Ezekiel continued, and his smile was terrible in its gentleness. "They will not harm you. Not today. Not unless you give them reason."
"We offer you a choice," Ainz added. "Rare thing in this world—a genuine choice, with real consequences either way."
"You may leave," Ezekiel said simply. "Walk away. Return to whoever hired you, to whatever lives you led before this day. Tell them what you witnessed here. Tell them of the Great Tomb of Nazarick. Tell them of Ainz Ooal Gown and Ezekiel Douglas."
His voice dropped an octave, resonating with power that made reality itself shiver.
"Tell them that there are new powers in this world. Powers that will not tolerate what transpired here. Powers that SEE what happens in these forgotten villages, and REMEMBER."
"Or," Ainz continued, his skeletal hand gesturing lazily, "you may choose to stay. Choose to fight. Choose to die here in the dirt alongside those who paid you." The skull somehow conveyed dark amusement. "I assure you, we would find that outcome equally acceptable."
Silence hung over Carne Village like a shroud.
Then—movement. One soldier dropped his sword, the weapon clattering against stone. Then another. And another. Within moments, the entire surviving force had disarmed themselves, weapons lying forgotten in pools of their comrades' blood.
"We'll go," one managed to whisper. "We'll tell them. We'll tell everyone."
"Excellent!" Ainz clapped his skeletal hands together. "See? Rational beings, capable of learning from experience. Albedo, please ensure they have clear passage out of the village."
"As you command, Lord Ainz." The demoness's disappointment was palpable, but she gestured toward the forest road. "Go. And be grateful our masters are more merciful than I would be."
The soldiers fled, stumbling over each other in their haste, casting terrified glances backward as if expecting to be struck down at any moment.
They weren't.
Ezekiel watched them go with eyes that had witnessed the fall of kingdoms, the death of worlds, the corruption of everything he'd once held dear.
"You think they'll actually spread word?" Ainz asked quietly, pitched for his companion's ears alone.
"Oh, they'll talk." Ezekiel's smile was cold and certain. "Fear is the most reliable messenger. By tomorrow, half the region will know our names. By next week, the Slane Theocracy will have heard the reports. By next month..."
He turned to face his friend, and his eyes blazed with an intensity that suggested plans within plans, schemes that stretched across years yet unwritten.
"By next month, Ainz Ooal Gown, the entire world will know that something has changed. That the game board has new pieces. That the comfortable certainty of their little wars and plots has been disrupted."
"And that's... good?" Ainz sounded uncertain. "Announcing our presence so dramatically?"
"It's necessary." Ezekiel's hand rested on Frostmourne's hilt, and the sword sang in agreement—a chorus of the damned offering counsel from beyond death's veil. "Because if there are others from YGGDRASIL in this world, they'll recognize our names. They'll know to seek us out. Friends or enemies, allies or threats—we need to know they exist."
"And if they're enemies?"
Ezekiel's smile was the same one he'd worn when he'd purged Stratholme, when he'd claimed Frostmourne, when he'd murdered his father and damned his soul.
"Then we'll deal with them as we dealt with these mercenaries. Swiftly. Decisively. Without mercy or hesitation."
He turned to address the huddled villagers, his voice carrying across the square with preternatural clarity.
"People of Carne! You have witnessed today what happens when the strong prey upon the weak without consequence. You have seen what occurs when murderers believe themselves beyond retribution."
The villagers looked up at him—this creature of nightmare and frost, this thing wearing human shape—and saw not a monster but a ruler. Cold. Terrible. But undeniably powerful.
"Remember this day. Remember that justice—true justice, not the pale shadow offered by distant kings and corrupt priests—came to your village. Remember that when the world told you to lie down and die, something said 'No.'"
His eyes swept across them, and several gasped as that terrible gaze touched them—not with threat, but with something almost like... blessing?
"We are Ainz Ooal Gown and Ezekiel Douglas. We are the rulers of Nazarick. And we do not forget those under our protection."
Then, quietly, pitched for Ainz alone: "Even if that protection comes at a price they can't yet imagine."
The two turned away, preparing to depart. The villagers remained kneeling, caught between gratitude and terror, uncertain whether they'd been saved or merely claimed by new masters.
Perhaps both.
Perhaps there was no difference anymore.
As the portal opened to swallow them back into Nazarick's dark embrace, Ezekiel cast one final glance back at Carne Village—at Enri and Nemu huddled together, at the grateful and terrified villagers, at the bodies of soldiers who'd learned too late that the world held things far worse than death.
I saved them today, he thought distantly. Just as I tried to save Stratholme. The only difference is that this time, I had the power to do it right.
So why does it feel exactly the same? Why does victory taste like ash and damnation?
But he knew the answer. Had always known, ever since Frostmourne first whispered in his ear and showed him the true price of power.
Because saving people through slaughter, through fear, through the overwhelming application of force that leaves survivors traumatized and enemies terrified—that's not heroism.
That's tyranny wearing a rescue's mask.
And perhaps, in this world of casual cruelty and forgotten villages, perhaps that was the only kind of salvation possible.
The portal closed behind them, swallowing the Lich King and his companions back into darkness, leaving behind only corpses and questions and the terrible certainty that nothing in Carne Village would ever be the same again.
(AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND... scene! Hope you enjoyed this dive into what happens when Warcraft and Overlord collide with all the dramatic theatrical flair both franchises deserve. Remember—in the game of thrones and frozen thrones, you either win or you die. Or, if you're Ezekiel, you do both and keep going anyway. See you next chapter! May the Light save us all... because clearly, the Lich King won't.)