Asteria did not fall in a single night.
It unraveled.
By the time dawn came on the tenth day, smoke hung low over the capital like a second sky. Not the raging inferno of conquest, but the quiet aftermath of systems breaking—storehouses looted and abandoned, watchtowers left unmanned, streets empty not from curfew but fear.
The bells no longer rang.
No one dared touch them.
Aldir stood at the highest point of the eastern wall, overlooking the city he had bled for, starved in, died beneath. The undead gathered behind him in disciplined silence, their numbers fluctuating as decay claimed some and new bodies joined others. He no longer needed to look at them to feel their presence.
They were extensions of his posture, his breathing, his intent.
The capital felt… small.
He remembered when its walls had seemed impossibly tall. When the palace spires had felt like accusations carved into the sky—reminders that the world had been built without him in mind.
Now they were just structures.
Flammable. Breakable.
Replaceable.
"They will never forgive you," a voice said calmly.
Aldir did not turn.
The devils had not manifested as sound since the catacombs. Their presence lingered at the edge of his perception like a pressure system waiting to shift.
"I didn't ask them to," he replied.
Forgiveness is irrelevant, the presence agreed. Legacy is not.
Aldir exhaled slowly. "I'm done here."
That surprised even him.
The devils paused—an infinitesimal hesitation, but Aldir felt it.
You have not completed correction.
"No," he said. "I've completed proof."
He gestured toward the city. "They accused a nobody because it was easy. They executed me because no one would object. Now they know what that costs."
And what of rule? the presence asked. You could govern this place.
Aldir laughed softly. "I won't wear their throne. I won't play their game with different pieces."
That was the truth. Power no longer tempted him the way it once might have. Commanding the dead was precise, honest. Ruling the living required lies.
He turned away from the city.
"Let them rebuild," he said. "Let them argue over whose fault it was. Let my name rot into rumor."
You will become a myth, the devils observed.
Aldir pulled his cloak tighter around himself. "Good."
Before sunrise, he dismantled his presence.
He did not march the undead out through the gates. He released most of them—unbinding their tethers gently, letting bone collapse back into stillness. The remaining few he guided into the wilds beyond the capital, dissolving the army into silence.
By the time the first scouts dared to leave the walls, Aldir Frost was gone.
Only stories remained.
They called him many things.
The Gallows King.
The Grave Sovereign.
The Emperor's Shadow.
Some swore he commanded legions that slept beneath every city. Others claimed he was a devil wearing a man's memory. Children dared one another to say his name aloud after dark.
Aldir heard none of it.
He traveled north, where the land thinned and civilization gave way to marsh and forest. He avoided towns, not out of fear, but out of disinterest. Killing had become… simple. Too simple.
That frightened him more than the capital ever had.
It was in the Blackfen Marsh that he felt her.
The disturbance snapped through his senses like a struck wire—death-energy twisted, inverted, misused. Not necromancy. Something adjacent. Something reckless.
Magic without discipline.
Aldir stopped at the edge of a clearing ringed with dead trees, their bark blackened as if burned from the inside. At the center stood a woman.
She was young—perhaps—but age meant little when magic warped time. Dark hair clung to her face, damp with sweat. Her hands were raised, fingers carved with sigils burned directly into flesh. A circle of scorched earth surrounded her, pulsing erratically.
Bound within it was a creature of warped bone and shadow—once human, now something stitched together by rage and unstable sorcery. It thrashed against invisible restraints, shrieking in a voice that scraped reality raw.
A witch.
Aldir watched silently.
Her spellwork was powerful but crude. Emotionally driven. Anger laced every strand of magic she cast, tightening the construct rather than stabilizing it.
"You will obey," she hissed, voice shaking. "You will—"
The creature broke free.
The backlash hurled her across the clearing. She hit a tree hard enough to crack bark, gasping as the spell circle imploded in a violent surge of death-energy.
Aldir stepped forward.
He extended his will.
The creature froze mid-lunge, its malformed limbs locking as if seized by an unseen hand. It writhed, screeching, but could not move.
The witch stared.
Their eyes met.
Recognition flared instantly—not of his face, but of his presence. Her magic recoiled from him instinctively, like flame from water.
"You," she whispered. "You're—"
Aldir crushed the creature's spine with a thought. Bone collapsed inward. The thing fell limp, its animating force unraveling under superior command.
Silence reclaimed the clearing.
The witch scrambled to her feet, blood on her lip, eyes blazing with fury rather than gratitude.
"You had no right," she snapped.
Aldir tilted his head. "It was unstable."
"I had it under control."
"No," he said calmly. "You had it angry."
She flinched, then straightened. "Necromancer."
The word was not an insult. It was an accusation.
"And you," Aldir replied, "are reckless."
Her laugh was sharp. "Coming from a corpse."
The devils stirred faintly, amused.
Aldir studied her now—not as a threat, but as a problem. Her aura burned bright, raw, chaotic. Witchcraft fueled by emotion, conviction, belief. Everything necromancy rejected.
"You bind death without understanding it," he said. "You'll kill yourself."
She stepped closer, defiant despite the tremor in her hands. "And you dominate it without caring. You're worse."
That… was interesting.
"Name," Aldir said.
"Isabella," she replied without hesitation. "And I don't kneel to monsters."
Aldir considered her for a long moment.
Most people begged. Attacked. Ran.
She argued.
"You will," he said—not threatening, not cruel. Simply factual. "Or you'll die."
Her jaw tightened. "Try."
Aldir moved.
The fight was not explosive—it was surgical. Her fire met his void and guttered. Her wards collapsed under precise pressure. Spell after spell unraveled as he dismantled them at their source.
Within moments, she was on her knees, magic bound, breath ragged.
Aldir stood over her, one hand extended, necromantic threads coiling like black silk around her wrists.
"Kneel," he said again.
Isabella looked up at him, eyes burning not with fear—but defiance layered over something else.
Loneliness.
"Do it," she spat. "Kill me. Prove what you are."
Aldir hesitated.
The sensation startled him.
It wasn't mercy.
It was curiosity.
He withdrew his hand.
"You'll come with me," he said. "Learn control—or die failing without it."
Her eyes widened.
"That's it?" she demanded. "You destroy my work, overpower me, and expect obedience?"
"No," Aldir replied. "I expect usefulness."
She laughed bitterly. "You really are a monster."
"Yes," he agreed.
She stared at him a long moment… then bowed her head.
"Fine," she said quietly. "But don't mistake submission for faith."
Aldir turned away, already walking. "Good."
Behind him, Isabella rose and followed—angry, humiliated, alive.
For the first time since his death, Aldir felt something unfamiliar stir in the hollow where his heart once ruled.
Not warmth.
Not hope.
Tension.
And the devils watched in silence as the necromancer and the witch stepped into the dark together—two opposing truths bound by necessity, neither aware of how deeply the other would cut.