The Demon Realm was a place governed by an uncompromising law: the strong eat the weak. Information was the currency of survival and news of death traveled faster than a coursing river.

  Usually, the death of a Demon Lord was a drawn out affair. It involved decades of border skirmishes, political assassinations, shifting alliances and finally a cataclysmic war that left the land scarred for generations.

  But what happened on the 'Day of the Red Eclipse' defied every established rule of their brutal world.

  Three Demon Lords. Two Beast Kings. Five of the undisputed apex predators of the realm were wiped from the face of the world in the span of a single afternoon. There were no declarations of war. There were no grand battles spanning weeks. There was just existence and then, sudden erasure.

  As the sun rose the following morning the entire Demon Realm woke up to a reality that had been fundamentally broken.

  Grib and Snarl were scavengers. They were low level rat faced demons who survived by picking the bones clean after warlords clashed. They had assumed Malakor’s alliance had finally broken the Night Queen’s amber.

  They had snuck toward the siege camp and were expecting to find the scraps of a celebration. Perhaps some discarded weapons or half empty bottles of blood wine. Instead, they found a void.

  "Snarl," Grib whispered. His long nose twitched violently as he peered over the edge of a massive crater. "Where... where is everything? Where are the walls?"

  Snarl, a slightly fatter rat demon and missing half an ear, scratched his head. "I don't know. Maybe Lord Malakor moved it? I heard they can do such things with their incredible powers."

  "You idiot!" Grib smacked the back of Snarl's head. "You can't just put a fortress in a spatial ring! And look!" He pointed a trembling finger at the center of the crater.

  There was no debris. There were no corpses. There was only a thick layer of fine grey ash. The two scavengers scrambled down the smooth crater wall.

  "What kind of supreme, god-like entity slaughters an army of ten thousand elites and then disappears without anyone knowing?!"

  The two scavengers looked at each other and an existential dread settled over them.

  "We need to leave," Grib squeaked. "This isn't war, Snarl. This was an execution. If they come back we're dead."

  Within the Rotting Bone Lord’s Domain and at the secondary fortress, the atmosphere was entirely different. It was dead serious.

  General Marrow, a towering undead monstrosity clad in rusted iron armor, sat at a long stone table. Across from him sat General Femur, a skeletal demon draped in tattered necromantic robes. Between them, resting on a velvet cushion, was a shattered jade slip.

  The soul jade of the Rotting Bone Lord.

  "The Lord is dead," Marrow rumbled with his voice echoing from the empty cavern of his chest. "The soul jade shattered instantly. He was simply extinguished."

  "A tragedy," Femur lied smoothly with his eye sockets flaring with green balefire. "A devastating loss for our people. However, the realm waits for no one. A power vacuum has formed. The legions, what’s left of them, will need a strong and capable leader to guide them through these turbulent times."

  "I agree," Marrow said while slowly resting his skeletal hand on the hilt of his broadsword. "And as the Commander of the Vanguard, it is only natural that I assume the throne. You, Femur, shall remain my loyal advisor."

  Femur let out a dry, rattling laugh. "Commander of the Vanguard? You are a brute, Marrow. You lack the vision to rule. I command loyalty in others. The throne is mine."

  The two generals stood up and their killing intent filled the war room. The surrounding lieutenants drew their weapons and began taking sides. The inevitable, bloody war of succession that followed the death of every Demon Lord was about to begin right there in the council chamber.

  BANG.

  The heavy wooden doors of the chamber flew open. A skeletal scout scrambled inside and slid across the stone floor. It began bowing so low his skull clicked against the ground.

  "Generals! Report! Urgent report!" The scout stammered as his teeth chattered.

  "Speak!" Marrow barked but did not take his eyes off Femur. "What is it? Are the neighboring warlords attacking?"

  "No, General! It's the capital! We just received word from those passing by it... the capital is gone!"

  Femur frowned. "Gone? What do you mean, gone? Did the Gale Ape attack?"

  "No one knows. No one seems to know anything about what happened. Only that it did happen." the scout cried. "The Lord is dead!"

  "We know that, you fool," Marrow growled. "But what of the treasury? The ancestral bone marrow vats? The armory?"

  "It's all gone.”

  The killing intent in the room vanished and was replaced by a cold hollow silence. Marrow slowly let go of his broadsword. Femur’s necrotic sparks fizzled out.

  "The treasury is gone?" Femur asked with his voice barely a whisper.

  "Completely gone sir. Destroyed along with everything else."

  Marrow looked at Femur. Femur looked at Marrow. The realization hit them both simultaneously. They were two generals with a massive army to feed and maintain. And currently they had pretty much zero funds and zero weapons.

  "Well," Marrow said slowly while sitting back down in his chair and rubbing his skull. "This changes things."

  "Indeed," Femur muttered as he took his own seat. He looked at the shattered soul jade. "You know, Marrow, upon further reflection... I believe the Vanguard Commander is uniquely suited for the throne. The burdens of leadership are heavy. I insist you take the crown."

  "Absolutely not," Marrow countered immediately, waving his hands. "I am but a simple soldier! I lack your grand vision! You must lead us into the future! I pledge my absolute loyalty to you, Lord Femur!"

  "I refuse your loyalty!" Femur shouted back at him and quickly stood back up. "You take the throne, you big idiot or I'll curse your bones to rot!"

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "I'll shatter your skull before I take that bankrupt throne!" Marrow roared back.

  The lieutenants watched in absolute bewilderment as the two most ambitious generals in the Rotting Bone army aggressively tried to force the leadership upon each other. Neither of them wanted to inherit an empire that had just been financially ruined.

  In a tavern at Grim Spire, the news had hit like a localized earthquake. The massive tavern, usually a place of rowdy drinking, mercenary bartering and loud boasts was currently operating at a low and terrified murmur.

  The air was thick with smoke and fear. At a large round table in the center, a diverse group of mercenaries were huddled together and keeping their voices down. A Jackal beastman, a hulking Minotaur demon and a multiarmed succubus.

  "I heard it was an invasion from the Celestial Realm," the Minotaur whispered as he took a nervous gulp of his ale. "They say a legion of Heavenly Kings descended and wiped them out. The heavens finally decided they were getting too powerful."

  "Don't be stupid," the Jackal beastman scoffed. "If the Celestial Realm invaded, they wouldn't stop at five targets. They'd burn the whole place. No, this was targeted. Surgical. Have you noticed the pattern?"

  The succubus leaned in, her eyes gleaming with fearful curiosity. "The pattern?"

  "Think about it," the Jackal said as he was tapping a claw on the wooden table. "Who died? Malakor. The Spider Queen. The Rotting Bone Lord. The Gale Ape. The Sky Rending Condor."

  "So?" the Minotaur shrugged.

  "They were the five that formed the alliance recently!" the Jackal hissed. "The five that broke the Night Demon capital! They were the ones besieging the Night Queen!"

  The realization dawned on the table and was spreading like a cold chill.

  "You think... you think the Night Queen did this?" The succubus asked with her voice trembling. Somehow afraid that she would be next for no reason at all. "But she was trapped inside the Nether Amber! Her power was failing!"

  "Maybe it was a trap," the Jackal theorized. "Maybe she wanted them to gather in one place. Or maybe she has a backer. Someone ancient. Someone terrifying."

  From the next table over, a heavily intoxicated demon slammed his mug down. "Bah! You're all overthinking it! I know who did it!"

  The tavern went quiet with several heads turning toward the drunkard.

  "It was that human!" The demon hiccuped loudly. "The one they call the Little Void Demon! The one who stole Malakor's betrothal gift!"

  For a second the tavern was silent. Then a chorus of laughter erupted from the surrounding tables.

  "Go home, you drunk!" A nearby mercenary yelled while throwing a peanut at the demon’s head.

  "The Little Void Demon is an assassin, a thief!" The Jackal beastman sneered. "He's an annoyance. You think one guy who steals wedding presents can turn the Sky Rending Condor into a headless chicken in the span of an afternoon? You think a thief can crush Malakor? It takes armies to do that! It takes gods!"

  The demon grumbled while taking another drink. "Laugh all you want! But I'm telling you, that Void Demon is bad news!"

  Despite the laughter, the underlying tension in the tavern didn't fade. Contracts to travel near any of the five destroyed territories were being canceled left and right. Escort missions were abandoned. No one wanted to be anywhere near the power vacuum that would surely ensue.

  "Regardless of who did it," the succubus said quietly to her table, "the message is clear. The Night Queen is not to be touched. If her enemies of that level end up like this... I wouldn't go near her territory for all the spirit stones or demon cores in the world."

  At the edge of the Gale Ape’s jungle. Deep in the southern jungles, the atmosphere was one of primal reverence. The Emerald Serpent King, a massive, ancient beast whose scales shimmered like polished jade slithered silently through the dense undergrowth. Behind him followed his tribe. Thousands of highly intelligent serpent beasts.

  They had felt the shockwave yesterday. The entire jungle had vibrated with the death throes of the Gale Ape, a creature the Serpent King had warred with for territory for the past three hundred years. The Serpent King reached the edge of the Ape's domain. He raised his massive triangular head above the canopy and looked at the mountain where the Ape's fortress usually stood.

  The mountain was gone. In its place was a massive fist shaped crater that plunged deep into the earth. The Serpent King flicked his tongue and was tasting the air. His slit eyes dilated in horror.

  Beasts were more attuned to the raw laws of nature than demons or humans. They understood the food chain on an instinctual level. The residual aura lingering in that crater, the imprint of General Po’s punch, was not just strong. It was conceptually overwhelming.

  It was the aura of a being who could shatter the sky if they felt like it. It was the footprint of a titan passing through a garden of ants.

  The Serpent King didn't gloat over his rival's death. He didn't order his tribe to move in and claim the newly emptied territory. He simply lowered his head, a gesture of terrifying submission to an unseen master.

  He turned back to his tribe. He hissed a series of sharp, commanding clicks. ‘The apex has changed. The gods walk among us again. We migrate underground. We do not surface for a hundred years.’

  Without a single sound of protest, the massive serpent tribe turned around and began burrowing deep into the earth. They were abandoning their hunting grounds simply to escape the residual fear left behind by the Veiled Lotus.

  In the subterranean caverns of the east, the scene was one of quiet, haunting beauty.

  A surviving broodmother, a massive arachnid demon missing two of her legs, stood trembling at the edge of what used to be her Queen's grand throne room. The supposedly indestructible webbing, forged from the silk of thousands of demon spiders over centuries, was gone. But it hadn't burned.

  Floating in the air, slowly fading into nothingness, were spectral petals of black lotuses. The broodmother watched as one of the ethereal petals drifted down and touched a solid stone pillar. The stone didn't shatter; it simply unspooled. It quickly turned into fine dust as the Dao of the Sword, so unimaginably sharp and pure severed the very bonds of the material itself.

  The broodmother fell to her abdomen and pressed her mandibles against the floor. Her Queen was dead. Her empire was ash. And the power that had done it was so elegant, so terrifyingly beautiful, that it broke her mind to perceive it.

  The High Council of the Remaining Demon Lords

  Far from the destruction and hidden within a shielded dimensional pocket, a communication array hummed to life. The projection of five of the remaining Demon Lords flickered into existence around a circular stone table. The Night Queen was absent from this as she was still waiting for Li Yu to come out of the dome.

  They were the survivors. The ones who hadn't joined the siege. The silence among them was heavier than a mountain.

  "Five," a shadow draped Lord finally spoke. His voice vibrated with barely contained panic. "Five of the strongest in this world. Gone. Erased. Three from among us as well. Four if you count Balor, who has been missing."

  "Who benefits?" Asked another, a woman with wings of dark fire. "In our world, you follow the blood and you follow the stones. Who gains from this?"

  "The Night Queen," a third Lord rumbled. "She was the target of their alliance. They had her cornered."

  "Impossible," the shadow Lord countered. "She was trapped in the Nether Amber! Her armies were decimated! She couldn't have mounted a counter offensive, let alone one of this magnitude!"

  "Then she didn't do it," the winged woman said. "Someone did it for her."

  A cold chill ran through the communication array. The implications were staggering.

  "If the Night Queen has secured the backing of an entity capable of casually slaughtering five of our peers and looting their empires in a single afternoon..." The shadow Lord swallowed hard. "Then the balance of power hasn't just shifted. It has been destroyed."

  "What are your orders?" Asked a heavily armored Lord who had remained quiet until now. "Do we form a grand coalition? Do we strike the House of Night before she can rebuild?"

  "Are you insane?!" The winged woman hissed. "Did you not see the reports? If you march on the Night Queen now, you are marching into the maw of whatever god she has awakened!"

  "So we do nothing?"

  "We do exactly what survivors do," the shadow Lord decreed. "We expand into the empty space that has been created but we give a wide room for the Night Queen. She will be rebuilding as well. Let her have what she wants to take. We take the rest. We also heighten our defenses. And we pray to the ancestors that the Night Queen is satisfied with the blood she has already spilled."

  The communication feeds are cut out one by one.

  Throughout the entire Demon Realm, a collective, terrified breath was drawn and held. The stage was set. The House of Night was about to return and the entire world had already decided to step aside and bow their heads. At least for now.