Chapter 2

  I had done pitiful things in my life. I had sold my armor, devoted myself to a dubious demon, and slept in sewers. But none of that had reached the crushing irony of this situation: you are saved from annihilation by an unknown, cosmic power, have almost prevented the ascension of a semi-divine despot—and a week later, you are hunting goblins.

  Why? Because we had woken up penniless and with shredded clothes in a lovely fairy-tale forest. The Paladin gods must have a sick sense of humor.

  So, what does a Paladin, demon host, mage, and guardian of the Holy Order do in such a predicament? Right: You hunt goblins! And not for their tusks or furs, but for their nuts—by which, I must emphasize, I do not mean their damned offspring, but an internal organ that was well-paid for as an exotic ingredient or medicine in the cities of the Midlands. It was the only chance to afford a shabby hotel room in the next village so as not to be eaten by forest animals at night.

  That was the pathetic lot of Arik, Vin, Maira, and me in the week after we were ripped out of the hell of Reyn's facility. The teleport had taken everything from us except our bare existence.

  We were at a small, makeshift goblin camp. The ground was churned up, and the smell of impure meat and cheap liquor hung in the air. I had just subdued the last, particularly stubborn goblin. The short, brutal work was done.

  “What’s our next objective, anyway?” Vin asked, five days after the fight against Reyn, her voice exhausted and sounding disarmingly practical. She leaned against the trunk of a gnarled oak while I bent over the motionless goblin.

  I concentrated on my task, my demonic claw employed with surgical precision. Maira, who was currently dealing with the rest of the goblin camp and the quick bleeding of the creatures, had fortunately provided us with some expertise on dissecting dwarf-like beings. She had done so with an unsettling, clinical distance. Oddly, goblins seemed to have a similar anatomy to the Dwarves of the Great Mines regarding this organ, but that was an ultimate detail irrelevant now in the face of the worldwide catastrophe of the more or less thwarted ascension.

  I answered as I finally held the small, pearlescent organ in my hands. It was slippery and felt strangely cool.

  “We warn Reyn's first target,” I said, my voice muffled by the effort. I wiped my hand on a piece of leather. “Before he attacks and uses his new power against them.”

  Vin scraped stubborn dirt from the armor of a defeated goblin with a knife and muttered, “Do you think he’s already gathering the army of Thulegard? He absorbed the fragment. He won't hesitate.”

  “I suspect so,” I said, my voice sounding more certain than it actually felt. The uncertainty of the victory weighed heavily on us. Was the destruction of the embryo enough? “I also believe those Silverdorn types are on his side. Or at least they were instrumentalized.”

  “How so?” Arik asked, confused, as he and Maira finished their work and joined us. His expression was a mixture of disgust at the goblin innards and serious irritation at my theory. “He killed dozens of them every month when they raided the city. I lived there for years. I saw the guards stack the bodies. That was real blood.”

  I sighed, choosing my next words carefully as I slowly walked around the goblin camp, searching for more remnants. The thought had matured in my head over the last few days of fleeing and wouldn't let go.

  “I know, Arik. But even in the battle, on our second day in Thulegard, something about it felt wrong to me,” I explained. “He might have killed them, yes, but it seemed too… planned. The attacks were regular, but never truly successful. There was always enough chaos to portray him as a hero, but never too much chaos to jeopardize the structures he later intended to take over.”

  I turned to face them. “Reyn’s display of power—the gold light, the sun, his descending from the sky, the people's recognition. The more I think about it and remember it, the more it seems like a stage play to me. A perfectly staged ascent to legitimize his rule.”

  Gravor growled in my head: “The Cosmic Principles always operate with efficiency. He only allowed chaos that benefited him. The Silverdorn were useful chaos.”

  I nodded, internally agreeing with the demonic analysis. “The Silverdorn raiders were never the actual problem. They were the stage. He had to unite the people against an external threat before he could take over from within. Perhaps their leader was under his control. Perhaps he deliberately sent them to their deaths to eliminate the truly dangerous among them while using the weak as pawns. It fits his cold logic of order.”

  Vin and Maira had listened attentively. Maira, with her impassive face, slowly nodded. “It makes sense. To establish a total order, one must first create a clear enemy image. And the price of pawns is irrelevant to such beings.”

  Arik shook his head, the memory of his time as a guard clashing with the new, cynical truth. “That’s… terrifying.”

  “It’s Reyn,” I corrected him sharply. “He has just completed a godlike fusion. We must assume that every one of his former actions was part of a larger, cruel design.”

  I gathered the goblin eggs into a rough sack. It was a sobering, shabby reward for what we had been through.

  “Alright then, once more,” Vin repeated, gathering her thoughts and returning to pragmatism. “What is our goal once we have sold the eggs?”

  I deliberated. Should we hurry directly to the next city Reyn would target? Should we try to find allies that Axos might still have? Or hide and lick our wounds?

  Ultimately, I shook my head. The exhaustion was too great; strategic clarity was still missing. The cosmic reality had to settle first.

  “I’ll think about it until we get back to the village,” I said. “First, a roof over our heads. Then a bath. Then food. And then we can decide how to defeat the newly reborn demigod.”

  And with that, with a sack full of goblin nuts and the weighty knowledge of the cosmic threat, we set off back to Orkfield, the small, insignificant village that was to be our safe haven for one night. It was a pathetic, but necessary, step on the path to saving the world.

  -

  Every measured step the Lord of Shadow and Storm took toward the speaker's stand in the center of Thulegard was accompanied by a deep, internal rumble. Small, intense flashes, in an ominous violet and flickering gold, sparked off his boots, leaving slight, smoking scorch marks on the polished wood of the tribune. A visible, divine aura—a billowing, ethereal flame of the same colors—enveloped Reyn.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  To the golden lines in his black armor, the symbol of his former perfectionism, an incessant violet flicker had now been added, dancing like a cosmic fire beneath the surface. His eyes, no longer pure gold, shimmered fluidly in both colors—the perfect fusion of the pure form of the Primordial and the deadly mana fragment of Altron.

  All this was the unmistakable sign of his patron. The sign of his fusion. The sign of Altron.

  Reyn reached the speaker’s stand. He clenched his fists, an act that now made lightning sizzle in his palms, and raised his gaze. He looked over the thousands of soldiers and citizens of Thulegard, standing in militarily perfect rows. Interspersed among them was the symbol of Silverdorn—the new forces, now integrated and more loyal than ever, who would drive his impending crusade. They all stared back with focus, their faces marked by either fervent fanaticism or simple, unshakeable discipline.

  The start of Phase Two—the beginning of the expansion—awaited them.

  “Today is a historic day, my friends,” he began. His voice was no longer that of a man, but the crackling, infinitely resolute voice of a demigod. It was electromagnetically amplified, yet also carried the uncanny calm of the cosmic vacuum. “Today marks the beginning of a new era. Today…”

  He paused briefly, the deliberate silence stretching. He secured the absolute and irreversible attention of everyone.

  “Today marks the beginning of a new order. An order of unity. An order of peace!”

  Slowly, above the heads of the crowd, a heavy, dark storm began to form in the otherwise clear sky. Weather control was a byproduct of his new power.

  “Yet for every peace,” he continued, his voice swelling, permeated by a feigned sorrow that he staged as a necessary evil, “it has always taken violence to form it. History is littered with the bloody evidence of this.”

  He inclined his head, a brief, humble sign of acknowledgment of the past.

  “And in the end,” his voice grew longer and louder, he looked explicitly into the ranks of the army, his purple-gold eyes boring into their souls, “it was always false. No one, no king, no ruler before me, could ever create a true, eternal order. They were fallible, their rules were lies of convenience.”

  Then he placed his left palm—fringed with lightning—over his heart and smiled. It was a cold, pure, frightening smile of cosmic superiority.

  “But I give you my promise,” he said solemnly, his voice piercing every single listener. The first thunder was now clearly audible, a rumble of power in the dark clouds. “My order, our order, will not be a lie like those of hundreds of broken realms. It will be absolute, flawless, and eternal.”

  The first bolts of lightning could be seen between the dark, contracting clouds. The crowd—the soldiers, the citizens, the new Silverdorn fighters—chanted his name. It was no longer cheering, it was a litany, a fanatic confession.

  “And today, this order will begin,” he continued solemnly, the energy around him crackling and growing. “We will spread it. We will show it to the world. They will recognize that our order is finally a true order! And then…”

  The entire city held its breath. The silence was so extreme that the crackling of the lightning could be heard. Reyn smiled, the cosmic heat in his eyes unbearable.

  “…Tirros will be united.”

  The first lightning bolt struck the floor of the tribune with a crash, just a few centimeters from Reyn’s boots, a pure, golden signal of celestial approval.

  The crowd erupted in ecstatic cheers.

  “And all will kneel before us,” Altron whispered, the voice now fully merged with Reyn’s, a low, triumphant undertone of absolute power in the helplessness of the moment. The crusade had begun.

  -

  Thivan Sothar, Supreme Lord of the Black Woods and occasionally referred to as the Ruler of Caleon, stood in a small, underground training chamber directly beneath the foundations of his palace. It was a place of raw, dark stone, damp and only dimly lit by flickering torches, a stark contrast to the splendid center of power above.

  He was training his Storm Magic. His young, athletic physique was tense, his focus absolute. Through the concentration of his mana, he could already whip up small hurricanes in the chamber, unleash howling storms that lashed the air, and conjure razor-sharp lightning bolts that incinerated the stone training dummies before him.

  But that would not be enough. Not to unite the fractured Caleon. Not to bend the hostile princely houses whose egoism had crippled the realm since the Great Schism. Caleon was his realm. It was his legacy. A legacy he had to preserve, no matter the cost. It was his personal mission, his non-negotiable duty, ever since that Elven whore...

  The lightning in his hand began to twitch uncontrollably, the mana in his veins raging like an unleashed dog. His relatively young, blonde hair—which gave him the youthful appearance his adversaries underestimated—stood on end from the static discharge of his fury. He shook his head violently to dispel the tormenting memory and the associated magical instability.

  Not now. Do not let control slip. Anger is a tool, not a master.

  “That is the past,” he whispered his mantra, hard and rhythmically. He forced the twitching lightning to calm down. “We must look to the future. The future of Caleon.”

  A soft scrape of leather boots on the stone and a gentle creak announced that someone had broken the silent concentration of the training chamber.

  “Sir,” a man spoke from above, stepping down the narrow steps. It was Iden, his most personal envoy and most loyal servant.

  “There is news.”

  And it was good news, Thivan recognized immediately from the relieved, almost beaming look of the man who was twice his age but whose eyes were still clear and watchful. Iden, a man of diplomacy and long negotiations, did not enter the chamber with such open joy if months of work had been for nothing.

  “Were there successes in the negotiations with House Barwan?” Thivan asked, his voice hopeful but underscored by a stern, imperious impatience. House Barwan was the key to uniting the East, his father’s old friend—but frigid in its stance since the Schism.

  The envoy nodded vigorously, happy to deliver good news to his young yet heavily burdened ruler.

  “Prince Barwan agrees to a trade and war alliance, my Lord. He has confirmed the charter with his seal,” Iden said, the relief in his voice unmistakable. “The Princes of Caleon will fight side-by-side against external threats. We have secured a joint front against the Northern Clans.”

  Finally. The tension left Thivan’s shoulders. That was the first major step forward. A genuine alliance, not just empty words or a fleeting pact born of fear.

  “That is magnificent news, Iden. You will be richly rewarded for this,” Thivan said, a cold, satisfied smile spreading across his face. The first domino falls. Order begins.

  But Iden cleared his throat, his expression clouding slightly.

  “Furthermore…” the envoy continued hesitantly, his eyes fixed on the floor. “…your father wishes to see you.”

  The good mood instantly crumbled.

  Thivan sighed sadly, shaking his head, his voice freezing into an icy, unyielding hardness.

  “Iden, you know his illness has destroyed his mind. He barely recognizes me, confusing me with deceased uncles or servants. He is no longer a King; he is just a husk,” Thivan said, every syllable hard and painfully honest. “There is nothing he can tell me. No wisdom I haven't already found in the old archives. I will not waste time that I must dedicate to Caleon.”

  He turned back to the battered training dummies. The conversation was over for him. He raised his hand, the mana already gathering in his palm for the next lightning strike.

  But before he fired the first bolt, Iden spoke again, his voice now more urgent, more personal—he dropped the diplomacy and appealed to the young man beneath the armor.

  “Thivan,” said Iden, who had known the Prince since childhood, “your father will soon no longer be with us. The healers are honest. These hours are his last clear moments. Please, allow him this final honor. Not as a Prince, but as a son.”

  The young Prince let go of his fighting stance, his shoulders relaxing ever so slightly. He did not turn around, but his hesitation was audible. He was thinking. Duty called him to the future, but tradition demanded one last look at the past.

  Thivan took a deep breath, the cold, mineral aroma of the rock filling his lungs. Emotional pain was a familiar enemy.

  “Very well,” he finally said, his voice ice-cold and devoid of any familial warmth. He was not sacrificing this moment for love. He was sacrificing it for form and political correctness. “I will see him. But only to give him peace, so that I can return to my duties.”

  He now looked directly at Iden.

  “For Caleon.”

  The future had priority. Always.