The skies above the Valley of Broken Seals bled crimson. The heavens roared, and the scent of ozone and iron poisoned the air. A thousand banners snapped in the wind—tattered flags representing the Five Elemental Clans, each a heretical sect born from demonic blood and ambition.
They had come not to conquer a foreign land, but to slay a brother.
A man stood alone on the obsidian ridge. Armor cracked, bones broken, and shadow flowing from his feet like a living tide. His name was forgotten to most, but the world once whispered it with reverence.
Kael.
Once, he had been their greatest weapon. Their shield. The Nameless Blade of the Black Hollow Clan.
Now, he was the enemy of all.
Facing him were five armies, each marked by twisted banners of infernal power.
The Pyroclast Sect, bathed in flame and adorned in burning steel.
The Tidewrought Circle, robed in abyssal blues, their sorcery drawn from drowned gods.
The Stone Maw Brotherhood, giants wrapped in earth-runes and jagged armor.
The Skycarve Nomads, light as wind, deadly as thunder.
And the Ferrum Order, steel-bodied assassins wielding blades that cut through will itself.
Each had once called him "brother."
"You shouldn't have outgrown your leash, Kael." boomed a voice wrapped in fire. It came from within a hulking war chariot drawn by twin lava serpents—Inferis, Warlord of the Pyroclast.
Kael's lips curled in disdain. His eyes—once dull—now shimmered with a violet glow. Beneath him, the shadows seethed.
"You all knew I was the strongest," he said, voice ragged. "And you envied it. So now you come, rats in armor, to carve my legacy from my corpse."
The sky shattered.
The first strike came from above—dozens of Skycarve warriors descended with spears forged of lightning, forming a whirlwind of death. But Kael moved like a storm unfurling in slow motion. His shadows whipped upward, manifesting a jagged black greatsword from his hand.
SHINK—
Steel clashed against void. In a single arc, Kael cleaved a dozen warriors mid-air, their bodies dissolving into smoke. He vanished, then reappeared at the center of the battlefield—shadows erupting from him like a volcanic explosion.
The Ferrum assassins struck next, blinking into place like flickers of dying stars. Their weapons aimed not for his body, but his soul. Yet Kael had fought beneath a thousand suns and in ten thousand hells.
He whispered a command in the tongue of forgotten shadows. "Unchain."
From beneath the earth, a tidal wave of darkness surged upward. Tendrils of shadow seized the assassins mid-strike, tearing them limb from limb in a dance of silent agony.
But it wasn't enough.
The Tidewrought Circle raised their hands, chanting in a language that made blood boil. Kael stumbled, clutching his head—visions of drowning, of pressure crushing his ribs. He roared through the pain and charged—
—only to be met by Granith, the juggernaut of the Stone Maw Brotherhood.
A colossal fist—wrapped in living stone—met Kael's chest with a detonation of bone and force. Kael flew backward, shattering craters into the blackened ridge.
He coughed blood. "Still alive," he muttered, grinning. "You'll need more than a rock to kill a shadow."
But then came the final betrayal.
A voice—soft, familiar.
"Forgive me, Kael."
He turned. And time seemed to freeze.
She stood there—wreathed in blue flame, eyes brimming with regret. Her name was lost in Kael's memory, but the pain etched itself anew every time he saw her. She had been his anchor. His kin.
She drove the blade into his back.
Everything went still.
Not the shadows. Not the armies. But time itself.
As Kael collapsed, blood pouring from the wound, he looked up toward the shattered sky—toward the looming seal that the Demon Lord had left behind. An eternal barrier, a cage for the strong.
His breath rasped.
"…Cowards."
The world turned black.