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A few days had passed since the dungeon incident.
Now, under the blazing noon sun, in the outskirts of the Lexatric Kingdom, the mighty fortress-city of Oldia stood as a silent sentinel of history.
Oldia was never meant to be a city.
It was born as a war fortress, a bastion of steel and stone raised during the early unification wars of the Lexatric Kingdom. As time passed and the frontier pushed forward, Oldia was gradually abandoned by the main military. But nostalgia has a strange pull on those who once bled for a place. Retired soldiers returned, bringing with them discipline, memories, and dreams of a homeland. Slowly, Oldia transformed from a rusting relic into a thriving fortress city.
Here, the ancestral blood bead system—a subdivision of bead magic unique to the beastmen of Lexatric—formed the backbone of culture. This ancient method allowed its citizens to awaken dormant beast genes passed down from their ancestors, leading to fierce warriors and uncanny instincts. The practice shaped every aspect of life—militaristic, beast-aligned, nature-reverent, and deeply xenophobic. Outsiders rarely entered Oldia and left with their pride, or bones, intact.
The city was known for producing the finest officers in the kingdom, men and women honed like weapons. It had withstood numerous sieges in its storied past, and it stood proud with only one massive northern gate, carved into the shape of a lion's maw.
This lone gate was both a weakness and a message.
Oldia never needed more than one way in or out—enemies only came from one direction: the front.
But fate—especially in a world brimming with blade and magic—had no respect for logic or expectations.
And something unexpected had arrived.
From the great forest to the north, a lone figure emerged.
The guards on the walls, relaxed in their midday patrols, straightened immediately. Eyes narrowed. Bows were raised.
A knight. No, something else.
Clad in jet-black armor, etched with bone-white runes that pulsed like the heartbeat of a dying god, the knight rode a warhorse just as ominous. The horse was gaunt, skeletal in shape, its mane like burning threads of dark mist. Both rider and mount had glowing green eyes, ethereal and watery, like the remnants of souls lost at sea.
This was no merchant.
"Halt, Black Knight!" a captain shouted, voice like iron. "State your purpose or bear the wrath of Oldia!"
The knight did not flinch.
"I am the Raven Messenger of the Noid Empire. I bring a message of death and despair to this city."
Murmurs rippled through the ranks above the wall.
"Noid Empire?! That wretched graveyard still dares challenge us?!" spat another guard. "The dead rats dare to challenge the might of Oldia?!"
The black knight said nothing more. His message had already been delivered—verbally.
Now came the physical message.
He kicked the flanks of his mount.
The warhorse roared, not like a living beast, but with a shriek that echoed like steel on stone. It galloped with unnatural speed toward the lion-mawed gate. Arrows loosed in a volley—but none found purchase. They curved midair, missing entirely, as if the knight bent space by will alone.
Then came the warcry.
"CAWWWW!" (for merica!!)
Suddenly, twenty beads exploded into the air behind him, arranged in the shape of an inverted wing—each orb glowing with necrotic energy. The formation twisted, merged, and a colossal bone hammer was born above the knight's head. The weapon, inscribed with screaming faces and cursed glyphs, dropped with a monstrous arc—
BOOOOOOM!
The hammer crashed into the gate with such force that the entire wall shuddered, dust erupting like a volcano. The outer gate was flung inward, crashing into the courtyard, killing three guards instantly. Panic began to spread.
But panic was not allowed to live long in Oldia.
Within moments, horns blared.
"TO ARMS!" roared the Commander of the Wall. "OLDIA STANDS! RALLY THE BEAST!"
From deep within the fortress, units began mobilizing.
Lines of beastmen soldiers charged forward, half-animal forms shifting as their bloodline beads activated, bodies coated in shimmering aura, some sprouting claws, fangs, wings, or plated hide.
The Raven Messenger stood alone—until he didn't.
From the tree line emerged a black tide. Cloaked warriors, bone-armored behemoths, and skeletal archers marched under the banner of the Noid Empire—the empire of the dead.
This wasn't a message. It was an invasion.
The first clash was immediate.
Steel met bone. Beasts clashed with death.
A lion-headed beastman, one of Oldia's elite, leapt from the second tower and landed in the center of the battlefield, his twin axes tearing through undead like wheat. His beads crackled—sun-colored and fierce.
"YOU BRING WAR TO A CITY BORN FOR WAR?!" he roared.
Arrows rained down from the wall—flaming, enchanted, bursting into silver fire that consumed shadows. On the ramparts, beastkin channelers formed complex glyphs in the air, tracing ancestral bloodlines to call down guardian spirits—giant translucent beasts that howled into battle.
The Raven Messenger met the lion-headed warrior mid-field.
Their clash cracked the ground. A burst of pressure sent lesser undead flying. The hammer and axes met with thunderclaps, both warriors roaring, green eyes meeting golden.
Behind them, war raged.
Oldia's Hidden Order—an elite strike force—appeared from behind secret gates in the courtyard, flanking the enemy with scythe-like polearms and chained spears. From the rooftops, sniper beasts picked off enemy casters, arrows of crystal splitting skulls in showers of bone dust.
The battle lasted for hours.
The sun turned red, and the shadows lengthened.
Blood soaked the northern plains, the gate yard turned into a bone-field.
But gradually… Oldia pushed them back.
The Raven Messenger, wounded and outnumbered, was finally brought low by a combination of fire aura and ancestral beast strikes. His body was ripped apart—not by blades—but by a summoned spectral king of lions, his jaws closing on the knight's head like a vice.
As he died, the Messenger whispered, "…Welp… I tried…"
The last of the Noid warriors fell.
Oldia had stood.
Its gate was broken, its wall cracked, but its soul was unshaken.
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Oldia buried its dead at dawn.
The wounded were treated with reverence. The elders sang ancestral songs to soothe the pain of the fallen. The children were made to witness the aftermath—so they would remember, and learn.
Word spread across the Lexatric Kingdom.
Oldia had once again weathered a storm. The Noid Empire, long thought dormant, had reared its head.
And it had failed.
The King of Lexatric sent emissaries bearing silver laurels and honored blades to Oldia.
But the commander of Oldia said only one thing in response:
"We are soldiers. Not heroes. The wall still stands. That is all."
Far in the north, in a crypt as large as a city, in a giant black castle, the undead king opened its eyes (not literally)
"…So, the Raven fell," He murmured, his voice hoarse.
He was the King of Noid, and his soul fire eyes glowed with the same watery green.
"The game has begun."
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(Please comment for inspiration and motivation)
(Also, send power stones, if you have likes the story so far)