---
The first battle of Oldia was merely the matchstick. What followed would be remembered not as a war, but as a seven-day apocalypse.
---
Hour 1 — The Fire at Oldia
Oldia burned. The ancient walled city, first bastion of the Lexatric Kingdom, came under a violent surprise assault. Undead hordes—bone-thin monstrosities crackling with necrotic aura—poured in from the east, crashing against walls with blind fury, led by the raven messanger.
But the defenders did not yield. Arrow fire blackened the sky, blood-cloaked warriors lit up the streets, and with blade, shield, and prayer, they pushed the invaders back. In a blaze of silver light, the Hidden-Order of the FANG surged forward, decimating the frontlines. Oldia held.
---
Hour 3 — The Death Behind the Lines
Even as the defenders cheered, black smoke rose from behind.
The Death Legions of Noid had already moved. Slipping through canyons, old tunnels, and bone-choked valleys, they struck at the Lexatric Kingdom's unguarded villages. Children, mothers, farmers—all fell. And then they rose again. Twisted. Cold. Obedient to necromantic will.
Dozens of hamlets disappeared in silence. From the shadows, undead hordes struck the Lexatric frontline from the rear, cutting supply lines and encircling key positions.
---
Hour 5 — The Tentacles of Noid
The Kingdom of Lexatric became a sieve. Like black tentacles, Noid's army coiled into its lands.
Where once green roads and merchant routes flourished, now dead marched in lockstep. Towns were isolated. Watchtowers flickered their final fire. The kingdom's proud border was now a bleeding scar.
---
Hour 9 — The Beast Cavalry's Roar
But Lexatric was not yet defeated.
With horns blowing from mountaintops and banners raised in desperate honor, the Beast Cavalry charged. Ten thousand beastkin warriors—furred lions, horned minotaurs, swift pantherfolk—roared across the battlefield.
From the leftmost edge of the border to the farthest right, they carved through undead ranks. Gnashing teeth met brittle bone. Clawed feet shattered skulls. The very earth shook.
The undead lines buckled. The frontlines returned to where they began.
But victory came at cost. Of the ten thousand beast cavalry, only one thousand limped back. The rest died, smiling in honor, blades soaked in rotten ichor.
---
Hour 15 — Corpses Recycled
Their deaths, however, only fueled the enemy.
The Necromancers of Noid stood upon ridges, black-robed and laughing. With one terrible chant, they raised the fallen beastkin. The battlefield quaked again—but now under the weight of corrupted beast spirits.
Pale-eyed and twisted mockeries of their former selves, the undead beastkin turned against their homeland.
---
Hour 17 — Explosive Resolve
Lexatric answered not with prayers, but with bombs.
In a cruel echo of Noid's tactics, soldiers began strapping themselves with volatile alchemy grenades. If death awaited them, they would take many with them.
When an undead claw pierced a soldier's gut, his grin was the last thing it saw—before light consumed both.
---
Hour 27 — Command Collapses
Noid struck with precision.
In coordinated strikes, three out of Lexatric's seven command posts fell. One was reduced to ashes by spectral flames. Another was overwhelmed by shadow wraiths. The third was infiltrated by a traitorous commander, revealed only moments before detonating a sealed alchemy crystal, killing hundreds.
For two long hours, frontline orders ceased. Chaos reigned. An entire division was lost to friendly fire and blind retreats.
---
Hour 34 — The Liches Fall
In defiance, Lexatric's elite scouts infiltrated deep behind enemy lines.
Wearing the skin of the dead, they crept into a war council held by three powerful liches—each centuries old, their souls bound to bone and black spellfire.
With shaking hands and steady hearts, the scouts detonated themselves. The resulting explosion lit the sky like a second sun.
Three liches were slain. The cost: twenty lives.
---
Hour 45 — Commander Tyson's Last Charge
The Beastkin were not done.
Commander Tyson, old and maimed, gathered the last of the Beast Cavaliers—less than two hundred—and led them in a final charge straight through Noid's lines.
Through valleys of screaming undead and geysers of cursed flame, they rode.
And they breached the capital.
Tyson, with his blade blessed by the Forest Deity Y'thar, struck down a Necro-General atop the blackened walls before being crushed beneath a landslide of bone.
The beast cavaliers were annihilated. But the wound they left in Noid's heart had just begun to bleed.
---
Hour 70 — Lok's Wrath
General Lok, inspired by Tyson's sacrifice, gathered the Frenzy Beast Battalion and stormed the same path. What Tyson carved, Lok widened into a trail of death.
Thousands of warriors stormed through the capital outskirts. The siege of Noid had begun.
---
Hour 80 — The Death Knight Ambush
But the dead had not finished their tricks.
Thirteen Death Knights—ancient knights of the underworld, summoned to serve the undead king—ambushed the battalion in the Cursed Hollow. Beads flared and blood sprayed.
In a desperate rear guard, General Lok hurled himself into the knights, unleashing his final technique: the Devouring Roar.
He bought time. But his body was never found.
---
Hour 90 — Mistaken Identity
The shattered remnants of the battalion limped home, armor broken, flags torn.
But as they approached Lexatric lines, their rotting uniforms, scorched by undead magic, led to disaster.
They were mistaken for enemies.
Artillery fire rained down. Archer volleys filled the skies.
Few survived. The Frenzy Beast Battalion was formally disbanded.
---
Hour 100 — The Breach
With the battalion gone, the weakened frontline cracked open.
A flood of undead surged through the gap, trampling farms and villages, setting siege to towns unguarded.
The screams of civilians rang across the night.
---
Hour 112 — Retreat and Sacrifice
Lexatric made a brutal choice.
The frontline retreated, abandoning one-fourth of the kingdom's territory to the enemy. But in doing so, they turned inward, cleansing their cities of undead infiltration.
Rubble was cleared. Graves were dug. Survivors rearmed.
---
Hour 160 — Endless War
The war dragged on. The skies turned gray with ash. Food ran thin. Clerics dropped dead mid-prayer.
But the Lexatric Kingdom stood.
---
Hour 167 — Desperate Plea
With resources gone, and morale at its end, the king of Lexatric sent envoys to the Sparks Empire.
They bowed. They begged. They offered territory.
"Help us," they said. "Or their next target will be your empire."
---
Hour 168 — Sparks Ignite
The Sparks Empire, cloaked in gold and lightning, agreed.
In exchange for land, they would send their armies.
On the dawn of the eighth day, the sky rumbled not with death—but with hope. Great mechanical beasts marched. Magic-powered alchemical cannons glowed. Skyships darkened the sun.
And for the first time in seven days, the undead paused.
The war was far from over. But now, Lexatric was not alone.
---
The Week That Burned became the deadliest period in Lexatric history.
Over 600,000 soldiers died. Villages were erased. Five great beastkin tribes were nearly wiped out.
But the line held.
And with the Sparks Empire now on the battlefield, Noid's tide had finally been stemmed.
The world would remember this week. Songs would be written. Statues would be built. Graves would be carved into the bones of the land.
But war was not done.
Only now… had it truly begun.
---