The citadel of Nytheris stood like a monument to despair, an obsidian scar on a dead horizon. Its towers, jagged as the teeth of some primordial leviathan, loomed beneath a blood-hued sky. Rivers of ash cut through the blasted land around it, their currents slow and oily, whispering with the voices of the damned. To approach Nytheris was to hear screams without mouths, to see shadows that moved without light. No mortal army had ever marched on its gates and lived.
Within its deepest hall, beneath vaulted ceilings carved with runes older than the gods, Vorath, the Dread Sovereign, sat upon his Throne of Skulls.
The throne itself was a thing of legend, built not as a trophy, but as a warning. At its base, the bleached skull of Aurelion, the Golden God of War, still flickered faintly with divine light, casting long, trembling shadows. Higher up, the horns of Pyrrhos the Flame Dragon jutted like obsidian spikes, while the fanged jawbone of the Kraken of Valriss formed the seat's back. Each bone told a story; each story ended the same—with Vorath standing, unchallenged, atop the corpse of a once-unstoppable force.
Vorath himself was unnaturally still, as if carved from moonlit marble. His long, black hair fell loose over a sharp, pale face, unmarred by time. Only his eyes, silver and cold as winter moons, betrayed movement—always watching, calculating, devouring. Across his lap rested Nox Obscura, the Sword of the Black Star. The weapon pulsed faintly, as though alive, exhaling wisps of dark mist that curled around Vorath's fingers like smoke.
But Vorath had not been born to this throne.
Once, he had been a man of flesh and blood—a general, nameless now to all but himself. He had commanded the armies of Kaerath, a kingdom that no longer existed, brought low by the very gods who would later come to fear him. On the eve of Kaerath's annihilation, when the sky burned with heavenly fire and celestial legions rained death upon his people, Vorath had stood alone at the gates, a broken spear in his hands, and cursed the gods themselves.
Something had answered.
In the ashes of Kaerath, beneath the corpse of a star that had fallen in ages past, Vorath found the shard. Black, cold, and singing with whispers only he could hear, it promised him strength beyond mortal comprehension. He forged it into a blade—the blade now across his knees. The day he first wielded it, he faced a beast no mortal had ever slain: Thalryss, the Ash Wyrm, a dragon whose breath turned cities to cinders. His army had fled. He had not.
The battle lasted three days. On the dawn of the fourth, Vorath stood bloodied but unbroken atop Thalryss's smoldering corpse, Nox Obscura drinking the dragon's life until its soul was nothing but a faint echo in the steel.
The whispers in the blade grew louder after that. They taught him secrets—of necromancy, of forbidden rites, of how to pluck the dead from their graves and bend them to his will. When Kael, the God of Death, noticed, it was already too late. Vorath had become something beyond mortal, but not yet god. Something worse.
Now, centuries later, he ruled not kingdoms, but ruin. And by his side stood those who had once sought to kill him—now bound eternally as his Black Court.
Two stood closest on this day, their towering figures flanking his throne like living statues.
The first was Serikar the Hollow, a revenant clad in blackened plate etched with runes of binding. Once the Warlord-King of the northern steppes, Serikar had led a horde of a hundred thousand against Vorath two centuries past. He had died screaming as Nox Obscura split his soul from his flesh. Now his voice was a hollow rasp, his will shackled to the Dread Sovereign, his two-handed axe permanently aflame with the spirits of his fallen army.
On Vorath's other side stood Velira, the Crimson Widow. Once a sorceress-queen who had poisoned half the continent in her quest for dominion, she had been undone by her own magic when Vorath turned her plague back upon her. In death, he had remade her—a pale, graceful figure draped in crimson silks, her eyes black voids, her touch laced with necrotic venom. Where she walked, flowers withered, and men dreamed only of graves.
Both knelt now as Vorath rose from his throne, Nox Obscura whispering in his grip. The ghouls of the Gharradim clan, what few remained, writhed at his feet.
"Mercy, Dread One," one hissed, skeletal claws scraping the obsidian floor. "We will serve. We will bleed for you. Only—spare us."
Vorath's silver gaze slid to Velira, who tilted her head, smiling faintly. "Shall I take them for the pits, my lord? Their bones will make fine sentinels."
Vorath shook his head, stepping forward. The air chilled as he drew the blade fully, its mist coiling across the floor like living shadows.
"Mercy is for the living," he said softly, his voice smooth as midnight silk. "And you are already dead."
In a single, fluid motion, he swung. Heads parted from bodies. The corpses hit the floor like discarded cloth.
Serikar rumbled, his voice like grinding stone. "Another brood extinguished. Soon, there will be none left to oppose us."
Vorath sheathed Nox Obscura, turning back toward his throne. "No. Soon, there will be none left to oppose me. That is not the same thing."
But as he sat, a ripple passed through the black braziers, their flames flickering wildly. The whispers in Nox Obscura rose in a hiss, a warning. He felt it—not in his ears, but in the marrow of his bones.
The gods were watching.
Plotting.
Vorath's lips curved into a faint, amused smile. His pale fingers drummed once on the skull of Aurelion beneath his armrest.
Let them come.