The battlefield was a graveyard long before the fighting began.
Charred husks of buildings leaned over the cracked streets. The air shimmered with heat and dust. Smoke rolled in from the east, mingling with the metallic scent of blood. And above it all… silence. The kind of silence that comes not from peace, but from the moment before the storm breaks.
Then the dead began to move.
They did not shamble. They did not groan. They advanced in disciplined ranks — skeletal hands gripping spears of bone, armored hulks marching in perfect cadence. Their eyes burned with faint embers, not the mindless hunger of feral corpses but the cold discipline of soldiers who had already died once.
At the head of the advancing host strode a figure wrapped in a black officer's coat lined with silver-thread glyphs. His crimson eyes did not dart or blink — they scanned the field with the precision of a hawk circling far above. A faint spectral glow shimmered behind him, a ghostly eye hanging high in the sky, watching everything. To the living, he was a curse given form. They called him Black Requiem. Wherever his gaze fell, resistance broke as if the battle had already been decided.
To his right, the earth shook with each step of a colossal figure. Over seven feet of necrotic muscle and bone plating, his very presence radiated the inevitability of defeat. His left arm was no longer flesh — it had become a wall of fused bone, wide and solid enough to shield entire ranks behind him. Jagged barricades of ivory erupted from the ground with every slow, deliberate stride. The defenders knew his name and hated it, for when he came, their strongholds crumbled into tombs. They called him Ashen Bulwark… though one voice, and one voice alone, ever called him Bastion.
On the opposite flank, motion blurred crimson against the gray ruins. A lean predator wove through the streets, his movements too fast to follow, cutting down soldiers before their cries could leave their throats. Around him swirled a faint red haze — an omen of death that seemed to sap the courage from even the bravest. To the survivors who lived long enough to speak, he was Crimson Tempest. To the one who had raised him from the filth of the city streets, he was Raze.
And at the heart of it all stood the one they followed.
The Graveborne Lord.
From the broken shell of a watchtower, he surveyed the chaos below. His coat, black as the void between stars, moved faintly in the ashen wind. His expression was unreadable, but his presence pressed against the senses like the weight of an oncoming avalanche. The dead did not move until he willed it. The living under his banner stood as if bound by the same unshakable resolve.
They said his voice could rouse an army of corpses from the soil. They said his eyes could see through lies, fear, and hope alike. They said the world itself had bent to make room for his reign.
Five figures stood near him — five shadows as distinct and dangerous as the commanders at the front.
The first stood with one hand resting lightly on the hilt of a slender blade. Her hair was a waterfall of black silk, reflecting the moonlight even in the dust-choked air. She did not stand still — she flickered, vanishing and reappearing several paces away in the blink of an eye. People whispered her name like a ghost story told under a shrouded moon: Moon Veil.
The second figure radiated warmth and danger in equal measure. Long waves of chestnut hair framed eyes of golden amber, and wherever her bare feet touched the cracked earth, tiny blooms pushed through the ash. She smiled faintly at the soldiers around her, but in her hands, vines bristling with thorns writhed like hunting serpents. Civilians spoke her name with awe and longing alike: Verdant Saint.
Beside her stood a woman with eyes the color of polished emerald, her stance both graceful and unyielding. Shards of crystalline red drifted lazily around her before falling to the ground, embedding themselves deep into the stone with the weight of steel. The survivors of her assaults remembered the sound they made — a soft, deadly rain — and named her Ruby Rain.
A faint mist clung to the fourth woman, swirling around her pale form as if afraid to leave her side. Her hair was a cascade of sapphire blue, her silver-gray eyes unreadable. She moved like a reflection on water — graceful, untouchable, and cold. Soldiers spoke of her in low voices, as if saying her name too loud might summon her: Glacial Veil.
The last stood apart from the others, her posture slightly hunched, as though she listened to a sound no one else could hear. Her hair was stark white, framing eyes that had once been vibrant but now seemed to drift between worlds. At her side prowled a massive beast — fur white as snow, wings folded against its back, eyes glowing with predatory gold. Together, they were called Echo Nocturne, and it was said her voice could draw the soul from a man before his body hit the ground.
The battlefield belonged to them.
The defenders fought, but their shouts grew weaker under the measured march of the undead. Barricades rose and fell in moments. Streets became crimson rivers. The haze of dust and blood turned the sky a dim, hateful red.
The Graveborne Lord did not speak. He didn't need to.
With a single gesture, the commanders moved in unison, the army flowing like a tide around the broken remains of the city. Somewhere far below, a soldier screamed, not in pain but in despair — the kind of cry that comes when you realize there is no victory left to win.
This was not the beginning of the Graveborne Lord's story.
This was the future the world would one day see — a throne built from the loyalty of the dead, guarded by the most feared names ever whispered in the apocalypse.
And for now… it was only a glimpse of what was yet to come.