The wind carried the scent of blood and ash over the borderlands. The field before the ruin was a graveyard of steel — broken blades, shattered bones, and blackened earth where the Nether Flame had danced.
The outcasts stood amidst the aftermath, silent. They were no longer just the abandoned, the desperate, or the damned. They were survivors — his survivors.
The Exiled Prince stood before them, armor scorched, eyes burning faintly red in the dim light. Krag's skull lay crushed beneath his boot, the brute's blood still steaming on the dirt. Behind him, the ruin collapsed in on itself, as if the ancient stones finally surrendered their secrets to the new master who had dared to claim them.
Lira approached quietly, her blade still dripping.
"The men are shaken," she said softly. "But… they look at you differently now."
He turned to her, the wind catching his cloak, revealing the faint glow of the Codex's markings along his skin.
"They should," he replied, his voice low but steady. "We've crossed a line that can't be undone. From this moment on, we are no longer prey."
They marched for days through the desolate ridges until the fortress appeared — a ruin carved into the bones of a mountain, black stone towers rising like broken fangs against the sky. Krag had ruled here once, through fear and brute strength. His banner still hung at the gate, tattered and soaked in old blood.
The Prince stood before it in silence. The Codex pulsed within him — faint, like a heartbeat under his ribs.
"This place reeks of arrogance," he muttered.
Lira smirked faintly. "Fitting, then."
He tore down Krag's banner and threw it into the dirt. Then he drew his blade and with one smooth motion carved a sigil into the gate — the same mark the Codex had etched into his chest: a spiral of fire and darkness entwined.
When the sigil flared to life, shadows trembled. The fortress groaned as if waking from a long slumber. The outcasts gasped.
"From this day," the Prince said, his voice echoing through the courtyard, "this place will not bear the name of a beast. It will be known as the Nether Fortress."
The words carried like a vow. The Codex resonated violently in response, the mark on his hand burning with approval. Black energy rippled outward, washing over the fortress. The stones darkened, old cracks knitting shut. What had once been ruin began to breathe again.
They worked tirelessly for weeks.
Broken walls were rebuilt, watchtowers reforged, halls cleared of bones and filth. The Prince walked among his men, not as a king on a throne, but as a commander with blood on his hands like theirs.
At night, fires burned across the fortress, and for the first time, laughter echoed through the borderlands.
The Rune of Dominion pulsed in his Codex. With each warrior he marked, their loyalty deepened — not from blind fear, but from something heavier. Purpose.
When he branded Lira, she knelt before him without hesitation.
Her breath trembled as the black light spread from his palm to her chest, etching faint lines that glowed under her skin.
"Does it hurt?" he asked quietly.
She looked up, eyes steady. "It burns… but so did following you. I'll bear it."
He smiled faintly — a rare, human smile.
"Then rise, Captain of Shadows."
The moment the title left his lips, the Codex's light swelled. Her aura flared dark and fluid, like a living shadow wrapping around her.
---
Soon, order replaced chaos.
The fortress thrummed with life. Patrols were organized. Food stores replenished. Weapons forged from salvaged scrap.
The outcasts began to believe in something again — not the gods who had abandoned them, not the empire that had exiled them, but in a man who had stood before death and devoured it.
One night, as the torches flickered along the fortress walls, Lira found him standing alone atop the battlements, gazing toward the distant empire. The wind howled, carrying faint whispers of the past.
"You could rest," she said softly.
"I can't," he replied. His eyes glowed faintly in the dark. "Every time I close my eyes, I see the empire's banners. My brothers sitting on their golden thrones while our mother's name fades to dust."
He clenched his fist, the Codex responding with a pulse of dark flame.
"I swore I would return — not as a beggar, not as an exile, but as a storm they cannot silence."
Lira stepped closer, her voice a whisper. "And if the storm consumes you?"
He turned to her, eyes burning with quiet fury and something deeper — a fragile spark of faith.
"Then let it. Better to burn in my own fire than freeze under theirs."
For a long moment, neither spoke. Below them, the outcasts sang drunkenly by the fire, their voices rough and defiant. For the first time, their song didn't sound like mourning — it sounded like beginning.
At dawn, the fortress gates thundered open. A rider stumbled through — bloodied, breath ragged.
"My Lord!" he gasped, kneeling before the Prince. "From the empire… a seal. They know. They know you're alive."
The Prince's eyes narrowed. The wind stilled.
He took the sealed scroll from the messenger's shaking hands and broke it open. Inside, the imperial crest glared back at him — the mark of the royal family, his family.
His expression didn't change, but the air around him grew cold.
"So," he murmured, "the wolves finally scent the one they cast out."
He turned toward the fortress, watching the black banners flutter.
"Let them come," he whispered. "Let them see what exile has made of me."
The Codex pulsed once — dark light flashing across its pages, almost as if in laughter.
The Lord of the Forsaken had risen.
And the empire had just made its first mistake.
The fortress held its breath after the messenger's words.
It was as if even the wind dared not move. Every man and woman within those blackened walls felt it — the weight of what those words meant. The empire knew. The world that had cast them into the dirt had finally turned its gaze upon them again.
The Prince folded the imperial scroll slowly, his gloved fingers smearing the wax crest. The act was deliberate — quiet rebellion carved into motion.
"Burn it," he said.
The messenger hesitated, looking up in disbelief. "My lord—"
"Burn it."
Lira stepped forward without question. Her blade flared with faint black fire as she touched it to the scroll. The imperial seal curled, melted, and then turned to ash.
The flames burned quickly, almost hungrily. The ashes scattered on the cold wind, floating over the courtyard like gray snow.
The Prince watched them vanish. "So it begins."
That night, the fortress did not sleep.
Torches burned along the walls. Watchmen whispered among themselves, and the newly branded captains sharpened their blades in uneasy silence. Fear crept at the edges — not fear of death, but of the unknown.
Lira found him again in the war hall. Maps and torn banners covered the long stone table. Red ink marked the surrounding borderlands — rivers, wastelands, strongholds. The fortress's heart pulsed in his mind like a living thing, connected to him through the Codex.
"They'll come," she said, breaking the silence.
He didn't look up. "Of course they will. I killed one of their hounds. Now they'll send the pack."
Her brow furrowed. "You could flee deeper into the wastes. The empire won't follow far. Not yet."
He looked up then — and the fire in his eyes silenced her.
"I was born in their palace. My first breath was taken under their golden banners. If I flee again, I may as well cut my own throat."
He traced his finger across the map, stopping at the line marking the empire's reach.
"No," he said coldly. "If they want my head, they'll have to tear it from the walls of my fortress."
The Codex stirred at his words — faint whispers echoing in his mind.
Power claimed is power tested. Dominion invites war.
He exhaled slowly, letting the words fade. "So even the Codex agrees," he murmured.
Lira folded her arms. "Then we prepare."
He nodded. "Call the captains. Tonight."
When the captains gathered, the hall felt smaller than it should have. Firelight licked at their faces — scarred men and hardened women, once outcasts and slaves, now commanders of the Forsaken.
The Prince stood at the head of the table, his shadow long and sharp against the walls.
"You've all heard," he began. "The empire knows."
A murmur rippled through the hall — anger, disbelief, a hint of fear.
"They will come for us," he continued. "Not today. Not tomorrow. But soon. And when they do, they'll come with banners, gold, and blades forged from the blood of our kin."
He let the words hang before slamming his hand down on the table. The Codex's mark burned faintly through his glove.
"But let them come. For every knight they send, I will raise a warrior from their ashes. For every banner they raise, I will burn ten in return."
The captains rose to their feet, their voices a roar.
"FOR THE FORSAKEN!"
The cry thundered through the halls, echoing off the stone, reaching even the barracks below. The fortress seemed to awaken — a beast ready to bare its fangs.
The Prince stood amidst the sound, his cloak fluttering in the firelight. He felt the Codex pulse in his chest, its pages whispering, feeding on their devotion like blood to flame.
For a moment, he almost smiled.
He had no throne, no crown, and no empire. But in this fortress of ruin, he had something far greater — the loyalty of the damned.
Later that night, as the fortress quieted, he found himself once more on the walls, watching the horizon. The moon hung low — red and swollen, a wound in the sky.
He spoke softly, not to Lira, not to his men, but to the night itself.
"Father," he murmured, voice edged with bitterness. "You always said power belongs to those who can hold it without trembling. Tell me then — who trembles now?"
The wind carried no answer, only the faint echo of laughter from below, the sound of his people living — truly living — under the shadow of his rule.
He closed his eyes. For the first time, he didn't feel like the empire's outcast.
He felt like something far more dangerous.
The Codex pulsed again, and a faint whisper brushed the edge of his mind:
Then rise higher, my lord. The world above does not yet know your name — but soon, it will tremble before it.
He opened his eyes, and in the reflection of the moonlight, his pupils shimmered with black flame.
The Exiled Prince — now Lord of the Forsaken — turned from the horizon, walking back into the fortress that now breathed with his will.
The storm had yet to break, but its herald had already begun to walk the earth.