The kingdom did not fall—it simply calcified.
For a hundred miles, the shattered marble and corroded bronze of its former glories lay choked beneath a dust that was not earth, but finely powdered ruin. Above this necropolis of once architecture grandeur, piercing the perpetual, bruised twilight, stood an object, a towering mass, the Cinder Obelisk. It was not built by masons, but grown by malice—a spire of obsidian sinew and calcified nightmares, reaching out of the landscape like a spear thrust from a dying god.
At its base, where the last cobblestone plaza melted into the tower's unnatural foundation, stood a figure of stark contrast: a Knight.
He wore no polished steel, but Black Iron armor, dented and scarred, its surface absorbing all available light. His pauldron bore the fading crest of The Kingdom—a sun half-swallowed by shadow—a mockery he endured only because of the Oath. A single, massive greatsword with a scythed tip, its blade etched with arcane silver, was slung across his back. His face, hidden beneath the shadow of a broad-brimmed helm, was an expressionless mask of determination and grim experience.
His name was Artemis, and he had come to kill the thing that wore The Kigdoms crown.
He halted before the tower's entrance, a jagged, maw-like archway that pulsed with a low, chitinous hum. The air here was heavy, thick with the scent of ozone and stale blood. For ten years, the usurper, the creature known only as The Sovereign, had reigned from the summit, twisting the world below into a grotesque cathedral of perpetual night.
Artemis knew the history. The ancient legends warned that The Sovereign's power was a siphon, drawing the life and spirit of the entire kingdom into the Obelisk's structure. To destroy the enemy was to shatter the tower; to fail was to become another decorative gargoyle on its increasingly terrible facade.
As if sensing the intrusion, the darkness at the base stirred. It was not mere shadow, but a swarm—a legion of Flesh Wasps, creatures whose wings were brittle parchment and whose bodies were segments of pale, stolen bone. They boiled from the archway with a sound like tearing silk, their faceted eyes gleaming with predatory hunger. They were only the tower's sentinels, yet their numbers could strip a man to bone in minutes.
Artemis did not unsheath his greatsword. Instead, he reached to his hip and drew a short Hunting Knife, its edge polished to a mirror sheen.
"Hmph," the Knight muttered, the sound dry as grave dust—the first and likely only word he would speak all day.
He took one step into the pulsing darkness, meeting the swarm not with dread, but with cold, practiced slaughter. The ascent had begun.