The throne of Reidmar's repurposed church creaked beneath Nyx Voss as he turned another page of Gehenna's Grimoire. The wraiths he had harvested—eighty-seven translucent villagers—hovered in a silent ring, their faces frozen in the exact expressions they wore at death. A baker's mouth was open mid-scream. A child clutched a rag doll that had burned to cinders in the real world but remained pristine in spectral memory. Their eyes, milky and vacant, tracked his every movement.
The knight—Sir Aldric of House Veyre, the grimoire now informed him—knelt at the foot of the dais. His armor had been stripped of its crimson lion tabard; the cloth now served as a blindfold. Nyx had no interest in the man's tears, only his knowledge.
"Speak," Nyx commanded. His voice layered itself, a thousand graves whispering at once. "The Kingdom of Selaria. Its rulers. Its defenses. Its weaknesses."
Aldric's throat worked. "Selaria spans the Verdant Basin, bordered by the Blighted Marches to the north and the Iron Sea to the south. The capital, Aurellion, sits on the River Lys. King Edric IV rules from the Crystal Palace. His daughter, Princess Lirien, commands the Order of the Dawnstar—paladins sworn to purge undeath."
Nyx traced a finger along the grimoire's margin. New script bloomed:
• Selaria – Population: ~4.2 million
• Military: 120,000 standing army, 8,000 Dawnstar paladins
• Strategic Weakness: Overreliance on holy wards; necromancy resistance low outside capital
He closed the book with a snap that echoed like a coffin lid. "And the Blighted Marches?"
Aldric hesitated. "Old battlegrounds. Cursed since the War of the Nine Pyres three centuries ago. The barrows there… they were sealed for a reason. Something broke the seals three nights ago. The dead began walking. Villages vanished. Reidmar was the closest."
Nyx stood. The wraiths parted like smoke. He descended the steps carved from human femurs. Each footfall left frost on the bone. When he reached Aldric, he lifted the blindfold with a single skeletal finger.
The knight flinched at the azure infernos in Nyx's sockets.
"You will serve," Nyx said. "Not as a slave. As a scribe. Every settlement, every hero, every secret you know—write it here." He pressed the grimoire into Aldric's trembling hands. "Fail, and I'll inscribe you."
Aldric nodded, clutching the book like a lifeline.
Nyx turned to the wraiths. "You—Mira." He pointed to the spectral baker. "You baked bread. Now you will bake fear. Take twenty of your kin. Haunt the roads to Aurellion. Let travelers see what becomes of those who resist."
Mira's ghost bowed. Twenty wraiths dissolved into mist and streamed through the cathedral's cracked stained-glass windows.
Outside, the night was alive with purpose.
Nyx stepped onto the balcony of bone. The floating mausoleum—The Ossuary Ascendant—had drifted closer during his interrogation, now hovering a mere hundred meters above the ruined village. Chains of vertebrae tethered it to the earth like umbilical cords. From its lowest spire, a Bone Dragon unfurled wings of calcified membrane and descended with a sound like grinding millstones.
The dragon landed with enough force to crack the courtyard. Its rider—a Death Knight named Kael'Thuzad, forged from the corpse of a YGGDRASIL raid boss—dismounted. The knight's armor was black iron fused with ribcages; his greatsword dripped liquid shadow.
"My Sovereign," Kael'Thuzad intoned, voice a rasp of rusted gates. "Scouts report movement. A Dawnstar vanguard—three hundred strong—marches from Fort Halcyon. ETA: four hours."
Nyx's sockets flared. "Composition?"
"Paladins. Clerics. One Saint Candidate—Lady Seraphine of the Third Circle. Holy aura detected at 400 meters."
Nyx opened the grimoire. A new page titled "Chapter 2: The First Harvest Grows" appeared. He wrote with a finger dipped in his own ectoplasm:
Objective: Capture Saint Candidate alive. Extract divine essence. Convert or corrupt.
He closed the book. "Prepare the Catacombs of Reflection. I want her mind broken before her body."
Kael'Thuzad saluted with a fist of bone against breastplate and remounted the dragon. The beast launched skyward, scattering crows made of shadow.
Below, in the village square, Nyx began the ritual.
He drove the butt of his staff—[Staff of the Ninth Circle], a relic that once required a 41-man raid—into the earth. Black runes spider-webbed outward, sinking into soil, stone, and corpse alike. The ground breathed. Graves split. From each emerged a Skeletal Mage, robed in tattered funerary shrouds, eyes glowing with captured starlight.
Eighty-seven mages. One for every soul he'd claimed.
Nyx raised his arms. The grimoire floated open beside him, pages flipping to a spell he'd theory-crafted in YGGDRASIL but never cast: [Necropolis Ascension].
The incantation took seven minutes. Each syllable peeled paint from the cathedral walls, aged the palisade to dust, and turned the night sky the color of old bruises. When the final word left his lipless mouth, the earth rose.
Reidmar lifted from its foundations—houses, wells, the very cobblestones—carried aloft on pillars of bone. The village became a floating island, tethered to The Ossuary Ascendant by chains of vertebrae. Spectral lanterns ignited along its edges, casting green light over the Blighted Marches.
Nyx surveyed his work. A necropolis in miniature. A proof of concept.
Aldric stumbled onto the balcony, the grimoire clutched to his chest. "My lord… the Dawnstar vanguard. They'll see this from miles away."
"Good," Nyx said. "Let them come. Let them witness."
Hours later, the vanguard arrived.
They came in perfect formation: paladins in silver plate, clerics in white robes, warhorses snorting steam. At their head rode Lady Seraphine, a woman of maybe twenty-five, blonde hair braided with golden thread, eyes the color of summer skies. Her armor glowed with runes of purification. In her hand, a lance that hummed with divine wrath.
She raised it. "In the name of the Dawnstar, surrender the lich and his abominations!"
Nyx stepped to the edge of the floating necropolis. The height was dizzying—three hundred meters above the Marches—but he felt no fear. Only curiosity.
He opened the grimoire. A single line appeared in Seraphine's own handwriting, though she could not see it:
"I will not falter. I will not fear. I will burn the darkness away."
Nyx smiled. "Brave words. Let's see how long they last."
He snapped his fingers.
The Catacombs of Reflection yawned open beneath the necropolis—a labyrinth of mirrors forged from the polished skulls of saints. Chains of shadow lashed out, wrapping Seraphine's lance, her armor, her soul. She fought—oh, how she fought. Holy light flared, searing wraiths to ash. But for every wraith destroyed, two more rose from the grimoire's pages.
The vanguard charged. Skeletal mages rained Necrotic Missiles. Death Knights teleported into their ranks, greatswords cleaving horse and rider alike. Within minutes, the pristine formation became a charnel house.
Seraphine was the last to fall. Dragged screaming into the catacombs, her lance shattered, her armor cracked. The mirrors reflected her terror a thousandfold.
Nyx descended after her. The catacombs were silent save for her ragged breathing. He found her chained to a pillar of bone, divine light flickering like a dying candle.
"You're afraid," he observed.
"I fear nothing," she spat, but her voice cracked.
Nyx opened the grimoire to a fresh page. "We'll see."
He began to write. Not with ink, but with memory. Every doubt Seraphine had ever felt—her first failure, the death of her mentor, the night she prayed and received no answer—flowed from her mind into the book. Her screams became music.
When he finished, the page read:
• Seraphine val Dawnstar – Saint Candidate (Corrupted)
• New Title: Harbinger of the Ledger
• Ability Gained: [Divine Desecration] – Holy spells now inflict necrotic damage
Seraphine's eyes snapped open. The summer-sky blue had bled to pitch. She smiled—a smile that belonged to Nyx.
"Master," she whispered.
Nyx closed the book. Above, The Ossuary Ascendant cast its shadow over the Marches. Below, the remnants of the vanguard knelt, broken or converted.
He turned to Aldric, who had watched the entire battle from the balcony, pale as milk.
"Write this down," Nyx said. "The first saint has fallen. The first page is filled."
Aldric's quill scratched across the parchment. The grimoire absorbed the words, hungry for more.
Far away, in Aurellion's Crystal Palace, Princess Lirien dropped her scrying orb. It shattered into a thousand pieces, each reflecting the same image: a lich on a throne of bone, a corrupted saint at his side, and an army of the dead that stretched to the horizon.
The war had begun.