The First Blood
A pro-god rebel, face painted with ash, scrambled onto the burning stage. He smashed the lock of Riven's chains with a stolen mace. The iron cracked.
Riven stretched, the chains falling from his arms. He immediately picked up the broken length of chain and whipped it across a knight's face, tearing flesh and denting steel.
"Fuck yes!" Riven roared. He vaulted off the stage into the melee like a wolf loosed into sheep. Knights toppled, skulls cracked, blood sprayed. The mob cheered.
Another rebel, a young girl barely old enough to hold a blade, freed Kael's shackles. He stumbled, blinking in shock. "Oh god. Oh fuck. This is insane—"
He ducked as a spear lunged at him. Reflex kicked in. He shoved the broken shackle into the knight's visor, blinding him. The mob dragged the man down, screaming.
Damian remained perfectly still until the third lock snapped. Then he stood, brushed soot from his torn suit, and picked up the executioner's dropped axe. His grip was calm, surgical. His eyes never left Halbrecht's balcony.
"Now," he said coldly, "the game begins."
With two factions of villagers ripping each other apart and Halbrecht's knights breaking formation under sheer panic, the square became a slaughterhouse.
Riven carved a path through armor and bone, laughing with every kill.
Kael fought clumsily but desperately, wielding firebrands and jagged metal, each strike fueled by adrenaline and raw terror.
Damian moved with terrifying precision, every swing of his axe deliberate, every step forward calculated like a chess piece advancing across the board.
Above, Halbrecht shrieked at his men. "Stop them! Stop them! The demons must die!"
But already, half his guards were dead, the other half were running, and the mob was flooding into the castle itself.
The rebellion had begun.
At the edge of the square, a priest of the anti-demon faction climbed onto a cart, waving his holy book. "Strike them down! Burn the false gods!" he bellowed.
An old villager woman, torch in hand, screamed back: "The gods descended to free us from your pig-lord!"
The two factions clashed like armies. A dozen fell in the first charge. Blood slicked the cobblestones.
The mob swarmed around the CEOs, pushing them toward the alleyways. A dozen rebels shielded them with pitchforks and stolen swords.
"Gods! Protect the gods!" they cried, even as arrows cut them down.
Kael shouted over the roar. "They think we're fucking gods!"
Riven kicked a knight in the throat. "And they're not wrong!"
Damian's expression never changed. "Good. Then let's make them believe it."
The rebellion was in full swing. Greymoor was burning. And at the heart of the chaos, three men from another world carved their first steps into history—drenched in blood and fire.
Greymoor burned.
The square was no longer an execution ground but a battlefield, a storm of fire, steel, and screams. Halbrecht's knights scattered. Priests wailed. Peasants hacked one another apart in the name of gods or demons.
And at the center of the chaos, three men from another world strode through the smoke, their chains broken, their eyes blazing with the fury of survivors.
To the mob, they were gods descended.
To Halbrecht, they were demons unchained.
But in truth, they were neither.
They were predators.
And the New World had just opened its gates to them.