The world learned Aldir Frost's name the day it decided to erase him.
Before that, he was nothing more than a shadow scraping for warmth beneath tavern eaves and battlefield corpses—another unwanted child born to a mercenary who knew how to kill but never how to stay.
Aldir learned early that love was conditional, and mercy was a myth sold by priests to the starving. When his parents abandoned him, they didn't even look back. Not out of cruelty. Out of indifference.
Indifference hurt more than hatred ever could.
Hunger hollowed him before age ever did. Every insult, every boot to his ribs, every coin thrown at him like charity for an animal carved something sharp inside his chest.
Aldir survived not because he was strong—but because he refused to vanish. He learned to endure. To wait. To remember.
And the world mistook his silence for weakness.
When the Emperor of Asteria was found dead—his body untouched, his soul seemingly torn from within—the kingdom demanded a name to crucify. They chose Aldir Frost. A nameless man.
A lower-class mercenary with no bloodline, no patron, no voice.
Perfect.
Chains bit into his wrists as nobles spat words like justice and order. Aldir listened quietly as false witnesses spoke with practiced grief. He searched their faces, not for pity, but for truth—and found none.
When the sentence was passed, not one god answered his prayers.
So Aldir stopped praying.
Death came without ceremony. No heroic last stand. No miracle. His neck snapped beneath the gallows, and the crowd dispersed, satisfied. History would have ended there.
It didn't.
Something colder than death dragged him back.
Aldir awoke in darkness—not the comforting dark of sleep, but the suffocating stillness of a grave that remembered him. His lungs no longer burned. His heart did not beat. And yet… he thought. He felt. Rage slithered through him like a second spine.
The devils whispered his name.
They spoke not with voices, but with memories—every humiliation replayed with surgical precision. They showed him the truth of his existence: his soul had always been marked, a vessel forged for rot and dominion. His resurrection was no mercy. It was a curse.
Undeath hollowed him, but it also sharpened him.
When Aldir clawed his way out of the earth, the moon recoiled behind clouds. The dead beneath the soil stirred in recognition. They did not obey him yet—but they listened.
Necromancy came not as a spellbook, but as instinct. Bone answered thought. Shadows bent their knees. Aldir Frost did not command the dead—he understood them. They were honest. They did not lie. They did not pretend to be righteous.
And unlike the living, they never betrayed him.
He hunted his enemies one by one—not with rage, but with precision. Nobles choked on their own lies. Knights screamed as their fallen brothers rose to drag them into silence. Aldir did not enjoy it. Nor did he hesitate.
This was not revenge.
It was correction.
When it was over, the kingdom called him a monster. A devil's echo. A calamity in human shape. Aldir accepted the titles without protest. He had learned something vital in death:
Sin was a word invented by those in power.
Then the devils came in force.
Rifts tore the sky like infected wounds, and Asteria learned fear deeper than politics. Ironically, it was the undead king they had created who stood against the abyss. Aldir fought not for redemption, nor gratitude—but because the devils claimed ownership over him.
That, he would never allow.
Cities were saved by armies that did not breathe. Demons fell to hands that no longer shook. Aldir Frost, Ruler of the Undead, became the shield of a world that still whispered curses behind his back.
And he felt nothing.
Until Isabella.
She was a witch of ruin and fire, proud enough to challenge him and foolish enough to lose. When Aldir shattered her spell circle and pinned her soul to the ground, he expected fear. Begging. Hatred.
Instead, she laughed.
Not madness—recognition.
She saw what he was before he spoke a word. Not a tyrant. Not a hero. But a man hollowed so completely that power had filled the cracks. When he spared her—not out of kindness, but curiosity—something unfamiliar twisted inside his chest.
Hope frightened him more than devils ever had.
Isabella stayed. First as a subordinate. Then as a presence. She spoke to him like he was still human. She argued with him. Questioned him. Smiled at him as if death itself were not standing inches away.
And Aldir realized the most dangerous truth of all:
He could rule the dead forever.
But one living heart might undo him.
The world believed Aldir Frost was beyond salvation.
They were wrong.
He was beyond despair.
And that was far more terrifying.