The castle reeked of blood, rusted iron, and dying hope.
Heavy footfalls echoed against the cold stone as Illio walked down the dim corridor. Soldiers lining the walls stood at attention—not in respect, but in fear. Some trembled beneath their armor. Others could not meet his eyes. To them, Illio was no longer just a man. He was a living monument to death, to war, and to the impossible weight of survival. The only man left who could face what waited beyond the gates.
He moved like a storm bound in flesh—his steps steady, yet each one a quiet declaration of defiance against fate itself. Towering over most men, Illio's frame was a perfect blend of grace and brutal strength. Corded muscle ran beneath his scarred skin like tempered steel beneath leather, the physique of a warrior so refined it seemed carved by the gods—and envied by them. His ash-colored hair was tousled and swept back, streaked faintly with silver from countless battles. His eyes, a piercing emerald green, burned with resolve so intense that weaker souls found themselves looking away the moment they met his gaze.
There was no gleaming armor on his body—only the timeworn, charred remains of a cloak that had once borne the crest of the First Kingdom. Now it clung to him like a funeral shroud. His very presence radiated finality. He was power incarnate—but more than that, he was will. He was humanity's last, bitter "no" in the face of annihilation.
At the end of the corridor, the castle doors loomed open like the maw of a slumbering beast, casting flickering torchlight onto the threshold of death itself. Beyond them lay the field—a vast, desolate expanse of blackened earth that cracked and steamed as if scorched by hellfire. No grass. No trees. No life. The soil was ashen and cursed, stripped bare by centuries of demonic corruption. Jagged bones jutted from the ground like forgotten spears, remnants of battles long lost and lives long erased.
The air was thick and cloying, choking the lungs with the stench of sulfur and old blood. Faint growls rumbled from the distance, layered with guttural snarls and wet, gurgling moans—unholy sounds that clawed at the edges of sanity. It was the sound of a thousand legions of demons sharpening their claws and splitting their jaws wide in anticipation of slaughter.
Above it all loomed a sky the color of bruised flesh—purple, gray, and sickly red, roiling like a wound refusing to heal. Lightning crackled in silence across the clouds, illuminating twisted silhouettes far in the distance. There was no sun to warm the soul. No stars to guide the lost. Only the suffocating weight of an unnatural red mist that pulsed like breath from some unseen abyss, a warning to all who dared to stand against fate.
It was not just a battlefield. It was the graveyard of hope.
Strapped to Illio's back was Oblivion—a sword darker than night, so black it seemed to swallow light around it. Forged from dark mithril mined from the cursed veins of Mount Calgrin and the fossilized bone of an elder crimson dragon, it was a weapon of myth made manifest. It bore no ornate designs or gemstone pommel. Its simplicity was its defiance: a greatsword meant not for kings or heroes, but for executioners.
Its maker, the dwarven master-smith Gus Stonevein, had forged it as his final act, hammering until his hands bled and his lungs failed. With his dying breath, he quenched the blade in the sacred fire of Tharald's Heart and whispered only, "Let this blade carry my soul where the world ends." Oblivion was his masterpiece.
And to humanity, it would become a symbol—not of destruction, but of salvation.
"Sir Illio," a voice called out, thin and trembling.
A boy stepped forward, his armor hanging loose on his frame, eyes wide with a fragile desperation that had no place on a battlefield. He could not have been older than seventeen—barely past the age of squires, not yet hardened by the weight of real war. His hands shook as he clutched his spear like a drowning man clinging to driftwood.
"You don't have to do this alone," he said, and though he tried to speak with courage, the words cracked and fell from his lips like glass.
Illio did not stop walking.
"I do," he replied, his voice steady and without hesitation, as if the truth carried no room for comfort.
"But—"
"Every breath you waste arguing," Illio cut in, his tone firm, "is a breath you could be using to run. Now go."
The boy's lip quivered. "But humanity—"
"Will fall if you stay."
There was no anger in Illio's voice. No sharpness. Just the hollow certainty of a man who had already buried everyone he ever loved.
The boy faltered, his knees nearly buckling beneath him. Around him, the remnants of mankind's last army stood in frozen silence. No more than two hundred souls remained—once knights, kingsguard, rebels, farmers. Men and women who had lost everything and still found the strength to stand. Their armor was dented, their banners torn, their eyes hollow. They looked at Illio as one might look at a funeral pyre: beautiful in its final blaze, unbearable in its purpose.
Illio finally stopped and turned.
His gaze swept over them—not as a commander to soldiers, but as a mourner to the last procession. He saw the blood dried into their hair. The fear behind their eyes. The silent screams buried in their chests. What they needed now was not hope, but permission to survive.
"You are not cowards if you retreat," he said, quieter now. Almost a whisper. "You are the last spark. If you die here, then the world ends in silence. But if you live—just live—then maybe the gods will listen."
A few soldiers wept openly now, shoulders shaking beneath rust-stained pauldrons. Some looked away, ashamed of the relief blooming through their guilt.
He gave no grand speech. No cry for glory. Just a single, final nod.
Then Illio turned his back on them, and with Oblivion slung across his shoulders and the tattered remnants of a hero's cloak trailing behind him, he stepped into the dying world.
The gates groaned shut with a mournful wail, like the last breath of a crumbling kingdom.
And the waiting began.
The silence beyond the gates was deceptive.
It was the kind of silence that did not promise peace, but bled with pressure—like standing at the edge of a storm so vast and ancient, it had forgotten how to die. Illio stepped forward, his boots sinking into the scorched soil, black and brittle beneath his weight. Each step left behind a faint impression, as if even the earth recoiled from the presence of man.
Then, the ground began to tremble.
It started as a whisper beneath the soles. A vibration in the bones. But it grew—steady and unrelenting—until the tremor became a thrum, the thrum a roar, and the roar a chorus of nightmares. From the red mist ahead came movement: not the scattered chaos of mindless beasts, but the synchronized rhythm of an army that had no need for breath, no fear of death, and no concept of mercy.
The Demon Legions had come.
They emerged like shadows uncoiling from the fog—hundreds at first, then thousands. Then tens of thousands. A tide of forms both grotesque and monstrous, clawed and scaled, winged and horned. Some crawled on all fours, saliva dripping from jagged mouths. Others towered above the rest, armored in black bone and draped in flayed banners. Abominations of flesh and madness, born from curses and forged in pits where light dared not linger.
Illio did not flinch.
He stood alone on the wide, dead field, a lone sentinel of mankind facing an ocean of annihilation. The legions halted just beyond bow range, their grotesque shapes writhing in restless hunger, yet held at bay. Something was coming. Something greater. A presence began to push forward—slow, deliberate, and utterly foul. The lesser demons parted like insects before a boot, cowering low to the ground as a group of towering figures emerged through the red haze.
The Great Commanders.
There were seven of them—each a nightmare given form, each once a king of some forgotten hell.
The first was a wretched, skeletal figure mounted on a horse stitched from corpses, its body eternally aflame, its eyes two burning coals of hatred. The second slithered like a serpent across the earth, its arms dozens of sickle-blades weeping poison. The third—twice the size of a man—wore no face at all, only a mirrored helm that reflected the fear of those who gazed upon it. And the others followed, each grotesque in their own dominion, each a herald of extinction.
At their center strode a creature half-man, half-beast, his body covered in obsidian plate carved with runes that pulsed with infernal heat. Horns like gnarled branches crowned his head, and a massive halberd crackled with the energy of stolen souls clutched in his hand.
He sneered.
"One man," he hissed, his voice a chorus of mockery spoken in ten tongues. "They send one man to meet the end of the world?"
The others laughed—guttural, rasping noises that stirred the dust and curdled the air.
Illio said nothing.
The wind stirred his cloak. The red mist curled around his shoulders like grasping fingers. Slowly, he reached behind him, fingers curling around the hilt of Oblivion.
And then he spoke.
"Don't mistake my solitude for weakness. The only reason you still draw breath is because I haven't started yet. Take your continued breathing as the only act of mercy you will ever know—as short-lived as it will be."