Faelir Arlen — Level ???? Class Unknown

  A battle cry roared.

  The sound was faint—wind whipping through ancient towers, the shifting of loose stone, the distant cries of things dying. But to Faelir, the battlefield might as well have been silent. He did not hear the movement of men. He heard the flow of their blood.

  It was a river around him, coursing through pulsing veins, trapped in fragile bodies. Some belonged to the few remaining summoned heroes, still breathing, still fighting. Most belonged to the things that had made their home in this godless place—things that had long since discarded mortality, reshaped in pursuit of perfection.

  Faelir Arlen barely noticed. He had lived too long, consumed too much, seen the rise and fall of empires, and now, at the precipice of Seratheis’ heart, he felt nothing.

  A dying hunter twitched at his great nephew's feet, the poor man twisted beyond recognition into something beyond human, his mana too weak to survive the furnace that was this city, unable to ascend. Soon the transformation would take his life. The hunter's breath was ragged, blood bubbling from his lips. He reached toward Faelir, pleading.

  "M-my lord—please—"

  Vaylen's boot came down on the man’s throat with the casual ease of a man stepping over a puddle. He didn’t look down as the body convulsed, then stilled.

  "If you could still fight, you wouldn't need to beg."

  Vaylen cackled, clapping him on the back. "Mercy has never suited me."

  Faelir exhaled slowly. Vaylen was young—barely past a century. A child in the grand scheme of things. He had yet to learn the nature of men—how to kill them and have them thank you for it—but wisdom often fled from the young in ways that made the lesson distant. Faelir ignored him, his focus shifting to the grand architecture ahead.

  The ancient murals that lined the path sang of gods long devoured. They depicted the final, brutal hours of the divine war—the God of Blood, standing triumphant over a battlefield of discarded pantheons. The God of Magic, imprisoning the strongest among them in a cage of light. The God of Creation, consuming what remained, rewriting the world in their image.

  Vaylen reached out, dragging his long claws across the stone, leaving deep furrows in a depiction of a forgotten deity’s shattered corpse. "They never stood a chance, did they?"

  Faelir had seen the mural at their feet before. It hardly interested him.

  He had watched when the Age of Blood had begun. He had whispered to the sons of gods as they bled out in his grasp. Witnessed kings kneel and beg before him, only to tear out their throats moments later. And before that—before the rise of House Dreymoore—he had been nothing.

  A man, once. A soldier in the endless wars of an empire long forgotten. Then, Dreymoore found him. Turned him. Showed him what power truly was.

  The founder of their house had not survived the centuries. The others who had helped build their dynasty had crumbled beneath time, war, and treachery. But Faelir had endured.

  He had kept the name Arlen instead of Dreymoore, not out of shame, but because only one name had ever truly mattered.

  His own.

  He had walked these streets before with its people, before its fall. He had seen the temples free of death. Felt the weight of their purpose. Fought beneath banners that no longer flew. All of it had faded.

  And yet still, he remained.

  "No, they didn't. Power does not share its throne."

  He walked forward without a word, each step carrying the weight of centuries. Vaylen walked with far less restraint, the younger noble's presence a storm against his uncle’s stillness. The army at their backs—if it could still be called that—moved in fragmented lines, reduced to survivors rather than soldiers, hunters, and heroes.

  Faelir turned his attention to the few remaining pages in their ranks. They moved like restless spirits, aware of their own expendability but unable to escape it. They had offered their lives in service to his house and by doing so, had guaranteed their family's futures. One of them, a swordsman with foreign armour, caught his gaze and stiffened. Faelir walked toward him, slow, measured.

  "You’ve fought well," Faelir said, voice smooth, unreadable.

  The swordsman bowed his head slightly. "We follow your command."

  Faelir reached out, resting a hand on the man’s shoulder. The swordsman tensed, but he didn’t pull away. A good soldier. A good page. Loyal. Obedient. Wasted.

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  "Your blood will serve House Dreymoore well."

  The man barely had time to react before Faelir’s grip tightened. A sickening crunch followed, the soldier’s body stiffening as his strength drained away, siphoned into the veins of a creature beyond his understanding. His breath hitched once—then stopped.

  The hunters and heroes nearby took an instinctive step back.

  Faelir released the empty husk, watching it collapse to the ground. The glow in his eyes burned brighter for a moment before fading, the essence consumed, reforged.

  Vaylen exhaled, shaking his head with exaggerated disappointment. "You always take the good ones."

  Faelir stepped over the corpse without glancing back. "There are more than enough."

  The hunters around them stiffened but did not run.

  They had no reason to.

  The student kept pace among them, though he stood apart. His hands moved absently through the air, tracing unseen symbols, analyzing the traces of mana that drifted like dust. Faelir had never cared much for those obsessed with understanding the system rather than breaking it, but the boy had proven himself useful.

  The shadowed hero followed further behind, silent, obscured. His presence was not something to be seen, but something to be felt—a disruption of space, a wrongness ignored by all but the most perceptive.

  They all walked toward the same goal.

  The cathedral’s golden gates practically shone in the distance. Faelir could feel the pull of what lay beyond, its urge stronger than ever. The final act of a war waged two millennia ago.

  "It’s almost disappointing," Vaylen murmured as he licked the last traces of blood from his fingers. He wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular, just voicing the thought aloud. "This far, this deep, and nothing is challenging us. You’d think the city would try harder."

  Faelir didn’t answer immediately. His gaze passed over the ruined soldiers in their wake, the remnants of hunters and summoned heroes that had survived only because it amused him to let them. He had seen campaigns collapse beneath their own arrogance, had watched so-called legends burn and die under a sky that did not care for their names.

  He had never seen this.

  "It should be harder," Faelir said at last.

  Vaylen exhaled, almost a scoff. "You give the dead too much credit, uncle. We are strong. The city knows that. It bends because it must."

  Faelir turned his head, regarding his great-nephew with a calm that had outlived centuries. "You believe that?"

  Vaylen grinned, flashing teeth. "I know that."

  He was confident. Of course he was. A hundred years of life had taught him power, taught him war, but it had not taught him consequence.

  The student cleared his throat. "You’re both wrong."

  The student’s fingers never stopped moving, tracing something unseen, weaving unseen threads. He didn’t look up as he spoke. "It’s not that the city is bending. It’s that something else is breaking it before we get there."

  Faelir considered that. He had already come to a similar conclusion. But he wanted to hear the boy explain it.

  His gaze swept quickly over the bodies—some still twitching, some in pieces, some with large holes blasted through them as though punctured, others bisected in ways that spoke of impossible expertise. A few were already half-drained and drying to husks. It was a massacre, but they hadn't caused it.

  This wasn’t the slow, meticulous culling he preferred. This was a storm that had already passed, an aftermath of something that had carved through the monsters and left only wreckage in its wake.

  It was the work of men. Not ordinary ones.

  The thought was a mild irritation.

  Something was moving ahead of them. Multiple somethings. Too strong, too efficient, and culling a majority of the creatures meant to challenge them.

  Vaylen tilted his head at the student, questioning his thoughts. "You think something’s clearing our path?"

  The student’s hand rose, catching a wisp of mana between his fingers. He studied it absently. "I don’t think. I know." He let the energy slip away, then finally looked up. "And I think you know it too, Lord."

  Faelir's expression twitched at the address. The student never called him by his name, just a title. Not Lord Arlen or Lord Faelir... Just 'Lord'. He did so not out of respect or deference, but simply observational convenience, as though naming him personally was irrelevant and beneath him. He doubted the boy had ever attempted to remember his name at all.

  And as he often did, Faelir found himself internally debating the merits of killing the student, before inevitably deciding he was too valuable to waste. He flexed his fingers, the claws at his fingertips vanishing beneath flawless skin before emerging again, like instinct demanded confirmation.

  Faelir let the moment hang before he finally spoke. "If something is carving through the city before us, then what happens when we reach them?"

  The student smiled slightly. It wasn’t a pleasant smile.

  "That depends," he said. "On how fast you get to the centre and who dies first."

  Faelir met his gaze. "You do not fear death?"

  The Student blinked. A slow motion. "Not particularly."

  Vaylen sneered, the fresh blood on his lips still warm. "Then you should."

  The student looked genuinely confused. "Why?"

  A fool. Vaylen tisked with brash irritation, showing fangs that belonged to something far less human than his shape implied. "We just need to get there and kill the ones that have been killing everything, then claim this place."

  Vaylen grinned, rolling his shoulders. "That’s the easiest part of this entire campaign."

  Faelir agreed.

  He inhaled slowly, letting the remnants of slaughter pass over his tongue.

  Copper and decay. The signatures of broken foes, fallen champions and creatures that had dared to exist within the path of the first and final sons of his House.

  He turned his gaze forward, toward the cathedral waiting at the city’s heart. The golden gates towered over stone, the intricate carvings upon them built in ways that shouldn’t have been possible. They depicted no battle. No gods. No history.

  Just the endless churn of something unfinished, yet to be perfected.

  A scream tore through the far end of the street. The sound of a man realizing he had already been dead the moment something found him.

  The Student exhaled sharply. "Another one gone."

  Faelir barely shifted. "Our forces?"

  "Yes. Hunters, the ones still breathing." The Student’s expression didn’t change. "Something is eating them alive."

  Vaylen exhaled sharply, something between a chuckle and something darker. "Not for long."

  Faelir allowed a small, sharp grin. "No."

  And then they moved.

  Speed that was not human, not mortal. Flesh that twisted and reformed in an instant, claws extending, muscles shifting, eyes burning with red light that spilled like wildfire.

  The Student watched, no longer fascinated, but amused, intrigued, and calculating.

  The Shadow vanished into itself.

  And Faelir and Vaylen descended upon the gates, with all the hunger of something that had never been human to begin with.

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