The One King

The drums of war thundered above the walls of the Central Empire.

One beat.

Then a second.

Then dozens of beats echoed between the towers and across the city, until it seemed as though the heart of the empire itself had begun to beat in preparation for battle.

Tens of thousands of soldiers stood in formation atop the walls.

Spears were raised.

Bows were drawn.

And the war spells had been prepared.

Behind them, support units moved rapidly, carrying weapons, ammunition, and healing potions to the battle positions.

But before the walls...

Half a million undead still stood.

They did not move.

They did not scream.

They did not strike their weapons against the ground.

They simply waited.

At the forefront of the army stood the skeletal general, gripping his enormous weapon.

His empty eye sockets were fixed upon the walls of the empire.

Then someone appeared atop the highest tower.

It was Empress Titania.

She wore white-and-gold imperial armor, with a cloak bearing the emblem of the empire draped over her shoulders.

She stood before her soldiers without guards.

Without hiding behind the walls.

Thousands of soldiers looked toward her.

Titania raised her voice:

"Soldiers!"

Silence fell.

"Before us stands an army that knows no fear."

She looked toward the undead.

"An army that feels no pain."

Then she raised her sword.

"But they possess something we do not."

The soldiers exchanged glances.

"The advantage of numbers."

Then she smiled faintly.

"But we..."

She placed a hand over her chest.

"Have a reason to fight."

Several spears rose.

She continued:

"Behind these walls are your families."

The soldiers' voices began to rise.

"Your children."

The voices grew louder.

"Your fathers and mothers."

Then she raised her sword toward the heavens.

"And your homeland."

One soldier shouted:

"For the Empire!"

Another followed:

"For our families!"

Then tens of thousands of voices erupted:

"For the Empire!"

"For our families!"

"For Titania!"

The walls shook beneath the force of their cries.

Even the four generals stood silently for a moment.

One of them said:

"She has raised their morale."

Another answered:

"Now she has to maintain it."

The third looked toward the battlefield.

"That will be the harder part."

The fourth replied:

"Especially once the undead reach the walls."

At that moment...

Titania raised her sword.

"Open the gates."

The four generals froze.

One of them said:

"Your Majesty?"

Titania repeated:

"Open the gates."

Then she added:

"We will not wait behind our walls."

The enormous gates began to move.

The sound of metal echoed across the city.

The doors slowly withdrew.

Then the first cavalry units rode out.

They were followed by infantry.

Then magical units.

Then archers.

The imperial army began pouring out of the capital like a river.

Across the plain, the skeletal general raised his head.

He watched the advancing army.

Then he said in a cold voice:

"They have come out."

One of the undead commanders standing beside him asked:

"Shall we order the attack?"

The general remained silent for several moments.

Then he said:

"Wait."

The commander stopped.

"Wait?"

"Let them approach."

His voice was calm.

"I want them to believe that they are the ones who started the war."

The imperial forces advanced.

The sound of thousands of footsteps struck the earth.

At the front, one of the four female generals advanced.

She raised her sword.

"First formation!"

The ranks shifted.

"Archers!"

Thousands of bows were raised.

"Mages!"

Huge magical circles began forming in the sky.

Then she shouted:

"Fire!"

Thousands of arrows were released at once.

They were followed by a massive barrage of magic.

Explosions.

Flames.

Lightning.

Storms of wind.

The front lines of the undead army were engulfed in destruction.

One imperial soldier shouted:

"We hit them!"

But one of the commanders yelled:

"Don't stop!"

The bombardment continued.

Undead fell by the dozens.

Then by the hundreds.

Then by the thousands.

The soldiers' cheers grew louder.

"We did it!"

"Keep firing!"

"They're falling!"

For a moment...

It seemed as though the imperial army had found a weakness.

But the skeletal general did not move.

He merely raised his hand.

Then lowered it.

Suddenly...

The bodies that had fallen to the ground began to move.

The smiles disappeared from the soldiers' faces.

A skeletal hand moved.

Then another.

Then the corpses began rising.

One by one.

A soldier stared in horror.

"Impossible..."

An undead creature missing half its body stood up.

Then raised its sword.

Another soldier shouted:

"They're getting back up!"

The undead ranks began moving once again.

One of the generals said:

"They can't be..."

Then she realized something.

"They don't depend on their bodies the way we do."

Another answered:

"Then we have to destroy them completely."

The third said:

"And that will consume our strength."

The fourth stared toward the horizon.

"And that's exactly what they want."

The undead forces finally reached striking distance.

Then...

The battlefield exploded into chaos.

The first ranks collided.

Imperial spears pierced undead bodies.

Swords shattered bones.

The undead fell.

But they rose again.

The soldiers were fighting an enemy that knew neither retreat nor fear.

A commander shouted:

"Hold the line!"

An undead charged toward him.

He raised his sword.

The blades collided.

CRACK!

The commander staggered backward.

Then the undead struck again.

He barely blocked the blow.

But another soldier intervened and stabbed the skeleton through the chest.

It fell.

Then rose again.

The soldier stared.

"What?!"

The undead struck at him with its weapon.

Another commander intervened at the last moment.

"Don't let it escape!"

Three soldiers surrounded it.

Then five.

Then ten.

After several strikes, its body was completely shattered.

But elsewhere...

Ten undead had already broken through the first line.

Then a hundred.

Then a thousand.

The imperial ranks began to retreat.

Above the tower, Titania watched.

One of the generals said:

"Your Majesty, the first line is beginning to lose cohesion."

Titania answered:

"Send in the reserves."

"But we haven't used even part of our reserves."

"Use them."

The general hesitated.

"Your Majesty, if we deploy them now..."

Titania interrupted:

"I know."

Then she said:

"But we will not wait until the battle reaches the city."

The general nodded.

"Your command."

The orders were issued.

The reserves moved.

New units entered the battlefield.

Then the empire began reclaiming some of the lost ground.

One soldier shouted:

"We pushed them back!"

A commander roared:

"Advance!"

The soldiers surged forward.

Some undead formations retreated.

The empire advanced farther.

For the first time since the battle began...

The Shura army began losing ground.

The news reached the skeletal general.

One of his commanders said:

"Sir, the left flank is retreating."

The general remained silent.

"Shall we request reinforcements?"

"No."

"But they're losing ground."

The general said:

"Let them lose."

The commander looked at him in confusion.

"Sir?"

The skeletal general raised his head.

"We are not fighting a single battle."

Then he looked toward the imperial army.

"We are exhausting them."

At that moment...

Another battlefield began to move.

Far from the capital, an imperial detachment attempted to outflank the undead.

But it found itself facing thousands more soldiers of the Shura.

Elsewhere, a fortified city was resisting another Shura army.

Its defenders had held out for three days.

On the fourth day...

One of its towers fell.

The city's commander shouted:

"Don't let them in!"

The soldiers fought upon the walls with everything they had.

And in another part of the world...

A small kingdom managed to destroy a Shura army after a battle that lasted throughout the night.

The news spread quickly.

For the first time in days, people in some cities poured into the streets, shouting.

"They can be resisted!"

"Shura is not invincible!"

"There are those who can stop them!"

But the celebration did not last long.

Hours later...

Another report arrived.

Another Shura army had appeared in a region where no one expected them.

Three cities fell in a single day.

The world began to understand the truth.

Shura was not fighting on a single front.

The war was everywhere.

In one royal hall, a ruler stood before a massive map.

The markers representing attacks were spreading across it at an alarming rate.

The ruler asked:

"How many fronts do we have now?"

His adviser answered:

"We don't know the exact number."

The ruler raised his head.

"You don't know?"

"The reports are arriving faster than we can record them."

Silence filled the hall.

Then the ruler said:

"Then the war has spiraled beyond our control."

In another kingdom...

A group of nobles gathered around a table.

One of them said:

"We should surrender."

Another replied:

"And if we surrender, will they protect us?"

No one answered.

Elsewhere, the people of an entire city watched from atop their walls as a Shura army marched past in the distance.

A child asked:

"Will they come here?"

His mother held his hand.

"I don't know."

Meanwhile, in the Central Empire...

The battle was still raging.

Columns of smoke rose above the plain.

The earth had become a mixture of mud, blood, and ash.

The screams of soldiers mingled with the sound of steel.

Titania stood at the command center.

One of the generals said:

"We have retaken the eastern flank."

Another said:

"But the western flank is retreating."

The third said:

"Our casualties are increasing."

The fourth spoke:

"And we have a bigger problem."

Titania looked at her.

"What is it?"

She pointed toward the map.

"The skeletal general hasn't moved."

Silence.

Titania said:

"I know."

"And that means..."

Titania answered:

"He hasn't begun the real battle yet."

The four generals looked at her.

One asked:

"Then what do we do?"

Titania looked toward the battlefield.

Then she said:

"We continue."

"Until when?"

She answered:

"Until they force us to retreat."

Then she raised her sword.

"But no one retreats now."

The orders went out.

Across the plain...

The imperial army launched another attack.

Thousands of soldiers advanced at once.

The undead ranks were pushed back.

Then the empire advanced farther.

The soldiers' cries rose.

"For the Empire!"

"For our families!"

"For Titania!"

For a moment...

It seemed as though the balance of the battle had begun to shift.

But the skeletal general was still standing.

Motionless.

Watching.

Then one of his commanders said:

"They've advanced too far."

The general answered:

"Let them."

Then the skeletal general raised his gaze toward the sky.

"They still haven't understood."

The commander asked:

"What?"

The general answered:

"We did not send half a million undead here to win this battle quickly."

Then he slowly raised his weapon.

"We sent them to determine how much power the empire needs before it falls."

At that moment...

His aura changed.

The soldiers closest to the front lines stopped.

Some felt an enormous pressure descend upon the battlefield.

One of the generals stopped speaking.

She raised her head.

"Your Majesty..."

Titania's eyes remained fixed upon the skeletal general.

For the first time since the battle began...

He moved himself.

One step.

BOOM.

The earth trembled.

Then a second step.

BOOM.

The rocks began to crack.

The skeletal general raised his weapon.

His aura spread across the battlefield.

One of the generals' faces went pale.

"He's coming."

Titania answered without taking her eyes off him:

"I know."

Then she gripped her sword with both hands.

"Finally."

Across the world...

New reports began arriving.

The central front was erupting.

The Central Empire was still standing.

But a general from the Shura army had personally entered the battlefield.

At the same time, other fronts were igniting one after another.

Cities fell.

Kingdoms resisted.

Armies won for hours before collapsing.

Others achieved small victories that gave the world hope.

But one thing had become clear to everyone.

The war was no longer a war between an empire and an army.

Nor was it a war between one kingdom and another.

It had become a war shaking entire continents.

And far away...

Inside Abaddon...

Reports from the various fronts continued to arrive.

Azrael sat calmly within his palace.

Before him lay maps of the world.

Dozens of markers covered them.

The western front.

The eastern front.

The Central Empire.

And countless other regions where battles had not ceased.

He stared at them without speaking.

Then he said calmly:

"So the continents have begun to move."

No one answered.

Azrael raised his eyes.

"Let the war continue."

Then he added:

"I want to see..."

His eyes stopped upon the marker representing the Central Empire.

"...just how far this world can resist."

On the distant battlefield...

The skeletal general raised his weapon.

Before half a million undead...

He began advancing toward the imperial army.

As for Titania...

She left the command center.

She gripped her sword.

Then advanced toward the front lines herself.

She stopped before her soldiers.

She looked toward the approaching general.

Then she said:

"This battle..."

She raised her sword.

"Begins now."

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