Chapter 2, The End of a King and the Birth of a Prince
Icecrown Citadel – The Frozen Throne – Unknown Time
It was over.
The sky above Icecrown had turned still—a false calm, pregnant with the weight of what had been lost. The storm had no more reason to scream. The wind, long howling across the icy spires, had fallen silent. The last cries of war had faded into the frost. Even death seemed to be holding its breath.
And there, in the ruins of a shattered throne, Arthas Menethil lay dying.
What remained of his armor was twisted, blackened steel and broken runeplate, cracked open at the chest like a tomb half-excavated. Frostmourne was gone—shattered in an explosion of holy light and soul-fire. Its fragments lay scattered around him like the teeth of a long-dead god.
The helm—the cursed symbol of his dominion—had rolled to the edge of the platform, its runes flickering like a dying star. For the first time in years, Arthas felt air touch his skin. Real air. No longer filtered through armor, shadow, or unlife.
His body shivered—not from cold.
From fear.
And then he heard it.
Footsteps. Soft. Measured.
He raised his eyes slowly.
His father stood before him.
King Terenas Menethil II—ghostly, regal, dressed in robes that seemed woven from memory and moonlight. He stood not with the posture of royalty, but with the weariness of a father seeing what had become of his son.
No sword. No judgment.
Only silence.
Arthas tried to speak. His throat constricted. His lungs burned. Blood—real blood—filled his mouth.
He coughed, barely able to lift his head.
"Father…"
Terenas stepped closer, kneeling with slow grace.
His face bore no anger.
No disgust.
Only sorrow.
"No king rules forever… my son."
The words fell like snow.
Soft.Heavy.Final.
Arthas's lips trembled. His hand twitched weakly against the ground.
"I… I only wanted to protect them…""I thought… if I controlled death… if I became the thing they feared…""They'd be safe."
But his voice was gone.
His lips moved, but only vapor came. The words burned in his chest, but never reached the air.
Instead, his eyes spoke the grief he could no longer voice.
The weight of a thousand choices pressed in on him like a collapsing glacier. Cities burned. Souls consumed. Friends betrayed. The Light forsaken.
Jaina. Uther. Father. Myself…
Was there a soul left in him to forgive?
Did it matter?
The cold crept into his bones.
Not the cold of Northrend.
Not the cold of undeath.
But the cold of ending.
His chest rose one last time.
And then—
He let go.
The throne behind him began to fade.
The Citadel grew distant. Smaller. As though the entire world were falling away from him. The roar of war, the crackle of runes, the hum of cursed magic—all fell silent.
Even the Light dimmed.
There was no tunnel. No judgment. No hell.
Just stillness.
The throne vanished beneath him.
His body lost form.
And Arthas Menethil, once Prince of Lordaeron, once the Lich King, once feared by gods and mortals alike—
Became nothing.
His soul slipped free.
Weightless.
And for a long, unmeasured moment… he simply drifted.
No throne. No sword. No voice.
No name.
Only the void.
Beyond the Frozen Throne – Between Life and Unlife
He was nowhere.
No earth beneath him. No sky above. No sound, no breath, no heartbeat to mark the passage of time.
Arthas did not fall.
He simply drifted, like smoke from a fire long extinguished.
There was no gravity in this place.No direction.No meaning.
Just absence.
Not even the comforting cold of Northrend followed him here. No familiar sense of the Light. No looming Shadow. He had expected judgment. He had even hoped—if only faintly—for some reckoning. For a voice. A gate. A trial.
But this…?
This was nothing.
This was what came when the gods turned their backs.
This was forgetting.
Time unraveled.
There were no days here. No hours. Not even seconds.
Just an endless, formless moment—so quiet it drowned thought.
And slowly, piece by piece, he began to forget.
First, his name.
He clutched at it in the dark, the syllables sliding through his grasp like water.
Ar… Artha…?
Gone.
Then his face.
He remembered it briefly—fair, noble, touched by steel and frost.
Then it blurred.
Eyes became embers. Skin turned to ash. His reflection vanished, not shattered—but erased.
He tried to recall what had brought him here.
The sword.The Light.The sins.The screams.
Frostmourne…?
The name echoed faintly, but had no weight. No shape.
Even guilt became elusive—like smoke that curled through his fingers when he tried to hold it.
And then came the memories.
They didn't flash. They didn't come as visions.
They leaked.
Tiny fragments.
A soft laugh.
A girl in white beneath cherry blossoms.
A father's hand on his shoulder.
The hilt of a training sword clutched in both hands.
His first failure.His first death.
They drifted past like ash in a slow river, and he—whatever was left of him—tried to grab them.
But he had no hands.
No body.
Only the ghost of what once was a soul.
You were a boy once.You were a prince.You were a blade.You were a throne.You were… wrath.
The words weren't spoken.They weren't even heard.
They were remembered by something deeper—something beneath language and thought.
He didn't know how long he remained in that state.A second?A year?A lifetime?
Time had no shape here.
But even so—something stirred.
It began at the edges of perception.A flicker.
A tremble.
Not warmth. Not light.
But a pull.
Like gravity. Like fate.
He tried to resist—not because he feared it, but because he had nothing left to move with.
But the pull ignored him.
It claimed him.
Not with mercy. Not with rage.With purpose.
Something was reaching through the void.
Not to punish.Not to judge.Not even to redeem.
But to rewrite.
To take the story that ended in Icecrown…
And start it again.
And for the first time since he fell—
He moved.
Or perhaps more truthfully—
He was taken.
The void split open.
And stars began to pour past him.
Beyond Space – Outside Time
The pull became a tide.
And then a current.
And then a torrent, dragging him out of the formless black and flinging him into something vast, bright, and blinding.
The void cracked like brittle ice beneath a hammer, and Arthas Menethil was flung through the fracture—not as flesh, not yet, but as something smaller, older, rawer.
A soul stripped of armor, memory, and name.
He was falling, but not down.
Not through air. Not through space.
He was being hurled backward, flung through time.
Stars passed him on all sides, screaming silently, their light bending and twisting as he tumbled. He passed entire galaxies, watched worlds born and die, their histories flickering across his senses like the echo of stories he could not yet comprehend.
He didn't move his arms.
He didn't breathe.
He didn't think.
He remembered.
Not in order. Not in clarity. But in impression.
A sword. A throne. A crown of ice.
Jaina's voice, screaming his name.Uther's judgment burning through his spine.The horror in Terenas's eyes as his blade fell.
He felt it all crash against him like waves—each one heavier, hotter, louder.
The screams of Stratholme.The silence of the throne room.The moment Frostmourne whispered and he obeyed.
He burned.
Not with fire—but with undoing.
Everything that had built him into the Lich King was being peeled away, flayed from his essence like armor wrenched off bone.
The further he fell through time, the younger he became.
His sins shed like skin.His power frayed into threads of light.His body began to reform—cell by cell, spark by spark.
First came the bones—white-hot with reentry into the physical world.
Then nerves, twitching and alive.
Veins like golden vines wove through newly made muscle.Skin, flawless and unmarred, stretched over perfect form.
His eyes came last.
They opened not into darkness—but into the maelstrom.
And he screamed.
There was no air, but he screamed all the same.
Every wound.Every soul devoured.Every ounce of guilt, pain, desire, memory—rushing through him in a flood of fire.
He twisted mid-flight as the cosmos bent and condensed around him. The light wasn't warm. It was white, sterile, immense.
And then it tightened.
The light folded inward, pressing him into a single point.
The stars disappeared.The galaxies vanished.The endless past slammed shut behind him.
All that remained was a single moment.
One heartbeat.
One CRACK.
April 6th, 1896 — Athens, Greece — An Alley Near the Stadium
A sphere of blue lightning exploded into being behind a bakery near the Olympic stadium. The cobblestones cracked. Dust and steam shot outward in a spiraling shockwave. A surge of energy pulsed through the alley like the birth of a star.
And from its center—he landed.
His knees hit stone.His hand slapped against earth.
Naked. Gasping. Alive.
Arthas Menethil, age eighteen, reborn.
Steam curled from his bare skin. His muscles trembled. His hair clung to his neck, damp with the residue of cosmic fire. He blinked against the light, breath hitching.
His lungs worked.
I'm… breathing.
For the first time in what felt like centuries—he felt air. He felt warmth. He felt… pain.
Not the agony of war, but the ache of life.
Every nerve buzzed. Every sense flared. His ears picked up the rustle of leaves, the hum of distant traffic, the chirp of birds.
This is not Northrend.This is not Azeroth.
And then it came.
A sound.
No—a feeling. A presence.
Not from outside. From within.
The System Awakens
[SYSTEM BOOTED.]"Paladin Class Detected. Initializing Core Attributes…""Level: 1.""Age: 18 (Recalibrated).""Divine Alignment: The Light – Unstable. Reconnection in progress…""Subsystem: Warcraft RTS Interface – Dormant. Requires Town Hall Core.""Location: Athens – Earth Realm – Temporal Anchor Locked."
"Welcome, Arthas Menethil."
The words weren't spoken.They were felt—branded into the marrow of his soul.
He clenched his hands. Flexed his fingers. Looked at his arms—young, powerful, free of rot or ice or sin.
His eyes flicked to the alley walls, to the sky above.
It was blue.
Not the harsh gray of Icecrown, but a bright, brilliant blue.
Where… am I?
His heartbeat thundered in his ears.
And then—footsteps.
Soft. Light. Coming closer.
He turned his head.
And saw her.