The Unmaking

Consciousness returned to Allen like drowning. One moment, nothing but the searing white noise of a thousand fragmented screams - the dying gasp of a soldier, the clang of swords on forgotten battlefields, the chilling command of a demonic overlord: "The Kingdom of Conan will cease to exist!" The next, he was gasping, choking on the thick, coppery tang of blood and the cloying scent of decay. Cold stone pressed against his cheek.

But it wasn't the stones of Valemire's shattered courtyard he felt. It was the wind-whipped ledge overlooking the Rivene Gorge.

He was the memory. He was King Castal.

The city of Canute in Conan sprawled below, wreathed in smoke and screams. Before him, blotting out the sky, stood Bezoar, the Demon King of Wrath. Nine feet of corded muscle and hatred, four arms ending in obsidian claws, eyes like polished moonstones radiating pure malice. Beside him, radiating loyal fury, stood Hellakrion, his bone-white form crackling with a chilling power that spoke of his master's might. Opposing them, battered but unbroken, stood King Castal of Conan and his son, Prince Vallen, their black Rem flickering defiantly against the demonic tide. Behind them, a beacon of hope: Priestess Elysia of Vannir, her holy light a fragile shield against the darkness.

The war had raged for three brutal years. This was the final hour.

"Foolish mortal," Bezoar's voice grated like boulders grinding, condensed Rem swirling lethally around his clawed fingertips. "Do you think you can take me alone?"

King Castal, his armor rent, blood streaking his face, spat onto the stone ledge. He bit his thumb deeply, the gesture fierce and final. Smearing the blood across his brow in a ritualistic mark, he rasped, "I don't think I can take you, demon. I know I can."

Power erupted. Castal's black Rem transformed, igniting into the fierce, deep orange-gold of the setting sun - the unleashed power of his bloodline, the mark of the Kings of Conan. The air itself thrummed with the sudden, immense pressure.

They lunged. Not man and demon, but titans. Claws met sun-gold blade in concussive detonations that shattered the ledge beneath them. Shockwaves ripped outwards, pulverizing stone fortifications, and hurling lesser combatants from the ridge. Allen felt every bone-jarring impact, tasted the ozone tang of clashing energies, and smelled Castal's sweat and blood mixed with Bezoar's sulfurous stench. Twenty minutes stretched into an eternity of brutal, desperate combat under the blood-orange glow.

Then, the opening. In a split-second overextension from Bezoar, a roar of demonic fury turned to surprise. Castal, driven by the last reserves of his sun-bright Rem and the will to save his son and city, drove his blade forward with a final, desperate cry. The sword, blazing like a captured sunset, pierced Bezoar's dark heart.

The Demon King of Wrath stumbled, a guttural roar of disbelief tearing from his throat. He clutched at the sun-metal blade protruding from his chest, his moonstone eyes wide with shock, not rage. "Im...possible..." He staggered back, towards the sheer drop into the raging Rivene far below. His massive form teetered on the edge.

This was the moment. Allen/Castal felt a surge of grim hope. Bezoar was defeated! Victory. Allen/Castal felt the surge. Vallen would live! Conan would endure!

But Bezoar's gaze, filled with venomous spite, locked not on his killer, but on Hellakrion, standing frozen nearby in the sky, witnessing his master's fall. As Bezoar plummeted backward into the abyss, one clawed hand lashed out. Not in attack, but in a final, spiteful act of transference. A torrent of raw, wrathful Rem, black as a starless void and thick with the essence of a dying Demon King, shot from Bezoar's fingertips and slammed into Hellakrion.

The bone demon screamed- a sound of agony, ecstasy, and terrifying transformation. The stolen power engulfed him, remaking him, crowning him. Where Hellakrion the Aid stood, Hellakrion, the new Demon King of Wrath, rose. His bone-white form pulsed with the dark, inherited fury of his fallen master, his empty eye sockets now blazing with cold, calculating crimson fire. He stared at the spot where Bezoar had fallen, then slowly, deliberately, turned his gaze towards the exhausted defenders of Conan and the city below.

King Castal collapsed. His sun-gold Rem guttered out. His body was a ruin - muscles torn, organs pulped, lifeblood soaking the stone where Bezoar had stood moments before. He died there, on the ledge, his thoughts were only of his son, his eyes fixed on his beleaguered city, an arm reaching towards it. Then, with a final groan of stressed rock, the ledge itself gave way, plunging Castal's broken heroism into the churning Rivene.

Hellakrion pointed a single bony finger at Conan. Not a grand gesture. And just a spell [Nova]. Crimson-black Rem, thick with the distilled wrath of his predecessor and his own cold malice, pulsed from him. It wasn't a wave; it was an unmaking.

The air over Conan rippled. The screams from below didn't crescendo; they cut off. The smoke didn't billow; it dissolved. The city itself didn't collapse in fire and ruin. It simply... ceased to be. Stone buildings blurred like wet paint and then faded into nothingness. Streets vanished. The defiant lights of Priestess Elysia's barrier winked out like snuffed candles. Prince Vallen, raising his sword in a final, hopeless cry, dissolved mid-motion. One moment, a kingdom fighting for its life. The next was an empty, silent scar on the land where Conan had stood. Erased. As if it had never existed.

But Hellakrion wasn't finished.His crimson gaze swept the shattered ledge, settling on a small smear where Castal's blood stained a stable fragment of rock. A final insult. A final spark to extinguish.

With a contemptuous gesture, Hellakrion channeled annihilating power and necrotic essence. The blood sizzled and blackened. Shadows and crimson Rem wove around it, pulling stone shards into grotesque armor. Where Castal's blood had stained the stone, a skeleton now stood wearing a crude armor bearing Conan's sigil, empty sockets, phantom sword clutched in bony hands. Not a warrior. A monument to futility. A mockery of the king's sacrifice, animated by the power that erased his world. Hellakrion's command echoed in its hollow bones: "Guard this nothing. Remember your failure."

Allen gasped, jerking violently back to the present. The cold stone was Valemire's courtyard again. The coppery tang wasn't just memory — it was the real blood drying on his face and tunic. The scent of decay wasn't ancient Conan, but the fresh carnage of the High Lich's horde surrounding him. He was sprawled next to the shattered armor of King Castal's reanimated bones in Valemire's courtyard. The gauntlet on his arm throbbed with resonant cold, echoing the void of Conan and the king's torment.

He knew this armor. He remembered the crossed double sword on a shield sigil. He hadn't just witnessed the memory. He had been Castal. He'd felt the king's love for Vallen, his determination, the crushing despair as he died seeing his son erased, the unmaking of his entire kingdom, and centuries of hollow torment as Hellakrion's mockery. The defiance in the vow was Castal's own, amplified by centuries of silent rage against the demon who made him a monument of failure.

The memory wasn't just images and sounds; it was bone-deep horror, the taste of absolute loss, the knowledge of Hellakrion's true, terrifying power —not just inherited wrath, but the capacity for utter, silent annihilation. And the King had stood against it, a speck of defiance in the face of cosmic erasure.

Allen pushed himself up, his head pounding as if split by the collapsing ledge and the silent scream of unmade reality. His vision swam, overlaying the ruins of Valemire with the nothingness that had been Conan. He saw King Caelum's crimson Rem, so like Castal's desperate sun-gold blaze that had ended in dust. He saw Hellakrion's skeletal form, the architect of that void, the power that had killed King Vladimir - the power he had witnessed erase a kingdom.

A shadow fell over him. He looked up, blinking away the phantom void, to see Tila standing there. Her bunny ears were still, her merchant's eyes wide, for once devoid of sly amusement, filled with a stark, primal recognition as they fixed on the cold, pulsating gauntlet.

"Stars above," she breathed, her voice hushed with genuine awe and fear. "You saw it. You felt it. The unmaking." She crouched slowly, like approaching a live bomb. "That gauntlet... it didn't just take the core, It took everything he was." Her gaze met Allen's, filled with a new intensity. "That power... the power of the line of Conan... Do you feel it humming? The King's spite, the skeleton Knight's defiance... and the hunger to destroy what took Conan? Bet it aches. Bet it whispers of endings. Want to learn how to point that hunger somewhere useful?" Her voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. "Before you become a hollow knight like Castal."

The gauntlet pulsed, not just icy, but with a terrifying pull, a vacuum against his soul, whispering echoes of ancient wrath, a knight's futile defiance. The past wasn't just remembered; it was a fragment of pure annihilation bound to his arm, resonating with the essence of the Demon King who wielded it.

"Who are you?" Allen asked

"Someone you need for your journey," Tila answered.

He was on the ground, amidst the palace courtyard's carnage. The thunderous explosion from Caelum's final strike still echoed in his skull, momentarily drowning out the chaotic symphony of battle - the fading shrieks of dissipating undead, the groans of wounded Sanctums, the frantic shouts of medics and surviving trainees.

Allen glanced at the balcony and turned to ask another question but Tila was gone, leaving behind only a void black coin.

His hand burned. Not from injury, but from the gauntlet. It felt alive, humming with a cold, alien energy that pulsed in time with his frantic heartbeat.

The memory of the armored skeleton's core shattering, the torrent of its experiences flooding his mind - the disciplined swordsmanship, the Rem usage, the Sun-Rem technique, the chilling glimpse of the High Lich's command - was a raw wound in his psyche. He retched, bile burning his throat, but nothing came up.

"Allen! You alive? Look at me!" Jax's gruff voice cut through the haze. The big man loomed over him, his face streaked with soot and gore, black Rem flickering weakly around his battered gauntlets. He hauled Allen upright with surprising gentleness.

"Took a nasty knock, huh? Saw you go down after you shanked that skeleton. Nice work, Purp."

"Don't call me that," Allen said weakly

Allen blinked, trying to focus. His vision swam. The courtyard was a charnel house. Shattered bone littered the blood-slicked cobblestones like morbid confetti. Fires still smoldered where the Saintess's holy flames or Mia's volatile ash-grey blasts had struck. Sanctums moved among the fallen, their golden light dimmed by exhaustion as they tended wounds or performed last rites. Trainees huddled in small groups, some shaking uncontrollably, others staring blankly into the middle distance, their uniforms spattered with things no training could prepare them for. The holy barrier above was gone, revealing a sky stained orange by distant fires.

He saw Mia nearby, leaning heavily against a half-collapsed statue. A field medic was carefully extracting jagged shards of metal - remnants of her sacrificed pistol - from her forearm. Her face was pale, etched with pain, but her eyes... they held that terrifying, focused emptiness he'd seen before the explosion. She met his gaze, her jaw clenched, giving a curt, almost imperceptible nod before turning her attention back to the medic. Blood soaked her sleeve, stark against the ash-grey Rem that unconsciously coiled around her injured arm like protective smoke.

"Report!" Leon's voice, hoarse but commanding, sliced through the dazed silence. He strode towards Ghilaine, who stood near the center of the courtyard, her white Rem radiating a cool, assessing light as she scanned the survivors. Leon's armor was dented, his face grim. "Casualties?" He asked.

"Four trainees confirmed KIA," Ghilaine replied, her voice devoid of its usual calm steel, replaced by a cold, hard edge. "Jansen, Petrov, Li and Steph. Two more critical, four serious wounds including Mia's arm. The Sanctums..."

"Who?" Leon asked confused

"The holy warriors that came to aid Astralis," Ghilaine replied.

"Oh, those guys."

"Five dead, three severely wounded, including the Saintess. She's unconscious, Rem exhaustion." Her gaze flickered towards the covered form of King Vladimir near the shattered meeting room entrance, then to where Prince Caelum stood, flanked by Ser Riven and a visibly distraught High Mage Serena.

Caelum was a statue carved from grief and fury. His crimson Rem was banked now, a low ember, though traces of his regular ash-grey flickered beneath, it still radiated a dangerous heat. He stared at his father's covered body, his hands curled in fists, nails digging into his palm. Riven stood a protective half-step behind him, his ash-grey Rem subdued, his expression grim and watchful. Serena wept silently beside them, her healing magic spent, hands stained with blood that wasn't her own.

"The High Lich?" Leon pressed.

"Destroyed," Ghilaine confirmed. "Prince Caelum and Ser Riven neutralized it. The summons dissolved upon its death. The immediate threat is over. For now." She gestured towards the scattered trainees. "They held. Barely. Some... adapted."

Leon followed her gaze, his eyes lingering on Allen, still shaky but standing, then on Mia, enduring the medic's ministrations stoically, then on Jax, who was helping another trainee to their feet. Pride warred with profound sorrow in Leon's eyes. "Yeah. They did."

Prince Caelum turned from his father's body. His movement was deliberate, heavy with the weight of kingship abruptly thrust upon him. His eyes, red-rimmed but blazing with a cold fire, swept over the courtyard - the dead, the wounded, the shattered palace, the shell-shocked trainees who had fought beside his people. He said to Serena

"Send words to the nobles, 'King Vladimir is dead'."

Without waiting for a response, he strode towards the shattered meeting room, his Rem flickering like a guttering candle, leaving a palpable void of grief and unresolved rage in his wake.