The war room of Ebonreach was a tomb carved from living night. Walls of polished black glass rose twenty meters high, veined with threads of starlight silver that pulsed like slow veins beneath translucent skin. Floating above the central obsidian table hung a dozen scrying projections (maps that bled crimson, intercepted missives that flickered in and out of existence the moment they were read).
Tap.... Tap... Tap...
Aster sat alone at the table's heart, fingers drumming a slow, deliberate rhythm on the glass, each beat perfectly timed with the pulse of the silver veins in the walls. His shadow stretched behind him, too long, too sharp, as though it belonged to something far larger than the lean, twenty-seven-year-old man who wore it.
He closed his eyes.
The air shifted. The temperature dropped. The presence that settled over him was not the King, not the warrior, but the scholar... someone hungry for knowledge the way other men hunger for power. When his lids lifted again, the golden irises had gone flat and cold, reflecting the projections like twin mirrors of calculation.
"To step into S-rank," he said, voice soft enough that the lanterns flickered in sympathy, "is to step onto a stage the world itself reserves for ranked kingdoms...."
Finding an unranked kingdom with an S-rank cultivator was rare, and if there was one, it would never have more than a single cultivator of that level. This all traced back to the world steles; after the Elarian Empire became the first ranked kingdom, the steles revealed the path forward...
... And learning the knowledge from the world stele as an unranked kingdom was simply impossible.
"Well, that will come soon. I just have to find an S-rank hidden in one of these kingdoms...
But before that, I need to focus on peaking my existence level," he muttered, waving his hand as a map appeared with highlighted points.
There were twelve green points, marking where his plans were currently unfolding. White dots marked the kingdoms he had only recently begun investigating. It was universally known that the quickest way to gain EL was by killing beings, which could grant anywhere from 10 to 50L at random.
"I'm a little more than 12,000EL away... killing them one at a time will be too much of a waste," he thought.
As the idea struck him, he immediately got to work. Smiling, he pulled out a cloth and began writing a letter...
-----
The western gate of Ashenveil Kingdom was already burning when Varkis arrived.
Twenty thousand warriors marched behind him in perfect silence all C-rank and B-rank shadows forged in Ebonreach's endless night. No banners, no drums, only the soft scrape of black-steel boots on scorched stone and the triumphant roar of the rebels spilling out from the city.
For three days now the streets had belonged to the black-rag militias....
Ebonreach's children, planted years ago as orphans, cooks, whores, and street rats, now risen with hidden blades and hidden orders. Royal legions in silver and ash-grey were being hunted block by block, dragged into alleys, throats opened for the crime of serving the old crown.
Varkis stepped through the shattered gate alone at first, coat of living shadow rippling like spilled ink.
Tall, lean, pale as moonlight on bone, black hair shaved on the sides and left long on top, flat grey eyes that had never known mercy. A-rank aura rolled off him in slow, deliberate waves though it was not crushing, but just enough to remind the world whose side the night had chosen
Thousands of rebels on the walls saw him and raised their weapons in greeting.
"Lord Varkis!" a scarred woman bellowed from the battlements, voice raw with victory. "The palace is surrounded! The king hides behind three hundred guards!"
Varkis lifted one hand acknowledgement as he willed a talent into action with a thought.
|Shadow Dominion (A)|
Every shadow inside 50 kilometers answered.
Fires in the burning buildings stretched toward him like worshipping arms. The shadows of dying royal guards peeled off the ground and stood upright behind their killers, faceless, obedient.
He smiled almost with parental warmth.
"Children of Ebonreach," he called, voice soft as velvet dragged over steel, carrying to every rebel ear. "You've done well."
Twenty thousand fresh troops answered with a single, reverent roar as they entered the gates behind him.
"For the future that was promised!"
Varkis snapped his fingers.
|Night's Quiet Blade| -45% MP|
The upright shadows of the dead royal soldiers lunged.
They wrapped around the last pockets of resistance still fighting in the plaza, blades of pure darkness punching through silver plate like parchment, severing skills mid-cast, silencing the final loyalist officers before they could scream.
A rebel captain, B-rank fire user, one of the first orphans Varkis had personally recruited, ran up and dropped to one knee, blood-splattered and grinning.
"The throne room is ready, my lord. Shall we bring you the king alive?"
Varkis rested a hand on the man's shoulder, shadows curling affectionately around them both.
"Alive," he said gently. "King Aster wants to speak to him first."
Then, louder, to the thousands watching from walls and windows:
"Tell the world Ashenveil chose its new king tonight."
The rebels roared again, louder, drunk on victory and the taste of a future they had bled seven years to earn.
Behind Varkis, twenty thousand shadows and twenty thousand living blades began to march toward the palace in perfect, terrible unison.
The first kingdom had fell....
-----
One day later, beneath a sky the color of a healing bruise, the capital of Obsidian Lotus Kingdom drowned in its own reflection.
The rebellion here had been quieter, no roaring crowds, no burning gates, just a thousand small cuts that bled the royal family dry the past four nights. The palace's black-glass bridges were slick with blood that refused to drip; it simply pooled, shining, waiting.
Rovan Thalvar stepped onto the central plaza as though the night itself had opened a door for him.
Sixteen thousand warriors followed in perfect silence much like Varkis, they were all C-rank and B-rank reapers raised in Ebonreach's blackest cells, cloaks the deep violet of fresh bruises, blades sheathed but already wet.
They fanned out like spilled wine, claiming every shadow without a word.
Rovan was shorter than Varkis, broader, skin the grey of ash after the fire has forgotten it was ever flame. His hair was a living thing long, ink-black strands that floated weightless around his head, each one tipped with a tiny, soundless scream.
Eyes the color of a mirror that has watched too many people die. A-rank pressure leaked from him in slow, syrupy waves, thick with the scent of grave soil and old grief.
His affinity was not mere darkness or shadows....
It was Regret... the metaphysical residue left when a soul realizes it chose wrong and can never un-choose. His bloodline, Ebonvein was a mutation in the usual shadow or darkness Ebonreach were used to.
His talents and skills twisted that concept into weapons no light could ever touch.
As he looked around, he exhaled — a slow, deliberate breath that seemed to drag the plaza into silence. His hair of frozen screams unfurled, strands drifting outward like a net cast across the corpses.
|Confession of the Unlived Life| - 47% MP|
The Ebonvein bloodline pulsed once, and the dead shivered as though memory itself had clawed them back.
They rose, not as undead, but as 'ghosts' — translucent bodies sculpted from liquid remorse, each face locked in the instant of realization that death had already chosen them. Hollow eyes turned toward the loyalists cowering behind the shattered structures.
Rovan's voice was soft, almost apologetic, as the strands of his hair coiled tighter, binding the ghosts together. "Tell them what you should have done differently."
The regret-echoes opened mouths that had no tongues. No sound came, yet every loyalist dropped their weapons and began to bleed tears, their minds collapsing beneath the weight of paths unlived.
A rebel lieutenant ran up, dark cloak flapping, eyes shining with something close to worship.
"The throne room is open, Lord Rovan. The queen locked herself inside with twenty knights...."
Rovan's floating hair of frozen screams curled affectionately around the boy's shoulders, gentle as a proud father.
"She's grieving already," he murmured. "Grief is just regret wearing different clothes."
He walked forward.
The regret-ghosts parted for him like curtains.
Behind him, sixteen thousand warriors and thousands of translucent ghosts began to march toward the palace, footsteps perfectly silent, tears of blood trailing in their wake.
The Obsidian Lotus had twenty minutes left to learn what regret actually tasted like.