Mount Vash had always been a monument to human arrogance. Its fortress was carved directly into the mountain's vertical face, a defiant stone citadel reachable only by a single, treacherous ribbon of road—the infamous Ascent. At its end loomed the legendary Iron Gate, a slab of dark, ancient alloy etched with shimmering, triple-layered glyphs. For centuries, scholars, warlords, and siege engineers had all agreed on one fact:
The Iron Gate could not be breached. Not by mortal means.
High on the battlements, Archon Lyra, Mistress of Vash, studied the approaching warband with cool, almost amused disdain. Draped in silvery spell-woven robes, her hand glowed with the calm pulse of stored arcane power. The sun had dipped behind the far mountains, staining the sky a dusky violet, but her confidence was absolute.
"Thirty-eight men," she said lightly, her voice a blade of contempt. "And a ruined war-banner. That is all that remains of Kael's army. They dare approach Vash without siege engines? Without artillery? Without hope?"
She let out a short, mirthless laugh. "Let them tire themselves on my road."
But her captain did not share her ease. His voice trembled as he pointed. "Archon… the one at their front. Look carefully. He is no ordinary man. And that hammer—by the gods…it shouldn't exist."
Lyra merely waved the concern aside. "Exaggeration. Size is meaningless before arcane fire. Ready the shields. Prepare the plasma bolts."
---
Below, Carillon ascended the final curve of the Ascent Road. The air was thin and electric with latent wards; his Titanblood Physique (T.P.) felt it as a low, needling vibration beneath his armor. His D-Aura pulsed outward like a wildfire, terrorizing the soldiers above—and weighing heavily even on those behind him.
Commander Relius marched stiffly, jaw locked, eyes unfocused. The veterans followed mechanically, upheld less by loyalty than by the crushing awe radiating off their Warlord.
Carillon stopped fifty paces from the Iron Gate.
It rose before him like a symbol of everything he once feared: unchallengeable power, crafted by the old world to keep men like him in chains.
Unacceptable.
He slid the Blood-Forged Batterer from his shoulder. The titanic hammer struck the rock with a concussion that echoed across the valley. Dust jumped. The stone cracked.
On the wall, Lyra's derisive laughter rang out. "A ceremonial hammer? Poor brute. Fire!"
Ten orbs of molten azure shot downward—spells engineered to liquefy steel, guided by one of the most accomplished archons in the kingdom.
Carillon didn't flinch.
He did not raise his weapon. He did not speak.
He willed.
The red smoke leaking from his T.P. expanded violently, forming a whirling cyclone of chaotic crimson energy—his Warstorm Manifestation (W.M.). The incoming bolts burst on contact, dissolving into harmless vapor.
Lyra's smirk died. That vortex wasn't a spell.
It was raw existence rejecting foreign magic.
Carillon lifted his head. His eyes—glowing, predatory crimson—locked onto her.
"Stand aside," he said. Calm. Inevitable.
Not a Commandment. Not yet.
---
Lyra snapped, "Raise the shield! Second layer! Now!"
The Iron Gate blazed blue-white as the glyphs activated, linked to the mineral heart of the mountain. Its power reservoir could withstand siege cannons for weeks.
Carillon simply approached. He reached down, grasped the Blood-Forged Batterer, and hoisted its two-thousand-pound bulk from the earth. The effort was immense, yet satisfying—like lifting the weight of his former life only to turn it into a weapon.
Three steps. The ground cracked under each one.
Then he brought the hammer down, not in a swing, but in a descending pillar of force—as if driving a spike through reality itself.
What followed was not sound.
It was cataclysm.
KRAAAAA-KOOM.
A shockwave throttled the valley. The battlements shook. The triple shield did not shatter—it simply ceased, collapsing into dust as if eroded by centuries in an instant.
The Iron Gate folded inward like soft clay. Metal screamed. Runes flickered out. What remained was a twisted, smoking void almost perfectly shaped by the force that struck it.
Silence fell. Total. Disbelieving.
"Advance," Carillon said.
His army obeyed.
---
Inside, disorder. Panic. Men dropped weapons without being commanded. The D-Aura filled the courtyard like a storm, suffocating the will of every defender. Lyra tried to cast, tried to speak, tried to command—
—but reality had betrayed her.
In desperation she summoned a chain of shadowed magic, the strongest binding spell she knew. It lashed around Carillon's legs.
He looked down at it with mild irritation.
"Kneel."
He spoke the word as a Sovereign's Commandment (S.C.).
Lyra's knees hit the ground so fast the crack echoed. Her body collapsed forward, forehead pressed into the cold stone. Her mind remained conscious—horrifyingly aware—but her body belonged to him now.
Carillon approached, placing the heavy toe of his boot on the back of her skull, pinning her in place.
A glyph flickered before his vision.
She holds the key to Fenshire's arcane network. Proceed with absorption.
He obeyed.
Lyra's knowledge—her spellcraft, her mastery of arcane infrastructure, her understanding of the kingdom's inner workings—rushed into him with violent clarity. Agonizing. Transformative. The Warpath Reincarnation (W.R.) completed its work.
When he lifted his boot, Lyra's body lay still. Powerless. Empty of command.
Carillon turned to the paralyzed garrison.
"This fortress," he said, voice ringing with the promise of conquest, "marks the beginning of the Conqueror's Dominion (C.D.). Resist the Convergence Era (C.E.), and you shall become the zero you sought to escape."
No one moved.
No one dared.
Mount Vash had fallen in less than an hour.
And the war had only just begun.