Chapter 372: A Brother's Old Grievance
The bridge garrison had bought Luca and his army five minutes to cross. Not a second more to spare.
The two hundred thousand-strong Khornate army was absurdly strong, and the loyalist forces were melting away like snow in the sun.
If that loyalist line broke, a million civilians would end up beheaded, sacrificed to the daemon on the throne.
Every single person who made it across that bridge was one more life saved.
Luca's army knew exactly how precious the time was, and the moment they got clearance, they surged across at a dead sprint.
While everyone else was fighting to cross to safety, one force was moving against the current entirely.
The towering white Knight led the way, striding forward like some kind of war-god descending, each footfall shaking the ground.
He advanced at a full charge, straight toward the battlefield ahead.
The civilians waiting to cross dropped to their knees as he passed, recognizing this lone figure moving against the tide of refugees as their protector, offering up prayers and blessings as sincere as anything they had left to give.
In under five minutes, Luca's three thousand had fully crossed the bridge.
The bridge guards shouted orders, organizing the crowd into lines, women and children first, and any able-bodied man told to take up arms and head for the front.
Kian stood atop a truck, drew his sword, and readied himself for battle.
A cigarette hung from his lips, his eyes locked hard on the field ahead.
After what Luca had said, there was no question in his mind. He was seeing this through with him, life or death.
They reached the front line before long. Trenches cut across the ground everywhere, green-cloaked soldiers hunched inside them, snatching what little rest they could.
The battlefield ahead was a carpet of corpses, several wrecked Knight suits littered among the dead.
Across the line, Khorne's red forces had pulled back into formation to regroup, clearly worn down from a recent clash of their own. Both sides were exhausted, both resting.
A rare lull. Everyone knew it wouldn't last. The real battle was coming.
Luca's arrival hit the defenders like a shot of adrenaline. The rank-and-file just saw another Knight suit joining their side, one more machine to help hold the line a little longer.
But the Knight House lords recognized that white paint scheme instantly, and knew exactly who had just arrived.
Three green Cerastus-pattern Knights closed in, gathering around the white one. Over their vox, they asked, almost reverent.
"My lord... you've come back?"
Luca answered over his own vox.
"Yes. I've returned. My apologies, everyone. I'm late."
Silence followed for a long moment. Finally, Luca spoke again.
"My lords, what happened after I left the court? How did things come to this? Frales... why has he fallen to the Dark Gods?"
"Ah, my lord..."
Kian listened to the exchange between the Knight suits and slowly pieced the whole picture together.
Khorne's corruption of this world hadn't been sudden. It had crept in slowly, unnoticed, over time.
Because Glory had been named personally by the Emperor, everyone on the world held the concept of honor in near-sacred regard. But at some point, no one could say exactly when, that reverence for honor had been twisted by the Dark Gods.
The honor of Glory's Knights had originally sprung from a duty to protect humanity. But at some point, that honor had curdled into something else entirely: a fearlessness of death for its own sake.
A culture of dueling took root among the world's nobility. Sometimes it was two men crossing blades. Sometimes it was two full Knight suits.
Any dispute got settled by duel. Petty disagreements, duel. Someone looked at you wrong, duel.
A dueling culture had taken hold across the entire world, and it spread fast, dozens, even hundreds dying in duels every single day.
Luca was the eldest son of the previous High King. The current King, Frales, was his younger brother.
The old High King had loved dueling passionately. Any time a famous gladiator emerged anywhere on the planet, he'd issue a royal summons, bring the man to court, and duel him personally, to the death, every time.
Even he must have known that habit would kill him eventually, because he'd left a will: upon his death, his two sons, Luca and Frales, would face each other in a duel, and whoever won would inherit the throne.
Sure enough, not long after, the old King had his own skull caved in by a gladiator's mace. As dead as it got.
The throne sat vacant, and the succession clause activated automatically.
Luca and his younger brother Frales were thrown into the arena, matched in armour weight and blade length, and told to fight to the death.
Luca, older, stronger, and far more experienced, won as expected.
But Frales was his own brother. Luca had no intention of actually killing him, and held back.
The watching nobility, though, screamed for a real death match, insisting he finish the job, refusing to recognize him as High King unless he killed his own brother outright.
Luca argued furiously with them, but it changed nothing. They wanted Frales dead, full stop.
In the end, disgusted, Luca snapped his own sword in half, renounced the throne entirely, climbed into his Knight suit, and left the court from the far side of Throne Mountain as a Freeblade, beginning his world tour from there.
With Luca gone, the throne fell to Frales by default.
But because Frales had only won the crown through his brother's mercy, not by right, his reign faced constant whispers and doubt, and it warped something in him over time.
Losing to his brother Luca that day had become an open wound. Once he took the throne, he barely governed at all, pouring his time instead into obsessive training and combat.
The realm suffered for it, the court and countryside alike filled with growing resentment.
Frales ignored all of it. If anything, he doubled down, following in his father's footsteps, summoning famous gladiators for death duels of his own, over and over.
Khorne's influence had already had its eye on this world. A King behaving exactly like this only sharpened that attention.
Frales trained relentlessly, dueled endlessly, all in a desperate bid to prove he wasn't weaker than his brother Luca.
That exact spirit, that hunger, was precisely what Khorne loved most: a weaker man raising his blade against the strong, refusing to yield.
And so it all followed with a grim, predictable logic. The blessing came down, and King Frales, chasing a hollow, unattainable idea of honor, and still eaten alive by the humiliation of that old defeat, walked himself straight down the road to ruin.
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