The four teams converged just outside the castle gate, the sky above them cast in a permanent twilight—neither day nor night. The dead world seemed to hold its breath as if dreading the final blow.
Team 4 was already in motion, Rovik barking orders as glowing sigils flared to life beneath the wounded. Their support magic was efficient, unadorned—clean bursts of mending and revitalization cycling through the battered raiders like a machine long practiced in desperation.
"Three minutes," Rovik called. "That's all you get. Then we move."
Koda sat against a leaning stone, blood dried across his skin in long trails, though none of it his own. He took a moment to breathe, let the tension coil and uncoil from his muscles. Torren nearby, resting his hammer against his shoulder, bruises spreading like spilled ink across his arms.
"That last one actually nicked me," the berserker muttered with a smirk. "Been a while since something bled me."
Koda didn't reply. His eyes were on the castle. The structure towered above them—twisted spires and old-world stone architecture, its design starkly different from the savage camp that sprawled beneath it. The gate was massive, but not sealed—just slightly ajar, as if expecting guests.
Eris returned from a short patrol, blood at her collar, her daggers wiped clean.
"Perimeter's dead. No reinforcements. No movement behind us," she said, low and calm. "But something's watching from inside."
Dara stood at the front with her infantry, formation rechecked, armor polished with rapid care. "Let it watch," she said. "We're done hiding from it."
A quiet fell.
Koda stepped forward.
Torren fell in beside him.
Then the others, by group, fanning out as they formed up before the gate.
Twenty entered this world.
Nineteen stood now before the final threshold.
The shadows stirred beyond the gate.
The heart of the enemy waited within.
"On you," Koda said quietly.
Torren didn't nod—he just moved. With a guttural breath and the rise of his thick arms, he gripped the haft of his war hammer and charged. Each stomp of his boots cracked the cursed stone beneath them.
The blow landed like thunder.
The gates—already crooked on ancient hinges—shattered inward. Splinters of aged, rotted wood burst into the dark, carried on a wave of dust and stale, stagnant air. The castle groaned under the sudden breath of life.
What lay beyond stole that breath from every warrior present.
The reception hall was impossibly grand, built by hands far removed from the orcs that now claimed it. Tall arches swept the ceiling like the ribs of a colossal beast, their stone etched with ruins half-erased by time and grime. Dead braziers clung to the pillars—long extinguished, yet the room held light, a low red glow that seemed to come from the very walls.
And there, at the far end of the hall, atop a dais made not of stone, but stacked bones polished into unnatural gleam—sat a throne.
A bone throne.
And on it, slouched like a king bored of his feast, was a massive orc—larger than any they had seen. Nearly ten feet of gnarled muscle, tusks split and sharpened, wearing mismatched armor that bore the insignia of multiple human nations. His eyes, black with pinpricks of red at their core, held thought. Calculation. And beneath it, a hunger more ancient than the war.
He rose slowly, with no urgency, the throne creaking behind him as he stepped forward into the red glow.
"You come," he said, voice rough, the words broken, but unmistakably human in origin. "Little prey… grow teeth."
His grin was like a wound torn across his face.
"Much teeth. Much fight. Much… fun."
The bone throne behind him cracked under its own weight as if it knew its time had ended.
Torren's knuckles whitened around the hammer.
Koda's fingers closed over his blade.
The others fanned out behind them—silent, tight, ready.
The Chieftain of the Fallen had spoken.
Now it was time to answer.
The moment the Fallen Chieftain stepped down from his throne, the air thickened—dense with pressure, with fear, with a creeping weight that pressed against every lung and limb in the chamber. It moved with a terrible grace, deceptively slow, each step echoing through the bones of the hall as if daring them forward.
But Team Three didn't hesitate.
Dara raised her shield and led the infantry forward in perfect formation—three abreast, three behind, two flanking. Their timing was flawless, and their coordination showed the steel of experience. They surged toward the Fallen Chieftain like a tide of blades and discipline.
Steel met flesh.
The clash was deafening.
Blades sank into the orc's thick hide, but not deep enough. Its arm swung—a blur of meat and metal—and hurled one of the frontliners through the air like a ragdoll. But even as blood sprayed, the infantry adjusted, flowing around the gap, keeping pressure high and formation tight.
Then came Team One.
Koda and Torren struck like lightning breaking off from a storm. No formation. No rhythm. Just violence, raw and unrelenting.
Torren's hammer crashed into the creature's side, sending out a shockwave that made the walls shudder. Koda followed immediately, driving his blade low and upward, aiming for joints, underarms, tendons—striking not with wild fury but precision that had become lethal instinct.
When the beast reeled, Team Three pressed.
When it turned, Team One punished.
Around them, Team Four worked tirelessly—barriers flashing to block deadly counterstrikes, bolstering stamina, healing bleeding wounds mid-motion. Support spells rippled through the air, shining for a moment before being drowned in blood and grit.
But the monster would not fall.
It adapted.
Team Two's scouts slipped through the edges of the fight—daggers slicing at the backs of knees, the gaps in armor, the exposed ridges of muscle. But it didn't flinch. It didn't turn. It simply knew they weren't threats worth acknowledging.
Its mind was sharp, cruel. This wasn't a beast—it was a king.
And it was toying with them.
Time slowed in the thick of the battle. Every second was a gamble. Every breath hard-earned.
Then—an opening.
Koda caught it. A half-stumble, an overreached strike—Torren seized the shoulder, pinned it low.
And Koda moved.
He leapt, twisting mid-air, driving his blade deep—just under the thick jaw, up through the neck with the full momentum of his weight behind it.
The scream was horrible, gurgling.
Torren raised his hammer and brought it down on the crown of the beast's head just as Koda's blade burst from the back of its throat.
The skull cracked like a ripe melon.
The head split free.
Silence.
The monstrous body trembled once—then slumped with an earth-shaking crash. A groan rolled through the chamber as the impact shook the bone throne into rubble.
Panting. Blood dripping. Limbs shaking.
They did it.
"It's over…" someone whispered.
And then—
The corpse twitched.
A wet, sucking sound echoed through the hall.
Koda's eyes widened in disbelief as the headless body rose slowly to its knees.
From the blood-soaked floor, the severed head began to pull—a mass of flesh and sinew stretching out like hungry tendrils, crawling back toward the neck.
"No—" Dara breathed.
The tendrils snapped into place.
And with a hideous pop, the head reattached.
The Fallen Chieftain's black eyes fluttered open once more, and the twisted grin returned—wider now.
"More… fight," it growled. "Good."
And the nightmare began again.
The battle raged.
The Fallen Chieftain struck like a storm, its massive arms a blur, weaponless now—but far deadlier than before. Claws tore through shields, fists shattered stone. It didn't tire. It didn't slow.
Blood soaked the throne room, pooling beneath torn flags and splintered bones. Screams mingled with steel.
Koda dodged a wild swing and vaulted off a broken pillar, landing a deep slash across the beast's exposed back. Torren was there a breath later—his hammer crashing into its shoulder, sending a spray of black ichor across the floor.
It dropped to a knee.
Team Three surged in again, exploiting the moment, driving blades into the downed creature's ribs, throat, neck—again and again. Eris slid beneath the beast and drove her dagger into the spine.
A final bellow.
Then it slumped—again—lifeless.
Silence fell. Labored breathing. Cracked voices muttering prayers or curses.
They waited. One second. Two.
But the sound returned—that horrific, wet pulling, like meat tearing free of bone.
"No…" Rovik murmured.
The creature stirred.
Its body reknit with an obscene speed now—skin sealing, muscle pulsing. And the head—it hadn't even come off this time. It had never needed to.
It rose for the fifth time.
A quiet panic spread through the group. Even now, after so much punishment, the Chieftain looked barely winded—if anything, stronger.
They struck again. A furious, coordinated assault. Eris's poison. Dara's team unleashing every technique they knew. Koda and Torren, reckless and relentless, hammered away—bone cracking, flesh tearing.
A second death. For the fifth time.
And again—it rose.
Koda staggered back, chest heaving. His blood—some of it his own, some not—dripped from his blade. His eyes burned, not from pain, but from clarity. He looked beyond the Chieftain… to the spire.
There—far above them—twisted veins of mana pulsed like arteries. From the heart of the tower, a dark energy funneled down, winding through the cracked stone floor and into the throne. Into the beast.
His breath caught.
That's it.
"It's the spire!" Koda bellowed. "It's feeding him!"
Heads turned.
"When he falls again—cover me. I'm ending this!"
They didn't hesitate. Exhausted as they were, they nodded.
The Chieftain was already rising.
With renewed fury, the team fell on it once more. Koda didn't wait for the body to drop this time—he leapt early, sprinting past its collapsing mass the moment Torren's hammer connected and cracked its spine.
He charged through a ruined archway at the rear of the chamber and into the spire itself.
The tower interior was cold. Too cold. Every stone seemed to breathe—slow and damp. A faint pulsing sound echoed through the halls like a heartbeat, low and wrong.
As he ascended the steps, the light dimmed. Then the smell hit him.
Rot. Mold. Something far older than death.
He reached the peak—and stopped.
There, in the center of a vast, cracked chamber, was the source.
A black heart of congealed mana, suspended in midair, pulsing and thrumming with greedy hunger. And below it… something worse.
An amalgamation. Limbs. Faces. Bones. Dozens of them—maybe hundreds—all fused together in a spiraling, twisting monument to gluttony and rage. It slurped from the base of the floating heart like a babe to the teat, draining the dregs of the world.
Eyes opened across its flesh—some weeping, some blank. A long jaw slowly split down the center, revealing rows of mismatched teeth.
It saw Koda.
And it smiled.