The Underdark, already a land of eternal gloom, now seemed to pulse with the rhythm of undeath, a place where the boundaries of life and death were collapsing into one.
The clash between gray dwarves hardened by centuries of survival and the unholy tide summoned by the Death Knight was no ordinary battle.
Just as Kurman was cutting through the endless tide of abominations, he felt it—an overwhelming pressure, a killing intent so suffocating it froze the blood in his veins. His instincts screamed. He jerked his absorption shield up, bracing it across his chest.
BOOM—BANG!
The colossal black spear struck with a force that shattered sound itself. Twice the speed of sound, it tore through the air like a god's judgment and slammed against his absorption shield.
The impact was cataclysmic. Kurman's towering body was hurled backward as if he weighed nothing, blasted more than a hundred meters through the air before crashing into a stone-built dwelling. The house crumpled like paper beneath his mass. Two gray dwarf soldiers, too slow to move, were crushed instantly, their bones cracking like brittle twigs under the weight of their commander's body.
"Arghhh!"
Kurman staggered upright, his vision swimming. His eyes fell upon the shield he had forged with his own hands, a relic capable of devouring even legendary attacks. Now it lay in fragments at his feet, utterly destroyed. His heart clenched. This was no ordinary blow—it had been enough to ruin an artifact the Gray Dwarf believed indestructible.
Then he noticed it: his chest armor, dented inward as though struck by the hammer of a god. Even his giantized form had not absorbed the full brunt. Pain gnawed through his ribs, and he spat blackened blood that hissed as it struck the ground.
For a heartbeat, the battlefield froze. The clash of steel, the screams, the gnashing of undead teeth—all fell silent, as if the entire Underdark was holding its breath.
Kurman dragged himself free of the rubble, stone and soil falling from his massive form. He looked across the cavernous field, and his heart sank. Undead stood everywhere—an endless army of shambling, twisted things. Gray dwarves who had been his comrades now rose with eyes burning violet flame, their expressions blank, their mouths wet with grave-spittle. Some clutched axes and hammers with trembling hands. Others had been warped by the fog's corruption into grotesque horrors—limbs stretched too long, mouths split open to reveal jagged black teeth.
His thousands of soldiers. All of them. Gone. How long had passed since the battle began? Minutes? An hour? It did not matter. The Gray Dwarves were dead. Their army was gone.
And then, at last, he appeared.
The Death Knight.
Kurman's breath caught in his throat. He had heard whispers, grim rumors carried in hushed voices over smoky tavern tables—yet nothing had prepared him for the sight. A towering figure in armor more luster than the silver, seated atop a mount that should not exist. Nightmare. Its four hooves burned with living fire, each step leaving scars of flame upon the stone. Its eyes glowed like twin furnaces, its breath a stream of smoke and cinders.
In the Death Knight's hand, a weapon materialized—a sword vast and jagged, forged of pure dark purple black fog. It pulsed with the same hunger as the spear, each beat echoing like a war drum in Kurman's bones.
Kurman roared, defiance bursting from his lungs like fire from a forge. He raised his axe high, ignoring the abominations clawing at his legs, biting at his armor. "Kill!" His voice thundered through the cavern. He surged forward, scattering undead in sprays of blood and bone, each swing of his weapon cleaving through a dozen bodies.
Nightmare's hooves struck the ground, and rivers of fire burst forth. Arthas moved with unnatural grace, his armored figure dissolving into shadow and reappearing in an instant.
Kurman spun, but too slow. The Death Knight was behind him already, black blade poised with blood.
A chill colder than the void itself pierced Kurman's soul. His movements seized, his massive body freezing in place as though invisible chains had bound his limbs. He could not even raise his hand. He could only watch, helpless, as the world dimmed around him As he fell down with a loud thud.
Then came the mist.
The dark purple-black fog, writhing with tendrils like serpents, surged toward him. It poured into his wounds, slithered into his nose, his mouth, his ears, his very eyes. His vision blurred as his veins turned black beneath his skin, the corruption crawling through him with unbearable speed.
His last thoughts clawed at him. The kingdom will fall. They will not believe. They think the Death Knight is nothing… nothing worth mentioning. Fools. Blind fools. This carelessness will doom us all.
The kingdom was going to suffer, but there were still many guys like him in the kingdom who thought that the death knight was not worth mentioning.
This carelessness would destroy the entire kingdom…
Then all thought stopped. His mind drowned in shadow.
His body, stripped of will, began to shudder. The magic that powered his gigantification flickered, then dimmed. The technique was dying with its host, the giant frame threatening to collapse back into its mortal form.
But Arthas was already watching. His burning gaze pierced through the fog, and he sensed the truth: this dwarf was no ordinary soldier. Some among the Gray Dwarves were born with strange gifts—innate powers, echoes of their cursed heritage. The abilities to enlarge, to vanish, to twist their forms. He had slain many of them in thirteen years of war, grinding the clans into meat for his army. Many of his giant undead had come from these gray-skinned dwarves.
But this… this was different. Never had he seen one grow so big, so powerful, so unyielding. This body was rare. Precious.
"Yes…" Arthas whispered, his voice echoing like a grave's sigh. His gauntlet hand stretched, and the fog thickened, coiling tighter around Kurman's collapsing frame. "You will serve."
And in the silence of the battlefield, amidst the glow of blue flames in countless hollow eyes, Kurman—once proud captain of the Gray Dwarves—fell.
He stretched out his armor-covered palm, and the dark purple-black mist around him stirred as though it had been waiting for his command. The fog writhed violently, twisting like snakes, before it began to condense into form. From the swirling vapors emerged a jagged weapon—a dagger-like shard of night, its edges bleeding shadow, humming with whispers of tormented souls.
Without hesitation, Arthas thrust the weapon down. The blade pierced Kurman's massive chest with a sickening crack of bone and armor piercing through his heart and an eruption of unnatural light.
The gray dwarf's body convulsed. A mysterious force, ancient and malignant, took root in his veins. Kurman's eyes, once shut in death, flared open again. From them burst forth not violet light like the lesser undead, but a raging blue soul flame—a mark of something far stronger, far rarer.
Unlike the other fallen Gray Dwarves, Kurman's corpse did not shrink back to its mortal size. His giantized form remained intact, towering and grotesque, his thick armor and warped flesh both reinforced by necromantic power. Slowly, deliberately, he lowered himself onto one knee before Arthas, his titanic axe still clutched in hand.
The fortress was silent now. Not a living heartbeat remained within its blackened walls. Only the endless stares of the undead glowed in the darkness, thousands of eyes burning in hues of sickly violet and baleful blue. Their silent vigil made the air heavy with dread.
Then, from beyond the horizon, the stillness shattered.
Gusts of wind tore through the battlefield as shadows moved across the ceiling of the Underdark cavern. Vast shapes cut through the air—wings, massive and leathery, flapping with power that shook the air. Their wingbeats were thunder, their roars echoing like storms through the tunnels.
Dragons had come.
And from the fathomless depths of the Black Lake, its surface boiling and churning with toxic waves, a colossal figure rose—Barbatos, a terror of scale and fang, wreathed in the same dark mist as Arthas himself. The water hissed as it dripped from his scales, each droplet carrying the stench of corruption.
The younger dragons—those with no inherited memories of their kind—had known, in their hearts, that they would encounter a Death Knight. They had heard whispers of such things in fearful tavern tales or from mortal scholars. Yet none of them, in their arrogance and curiosity, were prepared for what awaited them here.
They saw an army so vast it blanketed the cavern floor: countless corpses twisted into mockeries of life, a sea of undead stretching into blackness. And above them, drifting like smoke from a thousand unseen pyres, the dark purple-black fog curled, spread, and flowed, seeking new vessels.
But it was the true dragons—the ancient ones, heirs to memory and bloodline—who felt it deepest. Their scales rippled as cold fear crawled down their spines. For in their inherited recollections, necromancy had always been bound by limits: the stronger the corpse, the greater the rituals required. Dragons knew this truth better than any. To raise a simple ghoul required blood, sacrifice, circles of binding. To raise a soldier took hours of chanting, offerings of flesh and soul. To raise champions, death knights, or monstrosities—such feats were said to demand cataclysms, centuries of planning, and power so great that only archliches or gods themselves could attempt them.
And yet, this knight—this Arthas—was doing it with fog alone. No rituals. No sacrifices. No time. Entire legions of Gray Dwarves, beasts, and horrors, raised in mere moments, all bound by his will.
The dragons circled above in uneasy silence. They looked down on the fortress, on the once-proud Gray Dwarves whose culture was one of harsh discipline, cruelty, and pride in their craftsmanship. Warriors who lived by the forge and oath, stern and suspicious of outsiders, had been reduced to fuel for this necromantic tide. Their famed resilience, their brutal pragmatism, their stubborn defiance against gods and demons alike—all broken, twisted, made mockeries of their former selves. Even Kurman, once a general of stature and discipline, now knelt as nothing more than a thrall.
The horror of it rippled through even dragon hearts.
When the dragons at last pierced through the cloud of undead, they descended enough to look upon Arthas himself. He stood tall upon the broken stones, silver armor gleaming with light that seemed carved into reality itself. His blade dripped with holy light, and the fog swirled around him like a crown.
"This is the Death Knight…" one whispered, her voice trembling.
Lyanna narrowed her eyes, wary, her claws tightening mid-flight.
Hannah, Emilia, and the other true dragons exchanged grim glances. Their inherited memories told them what a Death Knight should be, but none of those visions matched what stood before them now. Arthas was not bound by the usual rules. His aura was deeper, more alien, more absolute. He radiated not just death, but dominion—an authority that seemed to command the very concept of mortality itself.
Something in their blood screamed: This one is different.
Yet Arthas did not even glance their way. He ignored the circling dragons, their curiosity, their fear, even their hunger to know more. Instead, he walked forward through the tide of corpses, his footsteps heavy, deliberate. Before the looming figure of Barbatos, he stopped and bowed low, performing a knight's ritual gesture, gauntleted hand to chest.
"Master," his voice echoed across the cavern, cold and resonant, "all the enemies here have been eliminated."
Barbatos's fanged maw curled into a smile, jagged teeth glistening with white ichor. He gazed upon the fortress, upon the dense ranks of undead arrayed like an ocean, and his satisfaction was clear.
"Arthas," the dragon-lord rumbled, his voice vibrating through stone, "you have done well."
The Gray Dwarf kingdom, once proud and defiant in its tunnels, was gone. Its people broken, its armies repurposed, its name condemned to dust. Even if Arthas had unleashed only a fraction of his strength, it was already enough to wipe entire civilizations from history.
Barbatos's eyes gleamed like crimson blood as he lifted his claw, pointing toward the caverns beyond.
"Then attack directly."
The command was simple, yet it carried the weight of inevitability. The world itself seemed to shudder beneath the decree, for in its wake, the tide of undeath surged forth like an unending ocean. A single utterance, and the Gray Dwarves's graves. The living would drown in despair, suffocated beneath the endless march of death.
Barbatos's gaze swept toward the towering forms of the dragons who lingered close to Arthas, their eyes burning with clear colors. His voice rose, imperious and resonant, echoing through the hollow chambers of the Underdark like a divine proclamation.
"Gonzalo, Parvati, Isis, Azlik, Dior, Melissa, Katie, Eirlys, Emilia, Hannah, Saith, Ignacio, Miligas, Gaia, Agni, Guanyin, Ares, Shala, Izanami, Atlas, Freya, Horus, Radha, Maeve, Cernunnos, Hecate, Dagda, Diana, Nephthys, Tyr, Vesna, Ghuun, Neza, Zaria, Enki, Lillinoe, Brigid, Cizin, Tlaloc, Chernobog— you forty, step forth! You will march beside Arthas. You will heed his commands as though they were my own. Until I call you back, his will is your law."
With those words, the names of gods, goddesses, and forgotten deities—echoes of myth carried from Barbatos's former human life—were carved into the Starry Sky air, binding themselves to the draconic titans. More than three hundred dragons now bore divine names, the names chosen not by whim but with precision, reflecting the essence of their colors and the shaping of their nascent personalities. Golden, Silver, Brass, Bronze, and Copper—shimmering Metallics whose brilliance once brought awe. Red, Blue, Green, Black, and White—savage Chromatics, embodiments of elemental wrath. And now, all bent beneath his dominion, their beastly nature stolen, their names reshaped, their purpose reforged in undeath.
Barbatos's lips curled into something between a sneer and a benediction as he continued, his voice heavy with dark majesty.
"As for the rest of you—watch, wait, and savor the slaughter. If the hunger for battle calls to your blood, then take wing and follow your brothers and sisters into the carnage. Spill fire, frost, and lightning upon the living until the ground itself is charred black with their screams. But if patience is your desire, then roam this Underdark freely. It is vast beyond reckoning, its caverns stretching deeper than from what you know from the books, its shadows hiding a world that even ancient kings failed to claim. Search, devour, and make this domain your playground. Whatever you choose, you remain mine, and the world shall tremble beneath your wings."
Before him, more than three hundred pairs of draconic eyes gleamed like curious stars in a night without end, each one reflecting the unholy brilliance of their new commander. In silence they obeyed, bound not by chains of steel but by the irresistible weight of Father's will.
For this battle, he chose not to stand at the frontlines. Instead, he plans to remain upon the black cliffs of Shadow Island, his gaze cold and unblinking as he surveyed the vast abyss before him. From here, he would guide the storm. Arthas and the dragons would go ahead — not as vanguard sacrifices, but as living blades, sharpened and tested, meant to clash and draw blood before the true killing stroke was delivered. For them, this was exercise; for him, it was calculation.
The Gray Dwarf Kingdom had come seeking the Black Dragon Ball, and perhaps more — ancient relics whispered of in the dark, artifacts buried in stone long before mortal memory. He knew their greed was boundless, and their ambitions stretched as deep as the Underdark itself. And though he possessed three resurrection armors, he was not careless. No one could be, when facing a kingdom that had endured for thousands of years beneath endless layers of stone. A kingdom that had hidden its secrets in the dark while surface empires rose and crumbled like dust in the wind.
They were not like the drow. The dark elves were consumed by endless blood feuds, each House gnawing at the throat of the other in blind service to a spider goddess whose laughter echoed with malice. Their sacrifices and betrayals did not strengthen them; they hollowed them. Though the drow possessed the fertility of elves, capable of birthing millions across their millennia, they squandered that gift in ceaseless infighting. Instead of expanding, they rotted in their own webs, too obsessed with daggers in the dark to grasp the greater Underdark beyond their walls.
The Gray Dwarves — This Kingdom — were different. Cold, relentless, authoritarian, they built kingdoms of steel and stone that did not fracture with every whim of a goddess. Where the drow bled themselves dry in civil war, the Duergar turned cruelty into unity. They thrived not on chaos, but on control.
And yet, their dominion had not come easily. The curse laid upon their kind was crueler than chains: a curse of low fertility. Unlike their surface kin, or even the drow, the Gray Dwarves struggled to bring forth new life. Their lifespans stretched five centuries and more, but generation by generation their numbers grew too slowly. Entire cities might starve for children. Entire armies withered before they could be replenished. All this traced back to the cruel hand of Laduguer, their grim god, and the long centuries of torment under the mind flayers — "mind suckers" whose experiments scarred their very bloodline.