The sky tore open like flesh beneath a blade.
One moment, Lucas Nightveil was standing in his apartment, whiskey in hand, watching news reports of another pointless border skirmish. The television droned on about casualties, about peace talks that would inevitably fail, about the usual human comedy of violence dressed up as diplomacy.
Lucas had stopped caring about such things years ago.
The next moment, reality shattered.
It wasn't gradual. There was no warning, no divine trumpet, no angelic choir announcing the end of the world. One second he existed in his small, suffocating apartment with its peeling wallpaper and the smell of cigarette smoke from the neighbor downstairs. The next, he was falling through a kaleidoscope of fractured light and screaming colors that shouldn't exist.
His whiskey glass shattered against nothing. The sound echoed into infinity.
Then came the impact.
Lucas hit solid ground hard enough that he tasted copper. His vision swam, doubled, then slowly focused on a sky the color of old blood. He lay there for a moment, feeling the cold stone beneath his back, feeling his ribs ache from the fall, feeling remarkably... calm.
Around him, the screaming began.
It started as a few voices—confused, frightened. Then it multiplied. Hundreds of voices. Thousands. Tens of thousands. A chorus of human terror that rose into the crimson sky like smoke from a funeral pyre.
Lucas sat up slowly, methodically checking his body for broken bones. Nothing. Just bruises. Good.
The landscape stretched before him like something from a fever dream. Gray wasteland as far as the eye could see, dotted with twisted black trees that looked more like the grasping fingers of buried giants than actual vegetation. Fog rolled across the ground in thick waves, and in the distance, the ruins of some massive structure jutted from the earth—a castle, maybe, or a temple, long since fallen to whatever catastrophe had claimed this place.
People were materializing everywhere. They appeared in flashes of light—businessmen in suits, mothers clutching children, teenagers still in their pajamas, elderly people who looked like the shock alone might kill them. They appeared and immediately began to panic.
Some fell to their knees and wept. Some vomited. Some simply stood frozen, their minds unable to process what had happened to them.
A middle-aged woman in a bathrobe materialized three feet from Lucas and immediately began screaming, her voice raw and animal. A young man in a security guard uniform appeared next to her and started shouting questions at the sky, demanding answers from an entity that clearly wasn't listening.
Lucas ignored them all.
He stood, brushing dirt from his clothes—the same black shirt and jeans he'd been wearing in his apartment—and noticed something hovering in his peripheral vision. When he focused on it, it expanded into a translucent blue interface, like something from a video game.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]
[Welcome to "Global Lord"]
[Total Participants: 8,547,239,461]
[Survival Rate Prediction: 12%]
[You have been selected as a Lord. Your goal is simple: Survive. Expand. Conquer.]
[Good luck.]
The message was sterile, clinical, delivered with all the warmth of a death sentence. Lucas read it twice, then dismissed it with a thought. Another interface immediately replaced it.
[Lord Status]
Name: Lucas Nightveil
Title: None
Territory Level: 0
Territory Established: No
Units: None
Resources: Starter Pack (Wood ×100, Stone ×50, Food ×10)
[WARNING: You must establish a territory within 24 hours or face ELIMINATION]
Lucas studied the information without expression. Around him, others were discovering their own interfaces. The panic intensified.
"What the fuck is this?!"
"I want to go home! Please, I have kids!"
"Is this a dream? Someone tell me this is a dream!"
A fight had already broken out nearby. Two men were grappling over a pile of wooden planks and stones—presumably someone's starter resources. They rolled in the dirt, punching and clawing at each other with the desperate fury of cornered animals. Blood splattered on gray stone.
No one intervened. Everyone was too concerned with their own survival.
Lucas watched the fight for a moment with detached interest. The larger man won, smashing the other's head against a rock until he stopped moving. The victor sat there panting, staring at his bloody hands, his face a mask of horror at what he'd just done.
Weakness, Lucas thought. He'll be dead within a week.
Lucas turned away and began walking.
He walked for what felt like hours, though time seemed strange in this place. The blood-red sun—if it was a sun—hung motionless in the sky, neither rising nor setting. The fog never thinned. The air tasted of ash and copper, and every breath felt slightly wrong, as if the atmosphere itself was composed of something other than oxygen and nitrogen.
Lucas passed hundreds of other "Lords," each in various stages of panic or denial. Some were already attempting to build shelters from their starter resources, constructing crude wooden structures that wouldn't survive a strong wind. Others sat in the dirt and sobbed. A few had the sense to start exploring, searching for food or water or anything that might explain where they were.
Lucas ignored them all and kept walking.
He had a specific destination in mind, though he couldn't have explained why. Some instinct—honed by years of violence and survival—pulled him forward, away from the masses, away from the noise and chaos, toward something that felt... right.
The crowd thinned as he walked. Fewer people had ventured this far from the initial materialization point. The ones he did encounter looked at him strangely—this pale, dark-haired man with cold gray eyes who walked with purpose while everyone else stumbled blindly.
One woman, maybe thirty years old with tear-streaked makeup, grabbed his arm as he passed.
"Please," she begged, her voice hoarse. "Do you know what's happening? Do you know how to get back?"
Lucas looked at her hand on his arm, then at her face. She flinched under his gaze.
"There is no going back," he said flatly. "Accept that now, or die crying about it later."
He pulled his arm free and continued walking. Behind him, the woman collapsed, sobbing harder.
Lucas felt nothing.
The fog grew thicker the farther he traveled. The air grew colder. The twisted trees became more frequent, their branches forming canopies overhead that blocked out the crimson sky. The ground beneath his feet transitioned from packed earth to something else—cracked stone, ancient and worn, carved with symbols that hurt to look at directly.
Lucas had entered what appeared to be ruins of some kind. Fragments of walls jutted from the ground at odd angles. Broken pillars lay scattered like the bones of giants. And everywhere, carved into every surface, were those same writhing symbols—runes or hieroglyphs from a civilization that had clearly embraced death as a philosophy.
The temperature had dropped significantly. Lucas could see his breath now, white mist in the cold air.
He stopped walking when he found it.
A clearing in the ruins, circular and flat, surrounded by seven broken pillars that still stood upright despite the centuries—or millennia—that had clearly passed. In the center of the clearing was a raised platform of black stone, cracked but intact, with more of those unsettling runes carved deep into its surface.
The fog seemed reluctant to enter this space. It swirled around the perimeter but didn't cross into the circle itself.
Lucas stepped forward, and immediately a notification appeared.
[Location Discovered: Ancient Death Altar]
[This location is suitable for establishing a Lair]
[WARNING: This region has an extremely high concentration of death energy. Ambient hostility level: EXTREME. Recommended for experienced Lords only.]
[Establish Lair at this location?]
Lucas didn't hesitate. He selected "Yes."
The ground erupted.
It started as a tremor—a deep, resonant vibration that seemed to come from miles below the earth's surface. Then the platform in the center of the clearing began to glow, those carved runes blazing with cold, blue-white light that cast sharp shadows across the ruins.
The stone beneath Lucas's feet cracked and split. He stepped back calmly, watching as massive blocks of black stone rose from the earth like the bones of some buried leviathan. They assembled themselves with impossible precision, slotting together without mortar or seam, forming walls, archways, battlements.
What emerged was not a crude wooden fort like those other Lords were constructing. What rose from the cursed earth was a fortress—a structure of blackened stone and iron, ancient and terrible, that looked like it had been built to withstand sieges from armies of the damned.
The walls were fifteen feet high and three feet thick. Towers rose at each corner, capped with spires that seemed to drink in the red light from the sky. The main gate was massive iron, reinforced with bands of dark metal and carved with more of those writhing runes. And above the gate, a symbol blazed to life—a crowned skull wreathed in thorns.
[LAIR ESTABLISHED]
[Congratulations! Due to your chosen location and its unique properties, you have unlocked a Legendary-tier Lair!]
[Dark Crypt (Legendary)]
[Description: A fortress blessed by the forces of Death itself. Units summoned from this Lair are not bound by the laws of life and carry the taint of the grave in their bones. This Lair grows stronger with each death that occurs within its domain and can expand its territory by converting the land itself into death-attuned ground.]
[Special Ability: Crypt Resurrection - Units that fall in battle have a chance to rise again as undead variants]
[Available Basic Units: Skeleton Warrior, Zombie Laborer, Ghoul Scout]
[Advanced Units: LOCKED - Perform Awakening Ritual to unlock]
Lucas read the information carefully, then dismissed it. The massive iron gates swung open silently, revealing a courtyard of black stone and a pathway leading to an inner structure—some kind of keep or temple, built into the fortress's heart.
He entered his new domain.
The interior was cold and dark, lit by blue-flamed torches that burned without fuel in sconces along the walls. The architecture was oppressive—low ceilings, narrow corridors, everything designed to make an intruder feel claustrophobic and trapped. But to Lucas, it felt... appropriate.
He followed the main corridor deeper into the structure until it opened into a large chamber. The room was circular, maybe fifty feet across, with a high domed ceiling. The walls were covered in more carved runes, these ones glowing faintly with that same cold light.
And in the center of the room stood an altar.
It was massive—a block of obsidian stone ten feet long and five feet wide, raised on a platform of three steps. The surface was stained dark with what could only be dried blood, centuries old, worked deep into the stone's pores. Channels had been carved into the altar's surface, forming patterns and symbols that all converged on a single point at the stone's center.
Lucas approached slowly, his footsteps echoing in the vast chamber.
As he drew closer, new text materialized above the altar:
[Ancient Blood Altar]
[Purpose: Summoning and Awakening]
[Current Status: Dormant]
[Inscription detected: "Offer blood. Awaken the sleeper. Claim your Queen."]
Lucas stared at the altar for a long moment. The temperature in the chamber had dropped even further. His breath came out in white clouds. Somewhere in the darkness beyond the torchlight, he heard the faint sound of chains rattling.
He drew the crude iron dagger from his starter pack—a simple weapon, barely more than a sharpened metal spike with a leather-wrapped handle. The system had provided it as basic equipment.
Without ceremony, without hesitation, Lucas slashed the blade across his left palm.
Blood welled up immediately—dark, almost black in the blue torchlight. He made a fist, letting the blood drip onto the altar's stained surface.
The effect was instantaneous.
The runes exploded with light—not blue this time, but crimson, the color of fresh arterial spray. The blood Lucas had spilled didn't pool or spread naturally. Instead, it flowed along those carved channels like it was alive, racing across the altar's surface, filling every line and symbol with glowing red light.
The temperature plummeted to freezing.
Frost spread across the walls in beautiful, deadly patterns. The blue flames in the torches guttered and died, leaving only the red glow from the altar to illuminate the chamber. And from beneath the altar—from somewhere deep underground—came the sound of something massive moving.
Stone ground against stone with a sound like breaking bones.
The floor in front of the altar cracked, and through that crack, something rose.
It emerged slowly, deliberately, with the patience of something that had waited for centuries and could afford to wait a few moments more. A coffin—no, a sarcophagus—of polished obsidian and silver, covered in chains that looked like they'd been forged in hell itself. The chains were thick as a man's wrist, black iron covered in more of those writhing runes, and they wrapped around the sarcophagus hundreds of times, binding it shut.
The sarcophagus rose until it stood upright, twelve feet tall, floating three feet above the floor without any visible support.
Then the chains began to break.
They didn't rust or weaken. They simply shattered—exploding into fragments of black metal that dissolved into smoke before hitting the ground. One after another, the chains broke, and with each breaking, the red light from the altar grew brighter, more intense, until Lucas had to squint against its glare.
The final chain shattered.
The lid of the sarcophagus fell away with a sound like thunder, hitting the stone floor and splitting in half.
And she opened her eyes.