Ash rained from the sky that day. Ash, casting the atmosphere dark, weightless, and relentless. It drifted like a funeral shroud, soft at first glance but heavy with what it meant. The wind carried it in slow, spiraling flurries, each flake a ghost of something lost.
A village burned below the cliffs, its rooftops gutted and sagging inward, skeletal beams glowing red beneath their own collapse. The bell tower, once proud, now stood cracked and charred, its spire half-gone, as if some great hand had snapped it mid-prayer. Smoke coiled upward like the last breath of a dying god. And above it all, on the jagged overlook of a ruined fortress, he stood, a lone figure against the dying sky, watching the world burn beneath him.
Drayce Vortalis.
No crown adorned his head here, no banners flanked his sides. Just the wind, shrieking through the ruins as if it belonged to him alone. As if it were telling the tale of his vicious victory. His presence spoke louder than any battle cry, bleeding the warmth from the air and replacing it with something colder than fear.
His black coat whipped behind him, trailing behind him like a banner of ruin, it's hem etched with silver-threaded sigils and marked with bloodstains both old and fresh. Beneath the shadow of his dark fringe, his golden eyes glinted. Not warm like sunlit amber, but sharp, reflective, like something watching you from the bottom of hell.
A commander approached him, his armor was dulled by soot, ash and heavy with the weight of smoke and blood. He stopped a few paces behind the figure on the ridge. His voice suddenly broke through Drayce's wandering thoughts.
"Your orders, your Majesty?"
Drayce didn't turn towards him. His gaze remained fixed on the valley below, where the last spire of the village crumbled into the inferno. Flames danced in his golden pupils flickering like whispers of chaos but his face remained unchanged not divulging anyone anything.
"Let them run," he said, voice low, smooth, and absolute. "Fear spreads farther than corpses."
The commander bowed without question and vanished into the smoke, his silhouette was swallowed by flame-lit haze.
Behind him, four chained prisoners knelt in the mud, their chains heavy, their clothes torn and muddied beyond recognition. Trembling, nobles, generals, priests whatever they had once been, it meant nothing now. One of them lifted his head and dared to speak:
"You can't kill us all…" he rasped. "The kingdom—"
Drayce walked toward him. His golden eyes now fixed on him. Like death in no hurry.
He stopped before the man not even drawing his sword and looked down at him with quiet finality.
"I don't care about the kingdom," he said, in a voice cutting and cold. "I care about what happens after it stops existing, when I mold its remains in my own taste, to serve its new master."
"You fucking...you will go to hell," the man spat.
"Oh? Remind me what do you people named me." Dracye said in amusement.
"Ah, right. I am the devil's own shroud. Then hell will be my refuge." he ended with a cold smile.
Then he raised a single gloved hand, and snapped his fingers.
The guards obeyed without question.
As screams echoed behind him, but Drayce turned his gaze to the north to the untouched kingdoms that still hadn't fallen. Unaware that their time was running out. The wind stirred the ash around his boots like smoke curling at a pyre. And then —
He smiled. Like a man who already saw their end.
***
The war banners of Ilvaran were still burning, their rich velvet reduced to smoldering scraps. The scent of scorched cloth and ash hung heavy in the night air, curling through the darkness like the last breath of a dying kingdom.
Just beyond the broken skeleton of the conquered palace, Drayce walked through the cold moonlight toward his command tent. His long black coat billowed behind him like a dark flag in the wind, and the firelight caught the glint in his lethal golden eyes.
Around him, his commanders and ministers trailed him standing on the edge of their newly won kingdom. They surrounded him as he approached the tents, voices rising one after another with reports and questions.
"Your Majesty, the Ilvaran capital's treasury has been secured. The mint awaits your seal to begin conversion of currency." said a man, thin and pale with ink-stained fingers.
Drayce gaze flickered towards the finance minister. "Finance Minister, it isn't the first kingdom we've captured."
"Ah--of course, Your Majesty. Then I'll proceed with standard protocols." the minister replied.
"Your Majesty, the surviving nobles have been contained in the southern wing," another minister reported. "They request an audience."
The Finance Minister looked up, genuinely puzzled. "Why? Are they requesting an audience as terms of surrender?"
Minister two leaned closer to the finance minister, lowering his voice. "They want to pledge loyalty to join His Majesty."
"Ah! Right," the Finance Minister murmured, nodding earnestly. "His Majesty will show mercy, then!"
"In his mercy, His Majesty kept one alive for bookkeeping skills; otherwise he would already have been executed for his running words." murmured someone from the back of the ministers, earning a few muffled chuckles.
Drayce's voice cut through the surrounding, silencing the murmurs, "Execute them. Quietly. Replace them with those who already swore fealty; the ones who helped us with intel."
"As you say, Your Majesty," came the response.
The Finance Minister, moving slightly back, inclined his head and asked, genuinely shocked, "Why? Wouldn't some of them be useful for administrative purposes?"
It was his first time on a battlefield. Drayce had instructed and called them to set up the new province quickly; otherwise, the Finance Minister would normally arrive later, once all the political groundwork was settled, to handle the finances.
"They were too loyal to Ilvaran once." Minister two replied, easing his confusion. "Accepting them can lead to they plotting in the paperwork. Better to neutralize the risk. We have enough capable man to replace them."
Drayce added in his earlier instruction, "Keep an eye on the new ones. Once they betray, they'll do it again. Give them low posts, nothing important." confusing the finance minister more from the political calculus.
"Then why keep the traitors at all?" he asked his companion, getting confused again.
"Haa...because replacing them with foreign nobles from the start would spark protest," the minister helped him smoothly but with slight irritation this time, "And because punishing them outright looks weak. We need to strip them of influence slowly, letting them rot in mediocrity while we tighten control."
"Ah," said the thin man, ink still on his fingers, as if he finally understood his liege.
They entered Drayce's command tent and the ministers resumed their reports without missing a beat.
"The eastern ports remain unstable," another officer said. "With the capital fallen, they may revolt. Shall we send the Third Battalion, Your Majesty?"
Drayce moved to the centre of the tent, where maps and war plans lay spread across the table. He leaned over them, tracing a finger along the coast. "It was there prime minister's hometown, correct. Send the head of their prime minister with the Fifth Battalion, fear will make them-"
Suddenly, he stopped mid-sentence, abruptly, drawing everyone's attention. All eyes shifted to the emperor as he himself fixated his on the corner of the table. There lay a small box, one they all knew he always carried, a relic he had claimed in his fist when he was just fifteen.
Drayce's expression turned icy, the temperature in the tent seeming to drop by few degrees. Slowly, around the table he walked toward the box and opened it with a sharp clack.
Inside, the box was meant to hold a pendant, but it was empty, giving the pendant's absence strikingly obvious against the velvet lining.
"Bring the stewards, NOW!" Drayce shouted through his voice cutting through the tense silence.
Few stewards now knelt, trembling under the icy gaze of Drcaye, who sat unmoving before them.
Smash! Thud!
Drayce hurled the empty box to the ground, missing the trembling stewards by mere inches.
"Care to explain?" Dracye asked daring them to speak.
"It's an empty box. Something is missing, Your Majesty. From your tent." said the Finance Minister, unaware of the storm already brewing in the room. A few of the other ministers cast him sharp side glances from their bowed heads, silently willing him to stop talking.
Drayce's gaze slid toward him, his golden cold eyes catching the torchlight like a ice crystal but golden.
"Brilliant observation," he said, voice soft but edged with ice. "Tell me, minister, does your tongue move faster than your mind, or does it simply never catch up?"
The thin man's face flushed crimson as he realized, far too late, the depth of his blunder.
"And you--why is no one speaking? Do you want me to pry the truth from your bones?"
A steward at the back began to cry silently. The tent held its breath.
.