The tunnels beneath Aethelgard were never meant for princes. They were the veins of the city, clogged with the runoff of a hundred thousand lives—sewage, brackish river water, and the damp rot of ancient stone.
As the small group descended, the air grew heavy and cold. Prince Valerius led the way, his torch casting long, dancing shadows that made the weeping walls look like they were bleeding. Archibald walked at the rear, just behind Princess Elara. Every time his boots splashed into a puddle, he winced, expecting a blade to whistle out of the dark.
But something was different. His body felt... tight. The single wisp of red smoke he had absorbed from the fallen knight in the kitchen—the "Count of 52"—wasn't just a number. It was a physical weight. It felt like he had swallowed a hot coal that refused to cool. His senses were sharper; he could hear the skittering of rats twenty yards ahead, and the dim torchlight felt almost blinding.
"Keep up, Scullery," Sir Kaelen hissed, his voice echoing off the low ceiling. The knight didn't look back, but his violet-red aura shimmered with irritation. "If you trip and break that pan, I'm leaving you for the crawlers."
"I'm keeping up," Archibald whispered, though his legs felt like lead.
"Kaelen, leave him be," Elara said softly. She glanced back at Archibald, her eyes tired but searching. "Archibald, are you hurt? You're shaking."
"I... I think it's the kill, Highness," Archibald admitted, his voice barely audible. "The knight. His... his mist. It feels like it's trying to push its way out of my skin."
Valerius stopped and turned, the torchlight illuminating his grim face. He looked at Archibald with a mixture of pity and clinical interest. "The First Intake," the Prince said. "For a 'Zero' to take fifty-two points at once is like a starving man gorging on a banquet. Your soul doesn't know how to weave the power into your muscles yet. Focus on your breathing. Imagine the heat spreading to your fingertips. If you let it sit in your chest, it'll burst your heart."
Archibald did as he was told, shivering as he felt the warmth slowly migrate from his core into his thin limbs. The shaking subsided, replaced by a strange, humming strength. He felt less like a boy and more like a bowstring drawn too tight.
After an hour of wading through filth, they reached a heavy iron grate. Valerius signaled for silence. He tapped a specific rhythm on the bars—three slow, two fast.
With a rusted groan, the grate swung inward. A dozen crossbows were leveled at them from the darkness beyond.
"Lower your weapons!" a gruff voice commanded. A man stepped forward into the light. He was older, his face a map of scars, wearing the battered breastplate of a Captain of the City Watch. This was Captain Thorne. His Ledger was a solid, brick-red haze—a Count of 800. "Prince Valerius. By the gods, we thought the Chancellor had taken your head."
"Vane tried," Valerius said, stepping into the dry cellar. "He found the Ledger of a High Arcanist instead. Where are the others?"
Thorne sighed, gesturing to the room behind him. It was a massive, vaulted wine cellar beneath a ruined tavern in the Low-Quarter. Scattered around the room were men in various states of disarray. Some were Royal Guards who had escaped the purge; others were common soldiers and even a few armed stable-hands.
Archibald counted them. Thirty. Exactly thirty.
"This is it?" Kaelen spat, looking around the room with disgust. "Thirty half-starved dogs to retake a kingdom? Malakor has ten thousand men in the capital alone, and their counts grow with every 'loyalist' they execute."
"They aren't just dogs, Kaelen," Thorne said, his eyes narrowing. "They're the only men in this city who didn't kneel when the General started cutting throats. But you're right about one thing—we can't stay here. Malakor has already put a price on the royal bloodline."
Thorne walked to a table and unrolled a piece of parchment. It was a royal decree, fresh from the palace presses.
> BY ORDER OF KING MALAKOR I
> For the head of the Pretender Valerius: 50,000 Gold Crowns & a Count-Transfer of 500.
> For the head of the Princess Elara: 20,000 Gold Crowns.
> For the location of the survivors: 5,000 Gold Crowns.
>
Archibald felt a cold sweat break out. The "Count-Transfer" was the real prize. In this world, gold was fine, but the ability to legally "inherit" someone else's kill-count through a bounty was how commoners became lords overnight.
"They're turning the whole city into hunters," Elara whispered, her hand going to the hilt of her staff.
"It's worse than that," Thorne said. "Malakor didn't just hire the Watch. He opened the gates of Black-Iron Prison. He's promised a full pardon to any 'High-Count' criminal who brings him your heads. The Hounds of Malakor are already in the streets."
A sudden, sharp whistle echoed from the street-level grate above the cellar. One of the sentries scrambled down the ladder, his face pale.
"Captain! There's a pack of them outside. Not soldiers. They look like... scavengers. But they've got a 'Scent-Eater' with them."
Kaelen's hand went to his sword. "A Scent-Eater? Those monsters are only used for tracking High-Ledgers. How could they have found us so fast?"
"They aren't tracking your Ledger, Kaelen," Valerius said, his eyes shifting to Archibald. "They're tracking the First Intake. The 'new' blood of a fresh kill is like a beacon to a Scent-Eater."
Archibald felt thirty pairs of eyes turn toward him. He clutched his frying pan, feeling the heat of the 52 kills pulsing in his veins. He wasn't just a servant anymore; he was a glowing target.
"We have to move," Valerius commanded. "Thorne, get the men to the back exit. We head for the West Gate. If we can reach the forest of Gallow-Wood, we can disappear."
"The West Gate is a kill-box, Highness," Thorne warned. "There's only one way out of the Low-Quarter that isn't watched by a battalion."
"And where is that?"
Thorne looked at the ceiling. "The Bone-Walks. The rooftop bridges. But if we go up there, we're exposed. Every archer in the district will see our auras."
"Then we go fast," Valerius said. "Archibald, stay in the middle. If you see anything... anything at all... scream."
They began to climb the narrow, spiral stairs leading to the roof of the tavern. Archibald's heart was drumming a frantic rhythm. As they emerged onto the rooftops, the scale of the disaster hit him.
The city of Aethelgard was burning. Plumes of black smoke choked the stars, and the distant sound of bells told of a city in its death throes. Below them, in the narrow alleys of the slums, Archibald saw flashes of red—the flickering auras of men hunting men.
"Down there!" Julian whispered, pointing.
A group of five men in tattered leather armor were moving through the alley. In the center of them was a hunched, distorted figure on a chain. It looked human, but its nose had been surgically elongated, and its eyes were sewn shut. It was sniffing the air, its head snapping toward the tavern roof.
It let out a high-pitched, warbling shriek.
"The Scent-Eater!" Kaelen barked. "Kill it!"
Kaelen drew a throwing knife and flicked it with supernatural speed—the power of 150 kills behind the throw. The blade blurred through the air.
But before it could hit, a shadow dropped from a higher chimney stack. A massive, jagged Greatsword intercepted the knife mid-air with a ping.
Standing on the bridge ahead of them was a man nearly seven feet tall, wrapped in bandages. His Ledger wasn't red—it was almost black, a deep, bruised purple that hummed with the weight of two thousand kills.
"The Prince and his kittens," the giant rumbled, his voice sounding like grinding stones. "Malakor said you'd be coming this way. I am Vorg the Butcher. And I've been promised a lordship for your hearts."
Vorg the Butcher didn't move with the speed of a man his size. He moved with the speed of a man who had stolen the momentum of two thousand lives. When he stepped forward, the wooden bridge beneath him—a rickety construction of salvaged timber and rusted nails—didn't just creak; it groaned as if the wood itself were terrified.
"Archibald, get down!" Princess Elara shouted, shoving the boy toward the peaked roof of a nearby tenement.
Sir Kaelen was the first to strike. He was a blur of silver and violet light, his sword whistling through the air in a perfect horizontal arc. It was a strike that would have decapitated any normal man.
Vorg didn't parry. He simply raised his forearm, clad in a bracer of jagged, blackened iron.
CLANG.
The collision sent a shower of sparks into the night air. Kaelen's blade didn't cut. It recoiled. The sheer density of Vorg's Ledger acted like a physical wall, an invisible layer of hardened intent that turned steel into glass.
"A hundred and fifty?" Vorg rumbled, his voice a low vibration that Archibald felt in his teeth. "You're a snack, little knight. Hardly worth the effort of swinging my blade."
With a flick of his wrist, Vorg backhanded Kaelen. The blow caught the knight in the chest, sending him skidding across the shingles, his armor leaving a trail of sparks.
"Form a circle!" Prince Valerius roared, his golden blades out and shimmering. "Thorne, take the flanks! Protect the children!"
The thirty loyalists engaged the "Hounds"—the five hunters who had been trailing them. These weren't soldiers; they were street-fighters, men who used hooks, nets, and poisoned daggers. The rooftop became a chaotic mess of shifting shadows and the spray of red mist. Every time a man fell, his "count" was instantly absorbed by the nearest survivor, creating localized bursts of heat and light that blinded Archibald.
Archibald was flat on his stomach on the slanted roof, clutching the gutter for dear life. Below him, the alley was a hundred-foot drop into darkness. Above him, the Butcher was systematically dismantling the royal defense.
"Stay behind me, Julian," Elara commanded, her short-staff glowing with a pale, steady light—the mark of a strategist's aura, designed for defense rather than slaughter.
Vorg raised his massive Greatsword, the blade notched and stained with centuries of dried blood. He brought it down in a vertical smash aimed at the Prince. Valerius dodged, the wood beneath him splintering into toothpicks, but the shockwave of the impact sent everyone within ten feet stumbling.
Archibald felt the roof beneath him shift.
The tenement they were standing on was old, its support beams riddled with dry rot and weakened by the very fire Malakor's men had started two blocks away. Archibald noticed something—a chimney stack, heavy and bloated with soot, was leaning precariously toward the bridge where Vorg stood.
I have to do something, Archibald thought, his hands shaking. But I can't fight that monster.
His eyes caught a glimpse of the Scent-Eater. The creature was crawling along the side of the building like a giant spider, its blind, sewn eyes twitching. It was heading straight for Elara.
Archibald looked at his frying pan. Then he looked at the chimney.
He didn't have a plan. He just had a sudden, overwhelming urge to move. He scrambled up the shingles, his feet slipping on the slick moss.
"Hey! You! Ugly!" Archibald screamed at the Scent-Eater.
The creature's head snapped toward him. It hissed, a sound like steam escaping a pipe, and leaped.
Archibald panicked. He swung the frying pan with both hands, not as a weapon, but as a shield. The creature's weight slammed into the pan, the force throwing Archibald backward. But as he fell, his heel caught on a loose masonry stone at the base of the chimney.
The stone popped out.
It was the "keystone" of the chimney's weight distribution—a flaw Archibald had noticed weeks ago while delivering bread to this very district. Without that single stone, and with the added momentum of the Scent-Eater slamming into the structure, gravity took over.
The chimney didn't just crumble; it toppled like a felled oak.
The Scent-Eater was crushed instantly under a ton of soot-stained brick. But the chimney kept falling. It smashed directly into the center of the wooden bridge where Vorg was about to deliver a finishing blow to a kneeling Sir Kaelen.
The bridge disintegrated.
Vorg's eyes widened—the first sign of surprise he had shown. He tried to leap to the safety of a nearby ledge, but the collapsing timber caught his ankle. The giant man, Greatsword and all, plummeted into the darkness of the alley below, followed by a mountain of brick and dust.
A heavy silence fell over the rooftops, broken only by the distant crackle of fires.
The five Hounds, seeing their leader fallen, hesitated. That was all the opening Captain Thorne and his men needed. Within seconds, the hunters were cut down, their red mists flowing into the loyalists like ribbons of light.
Archibald lay on his back, gasping, covered in gray soot. He looked up to see Prince Valerius standing over him. The Prince's golden armor was dented, and his face was smeared with blood, but he looked at Archibald with an expression that was halfway between horror and awe.
"Did you... did you just kill a Scent-Eater and a two-thousand-count Butcher with a brick?" Valerius asked, his voice cracking.
"I... I tripped, My Lord," Archibald wheezed.
Sir Kaelen stood up, coughing out dust, his eyes burning with a humiliated fury. "It was a structural failure! The boy is a menace! He almost brought the whole roof down on us!"
"But he didn't," Elara said, stepping forward and helping Archibald to his feet. She wiped a smudge of soot from his cheek, her touch lingering for just a second. "He saved us. Again."
"The Butcher isn't dead," Captain Thorne called out, peering over the edge. "A man with a count of two thousand doesn't die from a fall. He's buried under the rubble, and he's going to be very, very angry when he digs himself out. We need to move. Now!"
They didn't stop to argue. They sprinted across the remaining roof-links, leaping from tenement to tenement until the air began to change. The smell of smoke and sewage was replaced by the sharp, cold scent of pine and wet earth.
The West Gate of Aethelgard loomed ahead—a massive stone archway guarded by a skeleton crew of Malakor's new recruits. With the Prince and Kaelen leading the charge, the thirty loyalists broke through the line like a hot knife through wax. They didn't stop to harvest the counts; they ran until the stone streets turned to dirt paths.
By the time the moon reached its zenith, they were deep within the Gallow-Wood, a forest so thick that even the Ledger's glow was muffled by the canopy.
They made camp in a hidden ravine. The men were exhausted, their auras flickering low. Valerius sat by a small, shielded fire, staring at his hands.
"We lost the kingdom in a single night," the Prince whispered. "My father. My home."
"We have thirty men, Highness," Thorne said softly. "And we have the Ledger. Malakor thinks he's won, but he's forgotten that the common folk don't love a tyrant. They just fear him. We give them a reason to hope, and that army of thirty will become three thousand."
Archibald sat on the edge of the camp, away from the knights. He looked at his hands. They were still shaking. He felt the '52' inside him—the stolen life of the knight from the kitchen. It felt like a seed, waiting to grow.
Suddenly, a twig snapped in the darkness.
Sir Kaelen was on his feet in a second, sword drawn. "Who's there?"
A figure emerged from the shadows. It wasn't a soldier. It was a young girl, no older than twelve, dressed in rags. Her eyes were wide with terror, and she was clutching a crumpled piece of paper.
"Please," she sobbed. "Are you the Prince? My village... the 'Kings-Men' came. They said if we didn't hand over our grain, they'd start 'harvesting' us to increase the General's Ledger. They've already taken my father."
Valerius looked at his men. They were wounded, tired, and hunted. But then he looked at Archibald, the boy who had no right to be alive, yet stood there nonetheless.
"Where is your village, child?" Valerius asked, standing tall.
"Oakhaven," she whispered. "Two miles North."
"Kaelen, Thorne, get the men ready," Valerius commanded. "We aren't just fleeing anymore. We're recruiting."
Archibald gripped his frying pan. He was terrified. He was scrawny. He was weak. But as he looked at the girl, he felt the luck—the strange, supernatural pull of the world—urging him forward.
The first village was waiting. And so was the first real test of their new army.