"Obviously we refuse!" The Minister of Commerce exclaimed.

Some of the others nodded, but not one was knowledgeable in war.

"Look out the window!" One of the Generals shouted angrily, pointing to the window, which provided an excellent view over the city walls, a view that had now become filled with Undead, "We refuse, he attacks the city and razes it to the ground just like he did with Onigas, and he didn't even use any of his minions then."

"Our glorious city has survived countless invasions and sieges throughout the ages, yet still our walls stand proud." The Minister doubled down.

"Our glorious city will be a glorious message to the rest of the world not to disobey him. I personally trained our soldiers. I have personally ensured the walls are constantly repaired and maintained. I have personally witnessed the might of the Demons, and I can say with total confidence that our city would require the full might of the Demons to fall.

But that man, his strength is different. It doesn't rely on physical power. He reduced Onigas to a mound of rubble by himself. All that power, all condensed into a single point? There isn't a thing in this world that could withstand that. None that I know of, and certainly none in this city."

The Minister opened his mouth but was interrupted.

The City Lord slammed his cane against the side of his desk.

"You are both forgetting one thing. Lord Ashborn has the ability to teleport wherever his minions are. We have enchanted the Castle to prevent the incorporeal from entering, but it is impossible to do the same for the rest of the city.

He spoke the truth. He is only asking to be polite. Those walls, that gate, that we are all so proud of, mean nothing to that man.

He lived here. He knows the layout of both the city and the Castle.

Whatever his goal, he knows exactly where it is and the best way to get it.

So, the only question that needs to be asked here is, what is his goal?"

"Perhaps it is to reclaim his sister? We already know he became as powerful as he did all to find her again." The General said.

"Perhaps." Muttered the City Lord.

"If that was the case, he would have just teleported in during the night, taken her, and been long gone before anyone had any idea that she was missing in the first place. And quite frankly, if she did vanish, we would not look for her more than a standard search radius five miles from the city.

If his sister was his goal, then he did not need to show up with an army."

The General in charge of the scouts spoke for the first time since the meeting began, "Its not even his main army."

The City Lord looked up at the man, "What do you mean?"

"I'm in charge of the scouts, we are the city's first warning of any threat. But to do that, we must be aware of all threats in the forest, and since we 'revealed' ourselves to the world, we have been forced to be aware of all threats outside the forests as well.

I have been keeping a close eye on all reports relating to Lord Ashborn. He leveled Onigas, and while entire nations are constantly on the backfoot against these Demons, he has repelled the Demons constantly wherever he appears.

Unfortunately, despite all this horror and devastation Humanity has experienced since this Invasion began, we are only a side effort. Most of the Demons that come through the portal in Zolis, immediately go through a massive tunnel that goes, who knows how deep, underground.

And if all the other reports we have received through the communicator are even remotely accurate, I think the true war is being fought beneath our very feet. A war that spans not just our continent, but the entire world.

Unfortunately, while Human scouts have confirmed its existence, it is extremely difficult to explore. The terrain and environment is inhospitable at best, and even if you can avoid the Demon patrols, the Monsters down there are so numerous and so foreign to us that nearly every scout that attempts going there does not return.

What little we do get back, indicates that Lord Ashborn has been there since Onigas, or shortly after. Not just that, but that he managed to amass several armies to fight under the very same banner that flies just outside our walls."

The City Lord grumbled, "We will discuss your reasoning for not informing the rest of us of this matter later, right now, get to your point. We don't have much time."

"My point, is that we received a report from one of the lucky scouts who have survived down there. According to him, a Demon army, numbering somewhere in the hundreds of thousands, have engaged with an army of multiple Monsters and Undead, of equal number. And they are flying the same banner as Lord Ashborn."

"How long ago did you receive this report?" Another General asked.

"Twenty minutes before Lord Ashborn arrived. My point, my Liege, is that while that Undead army is capable to take this city from us, it is at most, a fiftieth of his true military might."

The Minister of Engineering sighed loudly, "So you mean to tell us, that while he commands an army that could topple the very defenses our people have been reinforcing for generations, he could do so fifty times over.

But oh, that's not all, he could quite possibly do it all by himself. And yet somehow, that's not all! He could simply phase right through them, rendering all that stone, metal, magic, and manpower pointless." The man turned to the City Lord, "My Liege, forgive me, but his goal doesn't matter. If he stood before us and demanded we turn over the city to him and bend down to kiss his boot, there is nothing we could do except ask which one he would prefer."

"How dare you!" The General shouted, reaching for the sheathed sword at his waist.

"Silence."

The General and Engineer each took a step back and bowed slightly to the City Lord.

"The Minister speaks truly. And likely, that is Lord Ashborn's goal. Though I doubt he cares about his boots. It is quite possible, and likely, that he is going to each surviving Human settlement and recruiting them to his goal. A unified opposition against the Demons.

The way I see it, he can either be doing so with the intention of an Alliance, or with the intention of Dominion.

Either way, we will accept. Because not only does the victory against the Demons align with our own goals, but also because, as the Minister said, there is nothing we can do to refuse."

The words sank through the skins of each person in the room, weighing them down.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"We will greet him outside the gates of the Castle, ready to pledge ourselves to whatever he demands of us. And we will do so without complaint, else he might take offense and decide to wipe out a city district.

Whatever he demands of us, our only task is to ensure the safety of the citizens. The survival of the city comes second even to that.

Am I understood?"

A chorus of acknowledgment was received by him as he stood up, prepared to take the lead, yet not at all prepared for what he might be forced to do.

The order was given and passed on.

By the time the entirety of the Galmorian Leadership stood outside the Castle gates, the order had been received, and the City Gates were opened.

Alaster calmly rode Nightmare through them, accompanied by one hundred of his Death Knights on foot, bearing the colors and flags of his banner.

The citizens peeked through their drawn curtains or around cracked doors as for the first time in Galmorian History, a foreign army marched inside the city.

Mothers quietly consoled their crying children. Fathers prayed to the Gods that their families would not become slaves.

Yet Alaster remained uncaring to their plight. It meant nothing to him.

However, he felt his irritation grow as the grey seed inside his core allowed him to see the prayers to the gods ascend to the heavens, knowing that the messages and pleas meant nothing to their intended recipients.

Alaster marched right past them, quietly allowing the seed to steal the prayers out of the ether and consume them. Better they feed the Seed of Heaven and Earth than be ignored by the Gods. However inconsequential the nourishment was.

The City Leadership watched him through various spells, abilities, or devices as he slowly made the long walk from the City Gates to the Castle in the middle.

With each passing minute, the tension grew, made even worse with the belief that Alaster was enjoying their self-imposed agony.

The City Lord could hear his blood roaring in his ears, his heart pounding in his chest, his hands all but dripping with sweat.

What would this man demand of him? How many of his people would he have to sacrifice to save the rest? Would the Lord be satisfied with their deaths and leave their families alone?

Thousands of questions, not a single answer.

Yet their answer was coming for them, and as much as he wanted to, the City Lord refused to allow himself to flee from the Monster he had just allowed inside his city.

Every second, that Monster stepped closer to him.

Every second, his death came closer.

Every second, the Monster turned away.

What?

The City Lord's eyes widened.

Lord Ashborn had turned away from them, the Leaders of the City. The ones in charge of over a million lives.

And he had ignored them and turned down a side road.

A road the City Lord knew well, for he had taken it himself countless times when he was a boy.

"He is headed for the Elder." Someone said from behind.

"Do we stay here or follow?" Another asked.

"We stay here." The City Lord commanded.

He told himself it was because it was the right thing to do, and not because he was afraid to move towards that Monster.

Yet the terror of the City's Leadership meant nothing to Alaster, even if his Shadows witnessed it.

He was too focused on the street and the buildings around it.

He remembered all of them.

As he passed it, he remembered helping the elderly man who lived in the building with repairing the shingles.

He glanced to the cobbler who had thrown him a pair of new shoes when his split right in front of the man's shop.

He remembered the young family across the street who had always teased him about the Elder's daughter.

Yet Alaster tore those memories away.

He had lived here for only a year, and yet it was possibly the most important year of his life. At least, the one with the most impact.

Alaster dismounted Nightmare and looked at the house he had lived in for a year. The year he had met and fallen for her. The year he learned to command and lead, to be a gentleman.

His one hundred Death Knights formed up behind him. Their banners and tabards waving in the soft breeze.

Necrotic Mana oozed off them in waves, killing all plants and weeds around them. The leaves of the nearby trees turned yellow and brown, falling from the branches to be carried away by the wind.

Yet that sickly Mana did not touch a single Human. They were not the enemies of the Death Knights. Not yet.

But Mana spread, regardless of its attributes. It spread everywhere, except, the Manor before them. The Mana recoiled from it, as if in fear, not of the Manor itself, nor of its occupants, but of the man who commanded Death.

Alaster stared at the door to the Manor, a symphony of memory and longing banging in his head.

A symphony that blocked out everything around him, until that door opened, and it fell silent.

Azamar stepped out of the Manor and closed the door behind him, not even sparing the small army of the Dead a single glance.

Alaster fell to his knees, his armor clinking and scraping against the stone street, and bowed his head.

Behind him, his hundred bent the knee in a more dignified manner, a motion that was emulated by the vast army still surrounding the city.

"I have no excuse." Alaster said even as emotion choked his throat, "I swore to you that I would protect her. And I failed. For the first time since my parents died, I failed. And it was the one promise that thing I refused to fail. Yet I did. For that, I have no excuse."

Azamar stared at the boy kneeling before him with cold eyes, "Then why are you here?"

"Because she was my beloved. But before that, she was your daughter."

"Stand up. Now."

Alaster slowly obeyed, standing as he had been taught by the very man before him, yet with none of the confidence his lessons had demanded of him.

Without his armor, Alaster was still taller than Azamar, if only by a little. With the armor, Alaster appeared to tower over the city's guardian.

Alaster saw it coming from the smallest movements of Azamar's shoulder, yet he did nothing.

The sound of flesh hitting flesh echoed throughout the city. Enough strength had been behind that slap to have felled an entire grove of ancient trees, yet Alaster did not move.

Instead, Azamar let his hand fall back to his side, stinging not from the blow, but from the Necrotic Mana that had coated his hand, eating away at his flesh. Azamar recognized it for what it was.

Alaster had given up.

"She loved you. That was enough for me. You did not put her in harm's way. She put herself there. Do not blame yourself, for I do not."

Alaster closed his eyes, "You should." The memory of that arrow burned itself yet again across his mind.

"She would not have wanted you to give yourself to Death so completely."

Alaster opened his eyes and stared hard that the man, a man he would have been glad to one day call father, if only he had not allowed her to die, "I have not given myself to Death. For it demands too much and gives so little. Instead, I have stolen from it. Enough power to sink this continent a hundred times over, yet none of it allowed the only thing I wanted it for. It could not bring her back! It could not even allow me to speak to her one last time.

So instead, I will use it to bring justice to her murderers."

"Do not mistake revenge for justice."

"They are one and the same. You of all people know that."

The door burst open, unleashing the young woman. She sprinted for Alaster, but Azamar held her back.

"Get out of the way Azamar! Let me hug my brother." Evelyn cried out, trying to get past the Guardian.

"Don't Eve." Alaster commanded.

"Why? You disappear for years and then refuse to hug me?"

"Evelyn, if you touch him, you will die. He has become too attuned to Death." Azamar explained before looking back at Alaster, "So then what? When the Demons are repelled and the war ends, then what?"

Alaster growled, "Repelled? No, I am going to wipe out their race. I am going to slaughter every single Devil, Argalon, and whatever else gets in my way. Then, when they are expunged from existence, the Gods are next.

I did not come here to argue with you. I did not come here to debate. I did not even come here for you Evelyn. I came here for one reason only, to return her to you so that she may be properly buried by those who love her and are not as corrupted as I."

Alaster waved his hand and an elegant coffin of Black Oak edged in polished Gold appeared in front of them.

Alaster bit back a flood as he stared at it, "Even with all the preservation Magics in the world, I could not revive her. She is as beautiful as the day it happened, yet her soul has moved on."

"Perhaps you should too." Evelyn said softly, "Its been years."

Alaster looked up at the sky, "Everyone always talks about the greats things that come with advancing in Tiers. They never talk about the horrors that come with it. It might have happened years ago for you, but for me, it happens every time I close my eyes. Every. Single. Time."

Azamar stepped forward and placed his hand softly upon the polished wood, "Say it."

Alaster looked at him.

"Say her name." He commanded, "Say my daughter's name."

Alaster's chest tightened and burned. His entire body revolting against such a crime. His mind twisted and pounded. His Mana rebelling, sucking the life out of the nearby grass and trees until the trunks couldn't support their weight and cracked.

Evelyn looked around in shock even as Luke stepped out of the doorway and protectively wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

Citizens that had been watching from their windows hurriedly closed them and huddled away.

Yet Azamar did not look away even as Alaster's Magic caused the air to whip around them.

But then, it all stopped. As suddenly as someone snapping their fingers.

Alaster caressed the closed coffin for a moment before leaning down and kissing it. As he pulled away, "Goodbye Lunaria, I will love you always."

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