Awakening of the Dead

walls trembling

Midnight: When Walls Tremble

The ancient barrier surrounding the kingdom crackled, shimmering in silver, gold, and icy blue—an impenetrable shield woven by the greatest magicians and powered by the black gems clutched in the trembling hands of the court’s elite. Midnight’s chill pressed down, heavy and suffocating. On parapets and along the wall, soldiers, magisters, and high court elders stood side by side, their eyes shining raw with fear and exhaustion. Every muscle was tensed for catastrophe.

Beneath this enchanted aegis, students huddled watching. They’d been sworn to the safety of the interior, protected by the power blooming in their blood. But every shadow outside the barrier seemed deeper now—eerier, alive.

The world felt as if it were holding its breath.

The First Wave

Then—a howl, jagged and primeval, split the darkness.

Monstrous forms surged from the skeletal forest beyond: demons, scores upon scores, each grotesquely forged from nightmare. Some slithered, slick with black ichor; others galloped on backwards-bent legs; hulking brutes, scabbed wings, and burning eyes—all charging, claws and knives glinting like a storm of shattered mirrors.

The barrier flared like lightning, halting the front line, burning flesh, but they clawed and hammered in numbers so great the very air warped. Fangs shattered against magic, but the pressure built, a roar and screech that made the ground vibrate.

Then, amidst the cacophony—betrayal. One of the inner gems flickered, the barrier briefly rippled…and a dozen shadowy figures slipped through, prying open the hole with dark incantations.

The demons poured in.

The Outer Defenders—Blood and Sacrifice

A wave of death crashed into the guard’s ranks.

Steel rang out, swords coated with runes glowing hot, axes gleaming in moonfire. Magic snapped in brilliant fire, some spells melting demon flesh, others bouncing off armor. A guard’s cry was cut short as a thicker demon’s claws slashed through plate and bone, blood splattering across the stones. The defenders halved the first surge with blade and flame, but for every demon slain, it seemed two more rose in its place, shapes writhing, flesh regenerating, jaws gnashing as pain only made them stronger.

Amid the chaos, the high magisters called on forbidden power. A storm of blue-white fire speared twenty beasts at once, vaporizing them, only for the ashes to darken, knitting together new fiends with fresher, hungrier eyes.

Students Called to War

The interior was no safer. The magical bloom—those once only boys and girls—watched as panicked teachers tried to marshal defenses. Olivia stood tall on the broken marble of the assembly floor, his face ugly with fear but fierce with pride.

“We fight! Or they will devour us and turn us to slaves!” he shouted, flames dancing on his open palms.

A student named Kain stepped forward, eyes burning: “Elior was right. But he’s not here. Tonight, we defend our souls.”

Reluctance melted into resolve. Classmates armed themselves: wands, knives, spell crystals, even broken stones. Sisters pressed luck charms to hearts; friends embraced, each a gasp away from battle’s maw.

They rushed for the breach.

The Heart of Violence

The onslaught at the breach became all-consuming madness.

A girl shrieked as a demon’s pincers closed around her leg; Olivia snapped out a chain of flame that scorched the monster’s head and flesh. Nearby, another student was swept up in tentacles, bones breaking, screams fading beneath wet crunches and hooves.

Blood splattered across faces, hot and metallic. The smell of burnt flesh clogged every breath. Hands shook. A boy barely older than Elior shattered a demon’s face with a spell, only to be flung through a wall by another beast, his lifeblood smearing the flagstones.

Screams, pleas, and war cries merged into a single, writhing chorus.

Kain leapt over a writhing corpse, sword blazing, slicing the limbs from a demon but getting knocked sideways by a second, teeth at his throat. Olivia barely saved him, burning away the monster with a flare that left his own arms blistered and raw.

Across the field, impostor shadows detached from the chaos—cultists, human betrayers robed in crimson, chanting in a tongue of old fire, sending shimmering waves of sickness and fear through lines of defenders.

The High Court Falters

The mages upon the wall gasped. Sweat poured down their faces, their focus fraying. One by one, their spells waned. A magister’s staff broke with a crack like thunder, leaving him defenseless as two demons tackled him, jaws finding throat.

The great barrier sputtered as more gems flickered out, its electric lattice stuttering before bursts of hungry darkness.

The high court’s eldest, Albert, bellowed: “Hold the line! The kingdom cannot fall!”

But the line was buckling. Women and men screamed as demons breached the last ranks, magic colliding with teeth and talons. Guards toppled from parapets, their armor torn open, entrails painting the gates in gory ribbons.

Captured—And the Arrival of Alaric

In a last stand, the students—bloodied, battered—fell one after another. Invisible chains snapped over survivors. The cultists conjured shimmering webs, binding the young magicians, sapping their strength.

Out of the smoke, a shadow coalesced, taller, denser, darker than all the rest. It stepped forward, its outline flickering, forming.

Alaric.

His gaze was void and ice, horns curling like a crown, his flesh mottled with sigils carved from agony.

He strode to the center, fire and shadow parting before him. He stopped before Albert, the court elder, who lay struggling, one arm broken, teeth bloodied.

“Hello, old friend,” Alaric said, voice cold delight. “Remember me? I promised I’d return.”

Albert coughed, spitting blood. “You brought this doom. You did this.”

“You made me.” Alaric’s voice shook with bitterness. “You exiled me, left me to rot. Now you will kneel—and your magic will become my throne.”

Alaric raised his arm, chanting. A vortex opened—the air groaned—and a wrenching pain rippled through every magician in the kingdom as power drained from their bodies, clawing up and away, toward Alaric’s open palms.

People screamed, writhing in chains, unable to resist.

Elior’s Crucible

Miles away, Elior knelt on the cracked floor of his lonely home, sweat slick and breaths shallow. The voices in his mind surged, the dark calling for blood.

Let them die. They mocked you. They spat on you and the graves of your ancestors. Let them burn!

Sobs wracked Elior’s chest. The air outside shuddered with distant, helpless agony. Rage and despair wrestled inside—love for a place that never loved him, grief for his dead parents, fury at the kingdom’s blindness.

He felt the pull—the seduction—of surrender. The desire to let hate have him, to let monsters win, to be the devil the world accused him of being.

From the corner of his mind, a touch brushed his soul. A cool wind lifted his hair. A whisper, gentle, maternal: “Elior. My child.”

He turned. A vision: A woman with golden hair, robes of white flame, eyes wise and wounded.

“You are more than a weapon,” she said, voice trembling with grief and hope. “Your father failed: he let hatred chain him in shadow. Do not let fear drive you to become what they dread. Embrace your gift. Use it. Save him—save them all—by choosing mercy. You are not alone.”

The vision flickered, leaving fire in his chest.

The Devil Rises

Screams battered Elior’s mind. His pain became will. He opened his door and ran toward ruin.

The school was lit in blood-red flame. Students and magisters knelt—all bound, drained, dying. Alaric’s eyes met Elior’s. He smirked. “You’re late. I have taken what was once yours. Join me and reign as a god. Or resist and be devoured.”

Demons poured forward. Elior faced them, darkness roaring in his veins, horns tearing from his brow as he transformed. Shadows whipped around his feet; a crown of fire and shadow formed above his head.

Power—pure and terrible—flared from his body. He clamped teeth over his own rage, voice thunderous:

“I will not be the monster you want. My pain is not your blade.”

He stepped forward and drew the shadows into himself. The first demons reached him—he devoured their darkness, ripping their forms apart, shuddering at the taste of their evil but drinking it anyway, claiming every pain, every shame, forging them to will.

Alaric cursed, summoning a hundred more. Each wave failed—Elior’s arms a tempest, horns aglow, wings blazing, every ounce of his power a scream against Alaric’s hate.

The Showdown

Alaric and Elior circled, the world itself pausing in terror.

“Join me,” Alaric hissed. “You are hated. You are what they fear. Let them kneel.”

Elior shook his head, eyes glistening with tears. “I am what you made me. But I choose my fate.”

A hurricane of magic detonated between them—Elior’s shadows clashing with Alaric’s crimson fire. The ground cracked. Statues shattered. The very air bled.

Elior pressed forward, ignoring the pain in every nerve, the blood spattering his arms, the howling in his chest.

Alaric screamed his fury. “You will regret this! You would save those who spit on you?”

Elior’s reply was a roar, twisted with loss and resolve. “I will not be what you are. They don’t deserve my help—but I won’t be the monster they think I am!”

Dawn’s Edge

The fighting continued—bloody, raw, terrifying. Every blow brought new agony, every victory stained in crimson. At the center, Elior refused the darkness—not out of love for a cruel world, but in defiance of fate’s script.

On the walls, surviving students stared in awe and terror as devil and traitor clashed, the kingdom’s future hanging by a fraying thread.

And in the swirling storm of shadows and flame, Elior found and chose himself.

The night howled on—terrifying, bloody, and real—and for the first time, hope smoldered at the horizon’s edge.