THE TRANSMIGRATED LORD: RISE OF THE NEW KINGDOM

The First Battle

The eastern gate slammed shut with a heavy boom, that echoed off the stone walls.

“Move!” Jade’s voice cut through the courtyard like a blade.

Soldiers scrambled in every direction, hauling oil barrels, coils of rope, broken weapons, and anything else that looked useful. Confusion and fear still showed on most faces.

Some men glanced back toward the western breach where the sounds of fighting still rose in waves. Others simply stared at their new lord as if waiting for him to collapse under the pressure. But they obeyed.

Orders were better than standing still and waiting to die.

Jade climbed the narrow stone stairs to the eastern wall, two at a time. From the top, he had a clear view of the battlefield. Smoke rolled across the fields in thick gray sheets. Black banners rose through it like the standards of a funeral procession.

Thousands of enemy soldiers had poured through the broken western defenses—not in a single charging mass, but spreading out in disciplined groups. Some pushed toward the southern road. Others angled toward the nearest villages and the thin smoke of cooking fires that still rose in the distance.

“They’re splitting their forces,” He announced.

An older captain stepped up beside him, his breath ragged, with a shallow cut still bleeding along his jawline. “They are going after our food stores. To starve us out before the week is done.”

“Exactly.” Jade looked down into the courtyard.

The oil barrels had already been lined along the eastern wall in uneven rows. With ropes stretched between the towers, already taut. Makeshift carts were also loaded with scrap metal, broken stone, and whatever heavy debris the men could find waited on the slopes above the road. It was crude and desperate but it would have to be enough.

The captain cleared his throat. “Milord… why are we holding the eastern gate? The real fight is at the west. They’re already inside the outer walls.”

Jade pointed past the battlements. “Look at the terrain.”

A narrow valley ran between the two low, rocky hills. The eastern road cut straight through it like a knife wound. The sides were steep enough that, the cavalry would struggle and infantry would be forced into a tight column.

“That’s a choke point,” Jade said. “Their cavalry can’t maneuver in there. If their infantry enters…”

“They’re trapped,” the captain finished, his eyes widened. For the first time, the faintest spark of hope and calculation flickered across his face.

A horn suddenly sounded in the distance, low and long.

The enemy soldiers appeared beyond the treelined. First, a few hundred, then a rolling tide of thousands. They advanced down the road with their shields raised, confident and loud. Their boots kicked up dust.

 Officers shouted orders that carried clearly on the wind. They expected resistance at the castle walls, not a prepared kill zone.

Jade raised one hand. “Wait.”

The soldiers on the wall shifted uneasily. Bows creaked as the strings were drawn. Someone muttered a prayer under his breath.

Five hundred yards. 

Three hundred. 

Two hundred. 

One hundred.

The front ranks entered the valley; Jade instantly dropped his hand. “Now.” He roared.

The first rope was cut. A heavy wooden cart loaded with stone and jagged metal thundered down the slope and smashed into the leading ranks with a wet, splintering crash. The second cart followed, then a third.

Wood exploded and men screamed. Bodies were crushed against the rocky walls of the valley. The narrow road turned into a slaughterhouse of tangled limbs, broken shields, and blood that soaked into the dirt.

“Archers!”

A black cloud of arrows rose from the walls and fell into the chaos. Shafts punched through armor and flesh. Horses reared and fell, trapping their riders beneath them. The neat formation shattered into pockets of panicked men trying to climb over the wreckage of their own comrades.

The enemy recovered faster than Jade expected. The shields came back locked with practiced speed. A commander’s voice roared above the screams, raw and furious. The formation began pushing forward again, stepping over the dead.

Jade watched without expression, his pulse steady. Somewhere in the back of his mind the old knowledge of sieges and logistics kept turning, cold and precise.

“Light the oil.” Torches dropped.

The barrels along the road erupted in a chain of orange fire. Flames raced across the valley floor, feeding on spilled pitch and dry summer grass. The choke point became an inferno. Horses screamed and bolted in every direction.

 Soldiers broke ranks, some trying to push through the flames, others turning to flee the way they had come. The heat rolled up the walls in waves that made the air shimmer.

Jade pointed toward the gate. “Open it.”

The eastern gate swung wide for a single heartbeat. The enemy commander saw the sudden opening and committed without hesitation. Dozens of his men charged into the courtyard, shouting in triumph.

Just then, the gate slammed shut behind them with a final, iron finality.

 “Now!” The Villeran’s soldiers fell on the trapped attackers with everything they had left.

The fight inside the walls was short, brutal, and one-sided. Swords rose and fell. Men died against the stones they had hoped would shelter them. Within minutes the last of the intruders were down or fleeing back into the burning valley, leaving bodies and blood in their wake.

Jade raised his hand again. “Do not pursue.”

The captain turned, blood streaking his face, his chest heaving. “Why? We have them on the run!”

“Because that’s exactly what they want.” Jade’s gaze remained fixed on the distant hills beyond the smoke.

The main enemy force had not moved. Their banners still stood in perfect formation, black against the gray sky. Their commander had been watching the entire time, measuring distances, counting losses, and testing reactions.

This had never been the real assault but a probe.

A cold weight settled in Jade’s chest. Whoever led the army outside was not a simple bandit chief or greedy neighbor hungry for land. Someone intelligent was testing him, and the test had only just begun.

A horn sounded from the western side of the castle, one long blast, then two short.

A messenger came sprinting across the courtyard, nearly slipping in the blood, and dropped to one knee.  “Milord! The western army has breached the inner gate. They’re inside the main courtyard!”

“Then we’re surrounded.” The captain’s face went pale.

Jade stared at the burning valley for a long moment, that the smoke stung his eyes. The distant shouts of enemy soldiers grew louder.

 He could feel the weight of every exhausted pair of eyes on the wall, turning toward him, waiting for the order that would decide whether they lived or died in the next hour.

He turned, his voice calm. “No…they think we’re surrounded.” He looked at the soldiers still standing, dirty, bleeding, but not yet broken.

“Prepare the tunnels.”

The captain blinked. “Tunnels?”

A flicker of old memory stirred in Jade’s mind: a locked iron door, his father’s warning voice echoed; a place beneath the foundations that no one was ever meant to open. The original Jade Hayden had known.

 The knowledge had simply waited for the right moment to surface. Jade’s smile was thin and cold. “The enemy has no idea what’s underneath this castle.”

Far below the stones of Hill Villeran, in a darkness that had not known light for centuries, an ancient entity slowly opened its eyes.