Chapter : 1133

From the first vortex, on the left, a figure stepped forth. It was a colossal skeletal entity, at least twelve feet tall, but it was not clad in armor. It wore the tattered, moth-eaten black robes of an ancient judge. It held no weapon, its bony hands clasped serenely before it. Its skull was pristine, almost polished, but it had no eye sockets, only a smooth, unbroken expanse of bone. Yet, Kyle felt its gaze upon him, a psychic pressure that was not an attack, but a cold, dispassionate, and absolute judgment. It did not radiate anger or malice. It radiated an aura of perfect, unyielding, and final authority. This was The Silent Judge, a being whose very presence was a death sentence. The world around it seemed to become more ordered, more rigid, as if all chaos were being suppressed by its will.

From the central vortex, a second horror emerged. This one was a spectral, weeping figure, its form a semi-translucent swirl of grey mist and tormented spirits. It was hunched over, its face hidden behind a curtain of what looked like weeping willow leaves made of shadow, and a sound emanated from it that was not a scream or a roar, but a constant, heartbreaking sob. The sound was a weapon, a psychic frequency of pure, unending agony that resonated deep within the soul, promising a pain that would never, ever end. In its spectral hands, it dragged a colossal, rust-pitted executioner’s axe, the blade the size of a man. The rust was not from age; it was the color of old, dried blood. This was The Weeping Executioner, a creature of pure, sorrowful malice, an embodiment of torture itself.

And from the third vortex, on the right, stepped the true king. This entity was clad in a magnificent, baroque suit of crimson plate armor, each surface etched with glowing, infernal runes that pulsed like a demonic heart. It was shorter than the others, its proportions almost human, but the power it radiated dwarfed them both. It carried a single, elegant longsword whose blade was forged from a shard of solidified night. Its helmet was fashioned in the shape of a snarling, demonic wolf, and from within its visor, two points of intelligent, strategic, and infinitely malevolent crimson light burned. This was not a mindless beast or a conceptual horror. This was a commander. A warlord. The Crimson General. Its presence was a symphony of perfectly controlled, masterful power, the aura of a being born to conquer and to rule.

Three King-Level Curse Knights.

Legends of ruin. Beings of myth and nightmare that were spoken of in the same hushed tones as natural disasters. Each one was a walking apocalypse, a creature capable of laying waste to an entire city. And three of them now stood on the battlefield.

The arrival of the Three Kings was not a shift in the balance of power; it was an erasure of it. The ten Dread Commanders, who had seemed like gods of death only moments before, now looked like mere honor guards. They bowed their heads in a gesture of profound, subservient reverence to the new masters of the field.

The army of three hundred skeletons went still, their red eyes dimming as their own minor wills were completely and utterly subsumed by the overwhelming presence of the three monarchs. The entire unholy legion was now just an extension of the kings’ will.

Lord Kyle Ferrum stood frozen. Not by fear, but by a profound, system-shocking awe. His mind, which had been a frantic whirlwind of tactical calculations, was now a perfect, silent void. The sheer, overwhelming, and absolute scale of the power arrayed against him was beyond any context he possessed. It was like a man preparing to fight a wolf pack, only to find himself facing three active volcanoes.

His men were already lost. The few who were still standing were on their knees, their minds shattered by the psychic onslaught. The aura of The Silent Judge had crushed their discipline, the sobs of The Weeping Executioner had devoured their courage, and the sheer, majestic terror of The Crimson General had annihilated their will to live.

This was not a battle. This was an execution. A sacrifice. And he was the main offering.

He had come to Ashworth seeking a traitor. He had found an apocalypse. His mission was over. His life was forfeit. And as the three Kings of Ruin began their slow, inexorable advance, a single, cold, and surprisingly peaceful thought settled in his mind: So, this is how it ends.

Chapter : 1134

The end came not with a roar, but with a whisper of weeping. The Weeping Executioner was the first to move. It glided across the cobblestones, its spectral form leaving a trail of black frost, its unending sobs a psychic drill boring into Kyle’s soul. The colossal, rust-pitted axe it dragged left a deep, bleeding gouge in the stone, a promise of the brutal, agonizing end it was about to deliver.

The moment of despair in Kyle’s soul lasted for a single, frozen heartbeat. He saw the faces of his men, their minds broken. He saw the triumphant, pitying smile on Raghav’s face. He saw the corrupted walls of a city that bore his family’s name. And in that instant, the cold, peaceful acceptance of death was burned away by a volcanic eruption of pure, unadulterated Ferrum rage.

He was Lord Kyle Ferrum. The Lion of Ironwood. He was the sword and shield of the main house, a King-Level master whose power was respected and feared in every corner of the kingdom. He would not die on his knees. He would not be unmade by whispers and shadows. If this was to be his end, he would make it a glorious one. He would show these abominations of the abyss what it meant to face a true lion of the North.

“FOR THE ARCH DUKE!” he roared, the name of his liege a defiant prayer on his lips.

The answer was not a human voice, but the roar of a spirit that shook the corrupted city to its very foundations. A pillar of brilliant, silver-white light erupted from Kyle, a pure, holy energy that momentarily drove back the suffocating darkness. From that light, his spirit manifested.

It was a lion. A colossal, magnificent beast the size of a war elephant. Its body was not of flesh, but of shimmering, solidified iron, its muscles like coiled plates of living steel. And its mane was not of fur, but of a thousand flowing, razor-sharp blades of the same brilliant, polished iron, each one humming with a contained, destructive power. This was Ferros, the Iron-Maned King, a spirit as proud, as unyielding, and as powerful as its master.

Ferros’s roar was a physical, concussive force, a wave of pure, noble power that shattered the nearest dozen skeletons into piles of clattering bone and made the spectral form of the Weeping Executioner flicker and recoil.

Kyle did not wait. The moment his spirit was manifest, he attacked. His own King-Level power, the mastery of his Iron Blood, was unleashed in its full, terrible glory. He was not just a warrior; he was a master of the earth’s bones.

He slammed his gauntleted fist into the ground. “Iron Fortress!”

The cobblestones of the entire square erupted. Not in random spikes, but in a moving, flowing wall of solid, three-foot-thick iron that rose to form a massive, domed fortress around his position, a final, defiant sanctuary for his broken men.

But this was not a defensive move. The moment the fortress was formed, its surface writhed. A thousand liquid-metal serpents, each with fangs of sharpened steel, shot from the walls, a tide of living iron that crashed into the skeletal legion, shattering and crushing everything in their path. Simultaneously, the top of the dome opened like a deadly flower, and from it, a storm of a hundred thousand iron shards, each one as sharp as a razor, rained down on the unholy army, turning the square into a meat grinder.

He was not fighting a defensive battle. He was waging a war of annihilation from the heart of his fortress. For a glorious, defiant moment, the tide of the dead was not just halted; it was being systematically, brutally, and magnificently dismantled.

The Weeping Executioner, recovering from the initial shock, let out a wail of pure rage and charged the iron wall, its colossal axe raised high. It brought the blade down in a devastating arc, an attack meant to cleave the fortress in two.

Kyle, watching from within, his eyes blazing with power, met the attack head-on. "Iron Lance!" he commanded.

A section of the iron wall flowed and reshaped itself in a fraction of a second. It formed a single, solid, twenty-foot-long lance of pure, condensed iron, its tip honed to a monomolecular point. The lance shot forward with the speed of a ballista bolt.

It did not meet the axe. It passed under it, striking the Weeping Executioner directly in its spectral chest.