The city of the Damned did not greet visitors.

  It did not toll bells nor lower banners. Its gates, carved from bone and fused iron, bore no heraldry, no name. Wind did not blow here. Trees did not grow. The air itself recoiled.

  But still the army came.

  Oblivion stood at the head of four thousand howling barbarians—twisted men from the Wastes, clad in the skins of the dead, chanting curses in forgotten tongues. Their faces were painted in ash and blood. They bore no sigils. Only scars.

  But Oblivion did not look back at them.

  He looked only forward.

  At the gates.

  He stood still, a mountain of blackened steel and pulsing hatred. His twin swords were slung low on his back, and each step he took scorched the earth.

  He waited.

  The gates opened with a hiss like breath through a corpse’s teeth.

  Out strode a death priest, his body a shrine of sewn flesh, lips sealed by iron rings, eyes glowing faintly green. Behind him came a cadre of Death Guard—hulking warriors in rusted boneplate, wielding halberds carved from frozen marrow and axes rimmed with soulmetal.

  The priest halted, arms open in mock benediction.

  “Oblivion,” he said in a voice like parchment burning. “How rare for the dog to come without a leash. Tell me… do you always arrive like this? Without invitation, without manners? Without shame?”

  Oblivion blinked once. “I am not here to parley.”

  The priest’s grin widened, waxy and sick.

  “Then do explain your purpose, great servant of fire and rage. We here in Zul'Vareth prefer honesty before violence.”

  “I’m here for your king.”

  The priest tilted his head. “How delightfully candid.”

  Oblivion drew both swords.

  They screamed into being—steel turning to serpents, edges unraveling into whips of forged chain, each link lined with blackened razors, dripping with ancient venom.

  “And I do not care for the dead’s humor.”

  The death priest began to raise his hands for some incantation—but Oblivion was faster.

  Too fast.

  The whip-sword in his left hand sliced clean through the priest’s neck.

  The head rolled a couple of times before stopping. The look of surprise still upon it.

  And then Oblivion moved.

  He danced into the Death Guard like flame into dry grass, both blades spinning in wild arcs, cutting, flaying, unraveling, his arms a storm of steel and pain.

  Bones shattered. Screams curdled.

  Within seconds, all twelve of them lay in pieces—torn apart so thoroughly that some never hit the ground whole.

  He stood amid the blood storm, both whips cracking in the smoky air.

  With a twist of his wrists, the weapons snapped back into sword form—gleaming, humming, waiting.

  Oblivion turned back to the horde behind him.

  “Stay here,” he growled. “Wait for my return. If I do not return within the day burn this city to ashes."

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  They bowed. Not one man dared speak.

  And Oblivion strode into the city of the Damned alone.

  Beneath the Bones:

  The gate swallowed him.

  The city beyond was built on bones—literally. Streets were paved with vertebrae. Arches rose from ribs. Temples crowned with skulls, towers held aloft by spines stacked a hundred men tall.

  Guards watched him from balconies and windows. Pale-skinned things with eyes like cloudy glass. Some wore armor. Others wore nothing but rot. None stopped him. None spoke.

  They knew.

  Oblivion’s boots cracked femurs and femurs alike as he walked toward the Temple of the Bone Shaman, the place where madness lived.

  The temple doors were open.

  Inside, the stench hit him first—like wet parchment and old meat left beneath the sun.

  The second thing was the sound.

  Bones, clacking against bone in endless rhythm.

  A figure waited at the center.

  A man—perhaps once—clad in tattered robes of skin and threadbare velvet. Bones dangled from his every limb, smacking together as he danced slowly in place. In one hand, he held a dead thing—a twisted beast with too many eyes and a mouth sewn shut. In the other, a scepter of rusted copper, crowned with a gnawed skull.

  The Bone Shaman spoke in tongues—chanting, deep and fast.

  Then, without warning, he hurled the carcass at Oblivion.

  It struck the floor—twisted, warped—and changed.

  Where it fell, now rose a beast: a hulking bear-like monster with horns, furless skin, and two rows of jagged obsidian teeth that clattered like knives. Its eyes burned green.

  It roared—and leapt.

  Oblivion dove to the side, hitting the bone tiles hard.

  The beast struck where he had stood, cracking the stone in half.

  Behind him, the Bone Shaman kept chanting. The bones on his robe clattered louder.

  “You grow annoying,” Oblivion muttered.

  The beast came again.

  Oblivion struck it mid-leap, both swords cleaving deep into its side. He felt bone split—but the creature did not bleed.

  It didn’t even flinch.

  Snarling, Oblivion swung again—his swords unraveling into whips, dancing in furious arcs around him. He sliced the beast’s limbs, struck its chest, tore open one eye—

  —and still it came.

  A swing of its claw nearly took his head. He rolled, bones shattering beneath him.

  The Shaman laughed. A dry, brittle laugh. Chanting faster now.

  Oblivion risked a glance.

  And he understood.

  “It’s not real,” he whispered. “It’s not here.”

  The creature was a puppet. The Shaman, the hand.

  With a roar of pure rage, Oblivion stopped running.

  He planted his feet in the shattered bones, waiting. The beast crouched to leap again.

  As it sprang, so did he—but sideways.

  He rolled hard, came up behind the creature—

  —and leapt straight at the Shaman.

  His blades flashed once.

  The Shaman’s head flew off his shoulders.

  The beast collapsed mid-leap, crashing into a pillar with a final, echoing groan.

  Oblivion stood, panting, his sword tips dragging trails of ash.

  “Your magic dies with you,” he growled.

  And he moved onward.

  The Throne of Dust:

  He reached the inner sanctum of the city—Ureathos’s court, a vast circular hall lined with the skulls of kings, their names etched in runes of dust.

  At the center sat the Grave King, on a throne of fused bone and screaming chains.

  He was immense—draped in black silks, bone-crowns stacked upon his brow like twisted halos. His eyes were hollow pits of green fire. His fingers rested on a staff carved from a child’s spine.

  Around him stood six death knights, and a dozen robed courtiers—priests, warlocks, revenants.

  Ureathos did not rise.

  “Oblivion,” he said in a voice like the cracking of a glacier. “What can we do for you?”

  Oblivion stopped ten paces from the throne.

  “You can start,” he said coldly, “by explaining why you ignored the Master’s summons.”

  Ureathos’s smile did not reach his eyes.

  “Ah. That. Yes, it’s true I have not yet… responded. I had intended to. In time.”

  Oblivion’s voice dropped to a growl. “Do not mock me, Ureathos. My patience is spent.”

  One of the knights stepped forward. “Careful, whelp.”

  Oblivion didn’t even look at him.

  “You are called before Malekith’s throne. Will you heed? Or will I end this pretense of kingship here and now?”

  Ureathos slowly stood.

  “Brave words,” he said, “for a creature surrounded. Outmatched. Outnumbered.”

  Oblivion smirked. “If you wish to test that theory, I welcome it.”

  "You trespass," he said, voice hollow and dry as the bones of the catacombs. "This city is mine."

  Oblivion walked a few paces closer, causing two of the death knights to draw their swords. This time when he spoke it was with the cold finality of a blade sliding home. "You confuse custody with claim, corpse king. This place was our master's before you clawed your way free of the pyres of Za'tharr."

  “You are but a blade with legs,” Ureathos mused. “A creature stitched together by wrath and hate. You bleed flame. But I have endured since before flame was named. In the master's absence I have ruled. I raised a host of my own. I forged legions from the dust. The master fell, and we survived. I grew."

  Oblivion didn’t flinch. "Grew? You think because you bed lesser shades and prattle with you Hollow Guard that you are more than a cur with a crown? You were a servant, Ureathos. You remain a servant."

  “Malekith has returned. The Crown’s shards are to be sought out. The war is coming, Grave King. You will kneel… or be reduced to dust.”

  A long silence passed.

  Ureathos’s eyes narrowed. He studied Oblivion, as if peering into his very curse.

  “I have no master. Only memory.”

  “Then remember this,” Oblivion snapped. “The old world ends. The new one begins with him. To deny Malekith… is to cease to exist.”

  At that, Ureathos looked around his court.

  And then—

  He laughed.

  A sound like breaking tombstones.

  “So be it.”

  He stepped down from the throne.

  “I will answer the call. But not because of fear. Not because of chains. I go… because I have no wish to be the last corpse in a world of fire.”

  Oblivion turned.

  “Then follow.”