Crutch's son shouted, "Father, help me!"
The King, unsure if he was hallucinating, asked, "Son, is that really you?"
His son replied, "Yes, father. There's a man who wants me to inform you and your Council Of Kings about his declaration of War."
The King, angry now, demanded, "Who is this Devil?"
His son, following every word I uttered, said, "You shall call him Warlord, King Of The Dark. He is the Slayer Of Kings, and you will be his first target."
Before Crutch could ask another question, his son screamed, "Look at the sky!" right before I pulled him back into the darkness.
I brought his head out of the sea of darkness and plunged him into the void.
He was terrified, shaking violently as he asked, "Please, will you let me go now?"
I wasn't smiling anymore. "No."
I slit his throat, and before his body could hit the ground, I drowned him in the sea of darkness—followed by every other person I had killed.
I was taking their corpses back to their kingdom.
There's a reason I told Crutch to look at the sky while he was actually in his throne room.
Crutch ran outside, stumbled across the marble courtyard, and looked up.
Before his eyes, it began: men raining from the sky. Crashing down behind Crutch, his son's corpse lay in a crater formed from his fall, the blood pooling and steaming in the cooling evening air.
The King fell to his knees, speechless, the cold marble biting into his palms.
A scream tore through the air above the courtyard. Not one voice. Many. A choir of panic, of terror, of lives snatched in an instant.
A body struck the marble steps below the balcony, flesh splitting open like a cracked shell. Blood sprayed across the white stone, painting it with streaks of horror.
Another followed—then another—men tumbling end over end. Shadows stretched beneath them like dark fingers, reaching to claim what was already dead.
Guards froze in stunned terror. One dropped his spear with a metallic clang that echoed across the courtyard. Another ran, tripping over fallen comrades, screaming into the growing chaos. Too late.
Another body slammed into the outer wall with a wet, final sound. A second crashed through the roof of the west tower, collapsing beams and sending stone cascading into the streets below with the sound of thunder striking iron.
From the castle gates, screams poured outward like floodwater, unending, unstoppable.
Beyond the walls, a farmer stood knee-deep in soil, guiding his plow, the warm evening light casting golden halos across his back. He heard something whistle overhead, a whistling that carried the inevitability of death, and looked up just in time to see a man falling from the sky.
The body hit the earth twenty paces away with a sickening snap of bones. The ox bolted, dragging the plow through rows of grain, hooves churning dirt into a dusty whirlwind. The farmer fell backward into the dirt, hands shaking uncontrollably, mouth opening and closing without sound.
"What the hell," he whispered, staring upward, the scent of iron and dust thick in the air.
In the market district, a woman counted coins, arguing with a butcher over weight. A shadow passed over her stall. She frowned. Then a corpse crushed the stand beside her, splitting wood, bone, and fruit in one violent instant. Blood sprayed across her dress like shattered rubies in the sun. She screamed and ran, slipping on something warm and sticky that hadn't been there a heartbeat ago.
All around her, bodies fell—some whole, some already broken—turning streets into slaughterfields. The scent of fear, blood, and wood mingled in the air. Animals bolted in terror, carts overturned, knives and baskets rolling in the chaos.
Inside a small home near the inner ring, a family sat around a low table. Bread was being torn. Soup steamed. The child was laughing. Then the ceiling collapsed.
A man's body punched through tile and beam, smashing into the table, obliterating plates, bowls, and bread alike. Wood shards flew, soup spilled, hot and pungent, onto the floor and across their trembling legs. The father was thrown back against the wall with a thud that rattled his teeth.
The mother screamed, pulling the child to her chest as dust and blood filled the room, the coppery scent of life lost making her stomach twist.
The child didn't cry. He stared at the corpse half-buried in their floor and asked softly, "Why are people falling?"
No one answered him. There was no answer. Only screams, only chaos, only the sound of a kingdom breaking apart.
Screams didn't come from one direction. They came from everywhere at once—near, far, above, below. A cacophony of terror and disbelief.
The very stones of the streets seemed to tremble beneath the impact of falling bodies, the echo of cracking bone and splintered wood reverberating in every alley.
A teenager stood in an alley clutching a wooden sword, staring upward as something dark crossed the evening sky, the clouds themselves seeming to bend under the shadow. A man fell nearby, hitting the ground hard enough to shake the stones under the boy's feet.
The young man dropped the sword and ran, sobbing, his feet slapping wet stone, mixing mud, blood, and dust.
All across the kingdom, the evening was filled with impact and terror. Homes shattered, roofs splintered, the screams of men, women, and children colliding into a chorus of dread. People were thrown from windows, doors ripped off their hinges, fire and dust mixing with blood and iron. Every moment stretched, every heartbeat amplified.
And from the highest balcony of the castle, Crutch listened as his empire screamed, as the cries of his soldiers, his citizens, his family and neighbors filled the air, vibrating the walls of his home with the unbearable sound of panic.
The sky finally grew quiet only after it was finished, but the fear, the panic, the disbelief it caused were far from over. The memory of the falling bodies, the sound of their screams and thuds, would haunt every corner of the kingdom for years to come.
Crutch's guards came rushing into the castle to check on him, shouting reports that made no sense.
"Bodies in the streets!"
"They're falling from nothing!"
"The sky—by the heavens—the sky!"
Crutch didn't look up. He only remained on his knees, his hands pressed into the wet marble where his son's blood had already begun to congeal.
Behind him, another body struck the courtyard stones, skidding to a stop with a spray of blood and dust. A familiar crest flashed before his eyes—one of his captains.
His men. His soldiers. Returning home not as victors, but as collateral damage, as instruments of Warlord's will.
The guards were out of words upon seeing their king in shock as he stayed beside the corpse of his son, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to comprehend the scale of what had just occurred.
One finally got the courage to ask, trembling, "Who or what could've done this?"
Crutch answered slowly, his voice raw, broken, heavy with disbelief, "The Warlord."