No man ever escaped his shadow.
They tried.
God knows they tried.
They built walls thick enough to choke the sky. They posted guards who hadn't slept in years. They burned incense, spilled blood, consulted prophets, and slept with knives beneath their pillows. They locked their doors and called it safety.
But shadows were patient.
They were invitations written in silence, stretched long across stone floors and candlelit corridors. And every tyrant left one behind without ever noticing.
After the Council fell, the world did not become quiet.
It fractured.
Kings who once hid behind alliances scattered like vermin when the torchlight came too close. Each tyrant retreated into his own stronghold, convinced isolation was survival—confident that if no one stood beside him, no blade could reach him.
They did not understand my power.
That ignorance was mercy.
They did not know that shadows did not belong to walls, or rooms, or nations.
They belonged to people.
And people carried them everywhere.
I chose Maze first.
Not because he was the strongest.
Not because he was the cruelest.
But because he was deliberate.
Maze, King of the Southern Reaches. Architect of gallows. Collector of screams. The one who ordered that any soul returning to the land of Oma be hanged on sight.
One hundred.
Men. Women. Children. Old ones who barely remembered why they had left. Young ones who had never seen the soil of their ancestors.
Their bodies swayed from trees like warnings written in bone.
Maze did not kill them himself.
He gave the order.
That made him worse.
Night fell gently over his fortress.
I arrived with it.
No horns sounded. No alarms rang. The guards walked their routes, boots scuffing against stone, breath fogging in the cool air. Torches burned steadily, obedient, casting long shadows that crawled along walls and floors like living things.
Maze was alone when I found him.
Of course, he was.
Tyrants always were at night.
He sat at a desk carved from dark wood, counting something—coins, perhaps. Or names. His crown rested nearby, discarded like a hat removed indoors. A goblet of wine stood untouched at his elbow.
His shadow pooled behind him, long and indulgent, stretched by candlelight.
I stepped out of it.
There was no warning.
No sound.
No dramatic confrontation.
I put the rope I brought along,over his head.
It fell to his neck—precise and intimate.
Before he could react, I pushed him into the sea of darkness from behind
Maze tried to inhale air that didn't exist in my Ocean Of Night. I pulled at the rope from the comfort of his desk.
He struggled as I strangled him.
Infact, his death was quick.
Having your neck pressed in a vacuum, was bound to leave anyone breathless.
He clawed sharply, confused, fingers spasming against the void. He tried to swim. Tried to turn. Tried to scream.
But his noise was silenced.
I pulled his corpse to the surface.
I severed his head, using all my strength.The headless corpse twitched once, reflex clinging to muscle like a bad habit.
I abandoned his headless body in the sea of darkness. The body sank without a splash, without a trace, swallowed whole by the void that reflected neither light nor sound.
He never saw me.
That mattered.
I set his head aside, letting it roll slightly until it faced the door—an audience for anyone who might enter too soon.
Soon, morning came.
The fortress stirred.
Servants entered the throne room first, as they always did, expecting routine, expecting safety.
They froze.
I sat on the throne.
Maze's throne.
One leg crossed casually over the other. One foot resting on something soft and yielding.
His head.
The crown lay on the floor beside it, discarded like an afterthought. Blood had dried dark along the grooves of the stone, a map no one wanted to read.
I watched them process the image.
Shock came first. Then disbelief. Then the slow, crawling realization that their king was not missing.
He was finished.
More people poured in—guards, advisors, nobles, family. Maze's wife screamed. His brother reached for a sword and stopped halfway, hand trembling as he took me in.
His son arrived last.
The boy couldn't have been older than sixteen.
He stared at his father's head beneath my boot, eyes glassy, jaw clenched so tight I thought his teeth might shatter.
Good.
Let him remember this.
I stood.
The throne room fell silent so completely that I could hear breathing echo off the ceiling.
"I am Warlord," I said.
My voice carried without effort, filling the vast chamber like smoke.
"You don't know how I come to you," I continued. "You don't know where I am when you aren't looking."
I pressed my foot down slightly.
The head shifted.
"But you know what happens when I arrive."
No one moved.
No one spoke.
"This man ordered the hanging of a hundred innocent people," I said calmly. "He believed distance would protect him. He believed walls would matter."
I leaned forward, resting one hand on the arm of the throne.
"They didn't."
I straightened.
"Let this be law," I declared. "Whoever takes this throne and calls himself tyrant will end like the one beneath my foot."
Somewhere in the room, someone sobbed.
Good.
Fear spread faster than hope.
By nightfall, every remaining tyrant would hear the story.
They would argue over details. Disagree about how I entered. Invent explanations that made them feel safer. Some would say Maze fought.
Others would swear he never had a chance.
They would all be wrong.
Because there was no fight.
There never was.
I was not coming for their armies.
I was not coming to their cities.
I declared to the hearing of the crowd before me,
"I will come for every man who stands alone at night, thinking himself untouchable."
Maze's son came out of the crowd.
Anger announced him before his voice did.
It rolled off him in heat and stiffness, in the way his shoulders squared as if rage alone could make him taller.
He looked at the throne, at the blood, at what remained of his king beneath my boot—and something in him broke cleanly.
"You killed our king," he said, each word forced through clenched teeth. "You sat on his throne.
You disrespected his corpse." His eyes burned as they finally found mine.
"What on earth makes you think you'll leave this room alive?"
I did not move.
I did not rise.
I did not even remove my foot.
"I am very confident in my skills," I told him calmly. My voice did not echo. It did not need to. "Maze would have testified, if he weren't dead."
The room tightened.
Not with courage.
With fear.
I felt it press inward from every direction, a collective breath held too long.
The Prince before me flinched—not at my words, but at the stillness behind them.
He wanted outrage. He wanted denial. He wanted spectacle.
I gave him certainty.
He stepped forward daring to get closer.
His grief was loud. It lived in his fists, in the way his jaw trembled as he tore a sword from the sheath of a nearby guard.
The metal rang sharply as it cleared leather, the sound brittle and desperate.
"Someone bring me his head!" he shouted.
The command cracked through the chamber.
And died there.
No one moved.
Not the guards.
Not the nobles.
Not the servants clutching the edges of pillars and walls.
He looked back at the crowd.
Really looked at them.
He was trying to become something in that moment—trying to force himself into the shape of a king, a son, a vengeance the world would respect.
He was failing.
"Why don't you do it yourself?" I asked him. I leaned forward slightly, enough for the light to catch the edge of my blade. "You were always welcome to try."
His grip tightened.
His knuckles went white.
But his feet stayed where they were.
He turned his head, searching the room, desperate for movement, for loyalty, for someone—anyone—to step forward and make the decision for him.
All he found were faces drained of color.
Eyes averted.
Spines bent beneath an understanding they had never learned but now spoke fluently.
Fear.
It was the only language everyone understood, no matter their birth, their rank, or the stories they told themselves about bravery.
The boy saw it then.
Not as an idea.
As a truth.
His sword dipped, just a fraction. Not enough to be a surrender. Too much to be defiant.
I stood.
The sound of my boots against stone was louder than his shout had been.
Every gaze snapped back to me, drawn by instinct.
In that instant, Maze's son learned the power of fear over loyalty.
Horror was the perfect tool and I was living proof.