General Thrain Ironhand did not merely travel; he carved a path of desolation through the fabric of reality. Mounted upon his legendary black steed, Shadow-Render, he moved toward the palace with the inexorable speed of a collapsing star. Every gallop was a rhythmic tolling of a funeral bell for the loyalist faction.
Shadow-Render was no mere beast of burden found in the common stables. Centuries ago, the horse had been a gift from King Elanor, Gronak's father. Elanor, a man who valued martial excellence above all, had been mesmerized by Thrain's peerless horsemanship and his ability to fuse his soul with his mount. Born in the mystical Elemental Kingdom—a realm where even the flora and fauna possessed rudimentary mana cores—and traded into the high crags of the Dwarf Realm, the horse was a creature of pure spirit, muscle, and malice.
The beast currently beneath Thrain was the direct descendant of that ancient line, a creature whose hooves were shod in enchanted dark iron, quenched in the blood of Tier 5 earth drakes. As the horse galloped, its massive steps struck the earth with the force of a tectonic shift. The vibrations surged through the foundations of the Dwarf Palace, causing the massive stone pillars to groan and the ancient crystal chandeliers to vibrate with high-pitched shrieks before shattering into thousands of glass daggers. To those inside, it felt as though a localized earthquake were centering itself upon their very souls. The rhythmic thud-thud-thud was the heartbeat of a coming massacre.
Inside the medical wing, the tremors jolted Jai and James into a state of hyper-alertness. Despite their previous battles leaving them with fractured ribs and depleted mana pools, the resonance of Thrain's killing intent acted like a stimulant, forced into their veins by the sheer pressure of the atmosphere. As they struggled to rise from their beds, frantic nurses, their faces pale with terror, rushed to restrain them.
"Mr. Arthur, please! Your internal channels are still fractured! You will suffer a cultivation backlash if you circulate your mana now!" one nurse pleaded, her hands trembling as she tried to adjust the bandages.
Jai pushed past her, his eyes glowing with a faint, subconscious golden light that flickered like a dying sun suddenly finding new fuel. "Tell me," he demanded, his voice dropping into a register of ancient command that didn't belong to a mere mercenary. "What is that sound? Why does the earth weep in such a rhythmic cadence?"
When the nurses tearfully explained the return of the Tyrant Gronak and the sudden, heartbreaking betrayal of the War-God Thrain, the entire room fell into a chilling silence. Zayn Stone, Borin's second son, felt his knees grow weak. He knew the history better than any. He knew that Thrain was not just a general; he was a living relic of a more brutal age—a force of nature that had once stood toe-to-toe with the legends of the Human Kingdom.
"We cannot stay here," Jai stated, his gaze sweeping over James, Brokk, Winston, and the trembling Zayn. "We are not going to sit like cowards in gilded beds while our comrades are turned into red mist on the palace steps. Today, we fight for the people of this kingdom. Whether we face friends, enemies, or the legends of the past, we cast aside the fear of death. Our only goal is to halt the Iron Hand."
As they prepared to move, Jai paused, looking at his companions. The air in the room was thick with the scent of ozone. "Before we step into this furnace, there is a truth I must reveal. My brother and I... we are not the wanderers we claim to be."
Winston, the void-specialist who had always been leaner and more observant than the others, leaned against a cracked wall and let out a soft, knowing sigh. "You mean the fact that you aren't 'Arthur' and 'Clement'? That your mana signatures are far too refined for commoners?"
Jai and James froze, their hands hovering over their weapons. "How long have you known?" Jai asked, his hand instinctively moving to the concealment artifact at his throat.
"Since the moment I laid eyes on your mana flow during the first skirmish and also see through your disguise using my Tier 5 power," Winston replied nonchalantly. "Commoners have turbulent mana; yours flows like a royal river. But you fought for us. You bled for us. Your disguise didn't matter—your actions did."
Brokk, the sturdy warrior, nodded solemnly. "A man's face can be a lie, but his sword-intent never is. I knew you were of high birth and also see through your Tier 7 disguise because, i am a Tier 6 elemental master."
Only Zayn stood there, his jaw hitting the floor. "Wait... what? You're telling me I'm the only one who didn't see through a Tier 7 disguise? I really am a Tier 8 failure! I thought you just had really good skincare!"
With a resigned, bitter chuckle, Jai and James reached for their necks, clicking a hidden mechanism on their necklaces. The magical shimmer of their disguises—the "Veil of the Commoner"—dissolved like mist under a morning sun. In their place stood two young men of ethereal, peerless handsomeness. Their skin radiated a faint, royal luminescence, and their eyes carried the sharp, piercing weight of the Chenwongo lineage—the very bloodline that had once humbled the Dwarf Kings.
"We are the descendants of Queen Beatrice," Jai announced, his true voice ringing out with the clarity of a struck bell.
The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly. Brokk, Winston, and even the Prince Zayn instinctively dropped to one knee, their heads bowed in deep, ancestral reverence. "Forgive our previous lack of etiquette, Your Highnesses," they echoed in unison, the weight of history pressing down on them.
"Stand up!" Jai cried, his face flushing with genuine embarrassment. "This is exactly why I didn't want to tell you! We are friends first, royals second. If you treat us like kings, we'll be too stiff to fight, and Thrain will decapitate us before we can finish a bow!"
The situation turned grimly serious as Winston proposed a desperate plan. "Jai, James... if Thrain is coming for your blood specifically, Brokk and I can use our combined Void magic and Light-speed movement to open a temporary dimensional corridor. We can teleport you out of the Dwarf Kingdom before he reaches the main gates."
Zayn shook his head, his face pale as he looked at the shaking walls. "You don't understand the depth of the monster we face, Winston. Thrain Ironhand is not some court minister who studied scrolls. He is the original master of the Void in our records. The moment you even attempt to tear the fabric of space, he will sense the ripple in the aether. He can collapse a portal with a mere thought, trapping us between dimensions. Attempting to teleport away from him is like trying to hide from the sun in an open, burning field. We have to face him on the ground."
Outside the palace, the carnage reached a fever pitch. Thrain's shadow-troops, bolstered by the defectors who saw the return of the "True King" as an omen, had already systematically eliminated 27% of Borin's loyalists. Thrain himself moved like a ghost through the ranks, his eyes fixed only on the palace spires. He didn't even draw his primary weapon; he simply rode.
Shadow-Render's massive hooves acted like hammers of celestial judgment, crushing the skulls and ribs of Tier 10 soldiers as if they were dry autumn leaves. The path behind Thrain was a macabre tapestry of colors that told the story of a dying hierarchy.
In the Aetheleon Planet, the color of one's blood was a biological marker of their cultivation and rank:
Sky-Blue Blood pooled in the gutters, belonging to the common soldiers and recruits of Tiers 10 through 7.
Vibrant Green Blood splattered the white marble walls, the lifeblood of the high-ranking officers and Ministers of Tiers 6 through 4, whose mana had chemically altered their essence.
Despite the thousands of blades swung his way—some fueled by desperation, others by duty—not a single bruise or scratch marred Thrain's form. His passive Void-Shroud was a masterpiece of elemental defense; it simply phased any incoming attacks into a pocket dimension a millisecond before they could touch his skin. He reached the palace plaza, where a final line of 150 Ministers stood trembling, led by the defiant Queen Morlin.
The massive oak and iron palace doors swung open with a heavy thud. Jai and James, having reapplied their disguises to avoid causing a mass panic or confusing the common soldiers who still saw them as "Arthur and Clement," stepped out. Beside them were Zayn, Brokk, and Winston, their weapons drawn and their expressions grim.
Queen Morlin turned, her eyes wide with maternal terror. "Zayn! Arthur! Why are you here? Get back inside the medical wards immediately! This is not a battle for the wounded!"
"Mother," Zayn said, his voice steadier than it had been in all his years of living in his father's shadow. "To hide behind the skirts of my mother and the shields of my dying people is a stain upon the Stone Head name that I will not bear. Zeron is gone—he chose the wrong path. Father is fighting for our very existence on another world. If I do not stand now, I have no right to the crown, and I have no right to call myself his son."
Jai stepped forward, bowing deeply to Morlin, showing the respect of a fellow royal. "Madam, we came to this kingdom to save it from the shadows. We didn't come here to watch it burn from a safe window. If Thrain wants the blood of the humans, he will have to take it from our cold hands."
Morlin's eyes filled with tears as she looked at her son. "Zayn... you are all I have left. Your brother is dead by your father's hand. Your sister, Morisa, is missing in the chaos of the border—we don't even know if she still breathes. If I lose you today, the Stone Head lineage dies with you."
Zayn grabbed his mother's hands, his grip firm. "You won't lose me. My father is going to win his fight against the ghost of the past, and we are going to kill the man who betrayed us for the sake of a dead king's shadow. We are the future; they are just the dust of history."
James stepped to the edge of the stairs, looking at the horizon where the black horse was now clearly visible through the rising smoke. The horse's eyes glowed with a hellish red light. "It's not just your kingdom anymore, Zayn. It's ours. We've bled on this soil too."
The air grew unnaturally cold, a sign that the Void was being thinned. The smell of ozone and void-dust—a dry, metallic scent—filled the plaza. A hundred meters away, the black horse stopped. The figure clad in scarred, ancient iron armor looked up. His pitch-black eyes, devoid of any light or mercy, locked onto the two "mercenaries" at the top of the stairs. Thrain Ironhand had arrived, and the very air seemed to bow in his presence.
The showdown that would decide the fate of the Dwarf Kingdom was no longer a matter of history books or ancient prophecies—it was a matter of immediate, bloody survival. The "Arthur" and "Clement" they knew were gone; in their place were the descendants of the woman who had once broken the man standing before them.
Jai's team was fully nervous to face the man that once Beatrice Chenwongo fought and defeated him .
"So," Thrain's voice echoed, cold and hollow. "The cubs of the lioness think they can stand where their mother once roared."
Jai gripped his sword, his heart hammering against his ribs. "We don't need to roar, General. We just need to outlast you."
The battle for the Dwarf Palace was about to begin.