The screams and roars of warriors, the echoes of devastating spells, and the thunder of hooves pounding the earth all tore through the sky together. Many soldiers still struggled to stay rational, raising their shields and ducking low on their horses as trained, trying to avoid the spells—but more had already begun to break ranks in panic, ignoring their commanders' shouts. The army's defense was supposed to be organized by the accompanying mages, but the high-ranking priests of the Temple of Shadows ahead were utterly beyond comprehension—those mages could barely protect themselves. Against these priests, the attack felt like watching armored knights beating beggars in the street.
Deadly magic swept across the horizon like an unending storm, following wherever the priests' gaze landed. Clouds of dust surged like torrential rain. The front ranks fell in rows—then flew into the air in rows—like insects tossed into the eye of a hurricane. The shouts of "For Gerdan!" were soon drowned out by screams and moans of agony. The deputy commander's right leg and arm were grazed by a spell from the Shadow Maze and immediately withered and cracked. He pitched off his horse, only to be trampled into paste by those behind him. The commander himself was thrown into the air when all four legs of his horse decayed at once—only to meet a descending spell midair that blasted his flesh into scattered, steaming chunks.
Just as the desperate charge reached the priests, the air split with a thunderous tear. Darkness spiraled downward, and three massive three-headed hounds appeared by the roadside—each one at least the size of a house. Counting the one that devoured the demon earlier, there were four in total. Ominous mist clouded their eyes, and black chains wound around their hulking bodies. These muscle-bound beasts fixed their gazes on a single direction—then released a deep, thunderous growl that rolled like distant stormclouds.
The first to truly sense death was the army mage.
He alone realized just how horrifying these creatures' power was—they were ancient, older than anything he had ever encountered. These were the gods' own trained executioners. Their power compared to his was like a vast lake to a shallow well.
Too fast—far too fast. They covered over a hundred meters in an instant.
The hounds crashed through rows of cavalry like four moving walls of stone. Dust and smoke erupted around them like crashing waves. To them, the soldiers' charge was a joke.
Ballista bolts and musket rounds shattered against their bodies. Enchanted lances snapped in half. Blades crashed against their magical defenses and broke apart on impact. The iron-clad warriors were forced back step by step. Panicked warhorses went wild, colliding with allies. Rows of soldiers and horses were shredded into pieces, crushed like fruit beneath hammer blows. Explosive shadow magic detonated beneath the hounds' feet, howling into the sky like localized earthquakes—each blast launching hopeless soldiers like ragdolls into the air.
It began when the army mage, along with his shielding spell, was bitten cleanly in two.
Then—everyone broke.
Sacolas calmly pulled a small knife from his waist pouch.
He began trimming his nails.
Crows circled over the silent village, their shrill cries echoing like a pale funeral dirge. The moonlight washed everything clean, making the pools of blood on the ground glisten.
The jet-black birds descended, tearing shreds of flesh from mangled corpses. They pecked out eyes, snapped off severed tongues, licked the fat oozing from torn skin, and clawed out burst livers. They gorged on the leftovers from the Shadow Throne's hounds—snatching their undeserved feast with greedy wings. They fought viciously over scraps, flinging chunks of meat in every direction, uncaring of what status their meals had held in life—noble knights, beautiful maidens, venerable elders, or simple, honest militiamen—none of it mattered. Now, they were only supper.
Armor and weapons were scattered among shattered bones and mangled flesh, glinting in glistening puddles of blood like an abstract crimson carpet. Across that sticky red path lay corpses twisted into unnatural poses. Some were withered into dry husks, others torn apart by hound jaws strong enough to crush demons. Armor was crushed and dented by claw strikes, shields shattered, blades snapped, muskets and ballistae drenched in sticky gore, still gripped in severed arms.
Dim moonlight filtered through the leaves like a spider's web, casting a gray veil over the ground. The night was still.
The three great hounds of the Shadow Throne vanished with a sound like the air being ripped apart, leaving only the smallest one behind. It walked slowly, sniffing through the piles of dead, searching for any survivors—its steps sending crows shrieking into the sky again and again.
A gentle breeze stirred the reek of blood and rot. The low-hanging clouds seemed to brush the creaking treetops, lending the scene a strange, desolate beauty.
And so, all of it—every scream, every ruin—would be buried beneath the silence that now cloaked the mountain's foot.
"Materials... barely enough,"
Sather muttered to himself.
He was sitting cross-legged on the carpet beside the fireplace, while Viola, serving as apprentice and observer, sat quietly nearby. Jeanne was seated on the other side of the bedroom, flipping through the witch's journal. She glanced over every so often.
Sather didn't bother telling her the journal was upside down—of course, Jeanne wasn't so illiterate that she couldn't tell the difference in her own language, but the journal was written in a regional dialect from a remote village on the continent of Bernachis.
At the moment, the black sorcerer had changed into the house's loungewear and was resting his chin on one hand, studying a long-necked flask that hovered over his palm. A blue flame burned directly from his hand beneath it. The bottle didn't contain water, but rather clumps of inky black soul matter suspended in deep violet liquid. As the temperature slowly rose, the spirits gave off faint, wailing screeches. The liquid was Talles Oil—translucent like amethyst—made by combining magically treated souls with low-risk biological materials from lesser species.
Though beautiful to the eye and even strangely musical to the ear, the potion itself was a common reagent—merely a base catalyst.
The flickering fireplace cast fragmented purple light through the curved glass, painting the girl's face. Despite the many tiny skeletal figures writhing violently inside—black, humanoid, and frenzied—Viola showed little fear. She simply watched silently, occasionally twirling a lock of hair around her finger in thought, but never dared interrupt the black sorcerer.
"I still need some source-less flame..."
Sather scanned the bedroom and eventually fixed his gaze on the fire in the hearth—the one that seemed never to die.
"That thing... should work, right?"
He murmured, then gestured for Viola—his unpaid apprentice assistant—to take the flask from him.
Before passing it over, he cast a basic heat insulation spell—not enough to resist violent or high-temperature flames, but perfectly suited for this kind of gentle, experimental work.
Viola took the grotesque bottle carefully, cradling it with both hands.
She was wearing a simple white, waist-tied dress. Her braided hair draped neatly over her collarbones. Her slender forearms, barely the thickness of reeds, looked even more fragile compared to the ominous flask she held. Under the firelight, she leaned closer, watching the chaos inside—if one could call those frantic, skeletal spirits "little people." Her long lashes shimmered as she blinked, her gaze following the motion of the swirling dead.
Suddenly, a corpse-like face materialized—pale and bleak, with only two pupil-less white eyes. It slammed against the inner wall of the glass, staring at her intently.
Viola blinked again and silently held its gaze.
Jeanne watched from the side, eyes narrowing. She pursed her lips. She honestly didn't know what to make of this girl.
"Viola, hand me the flask—"
"Eep!"
Startled, Viola nearly dropped it. In her panic, she hugged the flask to her chest and, off-balance, crashed forehead-first into Sather's ribs.
"So what you're saying," Sather said expressionlessly, glancing down at the girl, "is that I'm more frightening than the vengeful spirits in the bottle?"
"Um... uh..." Viola pulled her neck back like a shy flower on a fragile stalk. Carefully steadying herself with a hand on the sorcerer's back, she sat up straight and rubbed her throbbing forehead. Then she looked down, murmuring, "Maybe... just a little..."
She clearly wasn't very good at lying.
Sather noticed Jeanne nearly burst out laughing.