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Book 2: Chapter 1: Madness Has A Name
🕑 Added 2025-07-24 23:58:01 +0000 UTCChapter 1: Madness Has A Name
The hall was loud.
Louder than it had any right to be.
Grace sat stiffly at the high table of the Valewick Citadel, legs dangling from a chair too tall, squeezed into a red and gold gown she hadn’t chosen, barely able to breathe thanks to the ridiculous amount of silk wrapped around her ribcage. Her mother sat beside her like a living statue, elegant, perfect and untouchable. The Empress of Ashford.
And apparently, that made Grace a princess now.
This is madness, she thought flatly.
Everything here was madness.
The Great Hall stretched endlessly in every direction, its high arched ceiling aglow with hundreds of floating lights, mana lamps enchanted to shimmer like stars. Nobles filled every table. Everyone who had a name in Ashford, everyone with power, influence, or a family crest, had crawled out of their keeps to sit here and toast a six-year-old.
Me.
They were drinking in her name. Bowing in her direction. Leaving gifts, so many gods-damned gifts her fingers hurt from opening them.
She watched as a baron laughed so hard at something Ronan said that he nearly choked on his wine. A lady in silver fur wiped a tear from her cheek after toasting “the Princess of Light.” A young heir from House Velstran had knelt when presenting her with a ceremonial dagger, then promptly burst into tears after being granted a “thank you” from her royal lips.
This whole day is a freakshow.
She stabbed at a slice of sugared pear on her plate with a tiny gold fork, barely resisting the urge to throw it across the table.
Let’s recap, shall we?
At first, Corax—bless his ever-twisted soul—had decided to gift her a pet. Which was cute… until she realized it wasn’t a pet, it was a person. A beastkin. A child, apparently. Some little mutt of a wolf-boy who looked at her with too-wide eyes and didn’t speak a word.
A live gift. Sure. Totally normal.
Then, as if that wasn’t enough, she’d been told her celebration wouldn’t be at the Ashford Estate, but in Valewick. The whole damn city was celebrating.
I mean, I only turned six. Not sixteen. Not Empress. Not the Second Coming of the Goddess Iras herself. Just six.
But sure. Entire city. Fireworks. Parade banners. Merchants giving out cakes with her face on them. Why not?
Then there was the part where they put her in a high tower. Alone.
Okay, not alone. Elyne was there.
Which is worse.
Then, of course, while sitting calmly—so calmly—in that room, she accidentally awakened Light mana in her core.
That was fun.
Nothing says “happy birthday” like having your spine torn open from the inside by divine fire. She could still remember the feeling, like burning honey poured through her ribs and down her veins. Her hands still trembled when she remembered the light behind her eyes.
Super pleasant. Thanks again, world.
But that wasn’t even the end.
Oh no.
After the "incident," Elyne had dragged her to the citadel balcony, insisting she thank the people of Valewick for gathering in her honor.
Yay! Spontaneous public speech. Without training. While still twitching from internal mana trauma. Why not?
And just as she’d started, just as she’d found her rhythm, smiling through gritted teeth and reciting the lies Elyne had drilled into her, her mother interrupted.
Of course she did.
Liliana stepped forward with that perfect war-priestess voice and casually declared that Grace was now a princess.
A freaking princess.
And then, as if that wasn’t enough, she also declared that Ashford was now an empire, and that the Kingdom of Virethorn was officially their enemy.
War. Empire. Her birthday speech.
Oh, I’m sure that was all just a coincidence, Grace thought bitterly. Totally unplanned. My mother definitely didn’t choreograph a rebellion and a regime change around her six-year-old’s cake day.
Absolutely not.
Totally believable.
She was going to scream.
But no, it didn’t end there.
Liliana had said something about “the true heir”, about blood and legacy and light.
More responsibility. More mystery. Greaaaaat.
Grace had asked—very politely—if Ronan was a prince now too, since, you know, they were apparently royal now.
Her mother had replied with an elegant smile: “No. He inherits the duchy. You inherit the empire.”
Oh.
Cool.
Nothing weird about that.
So let me get this straight. You couldn't kill your husband’s legitimate heir, so instead you built a whole empire just to pass it to your own daughter? That's not unhinged at all. Completely normal behavior.
And then, after all that, instead of rest…
Instead of being allowed to breathe…
They stuffed her into this ridiculous dress, dragged her into this banquet, and expected her to smile while nobles cheered and wept and clinked their cups in her name like she was some holy relic instead of a six-year-old with a headache and a mild Light-induced mana rupture.
ARE THEY ALL INSANE?
She resisted the urge to scream into her cup.
If this was what ruling an empire looked like, she was going to outlaw banquets. No more music. No more toasts. No more fake smiles.
These people had way too much fun.
“Grace,” her mother’s voice broke through the chaos, calm and honey-sweet, “you haven’t touched your wine.”
Grace looked up slowly. Her endless blue eyes met Liliana’s unblinking stare.
She smiled.
“Sorry, Mother,” she said sweetly, raising her glass.
And thought to herself:
Ah yes, also totally normal that I drink wine at my SIXTH BIRTHDAY. Why did I miss how insane everyone here is. BAHH…
But the wine tastes good…
Oh well. Maybe I’ll drink myself to death here to teach them a lesson.
She took a dainty sip and let the warmth coat her tongue, keeping her expression perfectly pleasant as nobles began to line up again, bearing more gifts, more praise, more hollow words wrapped in velvet.
Yes, Grace thought, lifting her chin and flashing a princess-worthy smile at the next idiot who bowed before her, this world is definitely going to burn.
She sat beside her mother, posture flawless. A living porcelain doll. The perfect little girl with the perfect little smile, shining like the light of Ashford.
A perfect puppet.
At least everyone had taken their seats now. The feast had begun. The noise had dulled, if only slightly, as servants moved like clockwork through the aisles; silver trays, roasted meats, glistening fruits, things she used to dream of but now just stared at.
After the first course, her mother leaned in, subtle and composed, she whispered near her ear.
“I’m proud of you, Grace,” Liliana said, soft and so terribly warm. “And I truly love you, my little girl.”
Grace almost choked on her wine.
Her heart squeezed, just a little too tight, like it didn’t know how to handle softness from that direction.
But before she could answer, her mother spoke again.
“So…” Liliana’s voice lowered, conspiratorial. “Are you ready for your gift?”
Grace raised a single, elegant eyebrow.
“Making me a princess wasn’t the gift?”
Liliana chuckled, quiet and fond. “No, Grace. That was a gift to me.”
She smiled.
“My little princess.”
Then she stood, and the room fell silent at once. Every noble froze. Every goblet paused mid-air. The clatter of silver stopped.
Liliana’s voice rang clear and high.
“Today,” she began, “is not only the day that the old Empire of Ashford rises from dust once more.”
She paused.
“Today is also the birthday of my daughter, the light of our new age!”
Thunderous applause erupted.
Grace barely kept her eyes from twitching. She smiled again, because that was her job now.
Liliana raised one hand, and silence returned like a spell.
“So, I will gift her something truly special. A gift not just of wealth, but of legacy.”
She turned, ever so slightly, and looked at Grace.
“I hereby gift my daughter, Princess Grace of Ashford, the restored lands of Gatewick—castle and all holdings within. The ancestral home of our bloodline, rebuilt from ruin.”
Gasps and murmurs followed like a wave.
Liliana wasn’t done.
“She will be the first Ashford to reside in Gatewick since it was burned by barbarian fire with my own mother inside it. This is a new start. A new dawn. And with this, I declare: all vassals in the lands of Gatewick shall henceforth swear loyalty not to me—but to the Princess.”
Madness, Grace thought.
True madness.
Everyone cheered.
WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU GIFT A SIX-YEAR-OLD FUCKING LANDS—
She kept smiling.
Okay sure, yes, I was ‘in charge’ at the estate. That’s manageable. That was mostly theater. A manor. Some guards. A few staff. That’s cute.
But this—this is a castle. With villages. Towns. Real vassals. Actual power.
What. The. Fuck.
Still smiling. Grace stood slowly, poised as ever, and gave her mother a delicate, practiced bow.
“Thank you, Mother,” she said in her clearest voice, “for your trust and the precious gift of our family heirloom.”
Louder cheers followed.
As she bent her head, she caught a glimpse of Ronan at the edge of the high table. He had played his part well all evening, smiling, drinking, charming. But now, for a fraction of a moment, she saw it.
Envy. Barely visible. But there.
She didn’t care.
She sat back down, graceful and calm.
A steward approached with a velvet-bound scroll, the official documents transferring lordship of Gatewick and its surrounding holdings to her name.
Her fingers trembled, but she accepted it like a grown woman would.
What are you planning, Mother…?
Grace sighed inwardly, gaze drifting across the banquet. Her limbs were heavy. Her back ached. Her head throbbed. She felt the fatigue burrowed deep into her marrow.
The light mana that had awakened inside her earlier that day was still there, still simmering like a storm held back behind skin. Her core pulsed faintly. Every time she blinked, she felt a flicker of brightness behind her eyelids.
Her child body wasn’t built for this.
And this day—this gods-damned day—had been too much, even for her. She didn’t want wine or cake or her own lands, she just wanted to sleep.
Maybe she’d wake up in her old room on Earth, cheap bedsheets, buzzing monitor, dim ceiling light and all. Would that really be so bad? Was Earth ever really that bad? She didn’t know anymore.
--::--
Snow fell in waves, not flakes, slabs of ice slicing sideways in the wind. Marshal Dareth stood on the command rise, face grim beneath his iron-lined hood, watching death unfold across the valley floor. The Second Army had dug in fast, three layers of trenches, twenty mage towers, and two hundred carts of steel and powder, but even that felt like paper against what came at them. The Beastkin didn’t charge like soldiers. They swarmed like hunger given shape.
Down below, the first ranks screamed.
Boarkin crashed into tower shields with the force of siege rams, snapping arms and sending men flying through the air like ragdolls. Archers loosed volleys point-blank, only to have Wolfkin leap over the barricades and carve them down with hooked blades and teeth. One soldier fell, guts pouring out as a Catkin ripped his stomach open with clawed gauntlets, laughing the whole time. No discipline, no honor, just blood.
“Mages!” Dareth roared, voice cutting through the chaos like a whip crack. “Burn the center line! Don’t let them breach the trench!”
Two corps war mages raised their staves in unison, glyphs flaring red-hot across the air. The resulting inferno painted the snow orange, incinerating a full wedge of charging Beastkin in seconds. They didn’t scream, they didn’t have time. Flesh melted from bone mid-run. But behind the fire came more. They never stopped.
Steel clanged. Screams rang out, some cut short, others dragging on too long. A spearman stumbled past Dareth’s post with a javelin in his throat and kept walking three steps before collapsing, blood pumping from the wound like it was trying to escape first. Another mage—barely more than a boy—was sobbing uncontrollably, his hands glowing with spent mana as his partner bled out beside him, head half gone.
Dareth didn’t look away.
“Front shield wall rotate!” he shouted, gesturing with his gauntlet. “Replace! Replace!”
Fresh troops surged forward, stepping over the dead and dragging back the wounded. Men vomited into the snow and kept fighting. An Ashen Knight with half his helmet caved in barked orders while using his shield like a battering ram, knocking a Lynxkin off the ledge and into a spike pit. Blood sprayed across his tabard. He didn’t blink.
The wyvern on the north ridge let out a furious cry before diving again, fire trailing from its jaws like a god's breath. The impact shattered the ice below and sent a dozen Beastkin flying. Dareth looked up just in time to see it take a spear through the wing. The wyvern screamed, spiraled, and crashed into the outer trench with a sound like thunder. Half the 7th company died under its body.
“Medic teams to trench three! Now!” Dareth bellowed. He spun to his adjutant. “Signal fallback positions. I want barriers readied along the western slope!”
The adjutant opened his mouth, then froze.
A Bearkin chieftain had breached the second line.
He came barreling in like a siege engine, roaring, two blades the size of wagon axles whirling through the line. He split a man down the center like firewood. Dareth’s soldiers screamed, tried to close the gap, but five more fell in the next breath. Bones snapped. Blood fountained. One unlucky bastard lost his face in a single swing, and the rest backed up without even thinking.
Dareth moved.
He grabbed a spear from a dying guard and threw it with every ounce of rage he had. It punched through the Bearkin’s neck and out the back. The monster stumbled, let out a rattling choke, and kept walking.
“Mages!” Dareth barked. “Drop him!”
Four spells hit the Bearkin at once, fire, frost, concussive force, and one bolt of raw lightning. The brute finally went down smoking, twitching in a pool of steaming blood, limbs spasming like a broken beast. The trench was ankle-deep in corpses.
Still, the enemy kept coming.
The snow was red now.
Slick. Sticky. It clung to boots, to armor, to the dead. Dareth stepped over a pile of corpses—his men—and kept shouting orders. His throat was raw. His heart burned. Not from emotion. From fatigue.
He glanced at the sky. The sun had barely moved. This battle had only lasted twenty-seven minutes.
And they were already dying by the hundreds.
The valley was holding, for now.
…
Dareth stood at the central ridge, armor scorched, jaw clenched as reports flew at him from every direction. Blood soaked the ground like melted snow. The Beastkin didn’t break. They died in piles and kept coming, as if their bones were made of fury and meat didn’t matter.
But his line held.
The mages were burning through reserves, yes, but they hadn’t broken. Tower shields were scorched and bent, but still standing. The wyverns, gods bless their scaled hearts, were flying again. Even the wounded one—Ronan’s—had taken to the air, though it limped on torn wings. Dareth watched it scream overhead, fire crackling through its jaw like revenge. He hated that boy more with every breath.
“Marshal!” a scout slid down the icy slope, panting. “They’re sending siege beasts!”
Dareth snapped his eyes forward.
And there they were.
Massive things, not quite mammoths. Hulking towers of bone and sinew wrapped in iron harnesses, tusks like battering rams, armor plates bolted into muscle. They carried entire warbands on their backs, howling from wooden towers nailed into the beasts’ spines.
“Mage corps—barrier grid! All casters, defensive weave now!” Dareth shouted.
A series of loud chants rolled through the line as war mages thrust their staves skyward. Sigils snapped into life, casting translucent shields across the forward positions. The first beast slammed into the barrier, and the sound was like a cathedral collapsing.
The shield held.
Cracks spiderwebbed through the air, flickering mana bending under pressure. The beast reeled back, preparing for a second charge. Its rider screeched something guttural and pointed.
“Hit it with focused fire!” Dareth barked. “Center mass!”
Six mages raised their palms. One beat later, a coordinated burst of kinetic force hammered the beast’s chest. Bones cracked. The creature screamed, and dropped dead, twitching as its tower slid off its back and shattered on the rocks.
But two more were coming.
And the mages were already pale, sweating.
Dareth turned to his adjutant. “News from the rear?”
The younger man nodded. “Ashford banners. First Legion. They’re behind us—cutting through the lower trail. Lady Montclair rides with them.”
Relief didn’t come easy in war, but Dareth let himself breathe.
The First Legion.
Ashford’s best.
“They’ll reinforce the middle line. Pull our cavalry back. Let them rest,” Dareth ordered. “We collapse and charge with fresh steel.”
Another roar rose beyond the ridge. The Ursin hadn’t come yet.
But when he did, Dareth wanted him to see something: humans that didn’t run.
--::--
The high ground stank of blood.
The Ursin stood unmoving on the overlook of jagged black stone, staring down into the valley below. Wind howled past his cloak, tugging at the golden mantle braided across one shoulder. Smoke rose in columns from the battlefield, some white from snowfire spells, others black with charred flesh. The humans had dug deep. But his warriors had dug deeper.
Beside him, a ring of clan tacticians spoke in low, urgent tones. A Redfang strategist traced blood-lines across a hide map with her claw. A Frostclaw commander, teeth cracked from old wars, muttered about the pattern of their seer formations. They argued, disagreed, shifted stones, counted corpses.
The Ursin said nothing, because he already knew the truth.
They had lost many today, more than most campaigns. Five, maybe eight percent of the full force. Thousands dead in the snow. But his army was vast, the largest called in three generations. And Beastkin were not made to whimper at losses. They bled for glory. For war. The drums of the Drekkh Thar still beat behind them.
What a fierce battle, the Ursin thought, watching another siege beast collapse in flame as human magic tore through its chest. He clenched one massive paw against the cold stone. Every fiber of his body screamed to leap into the fray, to tear down the walls with his own hands. But he held still.
He was the High Voice of Korvethar.
And a commander must not break the rhythm too soon.
Another runner arrived, fur soaked with sweat and slush. “More human banners,” the scout barked. “South trail. A fresh army—twenty, thirty thousand.”
A pause.
“They weren’t there before. They came from the cliffs.”
The Ursin’s growl was low, thunder beneath the earth. His claws scraped stone.
“How?” he rumbled.
No one answered.
His scouts had seen nothing. No banners. No smoke trails. No drums. And yet, now they marched.
The tacticians fell silent. This changed things.
In the valley below, his forces were already deep in engagement. Blood painted the snow in thick strokes. Half a dozen clans were locked in brutal trench combat, Wolfkin fangs clashing with plated steel, Boarkin axes ringing against tower shields. The humans fought like rats in a flood: desperate, fast, always shifting. Fires bloomed. Screams echoed. A Skysplitter brute leapt over a barricade and was immediately crushed by a spell that turned his skin to salt.
The Ursin saw a Frostfang beheader take a blade through the eye and keep fighting for three full seconds before collapsing in a heap of twitching limbs. He saw a trio of Catkin rip apart a knight, only for all three to vanish in a sudden sunburst of holy light that burned them to ash.
This was war. Real war.
But now the terrain had changed.
If the second human army reached the fortress… the Beastkin would be pinned. Trapped in the valley between two walls of spears. No retreat.
The Ursin narrowed his eyes. He hated the word retreat.
But dying in a box earned nothing.
He reached out and took the horn from his belt. The sound that followed was low and slow, like thunder cracking beneath the mountains. It echoed off the slopes, passed through the smoke, and every beast on the battlefield heard it.
Pull back. Form lines. Fall behind the ridge.
The tacticians began snapping orders, runners scattered.
The Ursin stood still, eyes fixed on the rising banners of the new army; bright, golden, marked by a stag.
The horn’s echo still rolled across the slopes when one of his tacticians spoke.
“They bear Ashford colors, High Voice. The golden stag.”
The Ursin narrowed his eyes, fur rippling in the wind. Ashford? He had assumed only the Virethorn kingdom could raise armies of that size. Yet here they stood thousands strong, armored, disciplined, and rising like a second wave of steel across the ridgeline.
The humans he had been fighting all day—the exhausted, blood-drenched ones—had begun to fall back toward them. A coordinated move. An attempt to form a unified front.
The Ursin’s instincts twisted in his gut.
Something was wrong.
He turned, barked for his tacticians to gather. “Regroup the main force. Signal the back lines to re-form behind the crest.” The order was swift. Precise. They needed to reset their position before they were flanked. To do that, the frontline had to hold longer.
“Bring the Seers forward,” he growled. “Have them anchor the line.”
His voice rumbled across the mountaintop like a landslide.
Within moments, long-robed figures emerged from the ranks, old shamans wrapped in carved bones and runed cloaks, eyes white with vision-mist. They began to chant, deep guttural tones that vibrated through the stone itself. Ritual magic. Beastkin battle rites, older than the Duchies themselves. Roots cracked the ice. The winds turned red with spirit flame.
And then…
“Look!” a tactician shouted. “The new army, they’ve changed banners!”
The Ursin snapped his gaze back to the ridge.
Gone was the stag.
The golden banners were gone.
In their place: crimson and black. No symbols. No house colors. No heraldry. Just blood-soaked silk flapping in unnatural wind.
“What does it mean?” another hissed. “Why change—”
Then the air cracked.
Loud. Sudden. A pressure shift that made every furred back straighten and every seer falter in their chant. The Ursin’s heart sank, this wasn’t human magic; it was something else entirely. “Summoning,” someone whispered.
“But not against us.”
Below, the human frontline had stopped their retreat. They stared at the new army just as dumbfounded. Confused. Waiting for orders that would never come.
And then the black-armored humans attacked. With zero warning, the rear army turned on their kin. Fire ripped through command tents. Bolts of red lightning shattered the snowbanks. The black army charged downhill, not toward the Beastkin, but into the back ranks of the human lines. Shields clanged. Screams echoed. The knights cut down their own allies with surgical cruelty.
“Retreat!” the Ursin bellowed. “That is bad news! ALL UNITS FALL BACK!”
Panic ripped through his flank lines. Beastkin turned mid-fight, confused, snarling, bleeding. Some roared in defiance. Others ran.
The sky darkened. It wasn’t just magic anymore.
Over the old battlefield, the ground where men and beast had been dying for hours, a ring of red opened midair. A perfect circle, humming with runes no Beastkin recognized. The clouds twisted above it, blackening like ink spilled in water.
Then the portal opened, and the screaming began as abominations fell like smoke, twisted things that should never have touched the sky. Clawed things, some as small as wolves, others the size of siege towers. Horned heads, split jaws, wings like torn flesh. Demons poured from the portal, not summoned into position, but dropped like meat. They landed on friend and foe alike.
The Ursin watched in horror as a warband of Boarkin—twenty strong—was devoured in seconds. Limbs torn. Flesh peeled. One of the demons impaled a human knight through the chest and then exploded into fire, immolating a ten-meter radius.
“This is madness…” one tactician whispered, falling to his knees.
No, the Ursin thought, rage surging. This is worse than madness. This is heresy.
He saw the pattern now. The ritual. The sigils traced in ash. The placement of the new army. The sudden betrayal. The entire battle had been bait.
And they had taken it.
Sacrifice magic.
To open a gate like that—so wide—they would’ve needed thousands of souls.
And now the field was full of them.
The portal pulsed.
Another wave fell through, this time winged, shrieking in tongues not meant for the world of flesh. They flew straight into the clouds, dragging screaming humans behind them like meat puppets.
The Ursin spat.
“Regroup the main body!” he roared. “Pull everything behind the ridge! We hold nothing here! Nothing!”
Runners bolted in every direction, but it was chaos now. The Seers on the front had begun to bleed from their eyes. The spell was collapsing.
And through the smoke, the black-armored army pressed forward, untouched by flame, their formation perfect—like a blade cutting down all who stood.
“Monsters,” the Ursin whispered.
But he didn’t mean the demons, he meant the humans, the ones who had planned this.
They sacrificed their own to win this land.
He looked once more to the ridge, to the portal, and to the field drowning in red.
Then he turned his back on it all.
And ran.
Comments
Ryan N
Thanks for the chapter! Grace be lampooning real hard lol. Dareth seems like a fun character, hope he lives this. Also, gotta feel bad for the man, his allies are a bunch of crazy cultists.
Snow2Reaper
Finally we see the demons.
