The world had long been plagued by war.
Kingdoms rose upon mountains of corpses, only to crumble beneath the ambitions of their neighbours.
Armies marched until roads became trenches of mud and blood.
Legendary monsters haunted the forgotten reaches of the world, while famine and disease stalked those fortunate enough to survive the battlefield.
Death was everywhere.
Yet, in that age of slaughter, one man rose above it.
His name was Mortarion Krieg, though few dared speak it without lowering their voices.
To the people of the Aurellian Empire, he was the High Marshal, the conqueror of kingdoms and the shield of the imperial throne.
To the soldiers who followed him, he was an invincible commander whose presence promised victory, no matter how hopeless the battle appeared.
To his enemies, he was something else entirely.
They called him Death’s Disciple.
Mortarion commanded legions of armoured soldiers, hounds bred and honed for slaughter, and monstrous war beasts whose footsteps made the earth tremble.
When his banners appeared upon the horizon, cities barred their gates and rang their bells in warning.
Mothers gathered their children.
Priests crowded temples.
Kings who had once boasted of their courage began composing letters of surrender.
Those who resisted rarely lived long enough to regret it.
Stories of Mortarion’s victories travelled farther than the armies that won them.
Soldiers claimed he wandered battlefields like the Grim Reaper made flesh, appearing wherever the fighting was most desperate.
Arrows seemed to turn from him.
Blades shattered against his armour.
Men twice his size fell beneath his sword before they could utter a prayer.
Some believed he could not die.
Others whispered that Death itself refused to claim him.
Emperor Aurellian rewarded his High Marshal with estates, titles and decorations beyond counting.
Gold medallions covered the walls of Mortarion’s residence, while ceremonial weapons filled chambers he rarely visited.
Entire cities held feasts in his honour.
Statues bearing his likeness were raised in conquered capitals, often using stone taken from monuments dedicated to the rulers he had overthrown.
Mortarion cared little for such honours.
A medal could not kill an enemy.
A title could not win a war.
He desired only another command.
Under his leadership, more than a hundred thousand Imperial soldiers marched against every independent kingdom known to exist.
Some campaigns lasted years.
Others ended before the defenders fully understood that war had begun.
Mortarion crossed burning deserts, frozen valleys and forests where the trees grew so closely together that entire armies had to advance in single file.
One by one, the kingdoms fell.
Their walls were broken, their armies scattered and their royal bloodlines brought to an end.
Mortarion returned from each conquest carrying the crown of a defeated monarch.
These trophies were presented to Emperor Aurellian, who displayed them throughout the imperial throne room.
Golden crowns sat beside iron circlets.
Jewelled diadems rested beneath the claws of marble eagles.
Some were bent from battle, while others remained stained with the blood of their former owners.
Before long, the Emperor possessed more crowns than he had places to display them.
There were no kingdoms left for Mortarion to conquer.
For lesser men, that might have marked the end of a glorious career.
Mortarion could have retired to one of his estates, surrounded himself with servants and spent the remainder of his life recounting old victories.
Emperor Aurellian, however, had no intention of allowing his greatest weapon to rust.
The High Marshal had conquered men.
Now he would be sent to conquer legends.
Across the world existed four creatures known as the Fell Beasts.
They were not ordinary monsters, but living disasters born during an age remembered only in broken carvings and forbidden texts.
Each possessed the power to destroy cities, poison nations or plunge entire populations into madness.
For centuries, rulers had avoided the territories claimed by these beasts.
Armies had been sent against them and had vanished.
Heroes had sworn to slay them, only for their mangled remains to be returned home.
Mortarion accepted the Emperor’s command without hesitation.
The first of the Fell Beasts was Basilisk, the Great Serpent of the Sea.
Its vast body coiled beneath the northern waters, where it hunted merchant vessels and dragged warships into the depths.
Sailors described a creature longer than a city wall, covered in scales as dark as the ocean floor.
Its eyes shone beneath the waves like green lanterns, while its jaws could split a ship from bow to stern.
Entire fleets had been lost to Basilisk.
Mortarion took only one vessel against it.
The ship was reinforced with iron bands and fitted with the largest ballista the imperial engineers had ever constructed.
The weapon required thirty men to draw its cord and another ten to position each bolt.
Its ammunition was forged from mithril and coated in the blood of pale frogs found only within the poisonous marshes of Malverin.
According to an ancient bestiary, Basilisk’s scales could resist iron, fire and magic, but the blood of those frogs carried a sickness capable of weakening the serpent’s flesh.
Mortarion had never trusted ancient books.
He trusted them slightly more than he trusted frightened men.
Basilisk attacked at dusk.
The sea rose around the vessel as the beast emerged, its immense body breaking through the waves.
Sailors fled from their stations as its shadow swallowed the deck.
Some threw themselves overboard.
Others collapsed in prayer.
Mortarion remained beside the ballista.
He waited until the serpent opened its jaws.
“Loose.”
The mithril bolt struck Basilisk through the roof of its mouth and tore into its skull.
The beast convulsed, wrapping itself around the warship as the poison spread through its body.
Timber cracked.
Masts snapped.
Men screamed as they were cast into the sea.
Mortarion climbed onto the serpent’s head and drove a second bolt through its eye with a hammer.
By sunrise, Basilisk was dead.
The remains of Mortarion’s vessel drifted beside its carcass, and fewer than a dozen sailors survived to tell the tale.
They returned to the Empire bearing one of the serpent’s fangs, which was mounted above the doors of the imperial throne room.
The second Fell Beast was Arathorn, the two-headed manticore.
It had terrorised the eastern borderlands for generations, descending from the mountains whenever hunger drove it towards civilisation.
Arathorn possessed the body of a lion, a barbed tail longer than a siege ladder and two horned heads that constantly fought over their prey.
Its claws could tear through reinforced city walls.
Its roar shattered windows and paralysed horses with fear.
Mortarion encountered it among the ruins of a border fortress.
The manticore struck before his soldiers could form ranks.
One sweep of its claws killed twelve men.
Its tail punched through shields and breastplates, lifting screaming soldiers into the air before casting them against the stones.
Mortarion ordered his remaining men to withdraw.
He faced the creature alone.
Arathorn’s first head lunged towards him, jaws wide enough to swallow a horse.
Mortarion rolled beneath it and drew Dreaded Deliverance, the mithril sword that had accompanied him through every conquest.
The blade cut through the beast’s throat, but did not sever the head completely.
The second head seized Mortarion by the shoulder and hurled him through the remains of a wall.
Bones cracked beneath his armour.
Before Arathorn could finish him, Mortarion rose.
He attacked the wounded head first, hacking through muscle and spine until it fell.
The remaining head screamed so violently that blood ran from Mortarion’s ears.
It charged with its claws raised, maddened by pain and the loss of its twin.
Mortarion stepped inside its reach and drove Dreaded Deliverance beneath its jaw.
He cut until the second head joined the first.
From Arathorn’s corpse, Mortarion claimed several claws, strips of hide and the venomous barb from its tail.
The rest was burned, although the fires took three days to consume it.
The third Fell Beast was Moravia, the Harpy of Whispers.
She was smaller than Basilisk and possessed none of Arathorn’s strength.
Her danger lay not in her talons or wings, but in her voice.
Moravia spoke with a sweetness no mortal mind could resist.
A single command from her could turn loyal soldiers against one another.
Husbands murdered wives at her request.
Mothers abandoned children.
Entire villages tore themselves apart while Moravia watched from the rooftops and sang.
Those who survived remembered nothing except that her words had seemed more important than life itself.
Mortarion’s army found her within a shattered temple surrounded by hundreds of corpses.
Some had strangled one another.
Others had clawed out their own eyes.
A handful remained alive, kneeling before the harpy with vacant smiles.
Moravia welcomed the High Marshal by name.
She offered him kingdoms.
Immortality.
The imperial throne itself.
Mortarion did not hear her.
Before entering the temple, he had ordered a surgeon to pierce both his eardrums.
Moravia’s expression changed when she realised her voice held no power over him.
She spread her wings and attempted to flee, but Mortarion caught her with a chain.
She clawed at his armour, shrieking words he could not hear as he dragged her from the sky.
Dreaded Deliverance could not pierce her heart.
Neither could iron, mithril nor any weapon forged by mortal hands.
Mortarion therefore used the severed claw of Arathorn.
He drove it through Moravia’s breast and pinned her to the temple floor.
Her followers collapsed the moment she died.
Some regained their senses.
Others remained broken, begging the dead harpy to speak again.
Mortarion returned to the capital carrying Moravia’s head inside an iron cage.
Her blood was collected in crystal vessels, while her feathers were burned under the supervision of imperial priests.
Three Fell Beasts had been slain.
Only one remained.
Karaban, the Winged Nightmare.
The dragon dwelt in the desolate southern mountains, where peaks rose beyond the clouds and snow buried the ruins of forgotten civilisations.
Karaban had slept beneath those mountains since before the Aurellian Empire existed, awakening once every few generations to feed.
Whenever the dragon emerged, cities vanished.
Its wings were wide enough to cover entire districts in shadow.
Its scales were harder than enchanted steel, while its breath did not produce ordinary flame.
Karaban spat molten stone that flowed through streets like volcanic rivers, leaving nothing behind except blackened foundations and bones trapped within glass.
Imperial scholars spent months searching for a weakness.
Their answer was less comforting than ignorance.
Karaban could only be killed by a blade made from pure diamond and infused with the blood of Moravia.
The weapon had to pierce a narrow opening between the scales at the back of the dragon’s neck.
No other part of Karaban’s body was vulnerable.
Diamond had been used to decorate swords, crowns and ceremonial armour, but no blacksmith had ever forged an entire blade from it.
Mortarion ordered the Empire’s finest craftsmen to attempt the impossible.
For several weeks, furnaces burned without pause inside the imperial foundry.
Wagons carried diamonds from mines, treasuries and noble collections.
Jewels were crushed into powder.
Rare metals were tested and discarded.
Each attempt ended with the blade shattering, melting or emerging too brittle to survive a single strike.
Eventually, the master blacksmith requested an audience.
He approached Mortarion covered in soot, with burns wrapped across both hands.
Behind him stood the other craftsmen, their faces hollow from exhaustion.
“High Marshal,” the blacksmith began, “this is a hopeless endeavour.
We do not possess the means to construct such a weapon.
None of us has ever worked with pure diamond before.
We need more time.”
Mortarion sat at the far end of the foundry, watching another failed blade cool within a cracked mould.
He rose without speaking.
The blacksmith lowered his head, perhaps mistaking the silence for consideration.
Mortarion drew Dreaded Deliverance and removed the man’s head with a single stroke.
The body remained standing for a moment before collapsing beside the furnace.
Mortarion cleaned the blade against the dead man’s apron.
“Anyone who lacks faith shall be released from his duty,” he told the surviving craftsmen.
“Permanently.”
No one requested more time after that.
They worked until their hands bled and their lungs filled with smoke.
Some collapsed beside the furnaces and were dragged away so others could take their places.
Several died from exhaustion.
Others were executed when Mortarion judged their mistakes too costly to forgive.
New methods were attempted.
Enchantments were layered over one another.
Moravia’s blood was mixed into molten alloys and poured through diamond dust.
Every failure taught the craftsmen something, although the lessons were often purchased with lives.
After half a year, they succeeded.
The blade was long and colourless, its surface so clear that light passed through it.
Thin veins of crimson moved within the diamond like blood beneath pale skin.
It possessed no guard, no decoration and no inscription.
Such things were unnecessary.
Mortarion named it Karaban’s Bane.
The surviving blacksmiths stood before him awaiting their reward.
They received no gold.
No estates.
No titles.
They were permitted to keep their heads.
The six-month delay was unacceptable, but Mortarion understood that executing every skilled blacksmith in the Empire would eventually reduce the quality of its weapons.
Even punishment had to serve a purpose.
Mortarion prepared to travel south alone.
He left behind the black and dark-green armour that had become feared across the world.
Plate would slow him in the mountains, and its weight would make climbing impossible.
Instead, he wore layers of fur and dark wool beneath a hooded cloak.
He carried little beyond food, rope, climbing tools and Karaban’s Bane.
The journey into the mountains lasted half a year.
Mortarion searched every valley, crevice and cave he encountered.
He crossed frozen rivers and climbed cliffs that no sane man would have attempted.
Several times, storms forced him to shelter beneath the snow.
Once, he fought a pale mountain bear using nothing more than a climbing pick, unwilling to risk damaging the diamond blade.
Signs of Karaban eventually appeared.
He found trees turned to black glass.
Ancient stone had melted and flowed down the mountainsides like candle wax.
Enormous tracks marked the frozen earth, each one large enough to hold a cottage.
Mortarion followed them to a narrow gorge concealed behind a wall of ice.
Beyond it waited a cavern greater than any throne room.
Gold flowed across the floor like a frozen river.
Coins from dead kingdoms lay piled beside silver armour, jewelled idols and weapons whose makers had been forgotten.
Crowns rested among chalices.
Statues carved from emerald watched over chests overflowing with treasure.
Some of those riches were older than the Empire.
At the centre of it all slept Karaban.
The dragon’s body curled around a mountain of gold, its scales black along the spine and crimson beneath its wings.
Smoke escaped its nostrils with each breath.
The heat radiating from its body turned nearby coins soft, fusing them together in glittering clumps.
Even asleep, Karaban was larger than many fortresses Mortarion had conquered.
Fighting it openly would have been suicide.
Stealth offered the only chance of success.
Mortarion moved across the treasure slowly, placing each foot with care.
Coins shifted beneath his weight despite every precaution.
Jewels scraped against armour taken from forgotten kings.
Each small noise echoed through the cavern until it seemed as loud as a war horn.
Karaban did not wake.
Mortarion reached the dragon’s foreleg and began to climb.
The scales were hot enough to burn through his gloves.
He used the ridges between them as handholds, pulling himself higher until he reached the creature’s shoulder.
Karaban shifted beneath him, sending an avalanche of treasure crashing across the cavern.
One golden eye opened.
The dragon rose with a roar that shook shards of stone from the ceiling.
Mortarion clung to its back as Karaban thrashed.
Wings struck the cavern walls.
Claws tore through mountains of treasure.
The dragon rolled, trying to crush the intruder against the stone, but Mortarion drove his climbing tools between its scales and held on.
Karaban surged towards the cavern entrance.
Mortarion continued climbing.
The dragon emerged into the storm and launched itself from the mountainside.
Wind tore at Mortarion’s cloak as the ground disappeared beneath him.
Karaban twisted through the air, striking cliffs and scraping its back against jagged peaks.
Still, Mortarion climbed.
His fingers broke beneath the pressure.
The skin of his palms peeled away.
Each breath became a struggle in the freezing air, yet he dragged himself towards the creature’s neck.
He saw the opening at last.
It was scarcely wider than the edge of a hand, concealed beneath overlapping scales at the base of the skull.
Mortarion drew Karaban’s Bane.
The diamond blade glimmered beneath the storm.
With the last of his strength, he plunged it into the opening.
Karaban screamed.
For several heartbeats, nothing else happened.
Mortarion had enough time to wonder whether the scholars had been wrong.
Then the crimson veins within the blade began to glow.
Karaban’s Bane melted inside the wound, sinking through scale, flesh and bone.
The dragon’s scream became deafening.
Cracks spread across its neck as orange light burned beneath its skin.
Magma erupted from the wound.
It poured across Karaban’s scales in a blazing torrent, consuming Mortarion’s cloak and burning through his clothes.
He released the remains of the sword and attempted to leap from the dragon’s back.
Karaban twisted its head.
Molten stone struck Mortarion before he could fall.
Agony swallowed him.
His flesh blackened.
His bones cracked beneath the heat.
One arm disappeared within the flood of magma, followed by his shoulder and chest.
Mortarion tried to scream, but fire filled his mouth and burned the sound away.
Karaban began to fall.
Magma burst from between the dragon’s scales.
It poured from its mouth, eyes and nostrils.
Its wings ignited from within, becoming glowing skeletons against the night sky.
The great creature wailed as its body collapsed into a burning husk.
Dragon and warrior struck the mountainside together.
The impact shook the southern peaks.
Karaban, the last of the four Fell Beasts, was dead.
Mortarion Krieg had completed his final mission.
Yet the man heralded as Death’s Disciple had not survived his victory.
The same magma that consumed the dragon devoured him, melting flesh and bone until nothing remained of the High Marshal who had conquered the world.
There was no body to recover.
No armour to place inside a tomb.
No hand to remove from the ruins and return to the Emperor.
Mortarion expected darkness.
Perhaps he expected punishment.
If the priests were correct, then countless tormented souls were waiting to welcome him into the deepest pits of the underworld.
Kings he had deposed, soldiers he had butchered and craftsmen he had executed would all be there.
He did not find them.
Mortarion opened his eyes and discovered himself standing within a vast grey emptiness.
He possessed a body again, although it bore none of the burns that had killed him.
His hands were whole.
His clothing had been restored.
Even the exhaustion of the mountains had disappeared.
There was no ground beneath his feet, yet he did not fall.
No sky stretched above him.
The emptiness continued in every direction, silent and without end.
Then came the sound of metal scraping across stone.
A figure emerged from the mist.
It was impossibly tall and wrapped in robes that moved despite the absence of wind.
Beneath its hood rested a skull stained by age, with two pale flames burning within its empty sockets.
One skeletal hand held a great scythe, its blade marked by names written in languages Mortarion did not recognise.
The being stopped before him.
Mortarion did not kneel.
He had stood before emperors, kings and monsters.
Death would receive no greater courtesy.
“You have been difficult to claim, Mortarion Krieg,” the Reaper said.
Its voice came from everywhere at once.
Mortarion looked upon the creature without fear.
“Am I dead?”
“You were consumed by the blood of the world while killing a beast that should have outlived empires.
Yes, Mortarion Krieg.
You are dead.”
“Then send me where I belong.”
The flames within the Reaper’s eyes narrowed.
“Heaven would reject you.”
“I expected as much.”
“And Hell fears what you may become.”
For the first time, Mortarion’s expression changed.
Not from fear.
From interest.
The Reaper lowered its scythe until the point rested before Mortarion’s chest.
“Your life has ended,” it said.
“But your service to death need not end with it.”
The grey mist parted behind the creature.
Beyond it appeared countless distant worlds, each filled with kingdoms, wars, monsters and men who believed themselves beyond Death’s reach.
Mortarion watched them burn.
The Reaper extended one skeletal hand.
“I offer you a choice.”