The Stain of Blood

The sky was stained a permanent gray now.

Ray adjusted the tattered cloak around his shoulders as he made his way down the cracked, lonely road, an old scarf tied tightly around his arm like a bandage against the cold.

Dust stung his eyes.
Ash floated in the wind like dead snow.

In the distance, black smoke rose into the horizon —
another village burning.
Another flag torn down.
Another promise broken.

He passed a group of travelers huddled under a broken stone arch.
Their armor was mismatched — scavenged from battlefield corpses.
Their faces were drawn tight with suspicion.

But they nodded at him as he approached.
Not out of kindness.
Out of recognition.
A fellow survivor.

"You headed to the Republic?" one man called out.

He had a deep scar across his nose, and what looked like a shattered warhammer strapped to his back.

Ray slowed.

"Maybe," he said.

The man barked a laugh.

"Good luck," he said. "It's a city of golden liars now. They'll take your sword or your soul — whichever’s cheaper."

The others chuckled bitterly.

Another traveler, a woman with burned hands, chimed in:

"Heard they’re paying mercs in whole weapon sets now. Rare shit, too. Just gotta bring 'em heads from the Stone Kingdom side."

Ray said nothing.

Another spoke — a boy, no older than Marsden had been when they entered this hell.

"I heard the Kingdom don’t even pay no one," he said, voice thin.
"You fight because you want to over there. They don’t feed you unless you’re strong."

He shivered under his patched cloak.

"My brother went east. Joined 'em. Haven't seen him since."

The fire crackled between them.
Ray watched it flicker.
The flames danced like ghosts.
He moved on.

The West was wild.

It was different from the battle-scarred heartlands — different even from the brutal armies of the East.

It was untamed.
Here, whole stretches of plains and jungles had been swallowed by the rise of the Tribal Clans.

Hundreds of groups —
some nothing more than a few blood-brothers bound by survival,
others full-fledged villages with banners of beasts and gods stitched into their war cloaks.

They fought each other constantly.

For territory.
For supplies.
For pride.
Sometimes for nothing at all — just because they could.

Some clans followed ancient codes of honor,
where duels replaced battles and strength was its own kind of currency.

Others devolved into raiding and pillaging, their "laws" nothing more than the rule of the strongest.

Ray passed a signpost once —
or what was left of it.

Wood splintered, hacked with a dozen symbols —
a wolf's fang.
A serpent coiled around a sword.
A crow bleeding black tears.

Each one marked a clan’s claim.
Each one dared the next traveler to challenge them.

The Republic paid these clans handsomely.
Rare armor, enchanted weapons, gold — anything to buy their loyalty for a few more battles.
But mercenaries bought with gold fought only until a better price was offered.

In the west, the world wasn't just fighting.
It was feral.
It was alive.
It was free.
And it was ready to burn itself to ash if it meant getting stronger before the end.

Ray passed a dead tree hung with dozens of helmets —
trophies of a skirmish no one even remembered.

Above the helmets, someone had carved into the bark:

"Better a savage than a slave."

A day later, Ray crossed what was left of a battlefield.
The stench hit first — blood and burning leather.
Then the sight.

Armored corpses rotted in the sun, ravens perched atop their bodies, tearing at flesh with casual hunger.

Republic banners lay trampled in the dirt.
Stone Kingdom shields cracked like eggshells.
Neither side had won here.
Only death.

Ray picked his way through the wreckage.
Boots crunching bones.
Magic residue still fizzed in the air — leftover sparks of elemental chaos.

Someone had tried to summon a lightning storm here.
Someone else had tried to bury the battlefield under ice.

Neither had worked.

He found a young girl slumped against a tree,
sword still gripped in her hands.
Barely older than Marsden.
Her eyes were open.
Staring at nothing.
He closed them gently with two fingers.
Then kept walking.

At night, he found a ruined inn.
The roof had caved in, but the hearth still held embers.
He sat there, staring into the red coals, listening to the world howl outside.

Voices drifted through the broken walls.
Two merchants, arguing in hushed tones.

"...told you we should've stayed East. The Republic’s just throwing bodies at the problem now."

"You wanna live in a Kingdom where you have to win fights just to eat?"

"They're winning, you idiot."

"They're starving, too."

Ray leaned back against the wall, shutting his eyes.
The pieces of the world rattled in his head like broken glass.

The Republic — full of farmers and healers,
their warriors stretched thin,
buying strength with gold and broken promises.

The Kingdom — full of killers and gamers,
thriving on war,
their economy bleeding dry without shops or craftsman to support them.

The clans —
the wild, growing plague of mercenaries and freebooters,
playing by their own savage rules.

And somewhere out there,
his brothers were walking separate roads.

Trey —
chasing power with the clans, sharpening his blade in the blood of others.

Marsden —
guarding a fragile hope inside the Shield Nation's steel walls.

Dean —
a general of monsters.

Ray clutched the ragged scarf tighter around his arm.
His family was gone.
The world was burning.

And the only thing left that mattered —
the only thing that ever mattered —
was finding the Totems.

Finishing this.
Before it finished him.

In the morning, the ravens were back.
Perched in the dead trees, silent.
Watching.
Recording.

The outside world — the real world —
was still watching.
Still hoping.
Still fearing.

Ray shouldered his pack and walked on.
Toward the next ruin.
The next war.

The next piece of broken history that used to be Elysium.

He didn’t look back.
There was nothing left to see.

The world had changed.

A year had passed.

The rivers ran redder.
The skies burned longer.
The ground shook harder.

In the East, the Kingdom of Stone grew fat with victories.

Dean Clayton — once a reclusive boy hiding behind a computer screen —
now soared above battlefields like a wrathful god.

Silver wings made of roaring wind tore the skies asunder.

He wielded no blades of steel —
only conjured weapons of air itself, slashing and spinning and driving armies into the dirt.

And beside him?
A nightmare.

Lucas — the Bone General.

A man who crafted jagged wings of hardened bone, soaring through the air like some devil ripped from hell.
Bone spears rained from his fingertips.
Bone walls crushed charging soldiers into paste.

Dean and Lucas never lost.
Their names were prayers to some.
Death sentences to others.

In the West?

A different kind of monster grew.
The Legion had risen from the tribal blood feuds.

A sea of banners once separated by ego and greed —
now starting to weave together under one name.

The Chief of Chiefs.
A warlord who preached that the clans must become one army if they wanted to survive.
At his side was a shadow that never missed.

A giant figure, wrapped in black steel armor, a massive sword slung across his back,
moving through the battlefield like a ghost.

They called him a hundred names:

The Duelist Without Mercy.
The Hand of Shadows.
The Reaper of the West.

But Ray knew the truth:
It was Trey. His brother.

Tales spread faster than wildfire.

The black knight who demanded fair duels.
Who refused to assassinate cowards hiding behind walls.
Who challenged commanders on the field, crushed them, and left armies leaderless.

He was growing stronger every day.
Leaving the old Trey behind.
Leaving Ray behind.

Whispers spread from the South.

Urgent.
Terrified.

The Grand Chancellor of the Republic — James, wielder of explosive magic, the strongest of all players —
had been ambushed.

Not by an army.
By all five generals.
The Kingdom had unleashed its monsters.

Dean among them.
They found James in a hidden stronghold meant to protect the Republic’s only hope.
They tore through his guards.
They destroyed his defenses.
They carved through his captains.

And when it was done
It was Dean Clayton who stood over James’ broken body.
Sword of pure wind humming in the ash-stained sky.
And it was Dean Clayton who took the Pink-Eyed Totem from the Grand Chancellor’s dead hands.

The Republic — the shining beacon of hope —
was shattered.

The Congress stumbled.
The armies lost faith.
The people screamed for blood or salvation.

Ray stood on a cliff’s edge when the news reached him,
staring out across a dead valley.

A broken whisper fell from his lips:

"Dean..."

A world once so full of dreams had rotted into something crueler.

The Shield Nation huddled behind their steel walls.

The Clans fought for coin and power.

The Republic played politics with shattered swords.

The Kingdom crushed everything in its path.

And Ray Clayton —
the last jackrabbit —
stood in the ruins of it all.

Still chasing a dream no one else seemed to believe in anymore.
Still chasing the Totems.
Still chasing his broken family.
Still chasing the impossible.

But in the ashes of a dead world,
sometimes the most stubborn flowers bloom.