All of a sudden, the entire battlefield was teeming with the corpses which has fallen on the frontlines and even from the buried bones of ancient wars, from nameless graves across the continent, it was the carnival of the dead.
Seeing the crawling undead standing all around them, the soldiers’ expressions paled before someone screamed as a rotting body of a comrade clawed upward, and this soldier was the first, as all the undead seemed to have the same purpose. Moreover, they didn’t discriminate between the Dead and Life Factions!
With eyes glowing faint blue or green, skeletal fingers tightening around rusted blades. Across the continent, cities wailed as long-buried ancestors rose from beneath homes and cemeteries. From beneath forests, from beneath rivers, from beneath mountains—they clawed their way back.
The Death March had begun!
The Life Faction, moments ago brimming with righteous fervor, now stood in disbelief as their own dead returned—not as allies, not as martyrs, but as cursed soldiers of an unknown master.
Even the Dead Faction froze in terror. For these risen dead did not carry their banners, nor answer to their kings. They responded only to the infernal voice.
Just a few seconds ago, before the descent of that eerie voice and death march, within the inner reaches of the Undead Skyfall Canyons, a scene of dread was unfolding.
The bleached mist writhed violently as a cloaked figure stood above a massive ghostly corpse writhing beneath a titanic shadow throne.
The Throne of Death towered behind her like a monument to inevitability, chains of darkness coiled around the body of her prey.
An Undead Ghost King, once a sovereign predator among the dead, was now nothing more than a struggling carcass, his form distorted as spectral flesh peeled away, and his bones turned brittle under the throne’s devouring pull.
His howls tore through the canyon, yet no sound escaped—the abyssal silence of her domain swallowed every shriek.
The cloaked figure’s jade-like hand rested upon the throne’s armrest, her aura stern yet unshaken. The decree of her law was absolute.
"Devour."
With that single whisper, the throne pulsed. Tendrils of black mist drilled into the Undead Ghost King’s body, siphoning his essence until his form cracked apart like glass.
His crown of ghostly flames shattered into hundreds of shards that were drawn into the abyss of the throne, leaving only a hollow echo behind.
The figure’s aura surged again, climbing higher, richer—her breakthrough to Tier-3 Death Lord was a success, and with it her hunger sharpened.
But right at this moment, just as the Ghost King’s body crumbled to nothingness, all of a sudden, the earth of the canyons roared.
The trembling was not from her law—it was far greater, spreading from the depths of the canyon outward, as though the entire Undead Skyfall was waking from slumber.
Her starry eyes flickered sharply beneath the hood, "...What is this...?"
The tremor coincided precisely with the moment she had devoured the Undead Ghost King or a Legendary King Rank Undead!
Her heart skipped as an instinctive chill clawed through her chest, and then, she heard an eerie voice...
That voice, that infernal decree, not from her but from something older, vaster.
"Sacrilegious ants! Dare to disrupt the peace of the Undying Skyfall? Only by offering your tainted souls to my liege can you achieve infernal salvation!
"Death Domain: DEATH MARCH!"
The words resonated within her bones, deeper than law, deeper than will—it was like the abyss itself had spoken. Her fingers, for the first time since her breakthrough, tightened upon the throne’s armrest.
Behind the hood, her frown deepened. Her pulse quickened, a rare palpitation of fear.
"That voice...it’s that damned Undead Lich King..."
Her thoughts moved rapidly. She had been preying upon the generals of the Undead Lich King, one by one, dragging their armies into her throne’s abyss, building her strength in secrecy.
Now—this tremor, this decree—it could only mean that her actions had thoroughly provoked the Undead Lich King!
The realization sent a ripple of caution through her heart, "Not good. I may have pushed that undead too far..."
She instantly dismissed the Throne of Death with a light tap. The monolith of shadows dissolved into mist, erasing her presence as though it had never been there. The corpse of the Ghost King was gone, its essence devoured inside her.
She wrapped herself in the folds of the bleeding mist and vanished into shadow. Her aura dimmed to nothingness, reduced to the faint trace of a drifting phantom.
Her mind was clear, resolute, despite the storm within her, ’I can ambush Tier-1 Undead Kings, but even then, only with my throne. Tier-2, Tier-3... impossible. And him, the Undead Lich King himself... that’s death...’
Her starry eyes narrowed, determination flashing like the edge of a blade, ’Until I understand this disturbance, I must remain hidden. Devour from the shadows. Grow stronger. Wait for the right moment...’
The canyon groaned around her as if shuddering with greater fury, but the cloaked Death Lord was gone, melted into the darkness. Only the faint echo of her vow lingered in the silent mist:
"Teacher, I will survive. I will return. No matter what awaits!"
While an unknown horror gripped the entire continent, the phenomenon’s source lay far away in an unexpected, forbidden region, beyond others’ reach, and in a completely unexpected location.
At the core of the Undead Skyfall Canyons, at its very depths, lay a colossal chained altar, its surface carved with countless runes of suppression, black chains biting into its ancient stone as if the entire world conspired to restrain it.
Yet the altar trembled violently, straining against its bindings, as though it would break free at any moment. Each tremor rippled across the continent, awakening more dead.
Furthermore, beneath this altar knelt a giant lich, his skeletal body armored in obsidian plates inscribed with ancient runes, his eye sockets burning with purple-black fire. His aura was suffocating, world-crushing—a Quasi-Myth whose very presence warped the canyon into an abyssal graveyard.
Despite his terrifying might, the lich knelt low, his skull bowed in reverence before the chained altar. He trembled not with fear, but with servitude—like a dog awaiting its master’s command!
At this moment, a furious, indistinct voice filled with infernal fury and death sounded from the chained altar, the language it spoke was unknown and profound, but the Undead Lich King understood its every word...