Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

The average reaction time to an unexpected event is 0.8 seconds.

Two full seconds had passed since the soldier's body hit the stone floor, his lifeblood spreading in a slow, deliberate pool beneath him, thick, dark, and final.

Yet not a single man moved.

Chairs creaked under the weight of frozen bodies. Fingers clutched goblets in mid-air. Mouths hung slightly open, caught between breath and scream. The lords of the realm, seasoned generals, schemers, and self-styled warlords, all turned to stone by a silence that now screamed louder than any trumpet.

Then came the sound of boots.

Measured. Rhythmic. Not a charge, but a procession. The unmistakable cadence of men who knew exactly what they were doing.

Through the yawning mouth of the great hall's entrance, they marched in, first in pairs, then in rows. Legionnaires. Dozens. Maybe more.

They wore black and white stripes across their breastplates, revealing to all their allegiance. Their armor wasn't clean, but smeared with blood. Helmets with narrow eye slits made them look more beast than man.

Their movements were smooth, mechanical, with no hesitation. Shields drawn close to their sides, blades already unsheathed and held low, glinting like fangs.

They spread along the flanks of the hall, filing in with silent precision, an iron noose tightening slowly around the high table.

There was no shouting. No demands.Nothing.

Just the sound of metal and leather and the rising stench of blood from the entryway.

A lord stood, finally the first to move, knocking over his wine in the process, but the moment he did, one of the legionnaires moved a single step forward.

That was all it took.

The man sat back down, trembling. Around him, a suffocating stillness settled once more.

Like that of a child rebuked by his parents.

And then , no one moved again. No one dared.

Until the illusion of stillness cracked, Lechlian's guards, shoved the half-drunken prince to his feet. His eyes had gone wide, wine-addled fog clearing fast with the scent of death thick in the air, but now regaining clarity.

They accompanied him toward the side corridor, past the tapestry-covered wall, towards the servants' passages.

Only to find the door barred from the other side.

A pause. Then a rattle. Then a harder push.

Still nothing.

"Stratio, you traitorous cur!" Lechlian roared, voice hoarse but full of the dawning clarity of one being betrayed.

His voice echoed in the hall like a curse flung into a crypt as the lord of the castle made no move to turn around to face his liege, his eyes instead locked on the entrance, as if waiting for someone to enter.

The only road out of the great hall was now choked by steel. The black-and-white-striped legionnaires stood firm, impassive, their line unbroken from the high dais to the far end of the room.

Around the perimeter, the castle guards, Lord Stratio's own men, dropped their spears and swords as if they had burned their hands. One by one, they raised their palms to the air and stepped aside, like servants making room for a higher authority.

Then finally came the sound of the one that the lord of the castle was waiting for.

Thud.Thud.Thud.

A slow, deliberate rhythm. Not rushed. Not heavy. But final.

Thud.Thud.Thud.

The last shouts from the courtyard had long gone silent. No more screams. No more steel-on-steel. Only that sound, pacing closer to the threshold of the hall, crisp boots echoing against flagstone.

Then silence. Deafening. Dense.

Like that of a prey not making any sound except that of his shivering, waiting with heart beating at the approaching end.

Lechlian turned, slowly, as if dragged by the weight of the moment and the knowledge that he could not deny his very presence. His guards clawed again at the locked passage behind him, cursing and slamming shoulders into the thick oak—futile.

And in, finally he walked.

No helmet. As there was no need for one.

His face was calm, but not cold. Stern, almost polite.

His black coat, trimmed in silver thread, was untouched by the blood reaped from outside. He walked with his hands behind his back, posture like that of a man about to give a lecture, as he regarded the lords inside that hall to be beneath him.

His eyes scanned the room slowly, methodically, falling on each lord in turn as if measuring their worth with invisible scales.

Behind him, more legionnaires followed, but none stepped ahead of him. They didn't need to.

He was the executioner and the herald both.

"Enjoying the meal?" Alpheo finally asked, voice dry and precise, like a blade sliding between ribs and piercing the organs within.

The silence that followed was not simple fear. It was paralysis.

Somewhere near the far end of the hall, a goblet slipped from a nobleman's trembling fingers and fell on the stone floor with a sound that rang louder than any battle horn.

No one answered.

No one dared.

Lechlian, Prince of a soon to be burnt realm,stood frozen in place, his back stiff.

His mouth parted slightly, but no words came. No curses. No bravado. Not even breath. When his eyes finally met Alpheo's, he found not rage nor triumph, but disdain.

The casual, effortless kind one might offer a dying vermin scurrying beneath a table.

Without pause or announcement, the Fox began to walk, not around the table, but onto it. The heavy stomp of his boots crushed silver plates and shattered porcelain platters beneath him. Goblets spilled wine like arterial blood, splashing onto velvet robes. The feast, that illusion they so much desired, was desecrated with each slow, deliberate step.

He walked the table as if it were a bridge built for gods.

Behind him, his legionnaires followed, on his side , like shadows cast in iron. Their helmets gleamed in the firelight, visors down, each one a faceless executioner waiting for the nod.

Their gaze never left the seated lords, and not a single hand wavered from pommel or haft. The message was clear: make one wrong move, and die where you sit.

None did.

And so Alpheo took his time for the great spectacle.

"I see your stomachs are full," he said, casually nudging a roast bird aside with the tip of his boot. "Your thirst quenched with red wine..." he lifted a goblet from its place, sniffed it "...and cider."

His nostrils flared in distaste as if finding the notion of his enemy drinking his products disgusting, he hurled the goblet into the crowd

It struck a servant square in the forehead with a crack, and the boy collapsed, the hall echoing with the clatter of his tray and the low groan of steel from the conqueror's men unsheathing, only to be halted by Alpheo's raised hand.

He stood still then, silhouetted against the chandeliers' flickering light, , hishair falling in elegant disorder across the high collar of his cloak as if he was above the very chaos that engulfed the castle.

His face, half-shadowed, was a mask of noble contempt.

"For those of you who somehow, miraculously, do not know me..." he began, his voice like silk drawn across whetted steel as he pointed at the trembling Lechlian "I am the man who broke your armies twice beneath his banner. I am the sword that severed the hand of treachery when my wife's uncle dared to wear a crown not his own."

A beat. No one blinked.

"I am he who brought to heel two proud princes and a league of rebel lords, with nothing but my will. I am the one your prince spat upon, the one he thought to insult with empty parchment and feigned bravado. And so, I came not with letters, but with fire."

The room darkened, as if the very torches recoiled.

"I am the man who burned your fields, shattered your walls, took your keeps, and salted your roads, so that even memory would not bloom behind me."

His voice lowered, more intimate, more venomous.

"I am the cold that welcomed your ally, the Oizenian prince into the grave before his time had come. I am the wrath that no wall holds back, the reckoning that no prayer delays. I am the man whose feet lords kiss, not for favor, but for mercy."

He spread his arms wide now, basking in the utter silence of the hall.

"My name... is Alpheo Veloni-Isha. Fox of Yarzat. Slayer of Princes. And soon to be Conqueror of Herculia."

He took one final step forward and came to a stop at the center of the great feasting table.

And then, slowly—purposefully too—he smiled again.

"And tonight, you may rejoice!" he announced, his voice like silk wrapped around a fire that was threatening to burn the whole world. "For I am here and I offer you a spectacle."

He paused, letting the word linger in the heavy air like smoke.

"Tonight, my lords," he continued, louder now, voice rising above the hush of held breaths and pounding hearts, "I grant you the privilege to feast your eyes upon the end of a royal dynasty."

None dared speak.

Alpheo began to walk again, each step punctuated by the clink of metal and the crunch of shattered porcelain beneath his boots. His gaze drifted down the long table, cold and clinical, like a surgeon assessing a dying patient. He passed lords who shrank from his stare, men who had once ridden at the head of proud banners and now sat like children before the flame, fearing the sparks coming out of it.

And finally his eyes locked onto a face. The face of the heir.

The firstborn of the royal line of Herculia.

To him, Alpheo gave a wide, toothy grin. A smile with no warmth but full of knowledge.

The heir did not return it. He didn't raise his chin in defiance, didn't spit or curse or plead. Instead, his gaze faltered. His eyes fell, slowly, to the polished stone floor beneath him. His lips pressed into a pale line.

As if the weight of what he had done sank its teeth into his soul.

Finally, realizing that he had bartered his honor to a devil.

A devil now standing above him, triumphant and unshaken, ready to carve the end of an age before an audience of ghosts.

It was to him that Alpheo gave the most beautiful of smiles.