As Asher slid the helmet onto his head, a strange pulse reverberated through his body, like the shifting of unseen tides, warping the very nature of the world around him. The moment the helm settled, reality twisted.
The air grew heavy. The fog that had once cloaked the hilltop was swept away by a sudden, unnatural gust, a wind that didn’t howl, but whispered like the breath of an ancient one. The sky above dimmed, darkened, as if day had been strangled by the night.
Then it happened.
Crack!
The sky splintered, fractured like a mirror struck with a hammer. With a deafening roar, the shards did not fall… they rose, shooting upwards as though gravity itself had been reversed. Beyond the broken sky, something immense and terrifying revealed itself.
An inverted volcano.
It hung in the void above, a monstrous caldera, its molten rivers flowing upward into the nothingness. The crimson glow painted the fractured heavens, casting long shadows across the land below. Everything felt… wrong. Otherworldly.
Thud… Thud…
The earth beneath Asher’s feet trembled.
From each of the four cardinal directions, they emerged, giants unlike any he had ever seen. Towering at forty feet tall, their steps caused the very ground to quake with authority.
Their skin was a rich, cold blue, like frozen sapphire. Each bore battle-worn leather skirts belted with thick hide, and chest plates that shimmered faintly with etchings of runes from a language long dead. Their muscles rippled beneath the weight of their weapons.
Two of the giants wielded massive double-headed axes and colossal round shields, wide enough to shield a house. The other two gripped twin curved greatswords, blades as long as the mast of a warship, their edges glowing faintly with a cold, spectral light.
Their faces were emotionless, their glowing white-blue eyes locked on Asher like celestial judges summoned from myth.
They were Jotunn, but not like the ones he had defeated. These were the Primal Sons. Generals of the Abyss King. Sentinels of a power older than kingdoms. Older than the First Era.
And now, they stood around him, encircling him like a trial of gods.
“Mortal!” bellowed the first giant, his voice crashing through the air like a mountain collapsing. It wasn’t just sound, it was pressure, as if an unseen weight had been placed upon Asher’s chest.
“You stand before the Abyss King!” the second roared, his eyes burning with authority older than empires.
“Pledge your allegiance to your lord!” the third demanded, his twin blades gleaming with anticipation.
“Kneel!” thundered the fourth, whose towering form loomed directly behind Asher, the sound of his voice rattling the frozen ground.
With a single step each, the giants closed the circle, their enormous weapons raised high. Compared to their titanic forms, Asher was but a speck, an ant beneath thunderclouds.
One stomp, and he’d be pulp.
Yet, even as the air trembled under their sheer presence, Asher tilted his head slightly, a quiet defiance glowing in his golden eyes. The corner of his lips curled upward.
“I am king,” he said.
The words were soft, but they struck the air like steel against an anvil. Solid and unyielding.
The giants’ eyes narrowed. In unison, they raised their weapons, blades broader than city gates, axes heavier than ships, intending to bring them down in judgment.
The pressure was staggering. Space around them quivered, as if reality itself resisted what was to come.
And still… Asher stood.
In his heart, doubt tried to kindle, cold embers stoked by the knowledge of what stood before him. But he smothered them with will.
Pain had forged him. War had sharpened him. Death had baptized him.
He had not come to kneel. He had come to rule.
So what if the Kingmaker had not chosen him? So what if no king blade had been bestowed?
He would forge himself into the sword.
He was the king.
The world would learn to accept it.
Asher’s gaze swept across the giants, and when he spoke again, his voice boomed, resonating with mana, with gravity, with the weight of destiny.
“I am King Asher Ashbourne. I represent God, Ashbourne, and myself. Before my name, I command you… kneel!”
Suddenly, gravity exploded outward in a ring around him, slamming into the four giants with devastating force. Their knees buckled, massive legs crashing down into the ice, sending cracks spidering across the hilltop.
But Asher wasn’t finished.
The pressure surged again, focused, divine, relentless. Their skulls hit the ground next, slammed into the frozen earth as if forced to kowtow before the true king.
Asher stood amidst the chaos, veins pulsing at his neck and arms, his breath heavy. He turned his head slowly, his golden gaze sweeping over the four kneeling titans.
He had spoken.
In the next moment, Asher found himself back on the hilltop, standing where he had last faced Sariel.
Only now, she was on her knees, her piercing blue eyes wide with shock and something close to reverence. Asher’s gaze dropped slightly and he understood why, he was no longer touching the earth.
He was floating, mere inches above the ground, as if even the land itself dared not bear the weight of what he had become.
Then, with a thought, he began to rise, first one meter, then two, then ten. Higher and higher he ascended, the snow swirling around him as if in awe, and the howling wind quieted to a hush.
From the sky, like burning stars, they came.
Metal plates, glowing red as if fresh from a divine forge, descended with streaks of fire, comets from the heavens. They hurtled toward Asher and struck him one by one, not with violence but with purpose, melding onto his body like pieces of a destined whole.
Before the eyes of the thousands of Jotunn watching in stunned silence, an armour formed.
Pitch black. Gleaming. Reflective in a way that distorted reality itself.
Each plate bore scaled ridges, mimicking the texture of a dragon’s hide, ancient and impenetrable. From his pauldrons flowed a white mantle, the ends of which billowed and unraveled like mist, fading into smoke.
The pauldrons themselves rose like high, protective collars, almost throne-like in their presence, casting deep shadows across his helm.
And through that helm, his white hair spilled downward, thick strands cascading like silver silk over his shoulders and back.
Floating in the still air, wrapped in that living storm of smoke and scalding metal, he had become something more. Not merely king. Not merely man.
But myth.
Asher’s eyes burned brighter than ever, golden, searing, radiant with authority that now saw beyond deception, beyond illusion.
And it could.
He raised his gaze and his voice thundered across the frozen plain, resonating through mountain and marrow.
“Will you bow?”
Sariel trembled.
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