Chapter 5: 5 The black tower

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5: The black tower 5: The black tower A vow does not build a kingdom; will does, and the two brothers possessed more than enough will to bend the world.

Kharmul returned before the Void Stone and placed both hands upon it.

He closed his eyes and silently formulated his command.

The ground trembled.

A thunderous roar shook the entire expanse, and a column of black stone rose from the earth slow, inexorable, as thick as an ancient mountain.

It climbed brick by brick, block by block, each one materializing from the darkness, as though the Abyss itself were vomiting up its own entrails to give form to the desire of its new lord.

Vezareth worked beside him, but in a different way.

Where Kharmul created through sheer force, he shaped with precision: he made the air around each block vibrate, solidified it, made it cold and impenetrable, capable of withstanding anything an assault, a cataclysm, even a god.

They sweated, though such a thing was foreign to them.

They trembled from the effort, despite being immortal.

Creating something from nothing came at a price, and they paid that price with energy torn from their very essence.

Hours, or perhaps years in a place without time, who could say?

When they were finished, a tower stood before them, piercing the gray sky of the Abyss.

It was not beautiful.

Then again, they had never wanted it to be.

It was absolute.

Smooth black walls, devoid of ornaments and symbols, punctuated only by countless windows resembling watchful eyes that stared into eternity in every direction.

Its simplicity was its declaration of power: it needed no decorations because it had no need to impress anyone.

It was there, and that was enough.

Inside, with the mere force of thought, they shaped everything.

The throne room, immense and freezing.

The training chambers, where one day their descendants would learn to kill.

The underground levels, deep enough to swallow any secret.

And hundreds upon hundreds of empty chambers, destined for a kingdom and a bloodline that did not yet exist.

“This will be the Black Tower,” Kharmul said, his voice resonating heavily throughout the newly created throne room.

“The heart of our power, the symbol of the balance between destruction and creation.” Vezareth nodded, his gaze gleaming with a cold, triumphant darkness.

“And so long as it remains standing,” he added, “no force shall ever be able to divide us.” The words hung suspended in the air.

Ten thousand years later, the Tower would still be standing.

But the two brothers were heading toward another destiny.

A tower is not a kingdom.

A kingdom needs subjects.

And the Abyss, however desolate it might have seemed, was not empty.

Vezareth returned to the Void Stone and ordered it to show him every form of life pulsing within that dead world.

The stone obeyed.

Its surface opened like a mirror of black water, and images appeared within it.

First came the Vanhai, creatures similar in appearance to humans, but with one difference that chilled the blood: instead of hair, they bore crystalline gems upon their heads, embedded in their flesh and glowing with a light of their own.

They fed on the insects that swarmed through the cracks of the Abyss, lived in clans scattered throughout the expanse, and numbered in the millions.

Millions upon millions.

But it was the second image that made Kharmul smile.

The Black Dragons.

The Extra: colossal creatures more than a hundred meters long, their wings so vast that they could darken entire horizons when spread, their scales black as shattered mirrors.

They numbered in the tens of millions, and when even one of them took flight, the ground trembled for miles.

“Two peoples,” Vezareth murmured, studying the images.

“One innumerable, and one invincible.” “And we shall have them both,” Kharmul said.

The plan was simple and ruthless: subjugate the Vanhai, use them to bend the dragons to their will, and from that fusion of forces, create something new something that would belong to them, and them alone.

They waged war against the Vanhai first.

The clans, warned by the shockwave that had accompanied the birth of the Tower, had already gathered.

When the two brothers reached the borders of their territory, they found an army waiting for them that took their breath away: more than fifteen million Vanhai warriors, stretching all the way to the horizon, the gems upon their heads shining like a field of stars fallen to the earth.

Millions against two.

The Vanhai laughed.

Then they attacked.

Kharmul advanced first, alone, toward the first wave.

When the Vanhai were upon him, he raised one hand, and gravity crashed down upon them like a celestial hammer.

Thousands of warriors were crushed into the ground in an instant, unable to move, their flesh pressed against the earth beneath an invisible and unbearable weight.

They did not die.

Kharmul did not kill them.

He loosened his grip and left them there, paralyzed, trembling, alive.

Vezareth walked only a short distance behind his brother, and wherever he passed, the battle simply came to a halt.

His gaze alone was enough: warriors who met his eyes dropped their weapons and collapsed to their knees, forgetting even why they were fighting.

His presence emptied their will the way a hand empties a waterskin.

The two brothers cut through that vast army like two blades slicing through mist.

They shed no blood; blood was not what they sought.

They sought the surrender of their enemies.

When the Vanhai commanders finally understood what they were facing, it was not the warriors who knelt first.

It was the kings.

Within a few days, the fifteen million Vanhai had become subjects of the two brothers.