Chapter 1: Prologue: The Iron King

World's End (Future Route 0), North of Skalden – 100 years ago

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Thunders roared, winds moaned and rains weeped. No day was seem for months in those cliffs that tried to kill the skies, completely black and white, mountains of obsidian whipped by frost. The seas raged and screamed with waves that could easily swallow any ship; no wild monster would dare ride those chaos aside from the most dangerous and powerful in that ocean-land. Then suddenly no more rock was there to be seen, only waters unending, the world ended.

And explosion lighted everything with claps of light, shattering a peak of basalt.

A giant bird, just as dark as the stones she flew around, chirped. Only to be dwarfed by Daybreaker, the hydreigon, 's shadow. Their chase was legendary already. Castles were left as dust, beaches looked like the moon, and now they rode literal nowhere. Their knights, however, had a quarrel that would, needed, to end there.

"Logi!" The King emptied his lungs in a plead. "Finish this already! Bend and a peaceful exile awaits you, my brother!" 

"So may the Void embrace me, brother!" Logi's robes danced nightly, his powers evoking a pink light around himself that raised Daybreaker's defences. "I will not live under your tyranny!" 

With his psychic connection, the rogue prince, commanded his hydreigon forth. 

The King groaned in the agony of sentencing his own blood to eternal darkness. But, an entire decade too late, he was sure that his dream Skalden would not exist with Logi living. His cloak conciled a fullset of armor, a piece famed by its quality. His living sword was unsheathed and spoke:

"Your pain will also be mine, Raggin." It was alive. No, not entirely. It was a ghastly object, a weapon, a Honedge, the only thing in Skalden that could go through Logi 'shield, who was also haunted.

"Nightwinter!" The King needed no magic to get his convictions and ideas through his trusted Corviknight, enormous to her species' standards, yet Daybreaker seemed like an abomination.

The six-eyed dragon shone with malice and a pulsed with dark-energy, Nightwinter closed her wings and let the gravity evade his black-rays, meanwhile bulked herself up making her feathers impenetrable and strenght worth several tales, and rose throwing her incredible weight into Daybreaker, crashing the dragon-type in a nearby cliff. 

Ragni released his reins and jumped on an arm-head, swong his demon-sword and robbed one of the dark dragon's eyes. That thing howled in agony, his fury sharpened in an draconic purple aura and thrashed about as a tornado, clinging to Nighwinter's wings, and flinging Ragni ferociously to the drown in the dark waters. Their aerial-melee tussle darted as a shining arrow through the scenery, finishing with a mighty drop atop a giant rock, causing a massive earthquake that cracked it all up, soon it would fall apart.

Logi sighed, few of his energy was left after protecting himself from Daybreaker's spinning, but Nightwinter's armor was finally defeated. He smirked, just a single second, before a deep grey n' white cloth wrapped his leg. Logi got pale and his force submitted, that was!

"Ragni!" The rogue prince rotated his knees to see his undying brother gritting teeth with fury. 

Honedge salvaged him from that fatal fall by attaching himself to hydreigon's leg, and now the King was free to do what he did best:

"This! Ends...Now!" 

Slash. Tear. Kill.

His assault was fast and certain, only Logi with his loyal living-shield would be able to block it with the mastery it did in that moment. The weapons clanged to one another, their ghostly-energy shocking it eacher made sparkles fly.

"Is this what you really want, m'love?!" Screamed Honedge, his blade trembling with anger and melancholy.

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"Perhaps." The shield spoke cold and metallic.

As brothers exchanged killing-intended blows, their companions recovered from confusion and exhaustion, initiating their own showdown. Logi, always cunning, used his final psychic spell to disrupt Ragni's leg stance. An opening was made, and a shield bash retributed what the King had done with Daybreaker's vision.

Blood gashed, washed out by rain in thick droplets, the pain was unbearable, but not enough to stop a natural-born conqueror. Ragni rose again, slashed once, twice, worked his feet and slashed his thrice, right in Logi's neck. Nothing. His depth-vision was gone, and by an inch, his sorcerer brother lived. However, struck with fear, Logi was also open. A kick in his knee made him bend, a fourth attempt to take his head was made, and the prince elusively escaped, but when he lifted his eyes Honedge was nowhere to be seen, and neither his left arm.

As if fate was mirrored, Nightwinter, with her wings of steel took one of Daybreaker's head, that in response lit his remaining mouths and concentrated so much power that a hyper-powered beam of light started to demolish the world around him.

Just like Logi channeled Shieldash's energy and convoked a ball of nightmarish energy. Ragni was hit in his ribs and fell on his back, blood coughs stained his short and red beard. 

The one-armed cultist, panting for his blood-loss, powerless, was not caught surprised by Honedge's desperate attempt to pierce his heart stealthly.

"So simple-minded." Said both Logi and Shieldash, as if the woman trapped in steel was now one with her eldritch master.

"I am." Honedge admitted. "But not him." 

It was too late.

The King thrusted a dagger deep in his beloved younger brother.

Surprised, Logi, let Shieldash fall on dam rock, her eyes and curse dispelling, at least for now.

"Heh..." A bitter smile was drawn by the rogue prince's final thoughts. "You were always smarter." 

"You were the favorite." Tears muffled the last laugh he shared with his brother.

"That...is true." Logi collapsed to his knees, no strenght was capable of forcing his soul kept in this world. His eyes could only stare to falling rain, lightning and dark clouds, Ragni his final confidant. "why...though?" 

Logi, The Chosen One, was dead.

Daybreaker felt his master's end and roared an ugly lament, before, handicapped, fly low until his monstrous bode disappeared in the waves.

Nightwinter, partially melted and fulminating red and orange, chirped queenly her victory cry.

Only one royal was left in Skalden. No gods above.

Ragni, The High King, was truly born.

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