Devil's King , The necromancer

The village of Eldervale was a pocket of life tucked away in the shadows of an ancient, whispering forest. Nineteen-year-old Harry was a son of the soil, spending his days in the golden fields alongside his father to support his mother and his eight-year-old sister, Maya. While Harry was deep in the northern fields, the air suddenly grew cold—a biting, unnatural chill that shouldn't exist in mid-summer. He looked up to see the sky bruise into a sickly purple. A group of marauders, riding skeletal horses and wielding jagged blades that hummed with dark magical sigils, stormed the village. They didn't just want gold; they were harvesting life. From the distance, Harry heard the first screams—sharp, terrified sounds that were cut off by the sickening "thwack" of steel meeting bone. By the time he dropped his scythe and ran, the wind carried the metallic, iron-heavy scent of blood. He reached the village gates and the world turned red. The 300 neighbors he had known since birth lay in twisted, unnatural positions. One man, the village blacksmith, was pinned to his own door by a spear made of solid shadow. The silence that followed the s*******r was heavier than any sound Harry had ever heard. "Mom? Dad?" he whispered, his voice cracking as he stumbled toward his farmhouse. He burst through the front door, his boots splashing into a thick, warm pool of crimson. His father lay across the kitchen table, his hand still reaching for a dinner knife he never got to use. His mother was slumped nearby, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. But the true horror—the sight that broke Harry’s mind—was Maya. His little sister’s body had been desecrated, cut into small, jagged pieces as if by a butcher’s blade. Her favorite wooden doll lay in the corner, soaked in the same blood that now stained Harry’s boots. The outrage was so sharp it felt like a physical wound. The love he had felt for his family curdled instantly into a freezing, black hatred for the men who had done this. He fell to his knees, his hands gripping the blood-stained floorboards, and let out a primal, guttural scream that tore through the air. The forest seemed to catch the sound, echoing his agony back at him until the world felt like it was screaming with him. As the sun dipped below the horizon, Harry moved like a hollow shell. He gathered the bodies and built a massive funeral pyre. He watched as the orange flames licked the darkening sky, the oily black smoke choking the stars. That night, he returned to the scrubbed but hollow house. The silence was a lie. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard the village souls crying out in the wind, and his mind was consumed by relentless, blood-red nigh tmares.