Non-stop in his flight, Imuru drifted at last into the domain of the Undead King. The emanation of Huln's golden aura across the dark, desolate sprawl of the swamp lands and the vault of the night sky was a terrifying and wondrous sight to behold. Imuru paused there, suspended in the cold air above, looking down. The source of that vast, undead power pulses near the base of a jagged mountain.
⟨This is it...⟩
As if Huln had sensed the weight of Imuru's presence, his aura that had done so brightly, dimmed. It sank, bleeding away into the hungry backdrop of the dark, until Imuru hovered just outside a landscape that looked utterly dead once more.
Swallowing the dry knot of hesitation in his throat, Imuru felt the cold air bite through his clothes, a sharp, clammy touch that reeked of stagnant water and ancient rot, nevertheless he pushed forward.
A short moment later, the mountain loomed before him, a sleeping giant of black stone. He looked down upon what should have been a settlement. From this height, it was little more than a geometric scar on the swamp floor. It was a graveyard that no longer held anyone with a beating heart for ages.
He spied the path leading up the mountain's base. To fly directly to the Undead King's doorstep felt... wrong. Too little respect.
He descended, his boots touching the cracked cobblestones of the twin square with a soft crunch that echoed too loudly in the dead air; reminding him of his first time at Fernum. He would walk the rest of the way.
Before he committed himself to the climb, Imuru took a small detour, his footsteps whispering through the dead village. He needed to see, to understand. This was not what he had expected at all. The emptiness gnawed at him. After his visit to the Kitsune Highest; the town, with the vibrancy of life—this was a stark and bitter contrast. Among the Great Forces, Huln alone had no one to govern. No subjects. No courtiers. Just the silent loyalty of the grave and the echo of his own footsteps.
With this somber realization settling in his chest like cold stone, Imuru made his way to the base of the mountain. The path led him to an elderly stone bridge, its arch worn smooth by centuries of rain and neglect. It spanned a deep ravine that cut into the mountain's flank like a wound. Far below, in the impenetrable dark, he could hear nothing; not water, not wind, just the heavy, listening silence of the chasm that had swallowed sound itself.
The closer he climbed, the clearer the throne came into view.
There, carved into the mountainside or perhaps grown from it, sat a man of bones upon a white throne of petrified wood and polished ivory. Behind him, draped across the stone like a fallen mountain range, lay the colossal skeleton of a dragon. Its ribcage arched overhead, and great skull rested near the throne, eye sockets staring eternally into the void. The beast had met its end long ago, yet its presence remained-a monument to a battle won in some forgotten, heroic age.
And on that throne sat Huln.
The Undead King wore a golden crown that seemed to trap the last glimmer of light in the entire kingdom. His presence was not the frantic, hungry darkness of lesser undead; it was something older, something divine in its stillness.
"Demon Lord, they say!"
The voice came not as a shout, but as something ancient and calm. Huln held himself with the posture of one long accustomed to heavy titles, to the weight of crowns and the burden of judgement. He spoke as though falsehood itself would wither and die before reaching his ears; as if the very concept of lying had no purchase in this sacred, silent place.
"Never heard that one before..." A pause, dry as dust. The faintest tilt of that crowned skull, not mockery, but something closer to weary recognition. "But they fear you. Thanks to the similarities in title."
"I'll ask once."
It was not a question. It was a demand, carved from the bedrock of ages. Twin points of blazing blue burned to life in once empty sockets of his eyes. They fixed upon Imuru with an intensity that could pierce flesh.
"What is your purpose in the Sacred Forest?"
The question hung in the air between them, heavy as a blade poised to fall. Those twin points of blue fire bored into Imuru, patient and absolute, waiting for the truth to rise like water from a deep well.
Imuru did not rush to answer. He collected himself, drawing a slow breath through his nostrils, the air here tasted of cold stone and older things, of endings rather than beginnings. On its surface, the question was simple. Why are you here? But he understood with every fiber of his being that his answer would shape everything that followed.
His presence in the Sacred Forest was not destiny. To Imuru it was plain luck; he wondered when will run out. A tangle of complicated circumstances, wrong turns that had somehow led him right, a series of events he could scarcely explain to himself left alone to an undead King of vast knowledge and experience. And his true purpose... the cold, practical machinery behind his movements, was to gather the Great Forces and forge them into a buffer. A shield. A wall. Regarding them, that was his end game.
He looked at the crowned skeleton before him. The dragon's bones arched like a cathedral of death.
⟨If I say that aloud...⟩
No. It did not seem wise. It seemed like handing a blade to a stranger and asking them not to cut. And yet... and yet something deep in his gut twisted with cold certainty. A liar would not leave this mountain. He could feel it in the stillness, in the way Huln's presence pressed against the edges of his consciousness like a truth that had outlived deception. To lie here, would mean a death sentence, delivered not in rage, but disappointment.
Imuru opened his mouth, knowing that whatever came next would have to walk the narrow path between honesty and survival, a truth that served him without damning him.
"My purpose?" He hesitated, the words forming clumsy and inadequate on his tongue. "Not harm... Maybe something morally ambiguous. At the end of it all, I simply hope to have my presence serve everyone well."
The words fell into the chasm between them, like stones dropped into a bottomless well. No splash. No echo. Just the awful, damning quiet of an answer that pleased no one.
Before him, Huln rose. The movement was not sudden, but it carried the weight of tectonic shift.
Imuru sighed internally, the breath trapped behind a mask of composure. ⟨I'm a goner.⟩
"Navie," Huln said, his word landing with the finality of a coffin lid closing. Huln stood tall, skull tilting ever so slightly, measuring the distance between himself and Imuru. "The fools who trusted you with such fable convictions. Bore themselves blind to the passage of time."
"All that you will bring is calamity. This forest had been through enough. No one shall take control... I shall let it all die and be out to rest."
"You are not fit to be a leader." Each word was a hammer strike on the anvil of Imuru's pride. "A child, nonetheless. Playing at power you do not understand." And then, the final blow, delivered with clinical disgust. "And worse... A demon."
Now all that was left was Imuru's answer. The words rose from somewhere deeper than calculation—somewhere raw and unguarded, where truth lived without permission.
"I never claimed to be a good leader." His voice steadied, no longer the hesitant mumble from before. "I leave most of that to someone else. Someone better suited. And that last remark... It didn't surprise me. You were a hero in your last life, after all."
"You speak of my lack of conviction," Imuru continued, and now something sharp crept into his tone, not disrespect, but the merciless clarity of a mirror held up to an unwilling face. "While you sit here. Day after day. Year after year. No emotion. No movement. Not even an attempt to bring some life, some peace, to the home you once protected." He gestured broadly, at the dead village below, at the silent swamp.
"Weren't you once a hero? And yet you counted yourself a Great Force? Your fellow brethren—they are willing to try. Despite their differences. Despite their pride. Despite everything that divides them, they try."
His voice dropped. "You, on the other hand..." Imuru shook his head slowly. "I'm beginning to see the one who prolonged this fracture. The one who let the wound fester because it was easier to sit on a throne of memory... You Huln."
The Undead King stood frozen. For the first time in years, Huln found himself lost for words. His jaw parted, but no sound came forth. The ancient hero, the dragon slayer, the crowned lord of the Undead, stood there stripped bare by the raw unfiltered honesty of a so-called Demon Lord.
He wanted to be angry. But he couldn't. Because deep down, he still remembered. He remembered what he had been. The hero who rode against the dark. A man who had bled, and believed in something greater than himself.
.....
Imuru made him realize...
"What I had held onto I am no more... I do not bleed, I have no heart that beats... I am not human, but a cursed stack of bones." An energy hummed around Huln, as he turned his head to the night sky.
"Does any of that matter?" Imuru spoke, trying to break down Huln's walls, and de-escalating Huln from attacking him.
"What do you mean?" Huln inquired in solemn defeat. "I cannot be a hero no longer—"
"Wrong!" Imuru interjected, cutting Huln off. "What matters is your actions. What makes you any different now, are your actions. If a hero did the opposite of what you did, would you consider them one. Be that they are human, and carry such a title?"
"Hmph." Huln stared in silence, this held an obvious answer for him. "That is no hero." His confirmation was final and simple. Standing here they both formed a quiet understanding
Huln held his head low, and marched toward Imuru. There was no worry in Imuru he knew there was no harm to come.
At his feet, Huln bowed, taking Imuru by shock.
"Umm. Huln...?" Imuru wasn't sure what was going on here.
"For my sins this is the least I can do. I had let my pride blind me for a long time. I do not see myself fit to rule any longer," Huln expressed. "I would be forever honoured to become your subordinate, no longer a Great Force."
This was happening all of a sudden, but since he was out on the spot Imuru spit out one word. "Yes."