Chapter 373: A World Engulfed By The Domain Of Death

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An evil and malicious presence began to spread across the world. As kingdom after kingdom fell before the endless hordes of Undead, the last surviving nation, the Kingdom of Evercrest, fought with all its might. Its walls became the final refuge for thousands of survivors, while its soldiers defended them despite knowing that no help would ever come.

Among those defenders were two siblings, an elder brother and a younger brother. The elder was the king, burdened with protecting what remained of his people, while the younger was a genius of magic whose talent had surpassed even the greatest magicians and wizards of the kingdom.

The two had always argued and fought over the pettiest things. The king believed his brother was reckless, while the younger brother believed the king was too stubborn to accept new ideas. Yet, as they watched the world being swallowed by darkness, their old disputes lost all meaning. They finally put their differences aside and fought together, combining the authority of the crown with magic unlike anything Evercrest had seen before.

Because of them, the Kingdom of Evercrest survived for an entire decade while the rest of the world was swallowed by Death. For ten long years, its people endured hunger, loss, and constant attacks, refusing to surrender even as their territory diminished and their enemies grew stronger.

In the end, however, the forces of Death became too powerful. With Evercrest on the verge of destruction, the younger brother made a choice that neither of them could take back. He sacrificed himself to the Domain of Death and became a Lich, willingly accepting the same curse that had consumed so many others.

However, thanks to a spell he had spent ten years developing in secret, he retained his consciousness and sanity. Instead of turning against his brother and their people, he fought back against the other Undead, raising his own fallen enemies as a powerful Lich. His sacrifice gave Evercrest one final chance to survive, though it also forced the king to face his own brother as something no longer truly alive.

He protected the Kingdom with all his might, but even his power could not solve everything. Food became scarce, the remaining farms stopped producing enough to feed the survivors, and disease spread among those crowded behind the walls. People starved and died no matter how desperately the King tried to help them. Eventually, even his wife and child fell ill. He searched for medicine and ordered every healer in the Kingdom to save them, but nothing worked, and they died in his arms.

The younger brother had sacrificed everything so his elder brother could continue living, but now he saw that same brother kneeling before him, begging him to turn his family into Undead and bring them back. The King no longer cared about the price they would have to pay for such a thing, he only wanted to see them open their eyes again, even if they returned as something different.

But the younger brother could not do it. He could raise corpses and command the fallen, but he knew that bringing them back would not truly restore the people they had been. Their souls had already departed, and whatever rose in their bodies would only resemble them. He believed it was better if they died on their own terms as humans, instead of turning into Undead, forever cursed to this dead land. He tried to explain this, but his brother refused to listen.

Resentment swelled within his elder brother, whose grief had already driven him mad. The King accused him of cruelty, claiming that he had enough power to save them but had chosen not to. Their argument became a fight, and the fight destroyed what remained of their bond. In the end, the King used the same spell to turn himself into an Undead, convinced that he could succeed where his younger brother had refused.

Once transformed, he raised everyone who had died within the Kingdom. Soldiers, citizens, servants, and nobles climbed out of graves and collapsed buildings to answer his command. He then fought against his brother, blaming him for failing to save his family and for condemning the Kingdom to such a miserable end.

The younger brother fought back, hiding among the ruins of their Kingdom and gathering his own Undead whenever he could. What had once been their home became an endless battlefield where the dead kept falling and standing back up. Neither brother could defeat the other, and neither was willing to surrender. Years passed as their armies destroyed the last traces of the world they had once tried to protect.

In the end, the world died. The Domain of Death watched from afar, taking the form of an endless black cloud filled with sharp red eyes. It seemed amused by the brothers’ conflict, watching them fight like two pawns in its game, nothing more and nothing less. They had sacrificed everything to oppose it, yet their hatred for each other had completed the destruction it had begun.

It was tragic, but it seemed that the Undead Apocalypse and the meteor were the only Apocalypse this world had faced. There had been no gates for them to conquer and no other trial waiting beyond the disaster. As sad as it sounded, their world had simply been infected, overwhelmed, and left to die while the last two rulers continued a war that no longer had anyone left to save.

Eventually, the System intervened, but only after the world had already been stripped of all life. It took a fragment of the ruined planet containing the souls of the two brothers, perhaps to preserve the history of their world and, above all, the incredible spell they had created.

It was a spell capable of preserving a person’s consciousness, sanity, and memories after they became Undead, something that should have been impossible. Even after everything ended, the two brothers remained trapped within that fragment, were still bound to the choices that had destroyed them, fighting for eternity.

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