A city was not just walls.
Not just streets, markets, and towers.
A city was an idea.
A collective memory.
A belief that this place, this name, this ruler, meant something.
But what happened when that belief was erased?
When a city's own identity crumbled?
When its people could not remember why they were there, or who ruled them?
That was what Veyrath sought to prove.
That Unmaking did not conquer with swords.
It conquered with absence.
And now, he would erase a capital.
Not through war.
But through forgetting.
The capital was vast.
Larger than any of the cities that had fallen before it.
But that did not make it safe.
It only meant it had more to lose.
The Forsaken arrived first.
Moving through crowded streets, through busy halls, through guarded gates.
No one stopped them.
No one challenged them.
Because they did not appear as enemies.
They did not march in force.
They simply existed.
And in doing so, they began the unraveling.
It started, as always, with individuals.
A scribe, who suddenly could not remember the records he had written yesterday.
A merchant, whose entire stock disappeared—not because it was stolen, but because his mind could no longer recall what he had been selling.
A guard, who could not recall the name of the captain he had served under for years.
Not all at once.
Not instantly.
But piece by piece, memory by memory.
And as the city continued to function,
As people went about their daily routines,
They did not even realize what they had already lost.
Because to them, it had never existed in the first place.
Once the Forsaken had weakened the city's sense of reality,
The Hollowed arrived.
Not as invaders.
Not as conquerors.
But as citizens.
They spoke in the markets.
In the temples.
In the noble courts.
"Have you ever felt like something is missing?"
"Have you ever wondered why things feel… incomplete?"
"You are not alone."
And for the first time, people began to question what was happening.
Began to realize that something was deeply wrong.
And that was when the real panic began.
Because once the people started noticing the absences—
They could not stop seeing them.
The king and his court were slow to react.
Too slow.
By the time they understood something was happening,
It had already begun to spread beyond their control.
They held emergency meetings,
Tried to understand the reports.
Why were taxes missing records?
Why were entire families gone from the noble registers?
Why were their own advisors unable to recall crucial laws and decrees?
And worst of all—
Why did the king himself wake up one morning unable to remember the faces of his own children?
Fear was a powerful thing.
And when a city's leaders begin to fear,
The people notice.
The first desertions happened within the royal court.
Servants fled.
Messengers vanished into the night, taking nothing with them, only desperate to escape whatever was happening.
Guards abandoned their posts—not because they had been ordered to, but because they no longer understood who they were supposed to be guarding.
It was not a rebellion.
It was not a siege.
It was simply collapse.
And by the time the military realized what was happening—
It was already too late.
The city had thousands of soldiers.
They could have stood against an army.
Could have repelled invaders for months.
But they were not fighting soldiers.
They were fighting nothing.
They stood at the gates, awaiting orders—
Only to realize they did not know who they were supposed to be taking orders from.
The officers who should have commanded them—
Had forgotten their own authority.
Some stood frozen, unable to comprehend what was happening.
Others simply walked away.
Not because they had lost a battle—
But because they no longer understood why they were there.
And so the walls were left unguarded.
The streets unpatrolled.
The palace abandoned.
And a city that should have been a bastion of power—
Became a hollow shell.
Waiting to be taken.
When the Ascended entered the city,
It was not as invaders.
It was not as raiders.
It was as order incarnate.
They walked into a city without rulers.
A capital without a king.
And they simply took control.
Not with force.
Not with threats.
But by being the only ones who still knew who they were.
And in a city where memory itself had been shattered—
That was all it took to claim power.
This was not just another city.
This was a capital.
A kingdom's seat of power.
And its fall was not hidden.
The world watched as it unraveled.
As its rulers lost themselves.
As its army ceased to function.
And when the first travelers arrived, looking for the king—
And found that no one even remembered his name—
The truth became impossible to deny.
This was not a war.
It was not a rebellion.
This was something far worse.
And for the first time, the world understood what Unmaking truly was.
A force that could not be reasoned with.
Could not be bargained with.
Could not be stopped.
And the final question was now clear.
Who would be next?
The world had been too slow.
Too blind.
Too willing to ignore what was happening.
They had watched as cities fell without war.
As rulers lost themselves.
As kingdoms crumbled without a single battle.
But now, they had finally understood.
And now, they would fight back.
The Holy Crusade of the Radiant Light had been called.
Not just an army.
Not just a war.
A purge.
A declaration that Unmaking was not a force to be battled—
But a plague that must be burned from existence itself.
The world would march against him.
And now, Veyrath would be ready.
The Holy Church of the Radiant Light had gathered its armies.
It was not just one nation.
Not just one kingdom.
It was an alliance of those who feared the fall of everything they had built.
And it was coming.
At the center of the Crusade, there were three key forces.
1. The Paladins of the Radiant Order – Holy warriors clad in enchanted plate, wielding weapons that burned with divine energy. These were not mere knights. They were trained to purge corruption, and they would not hesitate to turn that training against the Unmade.
2. The Inquisitors of the White Flame – Masters of sorcery and divine magic, specialized in breaking curses, unraveling dark forces, and sealing away forbidden knowledge. If there was any power in the world that could resist Unmaking, it would be found among them.
3. The Army of the Faithful – Tens of thousands of soldiers, bolstered by mercenaries, conscripts, and those who had lost homes and families to the spreading influence of Unmaking. They were not just fighting a war. They were fighting for their very existence.
And they would not stop.
They would not hesitate.
Because they believed that if they failed—
The world itself would cease to be.
The Crusade was coming.
And while Unmaking had spread far and wide,
This was the first time the world had mustered its strength against him.
Veyrath did not underestimate them.
He did not assume his forces were invincible.
He had already seen that the Inquisitors wielded magic that could slow the spread of Unmaking.
That the Paladins were strong enough to resist its pull—at least for now.
And that meant he had to be smarter.
He could not let them strike first.
He had to control the battlefield before they ever arrived.
So he began preparing.
The Forsaken had already proven that their presence alone could unmake reality.
But now, they had to be more than an unseen force.
Now, they had to be weapons.
So Veyrath pushed them further.
He did not just let them drift through cities, unraveling memory.
He taught them control.
Refinement.
He made them choose who they unmade—
And who they left untouched.
And as they adapted, they became more dangerous than ever.
Because now, they could target the Crusade's leadership.
And once that happened, the Crusade would crumble from within before the battle even began.
The Ascended were warriors.
But warriors alone would not be enough.
They needed to be more.
They needed to understand their enemies.
So Veyrath had them study.
Captured documents, maps, strategies.
Every movement of the Crusade was analyzed, broken apart, examined.
They learned how their enemies fought.
What magic they used.
Where their weaknesses lay.
And when the Crusade finally arrived,
They would be facing warriors who already knew how to break them.
The Hollowed were no longer just those who had been Unmade.
They were the ones who spread Unmaking themselves.
And now, they would be used as the first trap.
Veyrath did not hide them.
He let them wander.
Let them be found by the Crusade's scouts.
And when the Paladins captured them, thinking them lost souls in need of salvation—
They would find something far worse.
Because the Hollowed were no longer just converts.
They were living Unmaking.
And when the Crusade tried to purify them—
They would bring Unmaking into their very midst.
A poison that would spread from within.
A war that would begin before the first battle had even been fought.
The Crusade was marching toward him.
And they believed they were marching toward a war they could fight.
A war of steel and magic.
A war they could win.
But war was not what Veyrath had built.
Unmaking did not fight on battlefields.
It fought in minds.
In identity.
In the very fabric of reality itself.
And so, as the Crusade moved toward the first city they planned to liberate—
They did not find an enemy waiting for them.
They found silence.
Buildings untouched.
Streets unbroken.
But no one there.
No rulers.
No soldiers.
No citizens.
And when they searched for answers—
They found only whispers.
And soon, they would realize the truth.
That they had already lost this war before it began.
Because they had come to fight something that did not need to fight at all.
Something that had already won.