Back then, the Bannubi Empire held smaller lands. Other nations struck like winter tides, and it lost ground step by step.

After the Plague God raised some into Plague Knights, the soldiers won battle after battle, banners like iron in storms. Their ferocity earned its name.

Yet war still meant casualties. The Plague God spent energy to heal, the well running dry, pain gnawing like moths, urges to spread disease slipping free, even its face warping.

At last, it couldn’t hold, a drowning beast clutching reeds. It asked Ment for a way out.

Ment said there was a path: don’t bear the storm yourself—shift the storm to another roof.

It believed him, a blind traveler trusting a lantern in fog.

Ment chanted a strange spell, smoke coiling like snakes. He told Nirael to test it.

Nirael infected a white rabbit, ink on snow. Then it marked a gray rabbit, ash on stone.

Soon, the white rabbit coughed blood, like a split pomegranate. Nirael urged the mark, and sickness leapt like a shadow to the gray rabbit.

The gray began bleeding; the white sprang lively, grass after rain. Nirael’s energy didn’t drop, the reservoir quiet as a lake.

Nirael thrilled, heart beating like drums. Then it saw it was zero-sum, a wheel turning in place.

Ment appeared again, voice soft as mist. His fog could press disease down, not cut the root.

He told Nirael to found a noble role called Sacrifice. Seek volunteers across the land, no force, for the mark needed Nirael’s own hand.

The willing would gain rich reward and honor, names carved into history like stone. Ment would build a Mist Domain to press illness like silk, so Sacrifices felt no pain and might not die, until the next took their place.

At first, Nirael hesitated, a bird beating against bars. To soothe it, Ment proposed cattle and sheep as Sacrifices too.

Yet beasts lacked the heart of the matter; people were the keystone, the pillar in the hall.

He added, people could become Plague Knights, healers not fighters, white lanterns under black banners. Different Blessings would treat different diseases.

In the end, under Ment’s honeyed smoke, Nirael agreed.

First cattle and sheep fell like dominos. In the end, it reached the people.

And so it went on, long as a winter night, frost settling day by day.

One day, Nirael felt wrong. Fur sprouted on its hands, body twisting like knotted roots.

Its energy had been drained unnoticed, a river siphoned in the dark, leaving it always on the brink.

Worse, it hadn’t even known, walking in a dream of ash.

For some reason, it thought of Ment’s smoke, that damp fog that smothered like cloth.

“Did the smoke numb my senses? Did it briefly pin down my frenzy?”

That was the first thought, a thorn sprouting in its mind.

It meant it had long been lost, held down under constant pressure. Remove the weight, and madness would snap like a bowstring.

It rushed to confront Ment, storm in its chest. Ment smiled like a fox and said it’d been duped.

Sacrifice was a curse laid on it, a hook in the heart. Ment had been siphoning the people’s energy and the Plague God’s as well.

Nirael raged and lunged, a blade of wind. The man turned to smoke and drifted away.

At the same time, the whole Mist Domain flared with a Magic Array, lines blazing like veins. Only then did Nirael learn the Dark Deity was elsewhere; Ment wasn’t in the real world.

The one who’d spoken was just a controlled follower, a puppet on mist strings.

The sky tore open, a crack like a wound, and inside stared a pair of pitch-black eyes.

The Dark Deity had been trapped in the void, like Elyssus, weaving a descent like a spider’s web.

Plague God Niral, cursed, became its offering, caged in the Mist Domain. Through constant siphoning, Ment truly descended.

After descent, it seized the Empire’s upper ranks, a hand closing over the crown. Only a few Plague Followers who knew the truth escaped.

Ment was the Dark Deity of curses. To stop fleeing Plague Followers from spreading truth, it laid a doom: speak, and your tongue meets a blade.

That’s why, later, the Plague Followers preached a Pro-God faction, raising prayer like banners, to help Nirael draw energy and win trust.

Ment’s curse hit healing disease, not spreading it. So the followers carried plague like wildfire, slaughtering innocents like grain before scythes.

With refilled energy, Nirael scraped together resistance, ice chains cracking, and broke from Ment’s grip.

Freed, its first thought was revenge, to erase Ment like ink washed by rain. But its energy couldn’t sustain the strike.

Cornered, it chose the maddest path—forge plague, a storm hammering every rooftop.

It would unleash a vast plague across the Empire. The dead would become its fuel, a furnace of souls, enough to oppose the Dark Deity Ment.

On Ment’s side, Nirael’s killing drew energy outside the curse, a river diverted. The fuel was stolen.

Ment wouldn’t wait to die. It made Mystic Return Smoke, branding the Plague God a Dark Deity and preaching human self‑reliance.

That birthed the Independents, a banner in hard wind.

Of course, some ordinary folk truly wished humans to stand alone, minds like clear springs. They could only dream under clouded skies.

No one guessed the first herald of the Independents was a Dark Deity in shadow.

Ment used Mystic Return Smoke to press disease down, a net cast over waves, and siphon some energy.

“That’s the Empire’s current state. Now you see why I had to do this, right?” The mouse watched Lucimia, brows gathered like clouds.

“I want your help—to break the blockade and draw energy. I have two aims: first, revenge; second, help the Empire’s people.”

Lucimia didn’t answer Nirael at once; Desty spoke first, voice a crisp blade.

“Help the Empire’s people? You killed so many with plague—call that help? Why should we trust you? Dark Deities love lies.”

Right—why believe its single story, a lone drum in the fog?

For the first time, Lucimia felt Desty made sense, sharp as frost on stone.

Who knew if Nirael’s words were true? It feuded with the Dark Deity Ment, and could splash ink on his portrait, painting itself as the victim.

Not that the Dark Deity must be good. Two snakes can share one jar. If Ment stood here, it might smear the Plague God the same, naming it a demon king.