Prologue

The Grand Army of Hilith that gathered to defeat the newly born harbinger had left their camp at dawn to continue their march toward the east. They had been on the road for eight days and soon spotted the walls of Rokillean off in the distance. Thanks to their early departure, they had arrived relatively early in the day.

The summons had come suddenly. Approximately nine days earlier, the kingdom’s government had announced the formation of a new expeditionary army. The government sent out notices that required not only conscription-aged men, but youths who were ordinarily below the kingdom’s conscription age and older reservists who had already served out their time. The expeditionary army’s destination remained a mystery, but clearly the kingdom’s leadership felt that they needed to bolster the ranks of the army ahead of its journey.

It was only after the army had been hurriedly assembled and was about to practically be shoved out the gates of the capital that a member of the royal guard briefed the officers on their mission. The briefing, which was only attended by senior officers of centurion rank or higher, revealed that this was not an expeditionary force, but a grand army gathered for a specific purpose—to kill a newly born enemy of humanity.

Their quarry was a newly spawned Harbinger of Destruction that made its home in the Great Woods of Lieb near the city of Erfahren. It had sinister plans and was a being of evil, according to the Bishop of the Holy Church of Hilith. Although the information they had was from a highly reliable source, unfortunately for the army’s officers, there simply wasn’t very much of it.

All of the army’s officers, including its commander, felt a pang of dread as they were informed of their objective. Harbingers of Destruction weren’t an opponent humans should be fighting. They were more like natural disasters, forces so powerful that simplysurviving was a feat in and of itself. Even the angels from the Celestial Citadel that appeared every so often, the mere underlings of a greater power, took at least ten fully trained soldiers to have a shot at killing one.

To kill a harbinger itself... That wasimpossible, no matter how many soldiers they gathered. The kingdom’s leadership had to know it