Dungeon King: The Hidden Ruler-Chapter 53: [Thrones in Ruin 2] - Stones Remember More Than Names

The teleport flare faded, and Raven exhaled into wind.

Not breeze. Wind. The kind that stripped heat from your skin and whispered through your armor seams like it wanted to find your bones.

The air tasted thin this high up, sharp and cold enough to scrape his lungs with every breath. A few players laughed too loudly nearby, nerves fraying at the edges even before the first horn.

Others compulsively checked their inventory screens, fingers twitching over menus that wouldn’t save them when the real fight came.

Somewhere to his left, an NPC bard casually plucked at a lute, the light-hearted melody jarring against the grimness bleeding from the stones.

A battered Cindraleth banner flapped against a cracked pillar—its colors faded, its edges torn by more wars than this generation could name.

He stood at the edge of the Stoneweft Plateau, high above the clouds, where the land cracked into cliffs and the world opened into sky. All around him, players materialized in pulses—guilds with matching crests, soloists checking builds, arena junkies riding bannered mounts.

Above it all, the game’s HUD flickered:

[You have entered: Greycliff Hold – Cindraleth Defense Phase]

Event: Throne War (Sponsored by White Mansion Energy Drink)

This Month’s Defender: Cindraleth Union

Attackers: Meridian Fold NPC Legion

Duration: 7 Days | Respawn Zone: Inner Sanctum

Faction Buffs: Active

Raven didn’t stop walking.

He’d seen this format before. A rotating monthly mega event—one month Velkarin Axis holds, the next Cindraleth Union, then the Meridian Fold.

NPCs attack in waves.

Players defend the throne.

Devs get footage. Sponsors get spectacle.

But this time, the system was held together by duct tape and arrogance.

Patch v1.3 had gutted the AI framework.

Now they wanted players to fight a war inside that mess?

Perfect.

The Throne War, Day 1

Raven moved through the crowd, brushing his cloak aside. Two bone-hilted daggers slipped into his hands—spoils from his last raid. They gleamed faintly, still hungry.

His gear shimmered. A light summoner’s harness of woven bark-thread and slate-blue leather replaced his usual look.

The system registered: Summoner (Twin Daggers) – Neutral Aligned.

No one looked twice. Just another event joiner in a flashy loadout.

The Inner Sanctum pulsed with ancestral energy. Runes lit the floor. Chimes hummed like breath through leaves.

The Inner Sanctum opened before him, more cathedral than fortress now that he looked closer.

Massive pillars spiraled upward, wrapped in living vines petrified into bone-white stone. Statues lined the far alcoves—carved in the likeness of defenders long dead, their names etched into plaques so worn that only a few letters still survived.

Above it all, a massive fresco stretched across the ceiling: a mosaic of knights, druids, and war-mages—arms locked, heads bowed beneath the same sky he stood under now.

The entire chamber seemed to hum with quiet mourning.

Not grief.

Resignation.

This was not a place where victories were celebrated. It was where sacrifices were counted.

Raven let his boots scrape lightly over the rune-lit floor as he passed, the sound too loud in the heavy stillness. A place like this wasn’t made to inspire hope.

It was made to remind you that the only thing left after a siege wasn’t glory.

It was memory.

Elder Kaelthorn waited near the throne, robes like wind-worn moss, his gaze reflecting stormlight.

"You do not come here to win. You come here to become legend—for the glory of Cindraleth, and the will of the Union, blessed by Mother Gaia."

Raven stepped forward. The quest UI opened without prompt:

[Quest Accepted: Echoes of the Last Stand]

Defend the Outer Wall during a Siege Breaker push

Kill 150 Meridian Fold invaders (Daily Objective)

Deploy defensive barricades or siege

Stop the Golem before it reaches the Sanctum

"Defend Greycliff. Let our story endure."

He barely nodded. His eyes were already scanning vendor markers.

He approached a siege vendor—a stone-skinned golem with hollow, ember-lit eyes.

[Buy Siege Item?]

☑ Ballista Kit (x2)

☑ Trebuchet Core (x1)

Purchased.

The kits dropped into his inventory, folding into hex-coded cubes.

He turned toward the stairs.

Raven glanced toward the horizon beyond the sanctum walls. The battlefield stretched wide—layered stone, broken passes, war camps, and siege lines. The Throne War wasn’t staged in some compact battleground. This was an arena meant to feel endless.

He knew what that meant. He needed mobility.

He summoned.

The mist churned. Shadows condensed.

And Duskrunner emerged—massive, sleek, quiet. A beast as tall as a man even on all fours. His glowing eyes scanned the sanctum edge, body taut with tension.

Raven stepped forward and reached for the familiar ridge along Duskrunner’s back. freewēbnoveℓ.com

Nothing.

No prompt. No mount interface. No shift in behavior.

Just a flicker of static through the beast’s fur.

"...Mount command invalid... behavior overridden... resetting instinct..."

Raven’s hand froze mid-air.

Of course. The patch hit mount functions too.

He sighed and let his hand drop, resting it gently against Duskrunner’s huge forehead.

"Don’t worry about this, buddy," he murmured. "We’ll ride this out together. On foot, if we have to."

The beast gave no answer, just stood silently beside him, caught between what it had been and what the system now forced it to become.

To the others, he looked like a prestige summon—a rare Dire Wolf evolution, maybe with a legacy skin. Flashy but familiar. Some mount that you can buy with tremendous amount of money.

To Raven, he looked like a partner trapped inside a broken leash. He unsummon Duskrunner.

There was no other way. He would run through the war zone like everyone else.

Raven moved through Greycliff like descending into a coiled blade.

The Inner Sanctum was still—the kind of stillness that hummed with ritual weight. It was more palace than temple, a sanctified core of moss-veiled columns and rune-lit spires.

Elevated walkways looped through sacred gardens and bone-carved monuments. This wasn’t just the fallback. It was the heart of Greycliff Hold—where vows were sworn, and last stands etched themselves into stone.

The place you woke up when everything else was gone. The player respawn point.

The path tightened as he passed beneath stone archways and descended into the Middle District.

The streets here were narrow, layered with barricades and makeshift cover. Homes long abandoned were turned into choke points, windows repurposed into kill zones.

It smelled like a place that had already seen tomorrow’s death.

No siege equipment here. Just boots, blades, and bloody attrition. It smelled like a place that had already seen tomorrow’s death.

Then the wind howled louder.

He stepped into the Outer Wall, where the real war waited. The battlements stretched wide, lined with zerg groups, indie guilds, and half-prepped formations. Some players barked macros. Others bickered over turret placement.

Raven claimed a spot on the overlook.

From his inventory, he deployed the trebuchet core. The frame bloomed upward, lines of light solidifying into wooden struts and tension-bound limbs.

"Siege weapon online," the system chimed. "Needs two operators."

The trebuchet finished assembling itself with a low hum, locking into place like a skeletal creature baring its spine to the sky. Raven stepped back, surveying the surrounding chaos. To his right, a half-collapsed tower groaned under the weight of too many snipers setting up makeshift roosts, their arrows fletched with guild colors fluttering in the wind.

Across the square, a vendor screamed about healing supplies, his voice hoarse from bartering with desperate players scrambling for buffs and potions. Overhead, PvP guild banners unfurled in quick flashes—red, blue, gold—claiming ground like old warlords carving names into stone.

"Get those barricades up, you potatoes!" a raid captain howled somewhere beyond the smoke of smoldering campfires. "They’re already cresting the southern ridge!"

Everywhere Raven looked, Greycliff buzzed with brittle urgency—the chaotic kind only a doomed defense could muster. Players huddled in tight groups, others stood alone, their faces grim beneath hoods and helms.

The siege hadn’t even begun in full yet, but the Hold was already bleeding.

And somewhere deep in the marrow of the fortress, the old stones whispered:

Not everyone here would walk away.

Someone nearby called out. "Hey, dagger-summoner! You mind me help manning this later?"

Raven gave him a thumb-up and turned toward the horizon.

Then it comes.

The war horn sounded from deep within Greycliff Hold—ancient, thunderous, and wrong in all the right ways.

It wasn’t blown. It was bellowed. Like a dying beast giving birth to a roar.

The sound rolled across the plateau, low and guttural, vibrating through stone and marrow alike. It echoed down the alleys, into bones, into bloodstreams.

Not just noise—a legacy howling awake.

It brought goosebumps in waves. Made knuckles tighten. Made hearts falter for a breath.

The kind of sound that warned the world:

The Throne War had begun.

[Wave 1 Approaching: Meridian Fold Infantry Detected]

Raven rose and adjusted the aim of his trebuchet, gaze cold.

That same player jogged over again. "Okay, let me help this side, my man!"

Raven gave a nod before turning his eyes to the horizon.

The Meridian Fold armies looked like a swarm of ants from afar.

He frowned. This wasn’t just war anymore.

Let the patch strain.

Let the event glitch.

Let the players see what he saw.

Even if he had to die and respawn a hundred times just to prove a point.

That’s how you fought a corporate giant—not with speeches or protest logs, but by letting their failure unfold in front of millions.

Broken frame by broken frame.

He didn’t need stealth. Not this time.

He just needed to fight.

And make sure everyone was watching.

On the horizon, thousands of Meridian Fold soldiers were marching in.

Their steps echoed across the plateau—a flood of death, rolling closer with every beat.

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