The Central Square of Minias.

  From the castle gates, retaken from the enemy at the cost of incredible losses, a relentless river of steel poured forth as reinforcements. T-90M "Proryv" main battle tanks, formidable and low-slung, and one T-15 heavy IFV based on the Armata platform, with its predatory, elongated 57mm autocannon barrel. Their appearance split the panicked, disorderly mob of retreating Topan soldiers like a granite cliff parting a turbulent, muddy stream. The soldiers, crazed with terror, scrambled to the sides, desperate to avoid the clanking tracks of these iron monsters, which they feared almost as much as the demons chasing them. Some, tearing off their heavy, useless armor as they ran, threw down their swords and shields to gain even a sliver more speed. Others, in a blind, irrational impulse, tried to take cover behind the armored vehicles, not understanding that they were running straight into the epicenter of the coming slaughter.

  Major Neverov, leaning halfway out of the commander's hatch of his IFV, saw the golem up close for the first time. And even he, a veteran of several wars, a man who had seen death in its ugliest forms, felt a chill of primal, superstitious dread run down his spine. The gigantic creature, nearly the size of a five-story building, made of stone and dirt, was walking straight toward them, ignoring the pathetic scurry of the humans below. Each of its steps was a dull, crushing blow that shook not only the walls of the half-ruined buildings but, it seemed, their very bones.

  "Jesus Christ…" Neverov breathed out, instinctively gripping the steel edges of the hatch.

  With each of Ur-Garon's steps, the last remaining panes of glass shattered from the windows of the houses. Dust and stone chips rained down from the roofs, as if the city itself were surrendering before this irresistible power. A strange, electrified tingling pricked Neverov's fingers—his own body, his instincts honed over years, were screaming of danger.

  "Yamal, this is Command! Target is dead ahead! Elephant-1, you're up first! Crack that shell! APFSDS round, center mass of the chest, you have the coordinates! How copy?!"

  "Solid copy! Ready to fire!" the calm, almost phlegmatic voice of Lieutenant Artur Neverov, commander of the T-14 Armata, crackled in the headphones.

  "FIRE!"

  "Shot out!"

  The 152mm 2A82-1M smoothbore cannon barked deafeningly. The projectile, flying at hypersonic speed, was nearly invisible. For just a moment, a tungsten rod flashed in the air. Impact. A crash. The outer stone shell in the center of the golem's chest shattered into a thousand tiny fragments, like an eggshell. And in the breach, protected by layers of stone, a bright, ruby heart throbbed and pulsed—its magical core.

  But the golem didn't even flinch. Its glowing red, boulder-like eyes focused on the armored box that had dared to cause it pain. And Ur-Garon, letting out a deep, long groan that was like the grinding of tectonic plates, broke into a run, intending to simply stomp the insolent insects.

  "Elephant-2, finish it! High-explosive! Full charge!" Artur roared into the radio, his voice rising above the whine of his own gas turbine engine.

  "Solid copy! Firing!" the T-90M commander replied crisply.

  Another crash, but different this time—dull, tearing. The high-explosive fragmentation round struck the exposed, pulsating ruby core precisely. The explosion was devastating. The magical power source, which had slumbered for centuries in the depths of the earth, could not withstand the impact and detonated, shattering into thousands of shining fragments that looked like bloody tears.

  The golem froze. For one endless moment. Then its gigantic body shuddered, and it slowly, with an almost human weariness, fell to its knees. The ruby light in its boulder-like eyes went out. The remnants of its mana escaped from the cracks in its stone body like steam, and with a dull crash, it began to crumble, turning into a formless heap of stones and dust.

  "Command, this is Elephant-1!" the Armata's commander could barely contain the elation in his voice. "Behemoth… we got Behemoth! Target destroyed! How copy?"

  "Solid copy, Elephant-1. Excellent work, men. Excellent. Over and out," for the first time in a long while, undisguised relief could be heard in Major Neverov's voice from the speakers.

  But while the tankers celebrated their impossible victory, far away in his dark lair, Nosgorath, who had been calmly observing the battle through a magical link with his creation, snapped his eyes open. He felt Ur-Garon's death as if it were his own. The last image, transmitted by the golem's fading consciousness, was seared onto his retina: an ugly green machine, and on its side, a hated, cursed, painfully familiar symbol, a symbol that struck a chord of genetic terror. A scarlet, five-pointed star.

  "VERMIN! INSECTS! YOU AGAIN! YOUR PATHETIC MESSENGERS AGAIN!" he roared, and his roar, filled with inhuman fury, shook the very foundations of his lair. He clawed at the air, as if trying to tear the very fabric of space. "HIGH GOD, I SWEAR BY THE DARKNESS, I WILL EXTERMINATE YOUR SPAWN!"

  In the next instant, the space in front of the T-14 tank warped, blackened, and burst open like a festering boil. From the rift, cloaked in clouds of black smoke and cold, stepped Nosgorath himself. His appearance was so sudden and unnatural that for a moment, all the targeting systems in the tank went haywire, flashing an error signal. Without losing a second, the Demon Lord, letting out a furious roar, began to form an attack spell.

  "SHIT! COMMAND, THIS IS ELEPHANT-1! WE HAVE DIRECT CONTACT WITH ALPHA-ZERO! I REPEAT, ALPHA-ZERO IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF US!" the tank commander's voice, so calm moments before, broke with shock.

  The crew of the T-14 Armata's unmanned turret, located in an isolated armored capsule at the front of the hull, plunged into a feverish, automated routine. For them, the outside world existed only as numbers, markers, and heat signatures on panoramic displays.

  "Loading HEAT round, 3BK31! Faster!" Lieutenant Artur Neverov's voice was tense, but there was no panic. It was the voice of a specialist solving a complex technical problem.

  The autoloader, with a clang and a screech inaudible to the crew but felt as a slight vibration through the hull, rammed a new round into the breech.

  "Ready! Target acquired!" the gunner reported, keeping the crosshairs on the charging demon.

  "Fire!"

  The 2A82-1M cannon roared again, spitting a deadly charge straight at Nosgorath.

  The Demon Lord, sensing a mortal, almost absolute threat from the incoming projectile, broke off his spell with incredible speed. With a short, almost instinctive gesture of his clawed hand, he activated a defensive spell. A golden-orange, semi-transparent force shield, pulsating with pure magical energy, materialized before him. In the same instant, the High-Explosive Anti-Tank round slammed into it.

  A deafening explosion that tore at the very fabric of reality. The shockwave threw the Demon Lord back a good thirty feet, and his magical barrier, unable to withstand the impact of a concentrated jet of molten metal heated to several thousand degrees, shattered with a melodic, crystalline chime into a thousand shimmering fragments.

  "SPAWN OF THE ANCIENT GODS! I WILL DESTROY YOU!" Nosgorath roared, and for the first time in the entire battle, his voice was a mixture of rage and… genuine surprise.

  With an inhuman, almost insect-like leap, covering a distance of a hundred and fifty feet, he landed directly on the turret of the T-14 Armata. Seventy tons of steel sagged under his weight, its tracks screeching as they were pressed into the frozen, cracked earth.

  "WHERE ARE YOU HIDING, RATS?! COME OUT!"

  His clawed hand, surrounded by an aura of dark energy, crashed down on the unmanned turret with a deafening screech. The composite armor, capable of withstanding a shell impact, buckled as if it were made of foil. Another blow, and another!

  "Elephant-2! He's on our turret! Get this thing off us! Now!" Artur shouted into his throat mic, his previously calm voice now laced with outright panic. "Command! We have heavy contact with Alpha-Zero! Requesting immediate fire support!"

  "Solid copy, Elephant-1! We're getting that monkey off you now!" the T-90M commander replied. He peered through the sight of the remote-controlled UDP T05BV-1 anti-aircraft gun. A long, angry burst of 12.7mm heavy machine gun fire stitched across the demon's back. Nosgorath roared and, leaping from the tank, landed on the ground. The soldiers watched in horror as the torn, bleeding wounds on his back began to close right before their eyes, exuding clouds of black, oily smoke.

  The demon raised his hand again, and in it, weaving from darkness and fire, a dazzling ball of superheated plasma, compressing to the size of a fist, began to form. The spell "Hellfire." With incredible speed, the ball shot from his palm and struck the frontal armor of the Armata. A monstrous explosion blinded everyone for several seconds. The tank's "Afganit" active protection system fired, launching countermeasures and creating a plasma cloud, but a part of the destructive energy still broke through.

  "AAGH! COMMAND! WE'VE TAKEN A DIRECT HIT! LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS IN THE CAPSULE ARE DOWN! ENGINE FIRE!" Artur's agonized, static-filled scream crackled over the radio. "TWO KIA! DRIVER AND GUNNER! I'M WIA, CRITICAL! BAILING OU—"

  "Artur, hang on! We're on our way! DO NOT SIGN OFF!" his brother, Major Neverov, replied, his voice hard as steel.

  But at that moment, the damaged tank's ammunition cooked off. A giant, silent fireball mushroomed into the gray sky, scattering twisted pieces of multi-layered armor in all directions. The turret was torn from its ring and thrown a hundred yards away.

  "SON OF A BITCH!" Neverov roared in an uncontrolled, primal fury. He slammed his fist into the radio with such force that the plastic casing cracked. Lightning flashed in his eyes. "ALL UNITS! SUPPRESSING FIRE ON ALPHA-ZERO! PIN THAT BASTARD DOWN! TEAR HIM TO PIECES! DO NOT LET HIM ESCAPE!"

  The T-90M fired again. This time, a high-explosive round. The shell struck Nosgorath directly in the side. The powerful explosion tore off his arm and ripped out a huge chunk of his flesh. But the demon only roared, and before the astonished eyes of the soldiers, his wounds began to close again. They could see bones growing, muscles weaving together, charred skin being replaced by a new, even tougher chitinous armor. He was breathing heavily, pouring all his mana into regeneration. Pure, concentrated hatred burned in his eyes. He was ready for the final, decisive blow.

  Obeying Major Neverov's final, desperate command, all the remaining firepower of the joint detachment simultaneously descended upon the single, crippled, but still living target. The T-90M "Proryv" tank, the T-15 heavy IFV, and the BMP-3—all of them, like a single, enraged steel beast, opened a blistering, almost hysterical suppressive fire.

  The first to strike were the 9M120-1 "Ataka" guided missiles from the Kornet-D anti-tank system mounted on the BMP-3. Four trails of fire streaked through the air, aimed precisely at the demon's center mass. Immediately after, with a dry, staccato crash, the 57mm autocannon of the T-15 IFV began to bark, spitting out a burst of high-explosive fragmentation shells. And then, as the apotheosis of this orchestra of destruction, the 125mm barrel of the T-90M roared monstrously. Everything converged on a single point. A leaden, fiery storm, a true eruption of a technological volcano, engulfed the Demon Lord, tearing through the air, the earth, and the very flesh of the ancient evil.

  Nosgorath, desperately trying to complete his regeneration, could be seen weaving the remnants of his defensive spell around himself at the last moment. A golden force field flared, momentarily holding back the first impacts, but it was designed to deflect blades and magic, not tandem-charge HEAT warheads and hypersonic projectiles. It popped like a soap bubble.

  The deafening cannonade, a thunder like the wrath of the heavens themselves, stunned even the soldiers inside the armored vehicles for several long seconds, causing their onboard systems to signal a sound overload. And when the dense, acrid gunpowder smoke finally began to dissipate, Nosgorath emerged from the dust, like a ghost risen from hell.

  He was monstrously, unimaginably mutilated. His impenetrable armor was twisted and pierced in dozens of places, and his body was covered in horrific, bleeding gashes and blistering wounds from the close-range explosions. He limped heavily, dragging behind him a nearly severed, charred leg from which flesh hung in shreds. But he was standing. And he was laughing. It was a gruesome, hoarse, gurgling laugh that made the blood run cold. And when he spoke, his voice was like the rumble of distant, funereal thunder, and a black, tar-like ichor flowed from his shattered maw.

  "BE DAMNED, YOU SPAWN OF THE HIGH GOD!" he roared, and his voice held not pain, but only pure, concentrated, all-consuming hatred. "HEAR ME, YOU WRETCHED MORTALS! YOU ARE TOO LATE! SOON… SOON THE GREAT RAVERNAL EMPIRE WILL RETURN! IT WILL RISE FROM THE ASHES! AND THE REIGN OF YOUR PATHETIC, MONKEY KINGS WILL TURN TO DUST!"

  He laughed again, and this laugh was like the death rattle of a soul condemned to eternal torment.

  "BEFORE THE MIGHT OF THE TRUE LEGIONS, BEFORE THE POWER OF THE WINGED LIGHT, YOU ARE NOTHING!" Nosgorath swept what was left of his clawed hand over the surviving tank and IFV, as if pronouncing a death sentence upon them. "MESSENGERS… PATHETIC CHAMPIONS OF THE LIGHT… BOW BEFORE THE GREATEST MAGE-EMPEROR, OR YOU WILL BE ERASED FROM THE FACE OF THIS EARTH! YOUR EXISTENCE… IS MEANINGLESS!"

  He poured into these last, prophetic words all his remaining mana, all the life force he had previously spent on regeneration. His body began to glow from within with a crimson, unbearable light. He was no longer trying to heal himself. He was preparing for his final, most terrible blow.

  It was not a physical attack. There was no fire, no explosion. It was a silent, invisible strike aimed directly at the mind. A psionic attack of monstrous, transcendent power, a focused empathic scream of agony and hatred, multiplied over millennia.

  The crews of the armored vehicles, even behind thick layers of composite armor, within the Faraday cages of their machines, felt it as a physical blow to the brain. Their electronic warfare systems shrieked, detecting a massive psionic spike of unknown origin. Hell exploded in their heads. They saw images the human mind was not built to withstand: scenes of genocide on entire worlds, tortures lasting for eternity, a cold, indifferent, maddening void. They experienced the deaths of billions of beings, feeling their agony as their own.

  In that same instant, the Demon Lord's body, having expended the last drop of its dark energy, flashed brightly and turned to dust. The black ash, caught by the icy wind, dissolved into the air without a trace, as if it had never been. The physical threat was gone. But his final, mental curse, his poison, had already seeped into the souls of those who had defeated him.

  Everywhere, within a quarter-mile radius of where the Demon Lord's ashes had just scattered, Russian soldiers collapsed to the ground as if cut down. Inside their armored boxes, in icy trenches, at guard posts—all of them, like marionettes with their strings severed, writhed in unseen, terrifying convulsions. Their screams, filled with an inhuman, transcendent horror, pierced the morning silence, mingling with the moans of the wounded Topan knights, whose souls, accustomed to magic, proved more resilient to this type of attack. Their minds were under assault. Brutally, mercilessly, barbarically pried open.

  They were dreaming a collective, perfectly synchronized nightmare.

  They saw… they felt… their bones being slowly, crunchingly broken on gigantic racks. Their limbs, one by one, being torn off with red-hot pincers. Boiling oil being poured onto their open wounds, their skin melting like wax. The pain was not an illusion. It was absolute, searing the very soul, surpassing any physical pain threshold. They saw their deepest, most hidden monsters, spawned by their own subconscious, gleefully tearing them apart. Each of them was a helpless witness to the most terrible thing they could possibly imagine.

  And then, at the end of this unbearable torture, when their will was almost broken, they were shown a vision. The final echo, implanted in Nosgorath's consciousness by his ancient creators—a parting gift from the vanquished, a propaganda reel for a future war.

  In an endless, black steppe, as void as nothingness itself, they saw a rupture. A tear in the very fabric of reality. And from this rift, like colossal whales from a bottomless ocean, gigantic flying structures silently emerged, defying the very concept of gravity—huge circular ships slowly sailing through the sky on an unknown force. Behind them, streaking the sky with fiery trails, swarms of small, swift craft that blended with the heavens moved at supersonic speeds.

  Below, on the ground, strange, angular bipedal walking mechs advanced, their magical cannons spewing streams of pure energy. Alongside them marched titanic constructs resembling golems, whose tread seemed to crack the very void. And behind them, in an endless, black river, flowed legions of creatures—orcs, goblins, giant wolves, trolls, and the like.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  And at the vanguard of this army marched Them. Figures in magical, matte armor, powered by magical engines. In their hands were weapons that emitted beams that silently incinerated everything in their path. They marched, and their single, multi-thousand-strong battle cry echoed across the void. And in that cry, there was no fury. Only a cold, indifferent certainty in their right to destroy, to burn, and to remake worlds. The soldiers watched as, on their command, pillars of fire rained down from the heavens, wiping entire cities from the face of the earth, leaving behind only melted, smoking craters. It was a power akin to that of a god. A power their minds refused to accept.

  The first to break free from this hell, by an effort of will that seemed to cost him a lifetime, was Major Neverov. He came to. His head was buzzing like a disturbed beehive, a deafening bell tolling in his temples. He saw his soldiers in the troop compartment of the IFV convulsing, their faces twisted into masks of terror, foaming at the mouth.

  His heart clenched with a primal fear and a sense of absolute helplessness. He was the captain of a ship sinking not in water, but in madness.

  Without thinking, he began to slap his comrades across the face. Hard, sobering, desperate blows.

  "WAKE UP! IT'S AN ILLUSION! FIGHT IT! IT'S NOT REAL! GET UP, SOLDIERS!" his voice cracked into a hoarse rasp. "KILL IT INSIDE YOU! THAT'S AN ORDER!"

  His cries, his pain, his will seemed to break through the veil of the nightmare. One by one, with heavy, convulsive gasps, the soldiers began to come to their senses. Their eyes, empty and glassy, slowly regained focus. They were alive. But they would never be the same. They had stared into the abyss. And the abyss had stared back.

  Five minutes passed. Five agonizingly long, endless minutes, filled with death rattles and the quiet, insane mumbling. One by one, like drowning men surfacing from dark, icy depths, the soldiers in the troop compartment of the BMP-3 came to their senses. Their eyes, just moments ago filled with cold, professional confidence, were now empty. In their depths was frozen that primal, animalistic terror that scars the soul forever. Their bodies were wracked by violent, uncontrollable tremors.

  Somehow regaining their composure, they staggered outside, into the fresh air thick with the smell of blood and ozone. Obeying a silent, hand-signaled order from the major, they headed towards the second tank, the T-90M. With a difficult, combined effort, they managed to pry open the commander's hatch, which had been jammed shut by the nearby explosion. What they saw inside made even these hardened veterans, accustomed to the sight of death, recoil.

  "Command… this is Falcon…" Captain Sokolov rasped into the radio, his voice hollow and lifeless. "The crew of Elephant-2… they're all gone. All KIA."

  Major Neverov, listening to the report on his own radio, slowly closed his eyes. The tank crew was dead. But they hadn't been killed by fire or shrapnel. They had been killed by terror. Their hearts, unable to withstand the transcendent mental strain in the confined space, had simply stopped. The medics would later call it a massive heart attack, induced by extreme psychogenic shock. But the soldiers knew—they had been killed by magic.

  "DAMMIT! SON OF A BITCH!" A raw, primal, inhuman rage erupted from Neverov's chest in the roar of a wounded animal. He slammed his fist against the armor of his vehicle with such force that cracks spiderwebbed across his gauntlet.

  "HQ! THIS IS COMMAND! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! ALPHA-ZERO IS DESTROYED! BUT WE HAVE SIX KIAs! SIX! I NEED A CLEANUP CREW AND A BLACK TULIP (a military slang term originating from the Soviet-Afghan War for the An-12 aircraft used to transport casualties, now a euphemism for any military casualty evacuation) FOR EVACUATION OF THE DEAD AND THE DAMAGED HARDWARE! URGENT! HOW COPY?"

  "Command, this is HQ. Solid copy. ETA for the recovery team is two hours. How copy?" the dry, official, utterly indifferent voice from the radio was like a slap in the face.

  "Acknowledged, HQ. Waiting…" Neverov almost spat the words and violently switched off the radio.

  He jumped to the ground and staggered over to Captain Sokolov. The major's face, usually so open and even kind, had turned into a terrifying, petrified mask, twisted by a grimace of hatred and unbearable pain.

  "Captain," his voice was quiet, but it rang with steel. "Establish a defensive perimeter. All around. Not one of those bastards, not a single creature, is to get near our guys' bodies. No one will desecrate this place. If any of the locals try to scavenge for trophies—warning shot in the air. If they don't get the message—you fire to kill. On my personal, direct responsibility. Do you understand me?"

  "Yes, Comrade Major!" the captain, taken aback by the sight of his commander, snapped to attention.

  Major Neverov, stumbling on unbending legs like an old man, walked to the still-smoldering wreck of the Armata. He touched the hot, melted armor with his palm.

  "I couldn't protect you, Arturka… I couldn't, little brother," he whispered, barely audible, and a single, stark tear traced a path through the soot and grime on his cheek. "Just a little longer, and you would've made Lieutenant Colonel… We went through Syria together… crushed those Chechen 'spirits'… and then this… some goddamn fairy tale crap… What a sick, fucking joke of fate. And to you, guys," his voice broke, "rest in peace, brothers. I hope there's none of this filth in your new world."

  He pulled a worn metal flask from his pocket, took a large, burning swallow of pure alcohol, and poured the rest onto the armor—an ancient, almost pagan ritual of remembrance for the fallen.

  Two excruciatingly long hours later, the recovery team arrived. Silent soldiers from an engineering battalion brought hermetically sealed zinc coffins, loaded the remains of Elephant-2's crew and the personal effects of all six casualties into them. Using a plasma cutter, they sawed through the jammed hatch of the Armata's armored capsule and, trying not to look at what was left of the men inside, carefully extracted three charred, almost unrecognizable bodies. Among them was Lieutenant Artur Neverov, the major's younger brother. A recovery vehicle towed away what was left of the brand-new tank to a temporary base. The advance detachment, having completed its bloody task, returned to the western part of Tormeus.

  This truly mythical battle, the battle for Tormeus, was over.

  And the city exploded with jubilation. The news that the Demon Lord had fallen, and his invincible legions had been reduced to a pathetic, fleeing mob, spread like wildfire. First, the fortress rejoiced, where exhausted warriors wept and embraced one another. Then, the news, like a wave of fire, engulfed the entire city. Joyful shouts and cheers in honor of the saviors from Russia echoed off the ancient, battle-scarred walls.

  Children, whose eyes still remembered the horror of captivity, now laughed as they threw bouquets of wild, thorny field flowers under the clanking tracks and wheels of the machines returning from the battlefield. Young women, crying with joy, broke through the lines of Topan guards to touch the armor of the Russian soldiers or to kiss their tired, soot-covered hands. The Russian soldiers, having received orders to rest, were immersed in this carefree, intoxicating whirlwind. Music blared everywhere, wine flowed like a river, and laughter and songs could be heard.

  "The Messengers of the High God! They have returned, just as the prophecies foretold!" the people cried out.

  This explained everything: their incredible power and their symbol. Awe mingled with superstitious terror. Old priests fell to their knees right on the streets, offering up prayers. Historians and sages in the royal library frantically sifted through ancient scrolls, searching for new confirmations. And the common people now looked upon the Russian soldiers not just as heroes, but as demigods.

  The Russian soldiers, not yet fully comprehending that they had survived, found themselves at the center of this carnival. They were embarrassed and a little annoyed by this almost religious worship. They tried to deny it, to explain that they were not "messengers," but just soldiers, but no one listened. For the people of Topa, they were the living embodiment of an ancient, saving legend.

  Only one man took no part in it. Major Neverov, having dismissed his men, sat alone in his small, cold room in the commandant's office. He sat at a simple wooden table, and before him was a bottle of local spirits and a single, overturned shot glass, covered with a piece of bread—a Russian tradition for mourning the dead. He slowly, almost mechanically, scrolled through the photos on his smartphone. Here he and Arthur, just kids, with their arms around their father, a colonel. Here they were at the academy, happy, full of hope. Here—Syria, dust, heat, and his tired but happy smile…

  The major drank. He drank in silence, until he was numb. But he held himself together, as befits a Russian officer who had survived hell. And then, when the bottle was empty, without undressing, he collapsed onto his hard soldier's cot and fell asleep. A dreamless sleep. The sleep of a man who had won. But who, in that victory, had lost a part of himself.

  An excerpt from the personal journal of the knight Moa, Guardian of the Gate and witness:

  This entry was made by the light of a dim oil lamp in a surviving tower of Tormeus. The hand holding the quill still trembles, and the parchment smells not of ink, but of smoke and baked blood.

  "I don't know how to put into words the primal terror that seized my heart when the most ancient servant of Nur-Datar, Ur-Garon itself, descended upon us like a mountain falling from the sky. My body was covered in a slick, cold sweat. My mind screamed of madness. I gave my detachment the order to take immediate cover in the nearest half-ruined building, understanding that this was no time for heroics—here, one could only pray and wait it out. And with this dark, almost glassy hope, I watched, trembling.

  I watched the battle of the steel beasts, the spawn of the Russians, against the embodiment of the ancient golem Ur-Garon. That fiery, thundering vortex of fire, steel, and inhuman power burned its image into the very depths of my consciousness. Forever. The Russians, not like divine knights, but like pragmatic smiths from hell, managed to destroy the stone colossus. But their victory was not easy. No. It was a monstrous, transcendent struggle in its intensity.

  This in no way diminishes their power. On the contrary, it only emphasizes it. If they are capable of fighting so fiercely against something that is merely a 'servant,' then what kind of power is this?

  And then… then I witnessed a battle that shook me to my very core. A battle that was many times more brutal and intense than anything described in our ancient chronicles, even compared to the battle five thousand years ago when the Four Legendary Heroes, whose names have long since become myths, challenged Nosgorath. The Russians, like two titans of metal and will, clashed in a death match with the Demon Lord himself.

  It was impossible. Unthinkable. But it happened.

  But then, it was as if I was struck by lightning. When the Demon Lord, screaming in pain, called the Russians the 'Messengers of the High God.' His words were filled with such an ancient, such an absolute, deadly hatred that I felt the blood freeze in my veins. And then I remembered. The red five-pointed star, depicted on the armor of the Russian iron monsters. That sign. The legacy. I rushed to Commandant Aziz, begging him to show me the 'Chronicles of the Demon War' again. With trembling fingers, I turned the brittle, centuries-dust-scented pages until I found what I was looking for. A drawing, made by the hand of the hero Kenshiva himself five thousand years ago. An image of the Messengers' sky-ship. It was crude, but on its hull, unmistakably, was drawn the same symbol. The same scarlet, five-pointed star.

  Does the Russian Federation belong to those same 'Messengers,' those who, as the ancient prophecies say, came from the heavens to save us from the first demonic plague?

  Who are they? Descendants? Heirs? New warriors from that same, mythical world? Or, perhaps, are they the very force that has wrought chaos in my own mind, the very beings who have uprooted my old notions of war, of magic, of the very essence of existence? Who summoned the Russian Federation to our world? What is their true purpose? Why are they here? What, in the demons' name, are the forces behind them, if even the Demon Lord fears them?"

  The questions multiply in my head, like bees in a disturbed hive. I do not know the answer. And this lack of understanding, this abyss of the unknown, torments me more than the victory itself.

  A safe house in the aristocratic quarter of Tormeus.

  Lydolka, a senior officer in the Ancient Threats Analysis Division of the Holy Mirishial Empire's Intelligence Bureau, sat in absolute darkness, trembling. Not from the cold, but from a primal, superstitious dread mixed with the cold exhilaration of a professional. He was here for one purpose: to observe. To watch the return of Nosgorath, a living relic, a bio-weapon of the accursed Ancient Magical Empire. His mission: to assess its power, magical abilities, and threat level.

  The power of its two bodyguards, the Red and Blue Ogres, was staggering. Lydolka, an expert in combat magic, immediately understood their secret: their bodies were constantly wreathed in a weak but continuous field of regenerative magic, making them nearly tireless and incredibly resilient. But even these monsters had been defeated. Although Lydolka hadn't seen it with his own eyes, all the reports and rumors converged on one point: they had been destroyed by the soldiers of a new, unknown country. The Russian Federation. Lydolka made a quick, calligraphic note in his encrypted journal, underlining the name twice.

  But the real shock was Nosgorath himself. His magic… Lydolka still couldn't forget the sight of the "hellfire"—a spell that had instantly incinerated nearly two hundred knights. And then—the summoning of Ur-Garon, an eighty-foot golem. By Lydolka's calculations, the amount of mana expended by Nosgorath was equivalent to the full reserves of an entire fleet of the Holy Empire's magical ships. It was beyond the realm of possibility.

  And then the Russians appeared. Lydolka, like everyone else, had at first written off the destruction of the Ogres as luck. But when their "armored, angular siege mechs" rolled onto the square, everything changed. He watched as two of these machines destroyed the giant golem with two consecutive shots. First, one, more futuristic and angular (the T-14 Armata), fired and tore open the golem's chest, exposing its pulsating core. Then the second, more squat one (the T-90M "Proryv"), finished it off with a precise hit to that vulnerable point. In theory, his Empire's flagship magic vessel could also have handled such a target. But to do it with ground-based, compact machines… the Russians had somehow managed to pack that incredible power into a small, mobile platform.

  Analyzing the Russian soldiers' weapons, Lydolka came to an even more disturbing conclusion. They did not radiate a single drop of magical energy. Like the superpower of Mu, they obviously relied on other, mechanical principles. But their weapons… he had seen their heavy tracked combat vehicle (the T-15) gun down trolls with a rapid-fire cannon, while another, smaller one (the BMP-3) supported the attack with missiles. This wasn't just weaponry. It was a system.

  Nosgorath's dying words—"The Ravernal Empire will return"—resounded in Lydolka's mind not as a threat, but as the deafening toll of a funeral bell. He remembered the classified lectures at the imperial academy. The Ancient Magical Empire, which in its pride had challenged the gods themselves and, according to legend, had not vanished but had been displaced in time, leaving behind only ruins and artifacts whose technology even the Holy Mirishial Empire could not fully decipher.

  The Russian Federation had, without a doubt, crushed the demon army. Lydolka had seen it. And then an icy chill gripped his heart. "Messengers…" Nosgorath had called them the "messengers of the High God." The ancient legends. And the red star on their armor… Could it be that the appearance of Russia in this world was no accident? Would it become an enemy of the coming Mage-Emperor? Or… or its ally?

  "The Mage-Emperor will return…" If Nosgorath, his faithful servant, said it, then it must be true. The revival of the Ravernal Empire was not just possible. It was imminent.

  Lydolka rushed to his long-range manacomm, which was hidden in a secret compartment in the wall. He activated it, turned the tuning crystal… but was met only with hiss and static.

  He frowned, feeling a chill run down his spine. The signal wasn't getting through. The magical background over the city had been torn to shreds; it was filled with "noise" and distortion, like the surface of the water during a storm. These were the residual emanations from Nosgorath's monstrous, god-like spells. His final mental attack and the summoning of the golem had been so powerful that they had turned the aether into an impenetrable wall of magical chaos for several hours. Even the most advanced communication device of Mirishial was powerless against such a disturbance.

  Remembering his instructions, he began to pack frantically. Every crystal with its recordings, every sketch—it was all priceless. He had to deliver this information to the capital. Personally.

  The war for Tormeus was over. Topa had lost nearly three thousand of its best warriors. The demons—almost their entire twenty-thousand-strong army. Deprived of their leader, the pathetic remnants of the horde fled in panic back to the cursed continent of Grameus.

  The events of those days would forever be etched in history, becoming the material for new legends and terrifying tales.

  And the relationship between the saved Kingdom of Topa and the enigmatic Russian Federation became not just warm. It forged into an unbreakable alliance, sealed in blood and a shared victory.

  Epilogue.

  The world, still reeling from the swift, almost apocalyptic fall of Leifor, shuddered once more. The news, transmitted through magical communication channels and carried on the wings of merchant ships, was like claps of thunder in a clear sky. It wove together into a single, terrifying picture of a new reality, at the center of which, like the pole of a new era, stood the enigmatic and powerful Russian Federation.

  In the north, in the Kingdom of Topa, a long, cold spring was beginning. For the first time in five thousand years, the threat from the continent of Grameus had not just been contained—it had been annihilated. The remnants of the demonic horde had fled in panic, leaving behind only scorched earth and thousands of rotting corpses, which were now being burned on giant funeral pyres by the soldiers of Topa and Russian CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear) defense specialists. King Rhodos, standing on a surviving wall of Tormeus alongside Russian engineers who were already assessing the scale of the "World Gate's" restoration, looked at the Russian flag reddening on the flagpole. The red five-pointed star—the very same symbol that was inscribed in the ancient chronicles on the sky-ships of the Messengers. Now, for him and for all his people, there were no doubts: the ancient prophecy had been fulfilled. The gods had returned. But their power was so absolute and terrifying that the reverence for their saviors was inseparably mixed with a deep, primal fear.

  To the south, in the Kingdom of Fenn, work was already in full swing. On the coast, under the protection of Russian frigates, engineering battalions were laying the foundation for a future naval base. Sword King Shihan watched every day as a citadel of concrete and steel rose before his eyes. The crushing defeat of Parpaldia's punitive expedition had become not just news for all its neighbors, but a lesson. Delegations from the Teararchy of Gahara and even from the timid, neutral principalities now lined up at the Russian embassy in Amanoki, offering alliances, trade preferences, and eternal friendship. Russia, with almost no effort, was becoming the new center of power in the Third Civilized Zone.

  In the capital of the Parpaldia Empire, Esthirant, a cold fury reigned in the grim office of the Third Department. Lord Kaios had shattered a precious crystal goblet against the wall upon receiving the report of the destruction of the fleet and the elite wyvern squadron. The defeat was not just humiliating. It was incomprehensible. He still refused to believe that a handful of "barbarians" had managed to crush the might of the Empire.

  Far to the west, in Ragna, the capital of the Gra Valkas Empire, the Director of the Intelligence Bureau placed two folders on his desk. One contained detailed reports on the brilliant and swift annexation of Leifor. The other held fragmentary, but all the more alarming, data on the battle for Tormeus. Analysts from the precision engineering department could not believe the reports on the tactical and technical characteristics of the Russian tanks and helicopters, and experts from the science wing read with horror about a psionic attack they could neither explain nor classify. The Director looked at the map of the new world, where two points now burned brightly—two superpowers from another world. And he understood that the war with the local kingdoms was just a prelude. The real battle for this world would be fought between equals. And that battle would be total.

  And in Moscow, in the silence of a Kremlin office, President Mikhail Viktorovich looked at an interactive map where new hot spots and new alliances were now marked. Major Neverov's report lay on his desk. The victory in Topa was complete, but its price had been high. Six fallen soldiers, including the commander's brother, and dozens suffering from the after-effects of Nosgorath's death throes attack. But more terrible than the losses was what they had learned. The prophecy of the return of the Ancient Magical Empire of Ravernal was no longer a legend. It had become a real, calculable threat.

  Russia had survived. It had established a foothold in this new world and had forced others to reckon with it. But the victories over Louria and the demons were just the first battles. New clouds were already gathering on the horizon. An insulted Parpaldia, a predatory Gra Valkas, and the shadow of the ancient, terrifying Ravernal Empire, which was more powerful than all of them combined. The Great Transfer was not the end of history. It was merely the prologue to a war of worlds. And Russia, having accepted its destiny, was preparing for it.