"Absolutely magnificent!" Kael'thas bellowed at the top of his considerable lungs, his voice cracking slightly from the sheer volume. The prince, who had been playing the role of crown prince for over a thousand years without ever getting promoted to actual king, became more animated than a caffeinated gnome inventor discovering a new explosive compound.
But his celebration was cut brutally short when Duke casually hoisted Antonidas's lifeless body over his shoulder and barked at him with all the urgency of a man whose pants were on fire: "Retreat immediately! I'm giving you exactly five minutes—grab the most precious treasures from your Mage Tower and run for your life!"
Kael'thas stared at him with the bewildered expression of someone who'd just been told that water was actually quite flammable: "Aren't we completely dominating this battle?"
Duke rolled his eyes so hard they nearly fell out of his skull. "Dominating? Did I perform so spectacularly that I've given you the catastrophically wrong impression that we're actually winning? Listen carefully, your royal denseness—Dalaran is absolutely, utterly, monumentally finished!"
"But didn't you just seize complete control of Antonidas's magical authority?"
Duke's smile turned bitter enough to curdle fresh milk: "That would be wonderful... if he were actually, definitively, permanently dead..."
"…"
Duke gritted his teeth with enough force to crack walnuts and spat out the words: "The most spine-chillingly terrifying thing about this entire situation is that he died... and then decided to come back for an encore performance."
Sometimes Duke desperately wanted to slap himself senseless, but unfortunately, good ideas never seemed to work while the catastrophically bad ones always came to fruition with stunning efficiency.
Almost the precise moment those ominous words left his lips, the corpse of Antonidas clutched in his grasp suddenly underwent a transformation so violent it made volcanic eruptions look peaceful. A writhing wave of pure darkness erupted from the body, radiating power that completely dwarfed even a second-tier Archmage's most impressive magical outbursts.
Acting on pure instinct, Kael'thas thrust forward with a ceremonial dagger wreathed in dancing flames, but his attack proved about as effective as trying to stop a charging dragon with a strongly worded letter.
Whether it was the physical steel of the blade itself or the fire elemental magic crackling along its edge, both were casually deflected and sent spinning away as if they were nothing more than annoying insects.
Duke and Kael'thas felt their faces drain of color faster than gold disappearing from a goblin's purse. When lower-level mystical forces are instantly rejected and dissolved by superior magical power, there's only one absolutely terrifying explanation—Antonidas's soul was returning from whatever hellish realm it had been dragged to, and it was coming back in the form of something far worse than death itself...
"Move! Move! MOVE!"
Without a moment's hesitation or a single backward glance, Duke and Kael'thas immediately teleported away across vast distances, their magical displacement leaving nothing but shimmering air and the lingering scent of ozone.
Are you completely out of your mind!?
A legendary Sun Master had fallen to corruption!?
This was earth-shattering news that carried the same apocalyptic weight as learning that Arthas himself had been twisted into darkness!
Duke ground his teeth together so violently he was surprised they didn't crumble to powder.
What in the name of all the demons in the Twisting Nether was happening here?
According to everything he knew about the original timeline, after Arthas conquered Dalaran with his undead legions, hadn't he shown mercy and spared Antonidas's soul from corruption? The spirit of this former master wizard was supposed to be left wandering the ruined streets of Dalaran as nothing more than a melancholy ghost, mourning his fallen city but retaining his essential goodness.
Even at this critical moment, Duke remained completely unaware that Antonidas's catastrophic fall into darkness was entirely, utterly, and ironically his own fault.
It was precisely because of Duke's unexpected interference that Arthas's carefully planned offensive had been severely disrupted not once but twice—first during the dramatic rescue operation in Lordaeron, and second during the brutal siege of Dalaran itself.
Then, when the noble soul of Uther stubbornly refused to be corrupted by Frostmourne's evil influence and rejected every attempt at spiritual perversion, Arthas had flown into a rage so profound it made berserker orcs look calm and reasonable.
When all other options had been exhausted and his patience worn thinner than parchment, it was the scheming dreadlords who had eagerly delivered Antonidas's captured soul directly into Arthas's vengeful hands...
At this very moment, the normally pristine surface of Lordamere Lake, stretching northward from Dalaran's borders, had become unnaturally frigid despite the blazing summer heat. No rational person would have believed that during the peak of the hottest season, simply plunging Frostmourne's cursed blade into the lake's waters would instantly freeze the entire surface solid across a radius of more than one hundred kilometers!
Arthas stood motionless as a statue, his cursed sword planted firmly in the ice, gazing with cold satisfaction at Dalaran as magical lights continued to flicker and dance across the city in its death throes.
"Insufficient! Completely and utterly insufficient! This pathetic display falls far short of adequate! His Majesty the Lich King demands greater destruction! More widespread death! More exquisite suffering!" Arthas's voice carried the terrible authority of absolute power: "Do you comprehend the magnitude of what is required, my newest and most valuable servant!"
"I understand perfectly, my lord!" The response came from a soul of such incredible potency that its spiritual density was almost overwhelming. The essence was so perfectly concentrated and focused that only the most careful observation would reveal that this was merely a disembodied spirit without any physical form whatsoever.
A soul chain as thick as a grown man's thumb extended from Arthas's gauntleted hand before mysteriously vanishing after traveling less than half a meter through the air. The other end of this ethereal shackle was firmly attached around the neck of a spirit clothed in the appearance of luxurious wizard robes that had once symbolized the highest academic achievement.
That immensely powerful captive soul belonged to none other than the fallen Antonidas himself!
Although he no longer possessed any physical form, Antonidas found himself swallowing nervously out of pure habit, his spiritual essence saturated with the bitter taste of complete defeat. The once-great wizard couldn't prevent his mind from dwelling obsessively on the recent events that had led to his current predicament, and his ghostly lips twitched with barely contained anguish.
Dreadlords were indeed the most deviously cunning and absolutely terrifying creatures in the entire universe. He had been foolishly confident in his superior magical power when he pursued the wounded dreadlord he had injured during their initial confrontation.
Unfortunately, most dreadlords were born with the natural acting ability of seasoned theater performers. The moment he chased the seemingly retreating demon away from the main battlefield, four additional dreadlords emerged from concealment and immediately joined forces to create an impenetrable spatial barrier around the entire area. Then, with ruthless efficiency, they layered no fewer than eighteen different varieties of debilitating magical curses directly onto his head.
His downfall had been swift and absolute—his soul ripped from his body while he still lived, followed by one particularly enterprising dreadlord magically shrinking itself down and crawling inside his corpse to wear it around town.
When consciousness finally returned to him, the first sight that greeted his horrified spiritual vision was Uther's cold, lifeless body and Arthas standing triumphantly over the scene, having just completed the unthinkable task of murdering his own beloved master!
Antonidas steeled his ethereal resolve, and in his current soul state, his blurry facial features bristled with righteous fury, his spectral hair and beard standing on end with indignation.
"I will never surrender to you, you absolutely inhuman degenerate! You walking embodiment of evil! You monstrous executioner! You possessed the unthinkable audacity to murder both your own father and your master—what conceivable act of depravity would you consider beyond your capabilities! I will never, ever surrender to your corruption! No matter what unspeakable tortures you devise, no matter what agonies you inflict upon my spirit, I will never bend to your will—complete annihilation is the only victory you can achieve over me!"
What Antonidas didn't realize was that Arthas had just endured another crushing defeat in his relentless campaign to corrupt Uther's incorruptible soul.
The former prince's pale lips twitched with barely restrained fury, and then his once-handsome face contorted into a hideous expression of twisted malice that would have made demons weep with envy: "As you wish, you self-righteous fool of a wizard... I find myself intensely curious whether your precious soul possesses the same nauseating purity as my former teacher's, and whether your vaunted willpower can match his insufferable strength?"
The death knight prince stepped forward with deliberate menace and raised his cursed magic sword, and immediately Antonidas's spiritual ears were assaulted by a cacophony of the most heart-wrenching sounds imaginable!
"Aaaaaaaaa——"
Those were the final, desperate screams of thousands of women in their last moments of terror.
"No—please—NO!"
Those were the soul-crushing roars of men who had failed utterly to protect their wives and children before being cut down.
"Mama—MAMA—"
Those were the heart-shattering cries of children who had barely begun to live when they were consumed by their worst nightmares made manifest.
Antonidas released a pathetic whimper that seemed to emerge from the very depths of his being. He couldn't determine whether he was crying out from pure terror or from overwhelming regret at his own failures. But he understood with crystal clarity that this short, hoarse sound of despair had absolutely nothing to do with righteous anger, justified hatred, or noble concepts of justice.
Among the seven proud nations of the original Alliance, Dalaran had always maintained the most naive understanding of true evil. Throughout its two thousand years of glorious history, countless mages had eagerly pursued forbidden magical experiments with the enthusiasm of children playing with fire.
That was precisely why the secretive Council of Tirisfal had been established in later centuries—to impose strict regulations on the scope of magic available to wizards and to forcibly halt those insane experiments that threatened reality itself.
However, buried deep in their scholarly hearts, every mage lacked any clear understanding of conventional morality or ethical boundaries.
The soul of Antonidas, now imprisoned by the terrible will of Arthas, faced the looming shadow of Frostmourne's accursed blade. He possessed no room for meaningful resistance, and the heroic defiance he had imagined himself capable of simply did not exist when confronted with absolute power.
The shadow of the rune sword pierced through his spiritual essence.
The cold was beyond description, so intensely frigid that it felt as if he still possessed a living body and an icy blade had been thrust directly through his ancient flesh and shattered his fragile chest.
"No—this cannot be happening—NO!"