Best Laid Plans

 The forge-fortress of N’Char no longer thundered with ambition; it stagnated in a sullen, suffocating silence. Upon a massive throne of jagged iron, N’Char brooded. His wings, once proud banners of smoke, hung draped around him like funeral shrouds. The living fire of his mane sputtered, casting long, resentful shadows across the empty obsidian hall. His grand design had stalled not due to a clash of armies or the intervention of rival gods, but because of a single, pathetic human flaw: cowardice.

The young sorcerer Sas’cha had groomed had faltered at the precipice. Faced with the pulsing, screaming malice of the Demonicum, the boy's courage had shattered. He had hidden the coffer away, leaving it to drift through the currents of mortal history.

"Centuries," N’Char rumbled, his voice a low, bitter grating of stones. "Centuries wasted."

Beside the throne, Sas’cha knelt, her flawless elven facade strained with tension. "The box is not lost, Great One," she purred defensively, though her purple eyes flickered with anxiety. "I have guided its path. Whenever a mortal grew close to deciphering the runes, I twisted their mind. None have broken the seals. The twelve thousand souls remain bound."

"Yet I remain here," N’Char snarled, a sudden flare of white-hot fire erupting from his tusks. "A prisoner to the forge."

"But its legend grows," Sas’cha countered quickly. "Even locked, the Demonicum bleeds power. The mortals feel it. They kill for it."

It was the truth. In the mortal realm, the coffer had become a catalyst for ruin. Stripped of its ultimate purpose, the artifact still leaked a fraction of its bound souls' agony, acting as a dark conduit that supercharged the ambient magic of any sorcerer foul enough to claim it.

Now, the tapestry of time had brought the Demonicum into an age of brutal transition. In the fractured lands that mortals would one day call the Border Princes—long before the unified rise of the modern kingdoms of men—a new tyrant had arisen. A cruel sorcerer-king had laid his blood-stained hands upon the coffer. He could not read the shifting, molten runes, nor could he unlock the snarling daemon visage that bound the box shut. But he did not need to. By merely basking in the artifact's radiating malice, his dark sorcery had grown absolute. With the Demonicum strapped to his war-altar, the sorcerer-king was building a terrifying empire of ash and bone, crushing the primitive tribes of men beneath his heel.

In the Realm of Chaos, N’Char leaned forward, his massive claws gripping the armrests of his iron throne until the metal groaned. He stared into a pool of stagnant blood at his feet, watching the distant reflection of the mortal tyrant waging war in his name.

"Let him build his empire," N’Char whispered, the malice returning to his voice. "Let him gorge himself on power and draw the eyes of the world. The greater his arrogance, the easier he will be to break when we finally teach him how to open it."