"You’re finally here." A man with long white hair and three horns, two from the front part of his head and the last from the back. The light creases at the side of his eyes and his thick short beard couldn’t indicate his age.
He looked like a man in his fifties but he was actually over two hundred years old. His hands had scales with long claws, making them more beast-like than human.
He stood on a round platform. Behind him was a wall with armoured figures carved into it. A broken staircase was before him and a young man with two horns and short white hair reluctantly ascended this staircase to meet with him.
One of the young man’s horns was bigger than the other. "Don’t tell me you called me here to lecture me about these dead men again." The young man clenched his teeth, his frustration evident in his glare.
The older man turned to the wall. "Do you know what the third horn blast signifies?"
"Third blast?" The younger man raised an eyebrow, then looked around. The fog was above them, a good portion of this castle still stood. It was like a labyrinth, one that took them years to clear and map out.
"This better be good." The young man replied and folded his arms.
"We have three horn blasts. You know the first two. The first one means our hunters have returned, the second means there’s a monster approaching. The third, on the other hand, means they’re coming." The older man frowned as he looked at the armoured figures.
"Dead men?" The younger one slapped his forehead.
"Think about it. Why do we have a third horn blast to warn us about these golden knights? I’ve been thinking about it and I realised not all of them are dead. We’re Pathans that took the blessing of the dragon to become monsters. We helped wreck the old civilization ruled by the golden order. They are the worst you would ever meet with these horns on your head."
The older man turned.
"They slaughtered our lords, the dragons. Killed the sun and encased the world in darkness for days. Wiped out the army of half a million undead with just three thousand heavy cavalry–"
"All they did was kill the commander, not the entire army." The younger man scowled.
"Clearly, you don’t know history. Three thousand men rode into an army of nearly half a million undead, right to the heart of it and killed the dark lich who was protected to ward off archers. Just three thousand men. They’ve been extinct for centuries but we still keep watch."
The younger man approached the wall after listening to all that and slammed his fist into it. He opened a hole in the first armoured figure’s head and did the same for the other two.
"Past glory. You’re too afraid for your own good. These monster-slaying terrors died to monsters, their glorious order in ruins, left for us to harvest. We might have feared them once but their fire burned out at the end. It was pathetic if you ask me."
He turned and went down the broken staircase. Halfway through, the older man’s voice echoed.
"We still exist. So can they. They’ll kill us without a second thought. If you ever hear the third blast, you run. You run and pray you survive."
The younger man slammed his boot against what remained of the stone railing and it crumbled. "Can you hear yourself? You’re deranged. You must have visited that witch again. Third horn blast, third horn blast. She’s been saying that for fifty years. You’re this old yet so foolish." He spat, then stormed off.
The young man approached a wide hole not too far away and climbed a ladder down. At the bottom, he saw other mutated Pathans standing before a massive golden door.


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