The square was teeming with soldiers, mages, and civilians, waiting for the moment of the impending battle moment by moment. The air vibrated with tense emotions, soldiers' faces set in grim determination. Women and men stood back to back with frost on their faces, hardened as they managed to catch on to the scale of what they were about to experience. They had prepared for years for this day. But this… this was something else.The wind howled down the narrow corridors, thick with the scent of rain, smoke, and something darker. Something malevolent.Emereah felt it, deep in her marrow. The storm was no normal storm it was an evil, a portent of the ancient darkness awakening. The Keep walls groaned under the strain, as though the stone itself felt the disaster building."Emereah, you must stay here," Elder Kael said, moving forward with worry creasing his furrowed face. "The child—""She is not a child, Kael," Emereah cut through his words like a blade. "She is the fire. The only one w
Emereah's breath was coming in labored gasps as she locked eyes with the Elders. They could no longer deny the magnitude of what was coming. Morgane's death had only been temporary respite, and the storm on the horizon was not a battle of strength it was a testing of their own souls. She could sense it clawing at the edges of the world, reaching out its claws to the very foundations of the Keep.The fire in her blood pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat, and Lunareth stirred again in her arms, sensing the building urgency. Her fire, her foothold in this endless sea of darkness, the child was hers. Emereah could not fail now, not when everything they had ever known hung in the balance.Vladimir was back, his face set in rigid determination. His boots echoed off the stone floor as he marched into the room, his eyes narrowed, already strategizing their next step.We must rush," he ordered, his voice stern in the midst of the tension building in the air. "The rest of the packs are mobilizi
This new darkness was not evil by itself; it was old, primal, and merciless."We have to get to the Keep," Emereah asserted, iron laced with a hint of weakness in her tone. "It's where we can prepare ourselves adequately. We have to warn the others. We cannot afford to waste any time; the kingdom will be gone before we are even able to strike back."Vladimir glanced over his shoulder toward the ruined gates of the keep, his eyes narrowing. "You think they’ll listen?" he asked, his tone a bit skeptical. "The Council hasn’t exactly been receptive to what you’ve been warning them about."Emereah’s lips thinned into a hard line. "They’ll listen now. Or they’ll be damned."They went down the path to the Keep without hesitation. The clouds on the horizon drew closer and closer, their rolling blackness darkening the sky, shutting off the previously peaceful light. There was a weighty feeling in the air. The storm was not a sequence of weather, but an embodiment of something old, something th
But her words were wrenched from her by roll of fire that engulfed her entire body. Her twisted form was consumed, the shadows disolving into air, only the thin curl of smoke that blew upwards into the air remaining. The sorceress who had been so powerful was no more,her kingdom of shadows and death crumbling as quickly as it had formed.The room fell silent. Thus, the fire that had burned from Lunareth's small stature slowly waned to nothing but the burnt shells of walls and the ground they occupied. Emereah did not stir, her heart racing with a cross between fear and incredulity as the golden radiance that had engulfed the room faded to leave only the soft warm light of ashes.Lunareth's little fists clapped open and shut, her golden eyes staring wide and unblinking. Emereah's heart constricted as she looked at her daughter, still clutched against her body. The baby had released unimaginable power, and yet in this triumph, Emereah felt engulfed by a flood of protectiveness. The fir
Morgane smiled more broadly, her eyes shining with evil intent as she crossed over the ruined destruction of the door. The atmosphere surrounding her staggered with evil power, twisting in an evil portent, as if the shadows themselves were being forced to move in every step of hers.The fire licking at the air in the room burst into waves of larger flames with each shuddering breath Lunareth drew. But Morgane did not stir. She raised her hand and drew a circle in the air, and the shadows danced at her fingers like coiling snakes at the victim's feet."You call this power?" Morgane spat, her voice a vipers' hiss. "This is nothing to what I am capable of. I am the darkness. I am the end."Her hands curled, and the darkness advanced like a set animal. The first tendril of shadow hit the ground, a hard, knotted thing, as cutting as glass. It wrapped around Lunareth's ankles and started to pull her towards Morgane.And then Lunareth screamed, a scream ripping the very fabric of being, a na
The night was not silent. Not anymore.Death walked outside the Crescent Vale like a fever. Morgane stepped barefoot across the embers of what had been a village, where laughter once filled the air, and children played and sang simple songs. The houses now stood empty and shattered, their doors splintered open like broken ribs. The wind and the wet, gasping breaths of the shadow-things that crept behind her were the only sounds.Do you hear them?" Morgane breathed to darkness. Her voice was a curled ribbon of smoke. "So many hearts that once beat, now still. So many voices, silent, waiting to serve.Her pale hands stroked the body of the woman on the ground, face-down in the earth. Morgane dropped to her knees, took a deep breath, and the corpse twitched. Skin creased and drew taut like worn vellum. The face folded in on itself, the cheeks emptying out as if some unseen hand had pulled the life from inside.Morgane arched back, sucking in the soul that arose like steam. It twined arou