Location: The Ruins of the Dancing Lawn, Southern Narn Border | Year: 6999 NY | Time: Dawn
The first blush of dawn broke across the broken realm of Narn like the opening note of a funeral dirge—soft, aching, and final. Where once the Dancing Lawn had shimmered with song and dew, a place where Tracients had danced with the wind and shared bread with sparrows, now stood a scarred basin of silence and frost.
The sun, peering timidly through heavy winter clouds, painted the shattered landscape in hues of pale orange and bruised violet. The skeletal remains of the forest stood like charred ribs encircling the field, each stump a grave marker to what once lived here. The air was sharp and dry, biting through armor and fur alike. It carried no birdsong, only the tense hush of thousands waiting to die—or to kill.
Two oceans of war stretched across the field, facing each other across a no-man's land of churned earth and frostbitten bone. On one side, Kon Kaplan stood at the forefront of the Archen Land host—200,000 strong. The disciplined lines behind him shimmered with pale steel and blue-and-silver banners fluttering in the wind. The soldiers' breath formed plumes of fog as they shifted restlessly in place, their every movement betraying the thrum of anticipation and quiet fear.
Opposite them, like a dark tide on the horizon, Razik's forces loomed. Countless and restless, they moved with a shadowed rhythm—like glass sand blown inland from a poisoned shore, impossible to count and more ominous for it. Here were not only soldiers but beasts, monstrosities, and the twisted spawn of Tracients corrupted by forbidden Arcem. A warband so vast it seemed to swallow the land beneath it.
Kon stood like a statue carved from stormclouds and stone. Atop a small rise, he wore his battle cloak loose over his shoulders, the Kaplan Clan insignia flaring like a gold sunburst in the breeze. His twin swords, Yırtıcı, hung silently at his back, the sheaths catching the dim sunlight as though waiting for blood to kiss the steel. His single amber eye stared straight ahead—not at Razik, not at the monstrous shapes moving behind the enemy lines, but into the field itself. Into the breath between the breaths. The moment before a blade is drawn.
He said nothing.
He didn't need to. The weight of his silence was thunder.
Behind him, the soldiers—some young, some old, some noble-born, most not—shifted uneasily, waiting for the signal, for the scream, for the first drop of blood to fall and prove that the day had begun.
The fragile silence—stretched thin as ice—fractured with the sound of fast-approaching footsteps. Snow crunched under heavy boots, and breath steamed in ragged gusts from the nostrils of the approaching scout—a Reptilian Tracient, his olive-green scales rimmed with frost, his chest heaving from the cold sprint. A silver insignia gleamed upon his shoulder—Özel Rank #30, a seasoned eye among the scattered ranks.
He reached Kon, bowed swiftly with one clawed fist over his chest, and spoke between panting breaths.
"General… did you succeed?" Kon's voice did not rise, did not falter. It was a still lake in the heart of a storm.
"Yes, my Lord," the scout answered quickly. "I counted their formations. Four hundred thousand… perhaps more. We are—" he hesitated, lowering his eyes, "—outnumbered, sir."
A hush, even more complete than before, seemed to press down upon the soldiers who overheard. Four hundred thousand. The number hung in the air like a curse.
Kon's amber eye narrowed slightly. The tension in his shoulders barely moved, but his exhale came slowly, with a controlled weight that rippled through the air. A thin pulse of mana, invisible to the untrained eye but felt by every heart in the ranks behind him, spread outward from his body. It shimmered like heat from a stone, subtle and steadying.
It touched them. Not like fire—but like a memory. A promise.
And the soldiers who moments before had shifted nervously began to still. Swords sat more firmly in hands. Shields were gripped tighter. Something unseen began to pass from one spine to the next. Even the snow underfoot felt more solid.
Kon turned his gaze toward the east, where the rising sun was a pale orb behind low clouds. Then, to the black mass of Razik's army on the horizon. They looked endless. Like a tide of shadow rising to swallow the last firelight of the world.
And then he spoke—low and certain: "We may be outnumbered… but we are not outpowered."
His voice did not echo—but it didn't need to. It sank into the hearts of every soldier within hearing, and it spread like a steady flame through dry kindling.
The scout stood straighter, his nerves braced by the sheer will in Kon's tone. But before he could respond, the valley trembled.
A deep, thunderous horn rolled across the battlefield. It was not a clear call, but a groaning, monstrous sound—like a ship's hull splitting beneath dark waves. The sound of ancient things rising. It echoed from Razik's line and bounced between the broken stones and buried bones of the field.
The scout stiffened. "That's the call," he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.
Kon's eye flicked to the horizon, then slowly returned to the faces behind him. Thousands of lives. Thousands of families waiting for their return. Thousands of stories yet unwritten.
His expression, so often graven like a blade's edge, softened. Just slightly.
He turned once more to the scout—who looked younger now, beneath his frost and badge—and gave him something rare: a smile. Small, confident, and utterly without fear.
"Do your best, Yüzbaşı," Kon said, resting a hand briefly on the scout's shoulder. "In Asalan's name… victory shall be ours today."
The scout inhaled sharply, as if the words filled his lungs anew. He saluted again—this time not from duty, but from belief—and vanished back into the ranks like a stone into water.
With measured, deliberate steps, Kon Kaplan, the Wild Tiger of Archen Land, began to move forward.
Each footfall pressed into the frost-covered earth with a certainty that seemed to echo louder than the crackling beneath his boots. He passed the final line of his soldiers without so much as a glance back. There was no need. They would follow. They always did.
The world around him quieted.
The soft wind stilled as if holding its breath. The banners behind him ceased fluttering, suspended in a hush that felt sacred and final. Only the sound of his boots meeting snow—the rhythmic grind of leather, steel, and ice—marked time as he strode forward, cloaked in silence and resolve.
His aura, faint before, began to bloom around him—not explosively, but inexorably. A quiet majesty that grew denser with every pace, like the slow but certain press of a mountain's shadow. A golden yellow light tinged faintly with ember-red flickered along his outline, rippling like heat waves. His presence was not boastful, not brutal—it was inevitable.
From the other side of the field, like a beast rising from the bowels of the world, Razik stepped forward.
Where Kon moved with precision, Razik strode with cruel delight, his crooked grin widening with each step. His dark red armor clinked with sick rhythm, metal straps laced with broken sigils and bones of old enemies. His long cloak, black as dried blood, dragged behind him through the snow.
And with him came a power like a rotting storm. His mana aura burst outward like a flood of poison smoke, deep violet with streaks of sickly green, twisting and writhing around him like serpents starved for blood. The ground beneath his boots cracked with each step—not from weight, but corruption.
Even his own soldiers shrank back. One knelt, shivering uncontrollably. Another dropped his spear as Razik passed. The shadow of their master did not empower them—it devoured them.
And then, between the vast armies of light and dark, the two Hazëls met.
Kon stopped first, his hand resting near his blade, though not drawing it. He did not speak.
Razik halted opposite him, his sharp teeth bared in a grin that barely passed for human. His breath smoked out like furnace heat, and his aura clawed at Kon's, seeking purchase.
The space around them began to shimmer.
Where their auras met, the very air bent and groaned. Snow evaporated. Earth cracked. A faint hum rose into a low, metallic ring—like the edge of a blade vibrating at the moment before a clash.
All along both battle lines, soldiers paused—not by order, but by instinct. They felt it.
A weight, spiritual and physical, pressed upon them. Not fear exactly—though there was plenty of that—but a reverent dread. A soul-deep awareness that something ancient and immense was unfolding in front of them.
The Reptilian scout, still lingering at the rear flank of Kon's formation, pressed a trembling hand to his chest. He had faced horrors before. He had walked through fire and shadow, bled for Archen Land, seen death in its many faces. But this...
He wiped the sweat from his brow, though the morning air was ice. His throat was dry.
'So this… This is the power of a Hazël…'
____________________________________
The silence that hung like a veil over the frozen battlefield was pierced—shredded—by Razik's voice.
A sneer laced every syllable.
"So, the cub finally becomes a tiger."
He said it with all the contempt of a god addressing a mortal. The cold morning air curled around his words, as if recoiling from their venom. His tone was sharp with mockery, but beneath it… there was something else. Wariness. Perhaps even unease.
Kon's face remained carved from stone. No flicker of anger. No twitch of reaction. Just the steady flame of his golden eye and the subtle coiling of his aura, tighter now, more refined. It pressed inward like a blade being sharpened. His reply was quiet, calm.
"Hello, Razik. It's been quite a while since we last met.
You haven't changed a single bit."
The words were heavy with meaning. Not just a greeting—a judgment. A final observation from one who had seen the monster behind the curtain and now stood above fear.
Razik's eyes glinted. "Ah! But you have changed much, cub. Or should I say… Lord Kaplan now?"
A tremor passed through the battlefield—not in the earth, but in the air.
Kon's aura pulsed once. Not violently, but precisely. Like a master swordsman drawing a breath before the killing strike. It wasn't rage. It was clarity. The edge of someone who had accepted his calling.
"Indeed," Kon said, voice now lower, anchored with iron. "Things have changed. And this… is just the beginning."
For a brief moment, Razik's grin twitched.
He was still smiling, still baring those jagged, stained teeth—but his pupils narrowed. "He's grown," Razik thought grimly. "He's developed a presence that could rival mine. If I weren't a Hazël myself… I'd be shaking in my boots."
But Razik was not one to blink first.
Instead, he let the silence stretch for one more heartbeat, then threw his head back and laughed. The sound was harsh, cruel—like chains being snapped. When he spoke again, his voice dropped a tone darker.
"Well, I suppose this whole charade is about reclaiming Narn, isn't it? Too bad for you, cub. You're outnumbered, outmatched, and out of your depth. Your dreams and your life will finally end here today. This ends here."
The words fell like a hammer.
Kon did not flinch.
Instead, his fingers moved to the hilt of Yirtici, one of the twin swords that had seen the blood of tyrants and the tears of heroes. The faint whisper of steel being drawn cut through the stillness like a holy hymn. It was not dramatic—it was inevitable.
His good eye locked on Razik.
And in that gaze, there was no fear, no bravado—only resolve.
"I agree with one thing you said," Kon said quietly.
"This ends here."
He moved first.
Or perhaps they moved as one. The moment blurred, a blink too slow to see the transition from stillness to motion. The two Hazëls closed the distance in a heartbeat, faster than thought, faster than light.
And then—
BOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!!
The clash of their weapons echoed like a thunderclap from the heart of the world. The very earth shuddered beneath them as if Narn herself had cried out. An enormous shockwave exploded outward, flattening the snow and grass in a wide radius. Dirt and frost lifted like a breath being exhaled from the battlefield, obscuring everything in a flurry of white and brown.
Soldiers on both sides stumbled backward.
Some fell. Others simply gaped—shielding their eyes as a blizzard of debris filled the sky.
For a moment, no one could see.
All they could hear was the rhythmic clash of blades in the storm.
All they could feel was the thundering pulse of two Hazëls locked in war.
______________________________
Far above the clash of armies and the thunder of Hazëls, a solitary ledge jutted from the mountainside like a cold, judgmental brow watching over the scene below.
There, framed against the rising sun, stood a figure of cold elegance.
A fox Tracient, his fur as white as new snow, stood motionless beneath a flowing coat of pristine silk-lined wool. The garment shimmered faintly, untouched by the frost that clung to every branch and stone. His tail swayed gently in the wind, and the collar of his coat fluttered like a banner. But it was his eyes—icy Amythx, twin shards of crystal—that held the world at a distance. They observed the chaos below with a glint of something too calm to be mere curiosity.
Not rage.
Not approval.
Amusement.
Behind him, barely perceptible in the thin dawn mist, stood a second figure. Indistinct. Cloaked in shadow so dense that the sunlight itself seemed unable to pierce it. A face hidden. An identity unreadable.
The fox did not glance back.
To his right, leaning against a weathered slab of stone, stood Jarik—the ever-grinning rabbit Tracient, his long ears draped behind his shoulders like lazy pennants. He twirled a delicate blade between his fingers as one might twirl a stem of grass. His grin, wide and toothy, was not joyful. It was the grin of a child watching dominos fall.
"Is everything ready?" the fox asked.
His voice was soft. Smooth. As calm and crisp as falling snow. It bore no weight, no drama—yet it somehow filled the air. The way distant thunder sometimes does, even before you've heard it.
Jarik didn't look up. He only rolled the hilt of his blade over his knuckles and grinned wider.
"Yes, my Lord," he purred. "Everything is ready. And going exactly according to plan."
There was a long pause.
Not the pause of hesitation.
The pause of a move being held. Deliberately. Lovingly.
The fox inclined his chin slightly. Not enough to be called a nod, but enough for those who knew him to understand. It was approval.
The smirk that ghosted across his mouth was so slight, so fleeting, it might have been imagined. But Jarik saw it. And Jarik's grin grew larger still.
"Then let us see," the fox murmured, his eyes never leaving the battle,
"how the game unfolds."
Beneath them, far below in the vast basin of the Dancing Lawn, titans clashed and armies trembled.
But up here…
Up here, the players watched the board.
And the board had just begun to shift.