For a breathless span of hours, it had seemed the worst was behind them. Reports trickled through the comm-net of rifts slowing, of battle lines holding.
Soldiers cheered raggedly where they stood, healers wept openly while their hands still worked, commanders dared to think of relief.
Then the screams started.
The first call came from the central plains. A squadron of scouts barely had time to shout a warning before a flare of crimson light seared the horizon.
Entire battalions were torn apart in an instant, bodies crumpling as a single spell ripped the earth wide open. And at the heart of that carnage—humanoid figures stepped from the rift.
Not mindless beasts. Not hulking monstrosities. But creatures shaped like men and women, cloaked in corruption, their eyes burning with a sickly gleam of intelligence.
Their hands crackled with sorcery that rivaled the mightiest of human archmagi. With a single gesture, they unmade fortifications, with another, they snuffed out scores of lives.
Allied mages scrambled to throw up barriers, their voices hoarse as they chanted, but their reservoirs were already depleted from hours of battle.
Shields shattered like glass against the scale of destruction unleashed. The screams over the comm-links drowned almost everything else.
Arasha slammed her fist into a wall as the voices poured in. "Damn it! They've been holding back—waiting for us to bleed dry."
Kane's jaw tightened, his face pale as Linalee's voice cut through the chaos in the comm-net. "Every front reports humanoid riftspawn. Casualties rising. The network is… it's straining. Kane, Arasha—we're losing whole divisions."
"We must endure!" Arasha replied, though her voice was edged with fury. "We can't let it fracture now!"
****
On the eastern front, Alexis stood among fire and ruin, his armor scorched, his blade dripping with corrupted ichor. He drove his sword into the chest of a humanoid riftspawn, the clash of steel and sorcery blasting shockwaves around him.
The thing screamed like a thousand voices twisted together, then collapsed into black ash.
But Alexis himself staggered, nearly falling to one knee. His squad rushed to shield him, their young commander gasping for breath. "We can't fight many more like that…" he whispered.
Yet still he lifted his blade, ready to press on.
Far in the north, Hiral's unit battled another of the spellcasters. He gave clipped, calculated orders, his voice calm even as his men fell around him.
With ruthless precision, he baited the creature into overextending, and when it did, he struck its heart in a flash of steel and ice. The humanoid dissolved—but Hiral did not smile. He turned immediately, cold eyes scanning the battlefield. "We've bought seconds, not victory. Move."
****
When Kane and Arasha dropped into the next war zone, the devastation stunned even them. Fields smoldered, blackened by sorceries that scarred the land itself.
Hundreds lay dead where they stood, the stench of burnt flesh choking the air.
At the center of it all, two humanoids strode like reapers, one wreathed in flame that consumed stone and steel alike, the other weaving tendrils of shadow that sliced through men as though they were paper.
Arasha's glaive was in her hands before the portal shimmer died. "We take them here," she growled.
Kane's response was low, grim. "Then let's make it cost them."
They charged.
Arasha beheaded the flame-wreathed creature, her glaive scattering sparks as it cleaved through a wave of fire. The sheer heat seared her armor, but she pressed on, teeth bared in fury.
Kane raised his hands, spell circles spinning faster than his heart could keep pace. Chains of light lashed from the sky, striking at the shadow-caster before it could finish unraveling another company of soldiers. The mana burned through him like fire in his veins, but he refused to slow, refused to falter.
All around them, alliance soldiers rallied once more. Despite terror, despite losses, they surged forward.
Commanders bellowed for unity, healers dragged broken men back from the edge, archers loosed volley after volley until their quivers were bare.
The network crackled with static, strained by the flood of voices and the weight of coordination—but it held.
Not one commander abandoned their post.
Not one nation pulled back.
If anything, the calamity bound them tighter.
Together, bruised and bleeding, they fought on.
And somewhere in the chaos, Kane and Arasha shared a single, fleeting glance—both knowing the truth. The rift was no wild calamity. This was orchestrated.
And the real battle had only just begun.
And so, the world bled.
From the mountains of Frosthaven to the fields of the southern front, the earth itself seemed carved open by the endless tide. Battlefields became graveyards, rivers of blood seeping into charred soil.
Every message that reached Arasha and Kane was the same: "Losses catastrophic.""Entire divisions wiped out.""We're holding, but barely."
Commanders pressed on despite their exhaustion. Their faces were hollow, eyes sunken, armor cracked and bloodied. Yet they stood, barking orders, dragging soldiers back into formations, rallying men and women who had nothing left but grim determination.
Healers trembled as they worked, their hands raw and blistered from channeling too much magic. They stitched flesh that tore open again, poured elixirs into throats that had no strength left to swallow.
And still they whispered prayers no god seemed to answer.
Soldiers, too, began to change. No longer did they cheer victories, no longer did they weep at losses. They fought with jaws clenched, eyes burning not with hope, but with resolve—the iron resolve of those who knew they might not see another sunrise, but refused to give an inch.
Morale hung by a thread. And yet, that thread did not break.
In one brief moment between battles, Kane stood in the ruins of a scorched keep, his cloak shredded, his mana reserves running dangerously thin.
The talismans he had created strained and cracked, glowing faintly as they pulled corruption from wounded soldiers. The process was too slow—always too slow.
Arasha dropped beside him, her glaive still hot with riftspawn blood. She wiped sweat from her brow with a gauntleted hand, her shoulders rising and falling with exhaustion.
"They need more than us," she said hoarsely. "If there are Awakened Ones out there, this is the time for them to show themselves."
Kane's silence was answer enough. His gaze swept the dead and dying, the ranks of exhausted soldiers waiting for orders that would drive them once more into hell. His fists clenched.
"If they exist," he murmured, "they're either dead… or they've chosen silence."
Neither answer brought comfort.
Meanwhile, in the shadows where no comm-link reached, something else stirred.
Among the ruins of a desecrated temple, cloaked figures gathered, their faces hidden, their voices low and reverent. The Rift Cult—thought fractured and buried beneath the chaos of years—was alive.
They whispered praises not to gods, but to the rift itself. They called the humanoid riftspawn not monsters, but harbingers. Proof that their "chosen time" was close.
Candles burned in a circle around a massive, pulsating shard of corrupted crystal. The leader raised his hands, voice sharp as a blade:
"Let the fools bleed themselves dry against the tide. When the union falls, we shall rise. The world belongs not to men—but to the Rift."
The shadows seemed to stir in answer.
And far away, as soldiers fought and commanders strained to hold their lines, a chill swept the network. For the first time, voices broke—not with orders or strategies, but with questions.
"How much longer can we hold?"
"What if the rifts don't stop?"
"What if… this is the end?"
Hope was dimming.
But the war had only just begun.