The Stirring Below
Beneath the snow-buried citadel of Varkul-Nar, where light had not touched stone in nearly a century, the dark began to stir.
The First were not gods. That had always been a comforting lie. They were not born of stars or carved from myth. They were before—before names, before wolves, before breath itself. They were intention, and when they left, it wasn't in defeat. It was in calculation.
And now, the reckoning whispered back.
Warrick Blackroot—once general of Ironfang, now little more than a husk stretched too tight with power not his own—stood at the edge of the hollowed throne chamber, hands bloodied from communion. His armor, a dark chitinous shell fused to his skin, pulsed in time with the chanting of the choir behind him. Thirty zealots knelt in perfect unison, reciting the syllables of awakening drawn from the Vaulted Tongue.
In the center of the room, suspended above a pit of voidlight, hovered the Seed.
It was not large—barely the size of a wolf's skull. Yet around it, stone bent. Sound warped. The bones of the citadel's old rulers blackened to ash just from its presence. The Seed beat like a second heart—syncopated with the world's pain.
And it was awake.
"My lord," a voice echoed from the tunnel beyond, breathless and sharp. "The Rift at Halgrin has widened. The veil is bleeding. The wolf-born have opened it."
Warrick did not turn.
"The beacon has done its work," he said, voice like frost scraping iron. "The world stretches wide to us again. But the wolves... they dare to lead."
The zealots hissed as one, tongues forked and teeth filed to points. One of them, a pale creature named Othren, rose to his feet.
"Shall we move now, Lord Blackroot? Before the Ridgefall scum gathers more than flags and fire?"
"No." Warrick finally turned, his eyes like coals submerged in oil. "Not until the Third Breath awakens. The world must be frightened, not simply broken. Let them see hope rekindled. Let them believe in Alaric. Let them fight."
He walked to the edge of the pit, staring down into the writhing mass of shadow beneath the Seed. Things moved within it—serpentine and spined, memories of creatures forgotten even in myth.
Warrick outstretched a hand, and the Seed pulsed in recognition.
"I will not descend as conqueror," he whispered. "I will return as truth. Let Alaric rally his banners. Let Mira dream. Let Caelen scheme with his artifacts and broken lore. They cannot stop what was never sealed."
A rumble shook the chamber.
The Seed cracked.
A tendril of black flame burst forth and struck the ceiling, leaving a smear of nothingness behind. From deep within the mountain, bells began to toll—ancient alarms not rung in a thousand years.
The Third Breath stirred.
Elsewhere, dark alliances formed in silence.
In the drowned city of Var-En, the lords of the Deep Choir awakened. These were not men, nor even beasts, but echo-beings born of shipwrecks and the last gasps of those who died in the sea. They wore cloaks of brine and bone, and each bore a shard of the original Deep Star. Their voices carried across salt and shadow.
"We hear the Seed," they intoned. "We remember the Howling Before. We answer."
From the dunes of the Ever-Dry, the Sand Whisperers—ash-bound nomads who walked between reality and mirage—spoke of a sky that turned its face and wept black rain. Their seers, mouths sewn shut with silver thread, began to write again. And every word pointed north.
To Ridgefall.
To Alaric.
And to his undoing.
Within the Voidspire itself—the last monument of the First—an eye blinked open.
It saw fire. Wolves. Blood.
It saw resistance.
And it did not flinch.
---
Warrick returned to his private chamber that night beneath Varkul-Nar. There, a mirror hung above a bowl of blood—not glass, but frozen thought, warped to reflect what should not be. In it, Alaric's face shimmered.
"You think yourself reborn," Warrick said, voice low and cracked. "You think your blood makes you First. But you are still young. Still hopeful. Still mortal."
He touched the mirror, and Alaric's face warped into Mira's, then Caelen's, then the sigil of the Vigil burning.
"I will show you what the First left behind," Warrick murmured, a smile carving its way up his ruined face. "Not gifts. Not prophecy."
He leaned closer, voice cold and final.
"But the price they demanded."
And from the abyss behind the Seed, something whispered back.