Chapter: The Howl Beneath Fire
The moment Alaric charged forward, the air ignited. Not with flame, but with memory, dense and choking. Every step he took across the cracked marble of Oathmark felt like stomping through the echoes of ancient war-cries. Beside him ran his elite guard—those chosen not only for strength, but for their resilience against dream-stain. Each bore a sigil etched by Mira herself, a protective ward against the corrosion of the Ember King's aura.
Warrick descended like a thunderclap, landing among the forward scouts and turning the earth to glass. His eyes were voids of molten red, lips drawn into a rictus grin that wasn't his own. He raised his arm—no longer flesh, but a fused weapon of embersteel—and swung.
Three soldiers vanished in a single arc.
Alaric didn't hesitate.
He hit Warrick like a storm—sword crashing into the emberflesh with a howl of impact. Sparks erupted. Magic clashed with memory. Warrick reeled, not from pain but confusion, as if some part of him recognized Alaric… and didn't know whether to kneel or kill.
Behind Alaric, the dreamwalkers chanted. Mira's voice rose above them, braided into the spell-song. She stood not in armor but in woven shadow-cloth, hands outstretched, eyes turned inward. Her body was here—but her mind was inside the battlefield itself, threading through the edges of the veil. Searching.
She whispered into the memory of the land.
"Show me where the seals are breaking…"
Alaric's blade struck again, this time biting deeper into Warrick's ember-cursed flesh, sending a shower of sparks cascading into the cracked stone beneath their feet. But with each blow, the warlord's form seemed to waver, flickering between the man he once was and something far more terrifying—a creature of fire and shadow, half-human, half-legend.
Around them, the battle surged like a living storm. The Ridgefall warriors fought with a desperate fury, howling as their claws tore through corrupted beasts spawned from the First's dark will. Thornkin rangers unleashed volleys of arrows that shimmered with silver-tipped magic, each shot aimed to pierce the veil of the Ember King's defenses. Yet the enemy pressed forward relentlessly, driven by the twisted fervor of Warrick's unholy command.
Mira's chant grew louder, echoing across the battlefield like the call of an ancient spirit. Her eyes glowed with ethereal light, veins of power tracing patterns across her skin as she wove her dreamwalk spells deeper into the fabric of the war. In her mind, she traversed the corridors of memory and time, seeking the weakening points in the Ember King's grip.
Suddenly, she gasped, her body stiffening as visions flooded her senses: the cracks in the seals, the fraying threads of the Veil Markers, and deeper still, a hidden locus where the First's corruption was strongest—an ancient altar buried beneath the ruins of Oathmark.
"Alaric!" her voice cut through the chaos, urgent and commanding.
He turned, blood and ash streaking his face, muscles burning with exertion. "What is it?"
"The altar," Mira said. "That's where the Ember King draws his true strength. If we can sever that connection, we can weaken Warrick—maybe even save him."
Alaric's eyes narrowed. Every moment counted now. "Gather the elite. We move there—fast."
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The rush to the altar was a maelstrom. Enemy shadows twisted like smoke around the columns of the ruined temple, their shrieks blending with the howls of the wolfguard. Alaric's heart hammered—this was no longer a fight of steel alone. It was a battle for the very soul of their world.
As they reached the altar, the ground beneath pulsed with a terrible heat. Warrick stood there, his form almost fully consumed by the Ember King's fire. His voice was a roar, the words incomprehensible but filled with ancient rage.
Alaric raised his sword, the rune-inscribed blade humming with power. "I remember you, Warrick. Not this… monster. The man who once stood beside me. Fight it!"
For a moment, the ember fire flickered, and Alaric saw a flash of human eyes beneath the blaze—eyes filled with pain and recognition.
Then the battle resumed—fiercer, darker, more desperate.