The second day should've begun with a march. The Dazhum commanders had their battle horns ready. Formations were drawn. Siege lines primed. And yet, they delayed.
Because the camp had turned into a nightmare.
By midnight, the cannisters Altan buried—hidden by whispershell agents weeks prior—had ruptured. Venomous insects poured into tents and latrines, feeding on flesh and fear. Some insects were burned alive. Others vanished into the mist. But the damage was done. More than a thousand dead. No scouts had warned them. No sentries survived to cry alarm. By morning, they were counting corpses and hauling half-eaten limbs from fire pits. The battle was postponed.
Day Three: The Hills Burn Cold
The Dazhum regrouped and struck north.
Two full legions advanced into the frost-laced ridges above the Grove, where mist hung like a net of ghosts. Elven auxiliaries led the charge, keen to engage the dark kin of Nyzekh's Virak'tai. But the hills had already been shaped for slaughter. Frost runes had been etched into stone. War snares soaked in shadow ink buried under pine roots.
The first casualties came quick. One squad of high elves vanished into a gorge, no screams, no clash of steel. Just silence. Then came the freezing traps. Ice crept up the legs of soldiers mid-charge, locking joints and snapping bone. Arrows rained from unseen ridges, dark elf archers firing from war-trees, their tips laced with poisons that turned blood into sludge.
A company tried to climb higher.
They never came back.
By midday, the advance stalled. The hills refused them, clawing every step with sorcery and precision. The surviving officers ordered retreat. Behind them, shadow mages collapsed trails with frostquakes, burying the wounded.
Day Four: Dunes of Death
The Dazhum tried the sea.
Six ships, low-decked coastal landers, slid onto the southern shoreline under fog cover. Their goal: to climb the sand bluffs behind the Grove and outflank the trench. Troops disembarked fast. Formation was loose but orderly. Until hooves thundered over the ridge.
Stormriders.
Light cavalry, born in the wind of the steppe, slammed into the landing force before they could raise shields. Spears drove through ribcages. Horses trampled officers mid-command. One Stormguard captain dismounted mid-charge and cleaved through three Dazhum auxiliaries with a single storm axe.
Panic spread. Some tried to flee to the ships.
A war mage ignited the beached hulls. One by one, the ships turned into pyres.
By sunrise, nothing moved on the southern beach but vultures and waves.
Day Five: Fire Fails
Fire.
If the sword failed, the Dazhum thought, perhaps flame would do what steel could not. They hurled napalm barrels with mangonels. Fire-pitch arrows rained down for hours. They scorched the outer bark of the Misty Grove, lighting trees in dancing waves of red.
Altan had foreseen it.
Wen Tu's firewards flared into being the moment the flames touched the canopy. Elementalists summoned ice from the air, draping the woods in frost veins. Shamans called winter spirits from the roots. The trees drank fire and exhaled snow. One Stormguard mage was seen standing barefoot in ash, chanting with frost licking her skin. The flames turned to steam.
Only a few outcroppings burned. Charred, blackened, but still standing. Like scars, not deaths.
Day Six: The Wall of Death
Dazhum pride could not tolerate another failure.
They unleashed the siege.
Using a tactic once perfected in the battle of Xora's Rise on the western continent, they began building earthworks, giant land bridges made from compacted soil, stones, and wooden scaffolds reinforced by shieldlines. Sigil masters walked among the workers, laying glyphs that protected against arrowfire and minor magick. As the day passed, towers rose behind them, massive siege towers with spiked rams and platforms for archers.
Altan watched from a high cliff.
He saw the plan forming and gave the command: full withdrawal from the Grove's edge. Let the enemy think they were breaking the line.
But they weren't.
The Skarnulf and two legions of Stormguard took positions inside the trench system behind the Grove's edge. Narrow paths, carved by hand, led the Dazhum directly into kill zones.
The siege bridges reached the trench by dusk. Trumpets sounded. Legions surged forward, Dazhum heavy infantry, armored in gold-bronze plates, shields locked. The first crossed. Then the second wave.
And the Grove erupted.
Skarnulf berserkers howled from the mists, leaping down with axes as long as men. They didn't hold the line, they shattered it. One berserker vaulted from a trench and tore open three Dazhum spearmen before a blade even touched him. He died smiling.
Stormguard lines were colder. More precise. Shields locked. Spears thrust with rhythm, not rage. Magick surged behind them, ice bolts, wind blasts, and summoned phantoms.
The Dazhum line broke.
Bruga led the final push himself, roaring through the trenches with frost chains around his arms. A siege tower collapsed under a fire rune. The bridge it stood on cracked. Dozens drowned in mud and snow.
By nightfall, what remained of the sixth-day assault limped back across the bridges. Half the siegeworks were in ruin. One bridge still smoldered, burning slowly from its foundations.
The Misty Grove had held.
Six days. Six failures.
And in the trees above, the three-eyed crow watched.
Waiting for the next feast.