"We marched north, but it was the dead who led the way."
— Survivor's account, taken in chains
Altan and Stormwake had spoken in his chamber at Gravemarch Bastion, after the battle in the Misty Grove. Using the elite scouts of the Whispershell Clan, Stormwake's agents had extracted battlefield intelligence from the fallen, utilizing beetles to recover neural remnants. From them, they recovered coded messages and high command protocols known only to Dazhum officers. One such message was sent to the forces still attacking Tidescar: "Leave Tidescar. Link up with northern forces. They need reinforcement." When the general in the Kaldoran forward base received the signal, all cipher-verification matched. Orders had come from the top.
Stormwake spoke low inside the chamber.
"Will it bolster the Dazhum forces here in the north?"
Altan's reply was cold, final.
"We need the ships."
The fleet from Tidescar had arrived.
Through bitter tides and fog-veiled coasts, the remnants of the Dazhum and Zhong exiles, what remained of their southern crusade, steered their warships into the docks of the forward base along the Kaldoran Isthmus. It was a cold land, harsh and narrow, where cliffs hung like jagged teeth over black seas. No humans or dark elves claimed to live in the land. It was a harsh, bleak place. It had more winter than summer.
When the fleet disembarked, seven legions' worth of warriors stepped onto the frost-hardened earth. They carried banners soaked with salt and ash, armor still streaked from Tidescar's fire. They had fled, but not broken.
They found six Dazhum legions already stationed at the forward base, camped, bloodied, and demoralized. The men spoke little. Word had arrived: eight legions, the northern spearhead, had been annihilated in the Kaldoran Caldera.
Not defeated. Massacred.
When the combined force, twelve and a half legions strong, marched toward the caldera, they did so with unease in their bones. Tight formation. Banners drawn low. Each step echoed a silent question: what waits in the north?
They reached the caldera.
And they saw.
The caldera was a wound torn across the world. Crows circled overhead in numbers unnatural. Snow clung to the torn earth, pink from dried blood. Scattered helms, broken pikes, charred bones—eight legions had died here and left their silence behind. In the center of the basin stood impaled banners of the eastern expedition, fluttering like forgotten graves. Some men vomited. Others wept. Even the hardened officers of the exile fleet faltered.
"No one lived," muttered a Dazhum officer. "Not one. Not even a dog."
A soldier fell to his knees, muttering prayers to the Sky-Mother. Another ripped off his helm and cursed the generals under his breath. "They sent them here like cattle. And we follow like fools."
One grizzled veteran spat into the snow. "We should've turned at Tidescar. Fought to hold the coasts. Now we march into the teeth."
"But teeth of what?" another whispered. "This... this was not war. This was a message."
Still they marched.
They passed charred bones fused to frozen stone. Swords half-melted in blackened hands. Broken siege towers covered in frost. The stink of death, old and deep, clung to the wind.
Then they reached the pools—shallow dips in the caldera where snowmelt had gathered, stained deep red. Frozen solid now. Beneath the cloudy ice, soldiers lay preserved in death. Some had curled into themselves, arms covering faces. Others looked as if they'd screamed until their last breath. Their weapons floated near their hands, just beyond reach.
A footstep cracked thin frost. One conscript recoiled.
"There's faces under the ice," he whispered.
"Don't look," came the reply. "They'll follow you back in your dreams."
One man knelt to touch the glassy surface—then stood and walked without a word. Another began humming a funeral rite, voice shaking.
A conscript wept. "This is cursed ground."
Another muttered, "I dreamed of flame. All night. Woke with blood in my mouth."
Still, the horns called them forward. Orders were orders. And fear was not a pardon.
As they passed the twisted remnants of the fallen, one officer froze. He stared at a broken Dazhum shield half-buried in the snow. Atop it perched a crow.
Three eyes.
It said nothing. It only watched. Still. Unblinking. The officer shivered and kept walking.
They crested the far ridge of the caldera—and there the dread worsened.
Atop a narrow rise, a lone soldier of the rearguard lost composure and loosed an arrow.
The shot fell short, striking the earth before the enemy line. Both sides froze.
Tension snapped through the wind. Blades were drawn. Orders barked. But the generals held the line.
"Stand down!" roared a Zhong war-captain. "That was no order!"
He turned to the man who fired. The archer was shaking.
"I saw something," he said, voice trembling. "In the corner of my eye. Maybe it moved... maybe it didn't."
Out of the caldera and across the narrow exit valley, they saw it: Gravemarch Bastion.
A fortress carved into the mountains, veined with iron and stoneglass, its towers sloped low like a crouched beast. Before it, in the valley plain, an army stood arrayed in silence, unyielding, unmoved.
Ten and a half legions of Dazhum and Zhong exiles formed ranks on the plain. One full legion of high elves, in ceremonial crimson, waited at the rear.
They formed squares of battle. Honor demanded it.
Across from them, the formation that held the field was no less grim.
At the center: five legions of Stormguards, their darksteel and aurichalcum helms glinting under cold sun. No sigils. No exposed flesh. From afar, they looked forged rather than born. Silent. Unmoving. At their rear, the Stormcasters stood in loose formation, shamans, ritualists, and elemental support, ready to call thunder or part the earth.
On each wing: two legions of Skarnulf clansmen, giants of the tundra with axes and longspears. Next to them, two legions of dark elves flanked both wings, their armor a shade between dusk and blood. They moved with the stillness of blade-dancers waiting to be drawn.
At the far edge of each wing, Stormriders waited, heavy cavalry clad in blackscale, their stallions armored and restless. Two legions in total.
At the center of it all, near the diamond of command, stood the war council:
Altan. Bruga of the Skarnulf. Nyzekh and his sister Yezari, veiled in dusksteel. Wen Tu, the archer-general, at the formation's heart.
Altan raised one hand. Qi surged through his voice, not with fire, not with thunder, but with weight.
"You've seen the caldera. Eight legions. Ash and bone. Do you still think you can win? Or you can be cowards, humiliated and insignificant, fleeing back to your home with your tails between your legs?"
Silence answered him.
One of their commanders muttered, "He's taunting us into drawing swords. Gods damn him."
Then a murmur. A growl from one of the enemy lines. A Zhong exile spat into the dirt and raised his shield.
A Dazhum captain turned to his general. "You saw the caldera. You're still marching us to death?"
The general gritted his teeth. "We hold the line."
A soldier screamed, "Then bleed for it, bastard!"
But their generals rode forward. One raised his blade in silent answer. Behind them, the ten and a half legions moved. Shields locked. Standards raised.
Blood will flow again in Kaldora. And the snow will remember.
Above the rising clash of wills, on a rise overlooking both armies, the same crow from the caldera perched on Altan's shoulder.
It did not caw. It did not fly.
It simply watched. As though it had already chosen the victor.