The Dazhum scouts saw only what they were meant to see.
A single wall of warriors, drawn thin across the valley mouth, just one line of defense. No banners flew. No horns sounded. Only five legions, they estimated, fewer than half their force. It emboldened the generals. It confirmed the reports. The north was fractured, scattered. The Dazhum held the numbers. They marched forward with the weight of certainty.
The generals and legion commanders discussed, then proceeded with the advance. Even when they passed through the caldera and saw eight legions dead or captured, they remained undeterred. They assumed the combined armies of the Eastern Realms, led by Altan, had been weakened in the last battle. They saw the ruins not as a warning but as proof of nearing victory.
The snow was unbroken.
When the Dazhum squares marched forward into the valley, the world held its breath. Ten and a half legions moved in rigid silence, boots crunching frost, shields locked. Their steps beat like war drums across the ice-veined basin. Banners fluttered under a gray sky.
Then the trap was sprung.
Two legions of Stormguard and four legions of Free Cities troops emerged from the game trail flanking the valley. They had hidden in the ridges, buried under frost canvas and silence. As the Dazhum pressed forward into the killing field, Altan's hammer swung shut.
The Stormguard advanced like a wall of iron and stillness.
From a distance, they did not look like men. Encased head to toe in darksteel and aurichalcum alloy, their visors bore only narrow slits, expressionless, inhuman. They did not shout. They did not chant. They simply moved, and the world moved with them.
A Dazhum cohort wheeled to intercept, shields raised in tight phalanx.
The first Stormguard line struck without signal or warning. Their sabers, shaped like broad leaves, moved with clinical precision, each arc designed to maim or kill in one breath. One soldier stepped into a spear thrust, absorbed the blow on his shield, then executed Stonewheel Reversal, twisting into the motion and redirecting the shaft into the spearman behind. The enemy collapsed with a broken neck, soundless.
Another Stormguard flowed through a series of Thousand Weight Pressure strikes, his body compressing and releasing with devastating force. He used no stylized sect technique, only raw, refined power. The enemy's ribs cracked under the recoil. Blood sprayed without a cry.
Spear-wielders followed, assuming Serpent Wind Form. Their strikes curved and coiled, baiting and snapping like silver vipers in a death coil. One feinted low, reversed the motion mid-thrust, and skewered two Dazhum soldiers in a single strike. His footing never faltered. His breathing never changed.
At the flanks, Mirror Edge shield doctrine unfolded with brutal economy. One Stormguard intercepted a blade, twisted in, and used his shield's edge to shatter a jaw. Another redirected a hammer blow through impact disruption, turning the recoil into a bash-strike combo that dropped two spearmen in a blink.
Some moved differently, attuned to the terrain. Gravelwalk users stepped with subtle rhythm, using frost and stone to obscure their stances. A Dazhum captain lunged at one, only to stumble mid-stride. Stumblefield Mirage had triggered. He fell, and the Stormguard was already above him, blade sliding through mail and marrow.
Elsewhere, three Stormguards pressed into a bottleneck between ruined palisades. Their formation adjusted fluidly, absorbing pressure as one. Enemy archers loosed from above. One raised his shield to deflect the volley while another slipped forward, cutting down two swordsmen before they could blink.
A Dazhum shieldwall tried to break them. The Stormguards didn't yield. They rotated mid-fight, the front soldier stepping back, the next surging forward with a Leaf Saber thrust, punching clean through a breastplate. No words followed. Only silence.
A Dazhum lieutenant charged with twin axes, roaring. He was met by a Stormguard using Echo Perception, moving before the strikes even landed. The first axe cleaved air. The second was caught, redirected, and met with a saber arc across the lieutenant's throat.
They did not speak. They did not celebrate. Where others shouted and chanted, they only adjusted formation and advanced. Behind them, only wreckage remained.
They fought not as if the battle were being won, but as if it were inevitable.
Then came the flank.
Dazhum cavalry surged down from the western ridge. Dust cloaked their charge. Warhorns rang through the mist. Their banners flew, torn but proud. They were here to crush the eastern hammer.
Stormwake turned his blade and gave the command.
A fresh wave of Stormguards broke from the mist and met the charge head-on. The ground trembled, not from thunder, but from precision. Shields locked. Sabers rose. They moved into the path of hooves and steel like statues come alive.
The cavalry crashed into them.
Riders screamed. Horses reared. Blades glanced off aurichalcum plating. The Stormguards retaliated in silence. There were no cries, only the sound of impact.
One rider's lance was caught mid-thrust and snapped in a twist. His mount buckled, and a Stormguard's shield drove into its neck, felling both. Another pivoted with the rider's momentum, delivering a spear strike straight through his torso.
A flanking cavalry unit veered around a rocky outcrop, only to plunge straight into a still formation hidden among the frost. The instant hooves struck gravel, Stumblefield Mirage triggered. Horses slipped. Riders tumbled. Sabers rose.
Three Stormguards moved in sync, one striking low, another sweeping mid, the third arcing high with his shield. The enemy died in layers.
The formation held.
By the time the Dazhum cavalry retreated, half their number lay dead or crippled. The Stormguards did not pursue. They resumed position without hurry, without sound.
It was no battle. It was a slaughter.
Altan himself led the center, walking at the tip of the line like he was out for a morning stroll. Above him circled the same crow, three-eyed and black as dusk. But now its feathers shimmered with a malevolent darkness, like a shadow made flesh. A dark aura cloaked Altan's form, seeping from the bird like a shroud. Where it passed, the air dimmed. Cold deepened. Even flame felt muted.
He moved with no wasted motion, each step cutting closer to the enemy's heart. He wielded no ornate weapon, only the standard leaf-shaped sword of the Stormguards. Yet in his grip, it carved through shields like butter.
Then he was among them.
And the massacre began.
Altan was death, made flesh. A war god wrapped in dusksteel.Altan moved like judgment given form. He sliced through shields. He tore into the squares like a god of war returned from old blood oaths. The center of the Dazhum formation buckled under the weight of his assault. The front line collapsed, then the second, then the third.
Flanking maneuvers from the Stormguard crushed the Dazhum sides. The Free Cities troops advanced like tidal pressure, blades out, killing without noise.
And then the Disciples descended.
Wen Tu walked calmly into a hail of arrows. He did not block. He grew. Roots coiled from his bracers and into the soil. Barksteel encased his arms. Each impact struck a shield unseen, then turned to blossoms. When the front ranks charged him, they slowed, staggered, then stopped. They were standing in his domain now, Inner Grove Meditation. Their swords trembled. Their hearts calmed, then stopped.
He moved through them with spiral strikes, redirecting force, shielding comrades, weaving through violence like wind through trees. One stormguard fell, then another, until Wen Tu stood at the heart of a still circle of bodies and blooming moss.
Ryoku advanced like a metronome of death. Every breath matched a strike. Every step a cut. His blade, Kensho, rang once and then echoed again and again through the Echo Strike domain. Each slash layered onto the last until the air itself bore the memory of his rhythm. Dazhum warriors raised shields. They shattered. They raised spears. He stepped past them. One captain lunged. Ryoku pivoted, rebounded, and his sword struck from behind as though time bent to his pattern.
He left no corpse untouched, every foe cut in the same precise, reverent motion. Repetition made perfect. Perfection made ruin.
Bruga did not charge. He ignited. Qi welled through his bones, building beneath skin like magma. When it cracked, the ground trembled. His war axe Pyrebite came down in a wave of heat and concussion, sending shields flying, flesh burning.
And then, Pyroclastic Burst.
A ring of flame erupted from his core. A dozen soldiers were reduced to smoldering bone in seconds. But Bruga did not scream or roar. He endured. Flame ran along his arms, venting through his armor, smoke rising from his beard.
When an enemy phalanx broke formation to flank him, he hurled an ember hatchet through their ranks. It struck the front shield, split it, and burst in flame. The line fell back. None advanced again.
Then the void came.
Nyzekh moved slowly, deliberately, until he didn't. His sabers flickered, not striking but erasing. His void domain spread like ink across stone. In it, light died. Sound dulled. Men screamed and heard nothing. One section of the Dazhum rear simply vanished, twenty meters of battlefield left as a crater, black and unformed. Even the earth beneath it was missing.
Nyzekh stood at the center, sabers dripping with conceptual silence.
And through that silence came Yezari.
Yezari walked.
She did not run. Did not lunge. She moved as if under snow, slow and inevitable.
Her Frozen Bloom Reversal unfolded in a quiet lotus of frost. Qi ceased. Motion died. Men who swung at her found their arms locked mid-swing, their breath fogged into stillness. She passed between them, sword in hand. When she struck, it was once per soul. And that was enough.
Even Altan looked at her, once, and nodded.
All across the valley, discipline broke. Officers shouted to rally their men, but the lines had already buckled. The rear legions, meant to reinforce, turned too late. Dark elves from the right wing sliced through their back ranks like dancers through silk.
The dark elves now bore armor and weapons forged in Gale Citadel, open-faced helms, breastplates, arm and shin guards, all wrought in dark grey steel that caught no glint, that drank the light.
Beside them, the Skarnulf clansmen roared into the fray, clad not in furs but in war plate from Gale Citadel, dark grey steel over massive frames, open helms revealing eyes burning for vengeance. Their axes and longspears rang with dwarfcraft.
A Zhong captain dropped to his knees, sobbing. "We marched into our grave."
A conscript threw down his spear and ran. A second followed. A third. Then panic took root, and the rout began.
From the ridgeline, Altan stood blood-slicked, unbent. He raised his hand.
"No prisoners," he said.
The crow cawed once.
Then the remaining disciples descended.
And death followed them into the valley.
Kael had a mission.
A thousand Stormblades and a legion of dark elves rode with him, veiled beneath night and snow. They moved as phantoms do: Bannerless, soundless, unseen. Only the soft hiss of wind over frost and the ghost-step of iron-soled boots broke the stillness. They skirted the battle, flanking through pine-black ridges and descending into the hinterlands, where the inlet carved into the land like a blade. Their objective: destroy the enemy's forward base and seize the warships docked along the icebound inlet before any survivor could flee and carry word of the massacre.
The forward base was lightly garrisoned, its sentries lulled by false security. The Dazhum believed their vanguard unstoppable. Kael moved to correct that belief.
Under the veil of a silence spell woven by the dark elven mistcallers, the first line of sentries died without sound. Arrows hissed. Throats opened. Kael was already inside.
Then the Stormblades fell upon the camp.
Tents were set ablaze with oil-soaked bolts. Blacksteel glaives ripped through stunned officers. The dark elves struck from shadow and ice, felling signal-bearers and torch-men before they could cry alarm. Kael moved like the void's whisper, cutting a path straight to the docks.
The main fleet had departed days ago, returned to the Dazhum home port with orders to retrieve reinforcements. The home port could only accommodate thirteen warships due to its narrow piers and turbulent currents. The rest of the fleet waited offshore, unable to anchor amid the rough seas. Only a detachment of thirteen warships remained behind to patrol the inlet and guard the base.
Thirteen warships stood moored along the frozen shore.
Two were taken within minutes.
The third attempted to flee, its oars churning, hull creaking through ice.
Kael boarded it alone.
A blur of smoke, a shimmer of light, and blood on the deck.
When the sun rose over the inlet, all thirteen ships flew the banner of the Eastern Realms.
The dark elves razed the base behind them. Command tents burned. Supply caches were emptied, then torched. No horns had blown. No scouts escaped.
Only ice. And silence.
Mission complete. The trap was sealed.