The Hollowhand's skeletal jaw worked soundlessly for a moment before its voice slithered into the air, a rasp like bone scraping stone.
"Humans… too late. Malthuurn, Hollow-Crowned Lord of the Endless Rot… will return… and consume your world."
Its rotlight-filled eye sockets blazed as the sigil beneath them flared, cracks spiderwebbing outward across the blood-drenched earth.
Altan stared, calm as the void between storms. "You talk too much."
In a single breath, the Spiral unfolded. Altan's body folded into a Wind Step so sharp it became a blur; his falcata descended in a Rooted Earth chop from the crown of the Hollowhand's skull.
Bone, rotlight, and corrupted marrow split with a wet, sucking crack. The Hollowhand's body tore apart from skull to pelvis, its two halves collapsing into the glowing sigil, scattering necrotic ichor like rain. The rune sputtered and died in a hiss of smoke.
The effect was immediate. Across the battlefield, the Nerathil horde faltered as one. The hive-mind connection snapped, leaving what had been a singular, coordinated force as a chaotic mass of isolated beasts.
Stormguards, long pressed under the tide, surged forward.
Supreme Warden Chaghan bellowed like a war god, driving his hammer down with such force that it caved in three Nerathil skulls at once. "Strike now! Leave none to rise!"
The Deputy Warden wove among the disoriented foes, serpent-wind cuts severing tendons and throats in a blur. Each strike was silent, precise, a scalpel in chaos.
Stormwake roared, his war bear bond erupting from the ether in a spectral surge. The Stonehide Kin thundered into the enemy's heart, each paw-fall splintering ribcages and pulping flesh. One massive swipe sent a Dreadblade spinning end over end before it landed in a crumpled heap, bones snapping audibly.
Bruga's Pyrebite split skulls like clay pots, molten qi spilling through the cracks, burning from within. Nyzekh's void domain rebounded to life, tendrils of shadow spearing into exposed chests. Yezari's frost mist rolled low and thick, freezing the legs of fleeing Nerathil before her blade shattered them to crimson shards.
The Flame Maidens' song turned from defense to slaughter, their voices rising in a killing hymn as their blades ignited. One sweep severed an Ironmaw's limb; another reduced a clutch of smaller Nerathil to smoking piles of charred bone.
Everywhere, the Stormguard pressed the advantage, hacking, burning, freezing, and crushing the leaderless horde. The ground became a mire of black ichor and crimson blood, steam rising in thick, choking clouds.
Through it all, Altan moved like the eye of the storm, calm, precise, unstoppable. His Spiral was now a killing current, folding from foe to foe, each strike ending a life before it could draw another breath.
By the time the last Nerathil fell, the only sound was the hiss of cooling steel and the slow drip of blood into cracked earth. The Stormguard stood victorious, weapons heavy, armor dented and scarred, but the line unbroken.
Above them, the crow on Altan's pauldron gave a single, low caw, warning, not triumph.
The Hollowhand's death had not stilled the rot entirely. Somewhere beyond the horizon, the name it had spoken, Malthuurn, hung in the air like the taste of ash.
They pressed into Orûn-Mal like a blade driven between ribs. The ruins closed around them, toppled colonnades, statues half-swallowed by creeping rot, plazas littered with the broken and the burned. Nerathil remnants clung to shadows in halls and collapsed sanctuaries, lunging from the dark with teeth and rusted steel. The Stormguard answered as one, each strike precise, each movement a practiced collapse of space and force.
Altan kept to the center of the wedge, the Spiral folded tight in his chest. His eyes swept the ruined streets and the ruin's edges where rot might hide. Chaghan moved at his side, falcata in hand, its flame sigils burning low in the gloom, an old, trusted brand among the Stormguard. Wherever a falcata flashed, Nerathil flesh flinched; the flame sigils were a crude gospel to those beasts, a weakness the Stormguard wielded like prayer.
Chaghan's voice carried over the clash, clear and absolute. "Purge the city. Check every hole, every chamber. Warmages and wardruids, sweep for rot and seal it. No corner left dark."
Officers snapped to the order. Warmages spread threads of searching firelight. Wardruids pressed ear and palm to stone, feeling for the whisper of corruption. Men and women of the Stormguard went door to door, hearth to crypt, prying apart rubble, lighting every darkened lock. They moved like surgeons, methodical and unrelenting.
Altan's hand lifted, a quick signal. He spoke low, aimed at Stormwake. "Call Daalo. Bring the artifact forward. We finish this from outside the gate."
Stormwake dipped his head and melted through the lines, returning breathless as the cart wheels ground over cracked stone. Daalo was a mountain of calm and soot, engineers and warmages clustered about his shoulders. He barked no complaint as his men lashed the device down and readied the bind.
The artifact sat like a small engine of doom, iron ribs, glass lenses, rune-scribed coils that thrummed when the warmages keyed them.
"So we are going inside that damn gate?" Daalo finally asked, voice thick with grease and half-jarred nerves.
"That is the plan," Altan said.
Daalo grunted. "Well, then let us go in."
The Gate
They formed the spearhead, Altan, Chaghan, Nyzekh, Bruga, Stormwake and his Stonehide Kin, Daalo with engineer-warmages manning the cart, three hundred elite Stormguard braced around them. The device rolled forward on reinforced axles, men straining at winches as the cart crawled beneath archways blackened with crawling sigils.
When the engineers finished the bind, the cart hummed, soft, then louder, cords of light wrapping iron like veins. The gate before them was older than memory, covered in dark runes that pulsed in slow, sick rhythm. Altan felt the air tighten. He watched the magicks like a predator watches breath.
"Hold steady. Then we move," he said.
The warmages chanted the last cadence, Daalo's hands on the cranks. The cart coughed, the artifact answered, and the stone mouth of the gate opened with a sound like a world tearing. The air folded, not with a fanfare but with the pressure of a throat closing. For an instant Orûn-Mal hung over an abyss, then vanished.
Heat and sulfur hit them like a physical thing. The sky reassembled in blood red, roiling with storm-scarred clouds. Serrated ridges and spiny mountains cut the horizon into teeth. The smell of brimstone and burnt metal stung the throat and eyes. They had stepped into another seam of the world.
They had entered the gate. The ruined stone of Orûn-Mal folded away behind them and was replaced by a world of red sky and serrated ridges. The Stormguard spearhead pressed forward, moving as one through the jagged terrain.
Nerathil guards emerged from the spiny ridges and shattered outposts, snarling and clawing with feral precision. Dreadblades swung fused greatswords, Ironmaw hulks lunged with grinding jaws, and smaller corrupted soldiers swarmed in waves.
Altan kept the wedge tight, the Spiral folded in his chest. Chaghan moved at his side, falcata flashing with flame sigils that made Nerathil flesh quiver; wherever a falcata struck, rot recoiled.
"Hold formation!" Altan barked. "Push through! Every step counts!"
The Stormguard cut a path forward. Nyzekh's void tendrils skewered armor and muscle alike. Bruga's Pyrebite spat molten qi through Dreadblades' ribs, leaving charred cracks in their husks. Warmages cast arcs of fire, wardruids bent roots into bone-crushing snares, and Stormwake's Stonehide Kin smashed through lines of smaller foes.
Step by step, the spearhead pressed past the snarling Nerathil guards, over shattered sentinels, through a wasteland of corrupted black stone, until the battered silhouette of the Nerathil city rose before them, black towers wreathed in crawling sigils, smoke and rot rising like a living mist.
Altan scanned the outer plaza leading to the inner gate. "Let's bring the artifact to the city gate. Move quickly," he ordered.
Daalo's engineers pushed the reinforced cart forward across the cracked black stones, warmages keying the runes as they advanced. The artifact sat like a small engine of doom, hum and vibration threading through the air.
Daalo wiped his coal-smudged hands and looked to Altan. "We leave it here. It must be sited at the threshold to function. The city's corruption meets the plaza precisely at this line."
Altan's eyes narrowed. "How much time do we have before the artifact will activate?"
Daalo studied the keyed runes and the machine's low heartbeat beneath his palms. Using an archaic cadence, voice dry as flint, he said, "In but a quarter of an hour."
The engineers cinched the last straps. Warmages intoned the final cadences. Daalo placed his hands upon the device, fingers moving across valves and seals as if playing a black liturgy. Runes along the frame flared from dull iron to molten orange, then into a humming, living blue. Sigils crawled across the cart's wheels like script come alive, bleeding light into the cracked stone.
The artifact answered with a keening, a sound like trapped wind. Barrier wards blossomed around it in violet and white, catching corrosive breaths and frying crawling magicks. Daalo planted the final seal, face lit by rune-fire. "It is bound," he said. "The sequence will hold for the time given."
Altan gave the command, voice low but absolute. "Let us go back to the gate."
The Stormguard formed ranks, shields slotted, spears set, falcatas burning faint emberlight. Stormwake's Stonehide Kin flanked the cart, spectral bears a wall of living bulk. Behind them, the red realm churned and twisted, but the artifact pulsed steadily at the threshold, a beacon against the black stones.
They began their retreat, moving back through the serrated ridges and red skies, the path they had carved open by blood and steel. Whatever the device would do, it would not be undone by sword alone.
As they withdrew, a chilling shadow rose over the red horizon. Nerathil reinforcements surged from the spiny ridges, moving with deadly speed. At their forefront loomed Malthuurn, the Rot Sovereign, a towering abomination of bone, shadow, and pulsing rot-veins. Its crown-like carapace glowed faintly, vents along its torso belching forth waves of lesser Nerathil. Each step blackened the ground, and a corruptive mist twisted in its wake.
Altan raised his falcata, flame sigils glimmering. "Brace!"
Malthuurn struck with deliberate precision, a clawed hand smashing the ground as shadows lashed and Rotstorm spilled outward. Altan met it head-on, falcata igniting in flame sigils, deflecting massive blows.
Chaghan moved to intercept, falcata slicing through swarms of spawned Nerathil, while Bruga hurled molten qi at charging Dreadblades. Nyzekh's void tendrils skewered mid-tier soldiers, warmages flung arcs of fire, wardruids twisted roots into bone-crushing snares, and Stormwake's Stonehide Kin smashed through lines of smaller foes.
The Rot Sovereign fought like a battlefield commander, spawning waves of Nerathil while projecting a Rotstorm that twisted the air, clouded vision, and weakened magicks. Altan folded his Spiral tightly, striking the Sovereign's heart-node with precise, burning fury. Malthuurn screamed in a wave of bone and shadow, but the effort left Altan gravely wounded, staggering as black ichor streaked his armor.
"Commander!" Chaghan shouted, hoisting him to his shoulder. Stormwake's Stonehide Kin helped bear him as the retreat continued toward the dimension gate. Daalo and the engineer-warmages followed, pushing the artifact's humming cart.
More Nerathil poured from the ridges, claws snapping and teeth gnashing. Nyzekh stepped forward, glancing at Chaghan. "The Stormguard needs you. We'll hold them here."
Chaghan hesitated, seeing the relentless surge, then nodded.
Bruga, Nyzekh, and a hundred elite Stormguard formed a blocking wall, falcatas flashing, flames crackling, void and molten qi tearing through the charging horde. They held the line, buying precious seconds as Altan was carried to the dimension gate.
They reached the threshold. Altan was safely inside the gate, the Red Realm's jagged skyline shrank behind him.
Nyzekh, Bruga, and the hundred Stormguard held their ground against the relentless wave of Nerathil. Every strike sent shards of bone and corrupted flesh flying.
The artifact sat alone at the city gate, its bronze-and-obsidian shell humming with latent energy. The engraved runes pulsed faintly, spirals of violet and white light crawling along its surface, whispering of power both ancient and forbidden. Dust swirled around its base as if the air itself feared the device.
A soft click echoed as the final countdown ended. The Ember Core flared, a contained sun igniting at the heart of the compact engine. Then the artifact erupted. A nuclear-like blast of violet-white light tore through the gate, shattering stone, scattering debris, and reducing the outer walls to molten rubble. Shadows screamed and twisted in the brilliance; even the jagged ridges beyond the city quaked under the raw, unbridled force.
In that instant, the artifact fulfilled its grim promise. The Nerathil city lay in ruin, its black towers shattered, walls melted and twisted, sigils fractured into glowing shards. The creatures themselves had not escaped unscathed. Waves of violet-white energy had torn through the horde, searing shadow and bone, leaving Nerathil forms twisted, charred, and writhing in the molten haze.
A lingering pulse of the blast hung in the air, a humming, keening resonance that made the ruins vibrate. The energy crackled along fractured battlements, spiraling up collapsed towers and coiling through shattered streets, casting the remains of the city in an otherworldly glow. Sparks danced across melted stone, and faint arcs of violet fire licked the edges of broken walls as if the city itself were alive with the artifact's wrath.
The horizon burned beneath the blood-red sky. The wind tore through skeletal spires, carrying the stench of scorched stone, burning flesh, and smoldering ichor. For the first time that day, a grim silence fell over the carnage, broken only by the keening echoes of fractured sigils and the distant, distorted cries of the few retreating Nerathil who had survived. Smoke and vapor coiled through the ruins, swirling with the afterglow of the artifact's fury, and the Red Realm itself seemed to tremble in the wake of destruction.
Then the aftershock struck. The energy pulse rippled back toward the dimension gate, forcing the air to twist and collapse around it. Stone groaned and metal shrieked as the gate slammed shut, sealing the Red Realm behind them. The roar of the blast faded, leaving only the hum of residual energy in the ruins and the eerie quiet of a city utterly undone.