The wind howled like a mourning widow across the twisted ravines of the eastern stretch, stripping bark from ash trees and flinging dust into the gray sky. The terrain here was foreign to most soldiers of the Dominion—scarred by old wars and sealed by silence. No one dared patrol this far east.
Until now.
Duncan led them through it anyway.
The fire-spiral at Blackroot Ravine had changed everything. No longer were they fighting just wild mystical beasts. Something ancient stirred—something with memory and purpose. Orders from High Command had urged consolidation near the Silver Crescent, but Duncan had gone off-script, marching his force eastward into old Dominion-forsaken territory. He wasn't obeying orders now. He was answering omens.
And strangely… his men followed.
They called themselves "The Bannerless."
It began as a jest—because Duncan had stripped the Legion's flag from their pole and replaced it with nothing. No sigil. No color. No identity other than the one they carved into the dirt with their boots and blood.
Now, the name carried weight.
Over three hundred followed him. Survivors. Veterans. Outcasts. And a handful of younger soldiers who believed more in his scars than in the Dominion's glory songs.
As they crested a ridge and stared into the dead valley beyond, Duncan slowed his horse and raised a hand. His scouts fanned out immediately. Sergeant Kael trotted beside him, chewing a strip of dried wolfmeat.
"That's Alderdeep down there," Kael muttered, pointing to the crumbling stone towers barely visible through the thinning mist. "Gods, I didn't think anything still stood."
Duncan nodded. "The old border fortress. One of the first to fall when the Beast Surge began thirty years ago. The Dominion sealed it off. Claimed nothing survived."
Kael spat into the dust. "Because nothing did. I've read the old field reports. They said the beasts tore through it like a wasp nest. No survivors. No remains. Just... echoes."
Duncan's eyes narrowed. "We're not here for the fortress. We're here for what's beneath it."
Kael didn't argue. He knew better now.
Duncan dismounted and walked forward alone, boots crunching dry stone. His leather armor was battle-worn, his twin swords strapped tight against his back. The pale blade—Ashborn—glimmered faintly as they neared the ruins, reacting to the air. Not to danger. To memory.
The valley fell into silence as the company halted.
Crows circled the sky above Alderdeep's half-buried towers.
Duncan unslung a scroll case from his belt and pulled out a parchment older than any Dominion war record—a map scavenged from a ruined temple near the Spiral Fires. Ink faded and smudged, but clear enough to show the hidden vaults beneath Alderdeep.
"Here," he murmured, tracing a line from the north watchtower to a broken courtyard. "The entrance should be beneath the well."
Kael joined him, frowning. "You're sure it's not just another death trap?"
"I'm sure it is," Duncan said grimly. "But it holds answers we can't ignore."
They descended as a unit, a dozen scouts sweeping ahead, weapons at the ready. The deeper they moved into Alderdeep, the more unnatural the silence became. No bird song. No insect hum. Even the wind fell still.
A firepit in the courtyard revealed half-burned remains—old Dominion gear, melted crossbow frames, a shield split clean down the middle by something that had no edge.
One of the scouts returned. "Commander. We found the well. But it's been sealed—stone lid, runed."
"Show me."
Duncan knelt at the ancient well, brushing away soot and ivy. The runes were deep, carved by something far older than the Dominion, pulsing faintly with dormant light. He recognized some of the script—from the bloodbrand spiral.
It wasn't a lock.
It was a warning.
"Stand back," he ordered. "Kael, hand me Ashborn."
Kael hesitated. "You're going in alone?"
"I'm not risking more lives until I know it's safe."
With one hand on the pale blade, Duncan pressed his palm against the center of the runes. For a moment, nothing happened—then the stone cracked open with a sigh like breath drawn after centuries.
A stale, cold wind exhaled from the well's depths.
Duncan tied a rope to the old winch and began his descent. The air grew colder with each rung, until he landed in a chamber walled with moss and iron-banded doors. The smell of rot and old fear lingered thickly.
Then—a flicker of movement.
Duncan turned, blade drawn.
A shadow scurried along the far wall—too quick to be a man, too thin to be a beast.
"Come out," Duncan said. "I don't fear you."
A voice, barely a whisper, echoed through the darkness. "You should."
Duncan's grip tightened.
From the gloom emerged a figure in robes of tattered red—hood drawn low, skin marked with old spirals burned into the flesh. His eyes gleamed silver. Not human.
Not entirely.
"You walk the steps of the forgotten," the figure rasped. "You carry the mark of the Wild Crown. Do you know what that means?"
Duncan kept his blade steady. "I know you're going to tell me."
The figure laughed—an eerie, rasping sound.
"The beasts remember the first kings. The ones who bowed not to gold, but to the world itself. When the Dominion slaughtered them, they thought it ended. But you… you are blood of blood. You are the echo reborn."
Duncan's heart thudded. "I'm no king."
"Not yet."
The chamber shifted.
A wall slid open behind the robed man, revealing a shrine made not of stone—but of bone. Beasts. Humans. Twisted together, spiraled upward like a mockery of a crown. At its peak rested a helmet of black iron, shaped like antlers, fused with a beast's skull.
"Take it," the figure said. "And you will know the truth."
Duncan stepped forward, breath shallow.
As he reached for the helm, the chamber trembled. Visions surged into his mind—battles long past, voices screaming in tongues never written, a throne of bone encircled by beasts.
His fingers touched the iron crown.
And the world shattered.
He was no longer in the chamber.
He stood upon a cliff of ash, overlooking a war-torn land. Armies clashed below—some bearing the Dominion's old sigils, others dressed in primal hides, riding beasts with runes carved into their skin.
And at the center of it all stood a man—wearing his face. Older. Hardened. Wreathed in fire and storm, bearing the crown of bone and antlers.
The vision spoke.
"When the kingdoms fall, and the banners rot, the last crown will be born not of gold... but of wild iron and ash. You are the spark, Duncan Voss. The choice is yours—obey the Dominion's dying breath, or rule a new world forged by truth."
The vision shattered.
He collapsed to his knees in the chamber, gasping.
The robed figure was gone.
But the crown remained.
Duncan looked at it for a long moment… then stood, lifting it from the shrine.
He did not put it on.
Not yet.
But the moment his fingers closed around it, something ancient stirred within him.
And somewhere far away, across the Dominion's corelands, a High Marshal woke from uneasy sleep—heart pounding, eyes wide—whispering one name he hadn't spoken in twenty years.
"Duncan."