The war room atop Hightower Reach's central spire had once belonged to High Marshal Drevon of the Dominion—an architect of terror known for breaking rebel clans with surgical brutality. Now, his war maps were scattered across the stone table, bloodied and burned.
Duncan stood before the sprawling parchment, eyes narrowed.
Red markers indicated every known rebel hideout across the Wildmarch.
Blue pins represented Dominion garrisons.
But there, near the center, marked in obsidian ink, was a symbol Duncan had never seen before—a black crescent engulfing a red flame.
Kaelen examined it. "That's no Dominion standard."
Alra approached, brushing dust from an old map fragment. "That's the sigil of the Umbral Chorus."
Duncan looked up. "Who?"
Alra's voice turned low. "Not Dominion. Not rebel. They're... something else. They show up when battles reach a fever pitch—harvesting corpses, stealing warbeasts, vanishing with entire caravans. I thought they were a myth."
Kaelen grunted. "Guess we found their mark. And it's close."
Too close.
It was less than a week's march west of Hightower.
Duncan rolled up the parchment. "Then we pay them a visit."
They left Hightower with fires still smoldering behind them. The army moved like a scar—fast, wide, and angry. News of their victory traveled faster than the horses themselves. Villages that once cowered under Dominion tithes opened their gates. Exiles returned. Beastkin clans sent scouts to join the host.
The rebellion was no longer a whisper.
It was a storm.
And at its heart, walked Duncan.
Crowned by blood, sword gleaming in ashlight, flanked by legends in the making.
Three days into their westward march, the terrain shifted.
The air grew colder.
No birds. No beasts. No trails.
Just silence.
The trees here were blackened and hollow. Something in the mana of the land felt dead.
Scouts began to vanish.
Not attacked. Just... missing.
Then they found the first signs.
Torn banners. Craters where wagons had been. Frozen blood, but no bodies.
And at the center of a ruined crossroads, a tower of helmets—stacked high and sealed with red wax.
Duncan approached it.
Kaelen unslung his blade. "Trap?"
"No," Alra said. "Message."
She pointed at the symbols etched into the helmets—markings from every known faction: rebels, Dominion, mercenaries, even beast clans.
Duncan narrowed his eyes.
A single word was burned into the earth beneath the tower.
"Silence."
They reached the edge of the Chorused Vale by nightfall.
It was a crater—massive and unnatural. At its center stood a structure like a black obsidian monolith, humming with low, guttural sound.
No torches were lit. No watchtowers. No soldiers.
Yet every step forward felt like walking into the jaws of a sleeping beast.
Duncan, Alra, and Kaelen descended first, leaving the army encamped above. A scout team followed, no more than a dozen warriors. Each carried a beast-horn charm and a silence ward.
Inside the Vale, sound died completely.
Words fell flat.
Even thought seemed slow.
But as they neared the monolith, it spoke.
Not in voice. In memory.
Visions flooded Duncan's mind—fields of fire, beasts crawling from the void, men with masks of shadow and chains forged from star-metal.
He saw the Dominion kneel before something vast and unearthly.
He saw a throne—not of iron or fire—but nothingness.
And sitting on it...
A man with no face.
The vision broke.
Duncan staggered.
Alra caught him. "You saw it too?"
He nodded, breath ragged.
"This place isn't a camp," he rasped. "It's a conduit."
"A conduit to what?" Kaelen growled.
Duncan looked back at the monolith.
And for a moment, it looked back.
They returned to the army at dawn, changed.
The air above the Vale shimmered like oil. The scouts refused to speak of what they'd seen. Two wept openly. One had gone mute.
Duncan gave the order.
They would not engage the Umbral Chorus.
Not yet.
"Let the Dominion think we're still climbing mountains," he said. "But now we know there's something beneath them."
That night, the warhost moved south instead—toward the last garrisoned city before the Heartlands.
Rimegarde.
A fortress-city perched atop frozen cliffs. Strong. Heavily defended. Known for crucifying rebel leaders along its ice walls.
Duncan stared into the fire that night as his army prepared for siege.
The map had changed.
The enemy wasn't just the Dominion anymore.
It was the darkness they'd made a deal with.
And it was waking.