The skies above the Ashen Wastes burned gray and dead.
What had once been fertile land now lay smothered in soot and bone. Twisted remnants of scorched trees clawed at the sky like skeletal fingers. Rivers of black sand wound through the canyons, whispering with the voices of the damned. The wind howled, but not like any wind Kael had known — this one screamed.
The Stormbreaker Company stood at the edge of the Wastes. Behind them, the crimson banners of their warpath fluttered. Ahead, only silence and ancient malice.
Kael's cloak billowed behind him as he stepped forward, his gaze locked on the charred horizon.
Lyra stood beside him, face pale beneath her hood. "There's no life here. Nothing breathes in this place."
"There shouldn't be," Kael answered. "This was ground zero. The Black Host's first rising. Thousands died here. And many didn't stay dead."
Darric grunted, planting his greatsword into the earth. "So we're marching into a haunted graveyard. Fantastic."
A soldier jogged up behind them — young, scarred, breathless. "Commander Rivenhart, scouts report movement up ahead. Shapes in the ash. Unnatural."
Kael gave a sharp nod. "Prepare formation. Lightbearers to the flanks. Shieldline center. We move in five."
As the company assembled, Kael's eyes narrowed at the swirling ash ahead.
He felt them — watching.
They entered the Wastes like blades cutting into rot.
The ash was knee-deep in some parts, and every step churned up clouds of gray sorrow. The further they went, the less sound there was — as if the land itself refused to echo.
And then the first scream came.
Not from the living — but from beneath the ash.
A charred corpse exploded upward, its body fused with blackened armor, eyes glowing with blue hate. Then another. Then dozens. Hollow Revenants.
"Line!" Kael roared.
The soldiers snapped into place. Shields locked. Spears leveled. Darric stepped forward, swinging his blade in a wide arc, cleaving through three revenants with a single blow.
Lyra vanished in a flicker of shadow, reappearing behind the nearest revenant and slicing its throat with one of her twin daggers. The creature let out a soundless cry before collapsing.
Kael stood unmoving as the enemies surged — then he stepped forward, slow and deliberate.
"Ashrend…"
He raised his blade.
"…Devour."
The crimson runes along his sword flared to life.
With a single slash — "Rivenfang Arc." — a wave of red energy carved a trench through the revenants, slicing ten of them cleanly in half.
Black blood sprayed the ash.
More enemies poured forth. Some with wings of bone. Others with fused limbs and hollow horns. The deeper horrors of the Black Host.
Kael's aura expanded — a blood-red tide of violent calm. He stepped into the fray, his blade a blur of death. Every strike was named. Every swing a sentence.
"Crimson Rend."
"Eclipsing Howl."
"Voidpiercer."
His companions fought by his side — Darric a wall of fury, Lyra a whisper of death in the dark — but Kael was the eye of the storm.
And in that moment, they weren't merely fighting revenants.
They were fighting a memory. A scar etched into the land by war and sorcery long forgotten.
By nightfall, silence had returned.
Hundreds of revenants lay scattered, smoldering in crimson flame. The company stood weary, but intact.
At the center of the battlefield, Kael planted Ashrend into the black sand. The earth quivered.
A voice called from the abyss below — not spoken, but felt.
"You who bears the blade of red lightning… descend."
A crevice split open beneath his feet.
A stairway of obsidian revealed itself, winding down into the depths of the Wastes.
Darric frowned. "You really love walking into cursed holes, don't you?"
Kael glanced back, crimson eyes alight. "Only the ones worth walking out of."
He stepped down without hesitation.
Lyra followed.
The rest of the company waited above, guarding the entrance.
Below, a hidden vault waited — older than Velaryn, older even than the Kingdoms of Flame. A place where the second shard of Veilstone had been buried — and where something else, something sentient, was waiting for Kael to find it.