The battlefield smoked with blood and ash, but silence never came.
From the treeline, howls rose again—thousands of them, twisted, wrong. Wolves with glowing red eyes, their bodies bent and broken by shadow. Hunters shambled at their side, their weapons dripping with ichor. Even the forest beasts—bears, elk, creatures of the mountain—marched, their forms corrupted into monsters.
And at their head—Ronan.
His body was nearly unrecognizable. His copper hair burned black, his amber eyes pits of void, his frame wreathed in shadow-fire. His voice echoed across the mountains like thunder from the abyss.
"You think love saves you?" he roared. "Love has always doomed you. Every life, every age, every war—you choose him. He dies. You burn. And I endure."
The pack shuddered, their golden eyes flicking to Kael and Aradia. Fear clung to the air like frost.
Kael stood tall, his green eyes fierce, his massive frame scarred but unbowed. "Then this life," he growled, "you fall."
And the siege began.