The wind howled like a starving wolf across the northern wastes, dragging the bitter sting of frost and iron into every breath. The land was an open grave, the ground hard and slick beneath boots, stained black and red with the mingling of blood-water and snow. Above them, the sky burned with the sickly hue of rust, the sun a swollen ember bleeding its light across the land in a way that gave no warmth.
On one side of the field, the Midnight Eye gathered—warriors clad in blackened armor, their helms carved with the symbol of a half-shrouded eye. A strange shadow clung to them, wrapping one side of their faces in permanent dusk as though the light itself recoiled. They moved in disciplined ranks, shields overlapping, spears leveled.
Opposite them, the Frostwolves stood. Their armor was less uniform—furs of pale white and gray bound over chain and leather, wolfish sigils scrawled in ash across their breastplates. They were howlers, raiders born from the tundra, and the snow-cracked earth shook beneath their roar.
Between these tides of steel stood a man—tall, broad shouldered, with strands of black hair slipping from a hastily tied topknot. Mordran Valcairn. His eyes, as cold as the ice that ruled this cursed north, studied the lines with a patience that belonged more to a hunter than a general. His hand rested lightly on the hilt of his longsword, a weapon worn smooth with use, balanced as though it were a part of his arm. At his hip hung another blade, smaller, curved, and etched with marks not of man but curse—the dagger he never drew unless desperation itself clawed at his throat.
He felt its weight even now. Waiting. Watching. Whispering.
"Write it well, scribe," Mordran muttered under his breath.
"Already doing so, already doing so!" piped a voice, thin and oddly cheerful amidst the carnage. A scrawny man darted between fallen corpses, clutching a book nearly as large as his chest. His round spectacles were spattered with crimson flecks, and his quill scratched frantically across parchment even as arrows hissed overhead. He wore no armor—just a tattered cloak—and yet somehow always found the smallest crevices to duck into when blades swung his way. His name was Edrin Quillhand, chronicler, coward, and fool, but a fool Mordran tolerated.
"I'll make certain you're remembered heroic," Edrin babbled as he narrowly sidestepped a thrown axe. "The stoic general, the frozen wolf, the blade of the North! Oh, the lines practically write themselves—"
"You'll be remembered as bones if you don't keep your head down," Mordran cut him off, eyes never leaving the Frostwolves' formation.
The air split with a scream—not fear, but fury. Through the melee carved a man with two blades, both dripping, both singing as they cut through steel and flesh alike. He fought with savage grace, his movements like water flowing over stone, relentless, unstoppable. His name was Kaelen Draemir, the only man in the Midnight Eye who matched Mordran strike for strike. The Frostwolves fell before him like reeds in a storm.
To Mordran's left, another figure advanced with slower steps but no less certainty. Older, his hair grayed and his face scored with deep lines, yet his eyes burned with the sharpness of a man half his age. Sir Aldric Fenrow. He fought not with youthful rage but with cunning precision, each swing measured, each parry calculated. Where younger men wasted strength, Aldric wasted nothing. He had bled the cursed land longer than most still breathing, and it had not yet claimed him.
And then came her.
From the smoke and shadow rose a woman, her hair as dark as coal, her eyes bottomless pits of black. Lyssara Valcairn, wife to Mordran, and branded a defect since birth. The people of this world feared her kind, for she walked the path of the Black Flame. It licked and coiled around her hands now as she spread her fingers, the unnatural fire burning with a silence that was more terrifying than any roar. Soldiers screamed as the dark blaze consumed them, flesh and bone turned to ash in moments.
Her resistance to magic was legendary; she had pushed her body past breaking a hundred times and reforged it with will alone. To most, her existence was an abomination. To Mordran, she was the fire that burned beside him, both curse and salvation.
"Burn a path," Mordran called, his voice carrying over the clash of steel.
Lyssara's lips curved faintly. She lifted her hands, and the Black Flame surged forward in a wall of consuming night, washing over the Frostwolves' vanguard. Shields blackened, flesh shriveled, men toppled with their screams cut short. In the wake of her devastation, Mordran and Kaelen surged forward, cutting through the staggered survivors.
Behind them, Aldric and the others held the line, steel grinding against steel as they prevented the Frostwolves from encircling.
The plan worked.
But as Mordran pressed deeper, the battlefield seemed to shudder beneath a new weight.
He heard it before he saw it—a booming crunch as something heavy struck earth and shattered bone. Then the warriors parted, like water before a great stone.
A giant stood among them. Nearly six and a half feet tall, shoulders like boulders, arms corded with muscle thick enough to snap tree trunks. His chest was bare save for a wolf pelt draped across it, his skin marked with scars of countless wars. In his hands was a battle hammer so massive it seemed forged from a single slab of iron, its head stained with gore.
The giant swung once, and three Midnight Eye knights were crushed into pulp, their helmets folding inward like tin cups.
Mordran's horse reared, shrieking, and he dismounted in a single motion, boots sinking into the blood-mud. He drew his sword.
"Name yourself," Mordran demanded, his voice cold and cutting.
The giant spat blood to the ground. "Thorrik of the Frostwolves. Your end."
Their blades met—steel against iron, fury against precision. The hammer came down with the weight of a mountain, and Mordran rolled aside, the earth cracking where he had stood. He slashed upward, his blade kissing Thorrik's ribs, but the giant only roared, swinging wide to force distance.
They circled. Mordran's breath misted in the frozen air, eyes sharp, reading the man's rhythm. Thorrik favored brute force, hammer strokes wide and crushing. One wrong step would mean shattered bones, but Mordran was not a man of wrong steps.
Thorrik lunged. Mordran sidestepped, blade flashing, carving a line across the man's thigh. The giant staggered, then brought his hammer in a brutal backswing. Mordran ducked, sparks erupting as the hammer struck his pauldron and tore iron from leather. Pain flared, but Mordran did not yield.
He drove forward, slashing again and again, his sword biting deeper into Thorrik's chest, shoulder, arm. Blood-water sprayed across the snow, steaming in the rust light. Still the giant stood, bellowing, hammer swinging like the hand of some vengeful god.
Then Mordran saw it. The briefest opening, the half-step between Thorrik's breaths.
He moved.
Steel pierced through flesh, through ribs, through the heart. Mordran twisted the blade, and Thorrik's roar choked into silence. The giant dropped his hammer, knees buckling, and collapsed into the mire.
The field fell quiet around them, save for the groans of the dying.
From the ranks of the Frostwolves, a figure emerged. One eye socket empty, the other burning with hate. Orla the One-Eye. He saw his champion fall, and with a voice like thunder, he called for retreat.
The Frostwolves broke.
"Loose!" Mordran barked. Arrows whistled, cutting down stragglers. Yet he gave no order to chase. Some fled, vanishing into the rust horizon.
Silence returned, heavy and grim.
"We burn the bodies," Aldric muttered, wiping his blade. "Else their curses walk again."
Mordran nodded. "Stack them high. Fire will cleanse what steel cannot."
Edrin scribbled furiously, muttering, "Fire will cleanse what steel cannot—that's a fine line…"
Lyssara's black eyes lingered on her husband. She whispered, "Every victory feeds the rot. Do you not feel it in the land?"
Mordran's gaze swept the field of corpses, the rivers of blood-water seeping into frozen soil. He sheathed his blade.
"I feel it," he said. "But it matters little. We ride back. The Carrion Sage must hear that Thorrik is dead, and that the Frostwolves bleed. Let him weave what carrion wisdom he will from it."
The rust sun hung low above them, casting long shadows across the ruined plain. Men moved to gather the bodies, to build pyres. The stink of death thickened with the cold.
Mordran Valcairn stood in the midst of it all, his topknot disheveled, his hand never straying far from the cursed dagger at his side.
The world was rotting. But rot, too, was a crown.
---
The march back was a weary one. Armor clinked with each step, hooves splashed in mud that sucked at boots, and the stink of blood-water mixed with the frost in the air. Out of the five thousand that had stood beneath the rust sun that morning, a little more than half remained—some limping, some bleeding, all silent. The rest of the army waited not far, encamped near the ridge where the Carrion Sage brooded, watching as crows circled the dead like priests preparing their sermons.
Mordran Valcairn rode at the front, reins held tight, his black hair loose where strands had escaped the topknot. His eyes wandered from the patches of snow to the mire where the frost had melted, as though measuring every piece of ground they crossed. Behind him, Aldric rode with less rigidity, his weathered face unreadable. Kaelen walked on foot, swords still at his sides, each step measured, like a wolf prowling among sheep. Edrin, naturally, trailed behind Aldric's horse, scribbling even as the mud splattered his pages. Lyssara strode near her husband's mount, her black eyes staring ahead, expression like carved stone.
For a long while, only the clamor of weary soldiers filled the air. Then Aldric spoke.
"Five thousand walked this morning. Barely three thousand walk back. The Frostwolves will not take this as defeat, Mordran—they'll take it as blood-debt."
Mordran's gaze didn't shift. "Then they'll pay the debt in full."
Aldric turned, his gray brows furrowed. "Always debts and cruelties with you, lad. You speak of honor, yet your hand drifts to cruelty too quickly."
"Because cruelty is the only coin this world respects," Mordran replied, voice cold but steady. "The cursed don't reason. The Frostwolves don't bargain. If we're to carve a future here, we must speak the language the land itself speaks."
Lyssara let out a faint, bitter laugh. "Spoken like a true son of this rotten world. Cruelty is survival. To show kindness is to be gutted by those who mistake it for weakness."
Aldric shook his head. "I taught you better. Cruelty may win battles, Mordran, but it rots the man inside. You cannot lead men if you've become no different than the cursed we fight."
Mordran's jaw tightened. He looked down at his gauntlets, still smeared with blood-water from Thorrik's chest. "You think I don't know that? You think I don't feel it gnawing at me? But tell me, Aldric, how do you keep humanity in a world that's forgotten what it is?"
Aldric's answer came without hesitation. "By remembering. By refusing to forget that each body burned tonight was a man once, not just meat for the crows."
The silence that followed was heavy. Soldiers around them pretended not to hear, but their ears strained.
It was Edrin who broke the gloom. "If I may," he said, sidestepping a puddle, "I'd like to remind everyone that being gutted is a poor fate for chroniclers too. Cruel or kind, I'd prefer we lean towards whichever keeps my insides… well, inside."
A few soldiers chuckled despite themselves. Even Mordran's lips twitched faintly.
"You hide your fear in jest," Kaelen's voice cut through, low and gravelly. The two-sworded warrior finally spoke, and all others quieted. "But the cursed don't laugh. The monsters stirring in the north grow restless. They smell rot, and they come to feast. This war with the Frostwolves is nothing but kindling to a greater fire."
Edrin looked up, quill frozen above the page. "Well. That's delightfully grim. Thank you, Kaelen, I'll be certain to note that down under 'horrors yet to come.'"
Kaelen's eyes lingered on him, unblinking. "You will note it down because when your bones are picked clean, someone may read it and know why the land drowned in blood."
Lyssara's voice cut in, sharp as her flame. "He's not wrong. Every year the cursed grow thicker in the forests, bolder on the roads. Once they came at night. Now they stalk by day beneath the rust sun."
"Because men war with men," Aldric said, bitterness creeping into his tone. "Instead of standing together against the true enemy, we sharpen blades against our kin. Descendants of Sunwolves or no, the Frostwolves are still human."
Mordran's eyes narrowed. "Do not speak to me of kinship with those beasts. They burn villages, take slaves, eat the weak. If we do not crush them, they'll tear apart every farmstead in the north until only carrion remains."
"Perhaps," Aldric allowed. "But perhaps by crushing them, we make ourselves beasts too. Do you not see? It is not just monsters that rot the world. It is men."
The words hung like a pall. Even the soldiers muttered uneasily, shifting their grips on spears and axes.
Lyssara's gaze softened, but only when it turned to Mordran. "You carry too much of this burden. Let Aldric prattle about humanity. Let him cling to his ideals like a man clings to a sinking ship. You are the one steering us. You are the one they follow. Whatever cruelties you commit, you commit so they may live another day."
Mordran looked down at her, his features carved from stone, but his voice, when it came, was low. "And what if one day that cruelty swallows me whole?"
Lyssara reached out, brushing the side of his boot with her hand as they walked. "Then I'll burn the darkness myself, even if it consumes me."
The road turned softer, muddier, as the snow thinned into slush. Men cursed as their boots stuck, horses strained against the mire.
Edrin cleared his throat. "Well, since doom is inevitable and humanity is crumbling, perhaps we could at least discuss our plans for this merry war? Might help to know which hopeless battle I'll be scribbling next."
That earned a chuckle from Mordran. "The plan is simple. The Frostwolves are scattered, licking their wounds. We hold the ground we've taken, and when they muster again, we crush them. Piece by piece, we'll break the descendants of Sunwolves until the north bends."
Kaelen's voice rasped like a blade on stone. "They will never bend. Only break."
"Then we break them," Mordran replied without hesitation.
Aldric frowned. "And in breaking them, we set the whole north aflame. Do not think the cursed won't smell blood. The more we war, the more they come. I've lived long enough to know. This land punishes bloodshed with more blood."
"Then we'll give it all the blood it asks for," Kaelen said, a strange hunger in his tone. "Until even the land chokes on it."
The soldiers shifted uneasily again. Edrin scribbled furiously, muttering, "Oh yes, that's one for the histories. 'Until even the land chokes on it.' Absolutely cheerful, that line."
Aldric glared at Kaelen. "One day, your bloodlust will damn us all."
Kaelen only smiled faintly, a thin, cruel curve. "One day, perhaps. But not today."
The conversation dwindled into silence after that. Only the sound of trudging boots and creaking armor filled the air. The rust sun sagged lower, painting the mire in hues of red and brown, as though the earth itself were bleeding.
Mordran lifted his head, eyes fixed on the horizon where the smoke of their camp rose faintly against the rust sky.
"Soon," he said quietly, more to himself than the others. "Soon we'll see what wisdom the Carrion Sage has to offer. Until then… keep marching. And keep your blades sharp."
The army trudged on, a river of weary men winding through snow and mud, their shadows long and broken beneath the dying sun.