The wind howls through the Hollow Mountains, a jagged graveyard of petrified demons.
Kael Arcanis, a disgraced assassin with a necrotic right arm (cursed by sorcery), drags himself through the blizzard.
His mission: retrieve a "Soulwell Shard" buried in the mountain's heart; a relic that could resurrect the Necromancer's Keep.
* * *
The blizzard screamed like a dying god.
Kael Arcanis dragged himself through the snow, his breath ragged, his right arm burning. The bandages wrapped around it had long since soaked through, the necrotic flesh beneath pulsing with a sickly green light. The whispers slithered up his spine, hissing in a language that made his teeth ache.
"Liar," the arm murmured. "Coward."
He gritted his teeth and kept moving.
The Hollow Mountains loomed ahead, jagged spires of black stone, their peaks lost in the storm. Legends claimed they were the corpses of ancient demons, petrified in their final moments of agony.
Kael didn't believe in legends.
But he believed in the shard buried somewhere in those mountains. The Soulwell Shard, a sliver of the abyss itself, capable of resurrecting the dead or damning the living.
And damnation was all Kael had left.
* * *
Flashback:
"You had one task," the High Inquisitor had said, his voice dripping with venom.
"One. Cut the Demon Lord's throat. And you failed."
* * *
Kael remembered the heat of Vorthax's throne room, the stench of burning flesh. He remembered driving his dagger toward the Demon Lord's neck, and then the searing pain as Vorthax caught his wrist, the curse slithering into his veins.
"You'll serve me in death, little assassin."
Now, the curse festered. And the Church had sent their cyberhounds to finish what Vorthax started.
KRZZT-KRZZT
The mechanical whir of augmetic legs crushing snow.
Kael dropped behind a boulder, his breath fogging the air. Three figures emerged from the storm, Church Cyborgs, their faces hidden behind chrome masks engraved with scripture.
Seraph-7 led them, her voice a synthetic rasp.
"Heat signature detected. The fugitive is nearby."
Her lieutenant, a hulking brute with a rotary blade for an arm, snarled.
"Let's carve him apart. The Inquisitor wants his head."
Kael's fingers tightened around his dagger.
"I should run. But running never saved anyone."
He struck like a shadow.
The brute died first, Kael's dagger found the gap in his augmented neck, severing the spinal cord. The man gurgled, his mechanical limbs spasming.
Seraph-7 whirled, her plasma rifle humming to life.
"Heretic!"
Kael ducked, the shot searing past his ear. He lunged, his cursed arm twisting on its own, fingers elongating into black talons.
They punched through Seraph-7's chest plate, crushing the mechanical heart within.
She gasped, blood bubbling between her lips.
"The Witchwood... is watching you..."
Then her optics dimmed.
At the Heart of the Mountain
The cavern was too warm. Too alive.
The walls throbbed like a heartbeat, and the stalks dripped black ichor. The Soulwell Shard, a ragged piece of obsidian swirling with imprisoned souls, was at the center, set into a nest of calcified veins.
Kael reached for it.
His arm whispered,
"Take it. You know you want to."
His fingers closed around the shard.
The mountain trembled.
The cavern floor was covered in spiderwebs of cracks. Under the stone, pulsating flesh was visible as the walls peeled back.
Suddenly, he realized that the Hollow Mountains had never been mountains.
They were eggs.
And something was hatching.
With an excessive number of eyes and mouths, as well as translucent skin over writhing organs, the fetus revealed itself as a hideous parody of a demon. Kael's eardrums were broken by the sound of its scream.
"Oh, you idiot. You woke it up."
Kael ran.
Behind him, the mountain split open, the newborn demon clawing its way into the world.
As Kael fled into the storm, the trees at the base of the mountains twisted toward him. The Witchwood, a forest of petrified sorcerers, their bark-like skin etched with silent screams.
One of them blinked.
"You're being hunted, Kael Arcanis. And the woods remember everything."
The demon's birth cry still echoed in Kael's skull as he staggered into the treeline. His right arm, now fused with the Soulwell Shard, throbbed like a second heart, veins bulging black beneath his skin.
Idiot. You should've left the shard buried.
Behind him, the Hollow Mountains ruptured, stone shedding like eggshells. Something massive and shrieking pulled itself free, its shadow darkening the blizzard.
Kael didn't look back.
The Witchwood swallowed him whole.
The trees were wrong.
Their bark split vertically, revealing pupils that tracked Kael's every step. Branches creaked like bending bones.
"Khhhhaaaael..."
A whisper. Not the arm this time. The trees.
Kael (growls):
"Shut up."
He gripped his dagger, the shard in his arm pulsing in time with the forest's heartbeat.
* * *
Flashback (Fragmented):
A woman with bark for skin pressing a knife into his palm
"The woods always collect their due."
* * *
The arm said in a mocking tone,
"You've been here before."
A root lashed around Kael's ankle, yanking him upside down.
Kael slashes the root; black sap sprays, burning his face. The trees shriek. Dozens of mouths split open in the trunks.
A petrified sorcerer peels free from an oak, its jaw unhinging.
"The Necromancer's Keep... remembers your face."
Kael stabs it through the eye. It crumbles to ash.
The Witchwood isn't just alive. It's sentient. And it's been waiting for him.
Above the canopy, an airship carved through the storm, the Inquisitor's Talon, its hull plated with screaming faces pressed into the metal.
Onboard the Talon:
Inquisitor Veyra with his cold, augmented eyes glowing blue watches Kael's heat signature flicker on a screen.
"Burn the Witchwood. Purge the heretic."
Soulfire Cannons hum to life.
The forest explodes.
Kael sprints as soulfire melts trees into liquid shadow. The ground heaves, a colossal root erupts, impaling the airship's hull.
Sorcerers shriek as flames consume them, their curses unraveling in the heat.
"We need cover!"
His arm chuckled,
"Take control, then."
The shard pulses. Kael's right arm shatters, reforming into a bone shield as a cannon blast hits.
The shield cracks, and his veins turn blacker.
A figure emerges from the burning trees, a woman with bark for skin, her eyes hollow pits.
"Kael Arcanis. You owe me a death."
* * *
Flashback:
Kael, years younger, slicing her throat in this very forest. Her blood watering the roots.
* * *
"What do you want?"
She presses a wooden dagger into his chest. It doesn't break skin.
"The shard in your arm is a key. The Necromancer's Keep is a lock. And the Church... is the hand that turns it."
His arm suddenly said in a serious tone,
"She's not lying."
The airship crashes in the distance. The demon from the mountains roars.
"Give me the shard, and I'll spare you."
Kael has two options.
Refuse: Fight his way out (lose the arm?).
Accept: But the Witchwood owns whatever it's given.
"No deals with witches."
He stabs her with the wooden dagger.
The forest screams.
As the Witch crumbles to rot, the shard burns, projecting a ghostly map into the air.
Destination: The Necromancer's Keep, its spires visible on the horizon.
Arm whispered,
"He's waiting for you."
"Yeah, and I'm bringing him a war."