High above the chaos of battle, Morgana's acute hearing caught fragments of General Kaider's desperate conversation with his officers. It showed just how powerfully her senses worked.

The words struck her like physical blows—several hundred souls, the town is overrun, we can't spare a single sword.

Her blue eyes blazed with fury and frustration as she deflected another wave of deadly energy from the Lich King's skeletal minions.

She gritted her teeth so hard that pain shot through her jaw.

Every fiber of her being screamed to abandon this cursed battlefield and race to the town's aid. Those were innocent people, families of the soldiers who were fighting now, their children who had never held a weapon, mothers clutching their babes, and elderly craftsmen whose only crime was living in the shadow of what they believed to be an impregnable fortress.

There were a lot of soldiers who lost their lives already; not only that, now they were fighting as her enemies.

But even as her heart cried out for them, her mind acknowledged the brutal arithmetic of war.

If she left now, if any of them left, the Lich King would break through the pass, and then not just the town but every town and village for a hundred miles would burn.

Her hands, already trembling with exhaustion from the prolonged combat, tightened around her staff until her knuckles went white.

The weight of impossible choices pressed down upon her shoulders like the stones of a collapsing structure.

"Damn it all," she whispered through clenched teeth, her voice lost in the roar of dragon-fire overhead and the clash of steel below.

-

-

Far from the smoking ruins of the town, on the trader's road that wound through the foothills like a serpent's spine, three figures stood silhouetted against the crimson-stained sky.

The elevation of their position—a rocky outcropping that jutted from the hillside like a stone fist—afforded them a commanding view of both the distant fortress and the town spread below like a map drawn in fire and shadow.

The eldest of the three was a woman whose bearing spoke of decades spent mastering powers that lesser minds could barely comprehend.

Odessa's black hair whipped around a face that remained beautiful despite the lines that experience had etched around her eyes and mouth. Her robes, deep blue and embroidered with silver thread, stirred in the wind that carried the acrid scent of burning thatch and the distant screams of the dying.

Beside her stood two young men, their faces etched with growing horror as they took in the scope of the disaster unfolding below.

The taller of the two—a youth whose dark hair fell across features that spoke of both human and something... other—pointed toward the town with a hand that trembled with barely contained energy. Baren's draconic heritage was subtle in his human form, revealed only in the golden flecks that swirled in his brown eyes and the way his skin seemed to shimmer faintly in the dying light.

"What in the seven hells is happening down there?" Baren's voice strained with shock and disbelief.

From their vantage point, they could see the orange glow of fires spreading through the town's streets like a plague of flame, while dark shapes moved through the streets in a wild and unruly manner, destroying everything in their path.

They had reached the Berdhshite place just a few minutes ago and stopped in their tracks seeing the fire and smoke coming from the town and the fortress.

His companion squinted at the chaos below, his gaze moving around the town and then towards the fortress.

His enhanced senses worked through the scene before him, and in seconds he got the gist of it.

Jaenor had only heard of them, but seeing them made him—he couldn't quite tell how he felt. He shouldn't be feeling thrilled when there are people dying. Jaenor thought to himself as he stared at the chaotic town.

"Orcs," he said flatly, his voice carrying the certainty.

"A full warband, from the look of it. But orcs here? How is that possible?"

Baren shook his head, his expression growing more troubled by the moment.

"The fortress..." he began, then stopped as his dragonic vision picked out details that mortal eyes might miss.

"The fortress is under attack too. Look—do you see the lights? That's combat of the Origin energy, massive amounts of it."

Jaenor followed his friend's gaze toward the distant stronghold, where flashes of various colored energies painted the walls in shifting patterns of light and shadow.

Above the fortress, two massive shapes wheeled and clashed in aerial combat, their conflict sending shockwaves through the air that reached even their distant position as muted thunder.

"How?" Baren's voice was filled with the same shocked disbelief that gripped them all. "What happened to the fortress defenses? How did the orcs get past—"

"They didn't."

The interruption came from Odessa, her voice carrying the calm certainty of one who had seen too many battles to be surprised by tactical innovation.

She raised one elegant hand to shade her eyes as she studied the battlefield with the practiced gaze of a military strategist.

"They bypassed the fortress entirely. Somehow, they managed to navigate the hill passes and strike at the town directly."

The implications hit both young men like physical blows.

The hill passes were notorious among travelers—a maze of treacherous paths, unstable scree, and vertical drops that claimed lives with casual regularity.

For an army to attempt such a crossing was madness.

For them to succeed...

"They've grown a brain in their empty heads," Odessa continued, her tone mixing grudging respect with cold fury.

"Whoever is leading them understood that the fortress's strength was also its weakness. By forcing the defenders to commit everything to holding the pass, they left the town essentially undefended."

Jaenor's enhanced vision picked out more details from the town below, and what he saw made his blood run cold.

It hit him like a wave—the scene before him tearing open a scar he thought had long since healed.

It was just like Frostvale.

The smoke.

The screams.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.