The Revenants didn't wait for diplomacy.
They never knocked.
They came like smoke over still water. Quiet. Endless.
And they struck with a cruelty that had forgotten the meaning of mercy.
---
The Red Sky Falls
It began in Duskwind Vale.
The sky turned red before the sun rose.
Wolves howled—but not in mourning.
> In agony.
Kael received the vision at dawn—a flash of fangs, flame, and bones cracking like twigs.
He fell to his knees as ten thousand voices screamed into him at once.
Sylah rushed to his side. "What is it?!"
Kael looked up, his eyes burning like a dying star.
> "They've started."
---
The Horde Descends
The First Horde didn't walk like soldiers.
They crawled, skittered, flew.
Some had once been wolves—now twisted with bone armor and black fire.
Others were new monsters.
Creatures born from broken spells and forgotten gods.
They poured into the valley, overrun the outer defenses, and turned entire tribes into living candles—bodies set aflame, kept alive to scream.
Lina scryed the battlefield from the Moon Mirror.
> "They're not just killing."
> "They're converting."
Every fallen warrior rose again, their eyes empty, their tongues singing Revenant war songs.
---
Kael's Response
The council was in chaos.
Again.
Debate.
Panic.
Fear.
Kael stood silently before them, dressed in black flame armor, the Fang of Varok at his back.
Then, calmly:
> "We're done talking."
> "Mobilize the Skyfang Legion. Rally Hollow Snow. Call in the Ash Hounds."
Alpha Drayk rose. "What about the civilians?"
Kael's eyes burned.
> "We move them behind the Ironwood Gate."
> "This isn't just a war."
> "It's extinction."
---
The Battle of Duskwind Vale
Kael's forces arrived as dusk fell—firewolves leaping from cliffs, siege flames raining from the stormforged catapults.
He led from the front.
A beast of twin bloodlines.
He fought like a star falling into earth.
Wherever Kael went, the Revenant tide broke.
But it wasn't enough.
The Vale burned.
Families fled into the caves.
And in the sky above the battlefield… something descended.
---
The Revenant Wyrm
It was not a dragon.
It had no scales. No breath.
Only wings of flame and screams.
Its bones were woven from the spines of the first Moonborn traitors.
And its eyes… were his mother's.
Kael froze mid-fight.
The creature howled—and the ground cracked.
> "Mother…" he whispered.
Lina gasped through the scrylink. "That's not her. That's a Revenant echo!"
But Kael couldn't move.
Until—
A child screamed from the rubble.
Kael turned toward the sound.
> And chose.
He leapt from the tower and drove his blade through the wyrm's head.
The explosion lit the valley.
---
The Price of Victory
Duskwind was saved.
But only in name.
Six tribes gone.
A third of the Ash Hounds dead.
The survivors called Kael Ashfang now.
Not as a title.
> As a warning
.
---
The Revenant King Watches
Back in the Hollow Throne, the Revenant King chuckled.
> "He's learning."
> "He leads."
> "Good."
He raised a hand.
And opened the next gate.