Grey skies swallowed the city as the harriers rose.

The only sound the beat of wings and the soft wind cutting through the air. One by one, the harriers lifted off from the cracked stone square, claws scraping against broken cobbles, bodies rising through the mist like phantoms escaping a grave.

Loyrth shrank behind them—silent, shattered, and dead. No sign that anyone had ever lived there at all. Just rot, ruin, and a smear of dark soil and broken stone where the town square used to be.

Liliana looked back. The others didn't.

Her harrier drifted slightly to the side as she turned in the saddle, eyes fixed on the receding ruins below. The crater where Namara had torn the ritual apart was still visible, a hollow wound in the city's center.

She didn't say anything. Just watched it vanish beneath the clouds. Above them, the sky stretched heavy and dull. Below, the world passed in silence.

No one spoke. What could they say? This was the beginning of the end, and they all knew it.

***

They followed the coastline north, then east. Town after town appeared in the distance—low walls, ruined roofs, shuttered homes. Hope flared each time. Faded each time.

No boats.

No people.

Only more black-veined stone. More corpses.

Each place was the same. Like someone had laid a template over the land and stamped out ruin. Docks split and empty. Fishing nets sagging with rot. Doors hanging open. Black marks climbing up the walls like ivy.

Liliana saw a family curled beneath an overturned cart. Skeleton-thin, arms still wrapped around one another. A man slumped against a door with his hand outstretched, as if reaching for something. A woman bent over the edge of a well, as if she'd been staring down into it when she died.

Near one set of broken piers, a corpse twitched.

Rika didn't hesitate. She dismounted mid-glide, warhammer already in hand. One heavy blow. The dull sound echoed off the blackened stone.

Kale tried counting the towns. Marking them in his head. He got to seven. Maybe eight. Then the names started to blur. The corpses all looked the same.

Eventually, he stopped counting.

The group passed through a dozen more settlements. None were spared. None were different.

A place that wasn't even on the map had a church that looked intact until they got close. The altar was blackened. The pews scorched. A ring of ash lined the floor.

Namara hadn't even gotten off her harrier that time. She just muttered, "Seen enough," and kept flying.

Kale tried not to look at the children. He failed.

Each time he saw a small shape lying in a doorway, or curled up in a street, something twisted in his chest. He couldn't stop wondering if they'd been scared when it happened. If they'd cried for someone. If anyone had come.

The rot had spread too fast. That's what Namara said. Too fast to fight, too fast to contain. But Kale still kept asking himself: could they have been faster?

If they'd rested less, pushed the harriers harder—would it have made a difference?

If he'd been stronger? Smarter?

And Aeloria, where was she in all of this?

She'd once been constant. A presence he could feel even when she didn't speak. At the start, she'd guided him, comforted him, steered him through the chaos with quiet certainty.

Now?

Now he couldn't even feel her when he held her sword.

Aeloria's Promise used to hum with divine warmth. Now it felt like cold glass in his hand.

Had she given up? Was she busy somewhere else? Fighting some greater battle they couldn't see? Or had she always intended for this to happen?

The question burned through him, quiet, constant, impossible to shake. Was she responsible? Had she set Xeroth on this path? Had she broken something sacred to rise, and now the world was bleeding out because of it?

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Kale didn't know. And that terrified him more than any answer would have.

The sky above was the same as the land below—grey, still, and indifferent. Even Namara made no jokes.

They stopped at a harbor once. A larger one than the rest.

From above, it looked almost intact—roofs mostly in place, the docks still stretching out into the sea. For a moment, they thought maybe—

But no.

The boats were gone. Every single one.

Some missing entirely. Others burnt to their frames. One had capsized near the pier, its hull split wide, sails half-submerged and stiff with salt. Charred boards floated in the shallows, creaking softly as the tide pulled at them.

The harbor town itself was no different from the rest. Black veins across the stone. Corpses frozen in final poses. Death soaking into every crack.

Liliana stepped off her harrier and stood by the water. "No way across. Not without a vessel."

Kale wanted to protest, but he knew it was no use. The distance was simply too far for the harriers. What would they do if they were too late, if Eldruin had already fallen? He didn't dare to think about it.

"So we go around," Sadek said.

He didn't wait for a reply. Just climbed back into the saddle and nudged his harrier skyward.

The others followed. Still no one spoke.

***

The trees began as shadows on the horizon. From above, they looked dense, quiet, untouched.

As the group descended into the valley between the mountains, the change in the air hit them immediately. The forest was thick with fog and silence. Not the gentle kind—this quiet was heavy, unnerving. It pressed against their faces like a wet cloth, clinging to their skin, making it hard to breathe.

Liliana's harrier shifted beneath her as they glided lower through the canopy. The trees were tall and ancient, but sick—bark peeling, branches drooping, black threads winding through the moss like veins. The rot was here too. Of course it was. Why wouldn't it be?

There were no birds. No insects. Not even the sound of wind in the leaves.

Just silence.

She saw bones once. Not human. Too long, too thin. Scattered near a dried creek bed with no blood, no claw marks.

Smoke rose in the distance, thin and pale, curling into the sky above the far mountain. Eldruin.

No one commented. They all saw it.

The harriers drifted lower. The trees grew tighter. Eventually they had to land and walk.

Branches clawed at their clothes. Leaves disintegrated underfoot with each step—they were already dead. Liliana walked near the front, eyes sharp, fingers tingling with readied magic. But nothing stirred. No rustle in the canopy. No crack of movement in the brush. Nothing came. Nothing attacked.

A deer stumbled out from behind a thicket, ribs sharp under mottled skin, black tears streaking from its eyes. It looked at them, then made a low, wet noise and stepped forward.

Sadek's spear snapped out in a blur of movement, and the animal dropped.

But it kept twitching. Legs kicking against the dirt, mouth opening in a dry, rasping scream with barely any sound behind it.

Rika moved forward to crush the skull, and the twitching stopped.

Namara crouched next to the corpse. "It's everywhere now," she said softly. "Not just cities. Not just people. Everything."

Liliana swallowed. Her throat was dry.

They walked for another hour. Then, with dusk falling and the harriers unsettled, they made camp in a shallow hollow beneath the trees.

Liliana sat with her back against a rock, arms folded around her knees. Somewhere nearby, something creaked—maybe a tree, maybe not.

Sadek, Kale, and Yajub took first watch.

***

"Yajub never fly before," Yajub said.

Kale glanced over. "I'm surprised Rika's harrier didn't fall out of the sky trying to lift both of you. You are not small."

"Yajub always finish dinner," he replied with a nod, tone grave. "Even the vegetables."

Sadek gave a quiet snort. "It's good to have you back, Yajub."

"Good to be back."

The fire crackled low between them, and the men stared at it in silence for a moment.

"You saw that smoke, right?" Sadek asked.

"Yeah," Kale replied.

"Hard to miss," Yajub said.

"Too much for cooking fires," Sadek started. "Too much for chimneys." He exhaled slowly. "That much smoke only means one of two things. Eldruin's under siege right now… or it's already over."

Kale sat up straighter. "Then shouldn't we go? Right now?"

"No." Sadek's voice was low but firm. "We've been flying and walking for weeks. Pushing nonstop. If Eldruin is still holding, they can hold a little longer. And if it's not…" He shook his head. "Then we'll need every bit of strength we've got left. We won't help anyone by stumbling into a slaughter half-dead."

Kale didn't argue, though inside he was already itching to run. Tomorrow, they'd find out what was left.

***

Dawn came without color.

They walked in silence. No one said a word as they moved through the last stretch of trees, feet sinking into soft rot.

Then the woods finally broke, and they stepped out onto the slope, the land dropping away beneath them. And there it was.

Eldruin.

Built into the side of the mountain—terraces of white stone stacked along the cliff face, towers rising from carved plateaus. Even from here, it looked old. Grand. Once proud.

Now, it was burning.

Smoke coiled up from the center tiers in thick, ugly spirals. No signals, no flickering hearthfires—just raw black smoke, rising fast and choking the sky.

They couldn't see the fighting. Not clearly. But there were flashes—quick bursts of red, violet, gold—lighting up the haze between buildings. Somewhere out there, someone was still trying to hold the line.

Then the monsters came into view.

One was tall—maybe four, five stories—its skin a raw mesh of pale muscle and blackened plates. It moved low and hunched, fast for something its size, scaling a wall with spiderlike precision before hurling itself to the next tier. Its limbs didn't match. Arms too long, back arched wrong, a head like a cracked bell fused to a torso that never stopped twitching.

The second one was even worse.

It moved slower, almost lazy. Towering. Bigger than the buildings. Its shoulder scraped against the upper cliffs as it turned, arms dragging long trails of ash and rubble behind it. Its chest pulsed with sickly green light. A crown of horns jutted from its skull, crooked and smoking. It looked like it had been stitched together from giant corpses.

For a moment they stood and watched as Eldruin burned.

"We're too late," Kale said.

Yajub smashed his fist into his open palm. A golden mesh flared across his skin, then vanished. "You say too late, Yajub say just in time."

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