At dawn, the gates of Gale Citadel opened to the pale light of morning. Cold wind rushed down from the mountains, carrying the scent of pine and steel.
Altan stood at the gate, fully armored, his Stormrider cohort assembled behind him. Thirty elite riders, silent and prepared, each mounted on trained warbeasts bred for speed and terrain.
Bruga stepped forward first, the ground shaking as his dire wolf loped beside him. The beast was massive, gray as ash, its steps shaking the ground as it loped beside him. Its name was White Fang, and it bore the scars of a dozen battles.
Nyzekh followed, his mount slower but no less intimidating. His dire wolf, Scar, was leaner, darker, with one eye milk-white and blind. It moved with a quiet menace, its breathing steady and deep.
Altan approached his own steed. The stallion stood waiting, black as midnight, its hooves and lower limbs streaked crimson like they had been dipped in molten flame. The soldiers called it the Devil Mount. Even Stormwake, who feared little, gave it space.
Altan mounted in silence.
Stormwake arrived next, leading five riders of his tribe—Qorjin-Ke scouts in bone armor and swamp-cloaks. Their eyes were sharp. Their mounts fast and silent.
He saluted Altan with a curt nod. "We'll ride ahead, sweep the path to the Cliffvale. You'll have eyes long before you see trouble."
Altan returned the nod. "Then we ride."
The gates groaned wider.
And the storm rode out—not just steel and thunder, but blood, shadow, and fire.
The ride northward took them two weeks, winding through rolling hills and wind-carved ridges. They camped beneath the stars, passed through quiet forests and narrow gorges, and moved steadily north with few words but constant vigilance. The journey grew colder each day. Patches of snow thickened. Frost claimed the rocks and brush. The air grew thinner, sharper. Peaks loomed ahead like jagged teeth. Somewhere beyond them waited the Cliffvale Reaches.
Bruga and Nyzekh rode ahead now, their mounts more sure-footed on the uneven paths. White Fang moved with the confidence of a beast born in these lands. Scar padded with silent wariness, each step deliberate.
Altan rode just behind, the Devil Mount snorting steam with every breath. Its crimson hooves struck the frozen ground like drums.
Stormwake, scouting a rise above them with his riders, signaled a halt. He came down at a steady pace, face set.
He reined in beside Altan and spoke low.
"We're close to the border of the barbarian lands. The wind's wrong. Tracks are fresh—but the woods are too quiet."
He looked ahead, then back at the others.
"We will be ambushed."
Altan studied the ridgeline, eyes narrowed beneath his hood. Then he spoke.
"We'll take the side path through that clearing. We won't outrun them, so we won't try."
Bruga glanced at the trees. "We're going to wait for them?"
Altan nodded. "Let them think they're chasing us."
The cohort shifted course, leaving the main trail. Hooves and paws crunched the frostbitten brush as they veered into a narrow pass that opened to a wide, flat clearing bordered by thick pine and jagged rock.
They dismounted, forming a tight perimeter. Nyzekh perched silently atop a low boulder, fingers on his blades. Stormwake's scouts faded into the treeline.
Minutes passed. Then shadows moved.
Assassins, wrapped in dark silks and ash-stained armor, emerged from the woods—silent, fast, lethal. But their formation stuttered when they saw Altan standing at the center, waiting.
They attacked anyway.
The clash was sudden and brutal.
Bruga moved like a landslide wrapped in flame. As the assassins surged forward, he slammed into them with a roar, Pyrebite igniting in his grip. His axe cleaved through a dozen foes in the first sweep, molten sparks spraying like embers off steel. Ember Hatchets flew from his belt, embedding in faces, throats, chests. Then came the Pyroclastic Burst—an explosion of qi and flame that rocked the clearing. Fire erupted outward, boiling air and flesh, reducing a score of assassins to ash and ruin. The earth beneath him cracked, scorched black. Blood steamed where it fell.
Nyzekh was a ghost among screams. He vanished from one shadow and reappeared behind throats, his twin sabers slicing without resistance. They made no sound. The air barely moved as he moved through it. The assassins that faced him froze—some screamed, others just fell apart, their minds unraveling as much as their bodies. One struck at him and missed entirely—he had already erased the space between them. In the center of his path, a void pulse opened and devoured a ring of attackers—nothing left but an empty crater.
Altan carved through the center line with cold precision. His blade didn't waver, didn't gleam—it struck with intent, not flourish. Every movement was honed. He fought like someone who had no time to waste.
The ground was slick with blood. Limbs scattered. Bodies twitched in dying spasms. The battlefield stilled for only a breath. Then the wind shifted—and the second wave came crashing in.
A hundred assassins fell in the first wave.
But more came.
The trees whispered with movement. Stormwake shouted warnings as a new wave of assassins burst from hidden burrows and high branches. Arrows rained from above, and blades flickered from behind shadows. The cohort began to tighten, shields raised, mounts pressing inward.
But Stormwake was already moving.
He disappeared into the treeline, vanishing like smoke. Moments later, a muffled scream echoed from a branch above. Then another. Stormwake reappeared behind a cluster of assassins attempting to flank the cohort. His curved blades gleamed faintly as they struck fast and deep, slicing through joints and necks with ruthless precision. He moved like a ghost on fire, slashing tendons, breaking knees, silencing killers before they could speak.
One assassin leapt from the canopy toward Altan—but Stormwake was there first, driving a poisoned dagger through the attacker's ribs mid-air, pinning the body to a tree.
Silent as their warden, Stormwake's scouts followed his lead. They struck from the underbrush with short blades and barbed spears, cutting down stragglers, gutting hidden foes, and dragging cloaked bodies from false snowbanks.
Within minutes, the second wave collapsed in blood and confusion.
Then they heard it—a long, rolling war cry echoing from the western slope.
The assassins paused. So did the Stormguard. The Stormriders stood quiet now, blades dripping, breath heavy in the thinning cold.
From the ridges came massive figures, clad in furs and iron, wielding axes as long as spears. The Skarnulf barbarians crashed down into the clearing, slamming into the flank of the assassin force.
The attackers scattered.
Moments later, it was over. The snow was soaked red, the silence broken by steam and panting.
One of the barbarians strode forward, broad-shouldered and grinning under a braided beard.
"I knew it was you, youngest," the man said with a loud laugh. "I could smell you from a ridge away!"
Bruga grinned despite himself. "You still stink like bear piss."
The man grabbed him in a tight embrace, clapping his back hard enough to echo.
Nyzekh walked past them with a smirk. "Didn't you say you hated your siblings?"
Altan gave a short laugh.
Bruga shrugged. "I hate most of them. Not this idiot."
They stood among the bodies and smoke, the wind picking up.
But for the first time in days, there was warmth in it.
Bruga's brother stepped back and looked him over. "Youngest, you've grown taller? And I saw you from the ridge—it looks like you fight better now."
His eyes moved to Altan and Nyzekh. "Who are your companions?"
Bruga gestured with a nod. "This is Altan of the Gale. My teacher."
His brother blinked, then burst into loud laughter. "Altan of the Gale? Didn't you say you'd defeat him one day, back when you first heard his name from the traders?"
Bruga rolled his eyes.
His brother clapped his shoulder again, nearly knocking him off balance. "And now you're escorting him around like a hound pup. Hah! I love it."
Nyzekh and Altan exchanged amused glances but said nothing. Bruga grumbled under his breath, but his smirk betrayed him.
For all the blood spilled, this was the part of war Bruga had missed.