The battlefield stank of ruptured intestines, scorched leather, and still-warm meat. The grass, once knee-high and golden, was pressed flat beneath twitching corpses. Limbs were severed, jaws dislocated in screams they never finished. Some still bled. Others had already turned pale beneath the moons.
Stormwake stood silent in the aftermath, not even wiping the assassin's blood from his blade. A boy once, now carved into a weapon. His eyes moved not with sorrow, but with calculation. Wind carried no song, only smoke, ash, and the slow bubbling of blood from slit throats.
Then the air shimmered.
Not a gust.
Not a sound.
A sonic frequency, inaudible to mortal ears, pulsed through the bone marrow of every Stormblade still breathing. Those trained in the Twilight Gale Codex heard it in their spine.
It was Altan's voice.
"Stormwake. Gale Order Black. No survivors. Burn their roots. Feed the dead. Begin extraction. Memory must speak."
The message ended, but the command had no end. Only result.
Stormwake gave no verbal reply. His fingers flicked a glyph in the air, a simple deathmark.
The scout arrived, robed in swamp-flesh, stitched with insect chitin, his eyes glazed with black ichor. The Whispershell Tribe had sent one of their elite. A Brain-Eater, bonded to corpse beetles bred for thought digestion.
The tribe, ever-hungry for mind residue, had long offered their dead-fed bonds in exchange for battlefield offerings. Tonight, they would feast well. Each corpse was a library of secrets, each death a ritual meal.
In response to the glyph, beetles began to crawl from beneath the scout's armor. Then more, and more. Hundreds poured out, clicking and hissing, swarming the corpses. They burrowed into skulls, popping them open with acidic bites. Some chewed through the eyes first. Others entered through the mouth, cracking molars on their way to the grey matter.
The sound was unbearable. Wet chewing, the crunch of bone, the splatter of brain jelly against the grass. One assassin, not fully dead, jerked as the beetles climbed into his face. He screamed once before blood gushed from every orifice and the skull burst inward with a wet crunch.
The insects fed fast, pulping memory sacs, tongue-tissues, and gland centers.
After minutes of mind-feast, they excreted a milky-white sludge, pungent with psychic residue. It coated the bodies in pale mucus. The largest beetle, a bond-leader with a spine-tail and golden mandibles, drank it all, bloating into a quivering sac of thought.
Then it coughed.
A white pearl slithered from its mouth, veined and warm, pulsing with psionic signatures.
The scout caught it on his tongue.
Swallowed.
And spasmed violently.
Veins bulged black on his neck. His jaw cracked. Fingernails peeled back as blood-letter glyphs spilled from his hands onto a stretched flesh-scroll. Names. Clans. Contract routes. Hidden accounts. Kill orders. The ink reeked of brain fluid.
When it ended, the scroll bled.
Stormwake took it.
He turned toward the cliffs.
On his shoulder, the Vahir stirred, its feathers grown long from feeding on battlefield smoke. He tied the scroll to its leg and whispered a single breath of direction.
"Black Vein. Code: Full Erasure."
The bird launched into the dark.
Far across the realms, in a stone fortress wrapped in vines and fake ivy, the Black Vein Hospitalier Warden unrolled the scroll. The blood still dripped. Eyes scanning the glyphs, he said nothing. Then, calmly:
"Mark them all. Black Flame Protocol. Alert the Warden of Assassins."
Down in the sub-level vaults, Kael stirred. The command had reached him.
He rose from a basin of darkwater where he'd been meditating, his armor still slick with dream-oil. His Windskin Sword hummed at his side, silent and precise. Without a word, he stepped into the storm. His weapons followed like shadows.
That night, the assassin guilds died.
In Khadmar, sleeping blades awoke to choking gas. Dream-leech smoke devoured thoughts first, then organs. Guildmasters bled from the eyes, trying to remember their own names as bone-blades pierced their backs.
In Vel-Kura, war-moths released from shadow-bombs tore through flesh and cloth. Their wings were razors. Their venom melted bone. A screaming girl fell to her knees, half her face sloughed off like wax, eyes still alive.
In Shahrat, Kael himself arrived.
The Obsidian Pavilion, high temple of the Dagger Moon Sect, was hosting a silent ritual when the wind changed.
Then the bodies began to fall.
Kael moved like something half-remembered, half-imagined. His Twilight Gale Codex technique rippled around him, shadows bending to his rhythm, wind trailing in silent arcs. His Whisper Veil Technique fractured his image, ghostlike afterimages trailed every movement, and none struck true. Blades passed through air. Eyes caught motion only where he had been.
One by one, throats opened. Eyes split sideways. No one saw Kael, not until the final blade passed through the guild patriarch's face, slicing off half his jaw.
"Stormguard…" the dying man croaked, half-cheek missing.
Kael didn't answer.
He was already gone.
And finally, in Mura Vale, Kael stood over a fallen figure, Tesh, once his friend, now a marked traitor.
Tesh's face was ruined. Blood leaked from three puncture wounds in his side. He raised one hand.
"You always were faster…"
Kael said nothing.
"They lied to me. I thought it was recon—"
"You knew who it was."
Kael's voice was calm. Detached.
"You should not have accepted the contract."
As the words settled, Kael released his Shadow Blade Domain.
Wind curved to him. Shadows tightened. Inside the radius, the world flickered. Perception twisted.
Then, Kael slid the Windskin Blade into Tesh's throat. Not a straight cut, but a slow, sawing whisper, just enough to open the spine and silence breath. The blade moved like it had no friction, like it wanted this.
Tesh gargled. Then fell.
By dawn, none remained.
The ledger of the assassin guilds once held three hundred and twenty-eight names.
After that night, it held zero.
Only one mark remained on the last page, written in cold ink beneath a sealed Gale sigil:
Stormblade Verdict – Executed Without Mercy.
The storm had whispered.
And the blade had obeyed.
There were no laments for those who bled in shadow. No tombs for killers who carved their names into silence. The assassins who dealt death with ritual and coin now tasted the ritual they had sown. One by one, the unseen fell to the unseen. No honor. No vengeance. Only erasure.
It was not justice.
It was a message.
A warning etched in blood across the Free Cities:
Do not raise your blade against Altan of the Gale.
By dawn, the message had spread.
Within days, the surviving guilds, those who did not accept the contract, began sending envoys. Not in defiance, but in offering. They came bearing scrolls of allegiance, seeking accord not in rebellion, but in recognition.
Kael, Warden of the Stormguard Assassins, did not speak at first. He did not threaten, nor demand submission.
He simply stood among the ashes.
And in silence, the guilds understood.
To deal death was one thing.
To strike at the storm was to be erased by it.