Chapter 1: The Burning Border
The wind moaned like a dying beast across the Whispering Scar. It carried with it the stench of scorched stone and decaying magic a taint so thick it stuck to the skin like ash. Commander Seralyn Virellia stood at the edge of a jagged ridge, her long silver cloak fluttering around her armored legs, her narrowed violet eyes sweeping across the ravaged expanse below.
What once was lush borderland had become a wasteland. The trees were blackened husks, their twisted trunks hollowed and leaking silvery sap like blood. Cracks in the earth shimmered with unstable leyfire. The ground breathed in pulses alive with something that should have been long dead.
Seralyn adjusted the grip on her twin blades, both sheathed at her back. Her troops five elite Elven Sentinels, silent and deadly stood in formation behind her.
"This wasn't here last moon," Captain Rhayen muttered, his voice low. "The scar's spreading. Fast."
"No reports came from the border forts," Seralyn said, her voice flat, focused. "That means either they're dead, or they never saw it coming."
The faint hum of corrupted magic prickled across her skin, like a thousand insects crawling under her armor.
Seralyn hated this place.
She hated the way the ley-lines twisted here. The way spells misfired. The way her instincts whispered of ambush. She hated the fact that even the birds wouldn't fly near the Whispering Scar anymore.
And more than anything, she hated that she could feel her here.
Kaela Morwyn.
The Ashblade Witch.
The half-demon sorceress who'd burned Seralyn's outpost to ash two years ago and carved a path of blood through the Dominion's eastern flanks. She'd vanished afterward like smoke, eluding every trap set for her. Rumors had her raising ghosts in the north, consorting with beasts in the deep marshes, or worse walking among the human courts in disguise.
Seralyn never believed rumors. But she felt her.
"Form a silent spread," she ordered, crouching low. "Fan out along the ridge. Eyes sharp. If the Ashblade's here…"
"She won't leave alive," Rhayen said with grim satisfaction.
They moved like shadows blending into the crags and ruined stone, light armor muffled, runes dimmed. Seralyn descended first, boots crunching on dry obsidian shards. Her fingers brushed the pommel of her blade, and it pulsed in response. The air thickened as they moved deeper into the ruins old stone walls leaning like corpses, the remnants of a pre-Fall village long consumed by war.
It wasn't the silence that set Seralyn on edge. It was the whispers.
Faint. Faint as breath. But real.
Words she couldn't understand. Language twisted into syllables her mind refused to grasp. It crawled into her ears and itched beneath her skin.
And then light.
A pulse of red-glow magic surged from deeper within the ruin, echoing off the broken stone like a heartbeat.
Seralyn raised a clenched fist. Her unit froze.
She crept toward the source.
She found her in the heart of the ruin.
Kaela Morwyn.
The witch stood at the center of a half-collapsed plaza, her back to them, her dark cloak billowing with the raw power swirling around her. Her hands moved with sharp, deliberate grace, etching glowing runes in the air. Her magic wasn't golden or pure like elven energy it was dark crimson, laced with shadows, and pulsing with a heartbeat not her own.
Seralyn saw the ritual circle complex, layered, illegal. Bones arranged in spirals. Blood dripping from obsidian knives floating midair. Candles burning upside-down, flames flickering against gravity.
And Kaela's voice low, sultry, and sharp chanting in the old tongue of the dead.
"Kaela Morwyn," Seralyn barked, stepping into the open with her blade drawn. "By the decree of the Elven Dominion and the Divine Accord, you are under arrest for sorcery, blood rites, and treason."
Kaela didn't stop chanting.
Her hands moved faster.
"I said stand down!"
Still nothing.
Seralyn's patience snapped. She raised her hand and released a focused burst of wind magic. The arc shot through the air like a blade, cutting through the edge of the circle. Runes flared and flickered.
Kaela's chant broke.
Slowly, she turned around.
And smiled.
That smile. Gods, that wicked, knowing smirk.
"Commander Virellia," Kaela purred. "You always know how to ruin a girl's mood."
Seralyn didn't lower her blade. "Step out of the circle. Now."
Kaela tilted her head, dark hair cascading down her shoulder. Her eyes were molten gold inhuman, unreadable. "You're just in time. It's almost ready."
"What did you summon?"
"A memory," Kaela said with a soft laugh. "A very old one. One the Elves tried very hard to bury."
The earth beneath them cracked.
The sigils flared blood-red. The bones began to rise, one by one, assembling like puppets strung by unseen hands.
"Too late," Kaela whispered. "They're already awake."
Seralyn took a step back, eyes narrowing. "What have you done?"
Kaela raised her hand and the dead screamed.
From the shattered ground, figures clawed upward. Not zombies. Not ghouls. These were ancient soldiers, wrapped in ceremonial armor older than the Dominion itself, their hollow sockets glowing with crimson fire. Their mouths opened, and the same whispers that haunted the wind poured from them like poison.
Seralyn's unit emerged from the shadows, forming a defensive circle.
"Undead!" Rhayen shouted.
Seralyn's blades ignited with windfire.
Kaela's grin widened. "Careful, Commander. Cut too deeply, and they might remember how to kill you."
"You've crossed a line, witch," Seralyn hissed, "and you won't walk away this time."
Kaela stepped back into the circle, her hands weaving fire.
"Oh, darling," she said, eyes blazing. "I didn't walk into your trap."
The runes pulsed beneath her.
"I brought you into mine."
And the dead lunged.