(A/N: Last chapter fixed)
The first roar shattered the sky.
It came not from a throat, but from the land itself—deep and ancient, like mountains weeping blood. The Oathbreakers had arrived, and they brought with them a hunger so vast it bent the horizon.
From the watchtower spires, the scouts shouted.
"Contact! Range three hundred!"
The beasts thundered out of Blackblood's edge—mana-twisted monstrosities with antlers like blackened spears and skin slick with rot. But they weren't leading the charge.
They were fleeing.
Behind them came the Oathbreakers.
Ten feet tall, long-limbed and wrong-boned, they did not run. They stalked, their pace deliberate, unhurried, as if the war was already won.
Skin pale as the moon, bodies inked in spirals of oaths they had once sworn and broken. Their eyes glowed faintly in their skulls, watching, reading, measuring.
Behind the wall, Ian raised a single hand. His blades were still sheathed.
"Not yet," he murmured.
