Morning came boundless.
It's been a week since the tournament.
A white fog veiled the western ridges of Artherion, laying its cold hand across the ravines and crags surrounding the Bastion of Flame. It was said the fortress was unbreachable, a citadel carved into the side of Mount Larethor, the eternal fire mountain. Once, dragons had died here. Now, it stood like a crowned sentinel, unmoved and invincible.
But in its shadow, enemies stirred.
The tunnels of Delsar, the forgotten ruins beneath the Bastion, whispered again. Black-cloaked saboteurs crept through broken aqueducts and buried catacombs, torches dim, voices held tight between clenched teeth. They were Riftborn. Shadowforged. Raised by Saevan himself in vaults of frozen stone.
They were not here to conquer. They were here to undo.
At the head of the vanguard was Kaerix, a silent priest of shadows whose skin had been drained of all pigment, a face tattooed with runes that pulsed whenever light touched them. His dagger had no metal, only bone and curse. His eyes were hollow, unfeeling.
"Through here," he rasped, brushing aside a moss-choked iron grate. The path before them ascended into light. "Within the hour, we rise beneath the citadel's inner wall."
Beside him, one of the younger infiltrators hesitated. "And if the legends are true? If the fire within is awake?"
Kaerix turned slowly. "Then we burn."
The saboteurs pressed forward, vanishing into the mountain's underbelly.
Above, the defenders of the Bastion stood watch.
General Vaelen Daryth, known to many as the Flame-Warden of Artherion, walked the upper battlements with a hawk's grace and a prophet's silence. His armor shimmered, not with steel, but dragon-forged brass etched with divine runes. His sword, Starbrand, had not been drawn in thirty years. He hoped not to draw it today.
The Bastion's towers pierced the sky like titanic spears, their pyres burning day and night, fueled by the holy flame beneath the keep. Couriers moved swiftly along the walls, relaying orders, maintaining formations. The soldiers were steady. Trained. Proud.
And watched.
In the distance, hidden beneath a veil of mirage and fog, sat Dravenguard's forward encampments. They were positioned to appear chaotic, makeshift. A trick.
But Vaelen had fought too many wars to be fooled.
"High Marshal," said a captain beside him, "report from the outer sentries. No movement from the ridge yet. But the birds are quiet."
"The birds know when death walks," Vaelen said. "Triple the watch at the west gate. Keep your lanterns high, and your steel blessed."
The captain bowed and departed. Vaelen turned to face the eastern sky, clear, pale gold with streaks of crimson.
He whispered beneath his breath, "My King… the storm begins."
It began with silence.
A tremor passed through the lowest halls of the Bastion, too soft to be noticed by most, too precise to be natural. The infiltrators had reached the inner sanctum. They moved like phantoms now, slaying guards in the dark, planting seals of destruction drawn in daemon script.
Kaerix knelt at the heart of the fire chamber. Before him stood the Pillar of Warding, a massive crystal spire that pulsed with inner flame, the very soul of the Bastion. It was Elyrion's design, ancient beyond reckoning. It was what made the fortress invincible.
He reached toward it.
His fingers burned.
The glyphs on his skin flared.
Then exploded.
The chamber lit up with sudden, blinding light. The runes on the floor rejected him, not with fire, but with truth.
Kaerix screamed.
Above, the towers trembled. A bell tolled once, then shattered into shards of silver flame.
In the command chamber, General Vaelen felt it.
He did not wait for alarms. He did not wait for messengers.
He drew Starbrand.
And the Bastion woke.
All across the fortress, light erupted. Holy fire poured from the torches, no longer orange, but white-gold and furious. The skies above split open, revealing not clouds, but sigils. Celestial marks of King Elyrion's divine will.
The soldiers felt it.
Strength unlike anything they'd known.
Their blades gleamed. Their eyes burned with righteous clarity. Traitors among them, those hidden, planted by Saevan's earlier work, burst into black flame, their true allegiances exposed and destroyed.
And then...
The inner chamber exploded outward.
Not in ruin, but in resurgence. The fire sealed the tunnels. The infiltrators were burned into vapor. Kaerix's screams echoed for a hundred miles.
Those who survived crawled from cracks, wailing. And were met by the Paladins of the Flame, descending in glowing armor, wings of ember and voice like thunder.
The Bastion had not fallen.
It had awoken.
Far away, in the war camp of Dravenguard, Saevan watched through an obsidian mirror.
He said nothing as Kaerix's soul was consumed.
Beside him, Prince Alaric growled. "What happened?"
"They reached the fire," Saevan said calmly.
"And?"
"They met its master."
Alaric turned. "You said the Bastion would be ours by dawn."
"I said the Bastion would be judged by dawn," Saevan replied. "And it was."
The prince was about to argue, but he saw Saevan's eyes.
And he fell silent.
Meanwhile, in the halls of Artherion's capital, King Elyrion stood alone on the eastern balcony of his throne room.
He said no word.
He raised no hand.
But the wind bent around him.
His gaze pierced the distance, seeing the fire rise from Mount Larethor.
Behind him, the Knight stood silent, golden cape unmoving, helm still aglow.
Elyrion's voice was a whisper that broke mountains.
"Let the purging begin."
Elsewhere, I had been walking the healing tents, tending to the wounded from earlier skirmishes. I paused when the fire flared across the distant mountains. I did not understand.
But in my chest, something thrummed. A quiet harmony I could not name.
Riven passed her in the corridor later that hour.
"You felt it?" he asked, his voice like thunder behind stone.
"Yes," I said. "But I don't know what it was."
Riven nodded once. "Judgment."
Night fell. The Bastion stood untouched.
The war had begun.
And not a single inch of Artherion had been lost.