The southern city of Balkan, smallest of the three major cities within the kingdom of Anglest. 

Middle of the night.

Atop the outer walls of the city, two dwarfs were having a fierce battle. Their livelihoods were on the line, as they fought one on one.

One of the dwarves brought his hand low to the ground, reaching out with his fingers provocatively as he picked up the weapon that would guarantee his victory.

“Put it down,” the other dwarf said as he stared into his eyes, deep into the reaches of his opponent's soul. “Put it down, let me see what it is.”

The dwarf smiled and let out a laugh, “Hah… You lose!” he yelled as he slammed his cards down onto the stone floor. “That makes three times in a row I’ve beaten you! HAH! Now hand it over,” he reached out his hand with a grabbing motion.

“Dammit! I can’t believe this, three months… of pay…” the brazen act the young dwarven soldier had earlier was nowhere to be found as he dropped his coin sack on the ground.

“Hah, that's what you get for tryna’ take me on. No one ‘round here can beat ol’ Trelby in a game of Iron King. Nobody,” he accentuated as he looked across the wall at his fellow soldiers, gauging if anyone else would play against him. “Heh, a bunch of wusses,” he let out quietly.

He grabbed the sack of coins he won and stood up, looking out into the pitch black wasteland that sat outside the city’s southern walls.

Nothing to do but gamble, he thought, damning his boring deployment there.

He grew up in Angleria, the capital city of the kingdom of Anglest, like most people but was sent to Balkan as a wall guard.

“Dead Balkan” was what some people called it because of how stagnant life was there.

Originally, the city was built as a deployment station meant to explore and record the wasteland that lay to the south of the city. Nearly a century of failed missions into those lands led to removed funding which turned Balkan into what it is today. 

Slums. Filth. Crime. 

If you were poor, this was the place you could escape to. The cost of living was much lower and basic labor jobs were the only thing supporting Balkan’s economy. The only good paying career was that of a soldier, spending your days atop walls guarding the city from nothing.

Still, nearly sixty thousand people inhabit the city. The population varies, but humans make up the vast majority. The gifted dwarves man the towering walls, but not many of the other races can be found here. The other races’ gifts, their magic, can earn them livings almost anywhere, and nobody would choose Balkan for that. Humans on the other hand…

After stuffing the coin purse into his waistband and calming from his victory, Trelby plopped down onto the cold stone floor placing his back against the wall. “Hey, who’s scouting tonight?” he asked towards the old dwarven soldier already sitting down.

“Scouting? Well… it's supposed to just be me and Wilmar, but I left it to him.”

“Wilmar? Bahaha, that's not good. I’m still laughin’ about that time he came screamin’ when he sensed a bear through the earth and thought it was an army. He set all of Balkan on alert ringin’ the warnin’ bell like that.”

“Heh, that made a good laugh. I try to be easy on the kid, but he’s just too hard of a worker for his own good,” the old soldier said as he brought a cigarette up to his mouth, lighting it with a dirty match. “You know though…” he breathed in, “Nights like these make me sick.”

“Huh?”

“...Listen,” he let out, exhaling smoke, “What do you hear?” 

Trelby paused at his suggestion, but decided to close his eyes and take in the sounds around him. All he could hear was the other soldiers talking and shuffling around. He opened his eyes and laughed, “It sounds like any other night, you sure your hearing ain't gone bad?”

The old soldier shook his head and brought a hand up to point towards the black abyss that laid outside the castle walls. The moon was nowhere to be found and only the torches on the walls provided a glimpse into the darkness beyond. Trelby stifled a laugh, thinking him crazy, when he realized something.

There was not a single sound.

No bugs. No owls. Not even the wind.

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Trelby stood up a little to look over the wall. He stared into the darkness and when he did, he felt like something stared back. This sent him flying back to his seat on the ground as he broke into a cold sweat.

The old soldier bursted out laughing.

“What?!” Trelby let out flustered, “Were you just makin’ fun of me?”

“No,” he laughed, before becoming somewhat serious, “No… I’m just glad I’m not the only one that feels that. Everyone else thinks I’m crazy. But lately, I feel like the darkness glares back at me. And yet, when I run my magic through the ground, sensing the earth, I get nothing.”

Trelby gulped as he brought his hand down to the floor. In an instant, he could see everything the earth touched in a hundred foot radius. He couldn’t see anything above ground, but if it was touching or below it, he could feel it.

He tried to direct his magic from sensing a circle around him to in front of him, and further, but he couldn’t do it. His head felt like it was splitting and he gasped for air as he nearly collapsed. The older soldier tried to help him but Trelby waved him off.

“Damnit…” Trelby said, between breaths, “I’m still not used to all this. I don’t know how those bastards back in the capital figured out this magic crap in only the few years since ‘God’ or whatever granted it to us. I can run a mean game of cards but I almost failed the artillery training. That’s probably why I’m in this dump to begin with...” 

Damnit, he said again as he kicked his feet out.

Trelby had never formally spoken with this old soldier before, so he tried to pass the time with idle talk to ease his mind.

While the rest of the guards might call these two paranoid for seeing something, they would be wrong for doing so. Something was staring back at them from the forest, only on nights of the new moon. 

It was death. 

And it straddled right outside the edge of their sensory range.

On moonless nights the creatures within the withering forest would move ever closer, watching the men on the walls. They were semi-intelligent beasts, magic users just like the dwarves, and they could feel the limit of the dwarven scouts’ range. They would come as close as they could, probing for weaknesses.

They were planning an invasion.

A massacre.

Targeted genocide.

For now, all for the sake of their higher goal, they would hold back their blood lust. They didn’t plan to attack tonight. 

But…

A certain dwarf forced their hand.

It was Wilmar, a young and hardworking dwarf that's been shafted onto scouting duty countless times. None of the other gifted dwarves wanted to sit on the wall night after night, concentrating endlessly to scout nothing with their magic. It was an exhausting job that none of these men were particularly great at so they made him take most of the shifts. 

However, he was improving steadily. 

Pouring his magic into sensing a circle around him was easy, any of the gifted dwarves could do it. It was like opening a gate and didn’t require any specific focus. But every night Wilmar was becoming more efficient. His range might extend by a foot or two before his next shift, pushing the beasts in the forest back inch by inch unknowingly.

His end goal was to change the shape of his sensory magic. If he could direct it only forwards, it would go much further than if he kept it in a circle around him. Unfortunately, the soldiers of Balkan were the bottom of the barrel. Many dwarves within the capital and other parts of the country could already do this and much more with their magic. But, because of the country’s disregard for Balkan, as it was not supposed to be under any immediate threat, their forces there were weak. 

In this very moment, Wilmar became the first soldier of Balkan to completely alter the shape of his sensory magic and direct it forward. Instead of the hundred foot radius that Trelby and most of the others could pull off, his range became shaped like a cone and shot forward as he grasped it for the first time.

He was able to see a thousand feet into the forest for a split second.

And he was horrified.

Because he was the scout, he was the closest person to the warning bell.

He shot around and placed his hand on the large iron bell, and was about to ring it with his magic, when the forest exploded.

It was like the depths of hell had been unleashed from the pitch black that extended before them.

The sky became littered with fire making it almost seem like daytime, before the wall was engulfed in flame.

An army in the thousands had been waiting deep within the woods. During these moonless nights, the smaller advance force would approach to try and learn more about Balkan. All of the creatures were under strict orders…

If they were ever discovered, they would begin their massacre.

They couldn’t afford to be spotted and lose the advantage of a surprise attack. For a split second, the creatures within the forest were caught off guard by the sudden wave of magic that flooded beneath their feet. But they knew what it was, and what they had to do because of it.

Winged creatures took to the skies as they assaulted the wall and flew past it in an instant. The wingless beasts took to climbing the wall with their brute strength. Many had four arms and it proved a simple task.

Normally, the entire stone wall was like an extension of the dwarves themselves. Anything made of earthen rock, ore, or refined metal, could be manipulated by any of the dwarves that were gifted magic. They could impose their will upon it as well as feel the changes to it. It should’ve been easy for the dwarves to fend off the creatures scaling their walls but the dwarves manning this side were almost all killed in the first volley of fire, mere seconds after Wilmar’s fateful discovery.

Most of them hadn’t even reacted by the time the wall became a smoldering remnant. It was a complete failure of the only force preventing these creatures from flooding the city. There were still thousands of soldiers within the city both dwarf and human, either on top of the walls or patrolling the interior, but they couldn’t keep the fight away from the people anymore. The chaos was only just beginning, and this was the start to something much larger than just Balkan.

This was a flame that would soon reach every corner of the known world.

It was the start of something truly macabre.