The war room of Blackridge had never felt colder.
The stone walls, carved from the ancient bedrock of the mountain, seemed to draw the warmth from the very bones of those within. Torches flickered in their iron sconces, casting long, dancing shadows over the faces of councilmen and strategists who sat frozen around the massive oaken table. Usually, this room was a cauldron of noise—quills scratching over parchment, armor clinking, voices sparring over tactics. But now, silence reigned, thick and absolute, as if sound itself had been swallowed by the dark.
Voss stood at the far end of the table, his silhouette sharp against the pale glow of the firelight. His hands were clasped tightly behind his back, knuckles pale beneath taut skin. His eyes were fixed on the map sprawled before him, a tapestry of parchment and ink, rivers of red thread marking the front lines, cold iron markers standing like tombstones over fallen towns. His mind wandered leagues away, tangled in a web of possibilities and failures, but each glance at the map felt like a tug on a noose, pulling him inexorably closer to an end he couldn’t yet see.
The city beyond these cold stone walls had been simmering with unease for days. Whispers wound through the narrow streets, coiling into shadows, nesting in the eaves. Gufran, the King of the Dead. His name was a chill wind, slipping through the cracks of every door. The severed head he’d sent wasn’t just a message—it was a promise. The undead were no longer a mindless plague, wandering and witless. Now, they were an army, and an army with a leader.
And now Blackridge was standing at the edge of the abyss of a war it had never prepared for.
It had never anticipated.
The council had already chosen their path: retaliation. A strike force was being assembled, a handful of warriors to slip through the dark and assault the fortress. But Voss saw through the thin veneer of strategy. This wasn’t a skirmish—it was a reckoning. The same old tactics, the same siege plans, would be nothing but a sword swung at shadows.
Behind him, voices murmured, an undercurrent of uncertainty beneath Rhygar’s booming commands. The Lord Regent’s voice rose and fell, speaking of supply lines and pincer movements, his words worn smooth by repetition. Voss had heard it all before, the same tired formulas applied to an equation that no longer made sense.
What he needed wasn’t on that map. It wasn’t in Rhygar’s droning or the parchment-strewn tables. What he needed was something more—something beyond the walls of Blackridge.
He needed allies.
---
The heavy doors to the war room groaned open, and the shadows stretched as if to welcome the figure that slipped into the chamber. Conversation ceased. Every head turned, and even the torches seemed to burn lower, their flames bending toward the draft that followed him in.
His silhouette was a cutout of darkness—tall, broad-shouldered, a figure etched in sharp lines and harder edges. Unlike the armored brutes of Blackridge, this man wore light, reinforced leather studded with bone shards and mementos from hunts long past. His armor whispered as he moved, a soft scrape of leather and bone, a sound that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. At his side hung a sword, its hilt polished to a dull sheen by the wear of countless battles.
He had the look of a man who had walked through nightmares and made them bleed. The kind of man who knew what monsters hid beyond the torchlight—and what it took to kill them.
Voss didn’t need to see his face to know who it was. There was a hum in the air, a quiet static, the subtle prickle of magic just beneath the skin. A hunter’s aura—familiar, dangerous, unmistakable.
Kael Thorne.
His name had drifted through the campfires of distant cities, through the smoky halls of Blackridge, and on the lips of survivors who spoke of him like a myth. A hunter from Ashenhold, Kael had once stood alongside Voss on the jagged edge of the borderlands. They had tracked the restless dead, burned witches at the stake, and peered into the maw of horrors that most men couldn’t even name.
Kael’s eyes, a shade too pale, met Voss’s. His voice, smooth with a gravelly undertone, sliced through the silence.
“I heard the rumors.”
Voss didn’t answer right away. The truth hung between them, heavy and unspoken. There was no room for pleasantries, no need for them. They were past that, deep in the territory where only honesty and iron mattered.
“I’m guessing you didn’t just come to trade stories.” Voss’s voice was sharp, each word a blade. “Gufran has made his move. The undead aren’t just wandering the wastes. They’re organized. They have a leader.”
Kael’s expression remained a mask, as unreadable as stone. “I’ve hunted the dead all my life, and I have never faced something like this before."
He moved deeper into the room, the council’s eyes tracking him. Some looked at him with suspicion, others with the uneasy reverence one might show a wolf that had wandered into a feast. He didn’t acknowledge them. His gaze was fixed on the map sprawled across the table, his fingers brushing over the worn parchment.
“It’s just like the ancient texts said,” he murmured.
“And you think you can help?” Voss asked. His voice was low, but beneath the even tone was a thread of something else—curiosity, perhaps. Or hope.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
Kael didn’t look up. “I didn’t come just for Gufran’s head, Voss. I came because you need more than steel. You need someone who knows what’s coming."
He paused, and the room seemed to lean into his silence. “And ofcourse, I didn't come alone. Many from Ashenhold have seen the signs. We know this is bigger than any one city.”
Voss’s brow lifted, a faint ripple of surprise breaking through his stoicism. “You brought others?”
“A few,” Kael said, with a villainous grin on his face. “Not an army, but the kind who can turn the tide-Witchs. Ashenhold isn’t what it used to be. We’ve learned to survive. But we’re tired of just surviving.”
His eyes rose to meet Voss’s, and in them burned a quiet, unyielding flame. “We’re here to win.”
In the heavy silence that followed, the councilmen seemed to shrink, their grand strategies and tired plans curling up like ash in the face of something raw and real. Voss let the moment breathe, the weight of it settling over the room.
Then, slowly, he nodded. “Then let’s make sure we do.”
---
The air in the room shifted—a subtle, electric change. It was as if a storm had broken, and in the wake of thunder, there was breath. The councilmen, hunched and hollow-eyed from days of fruitless debate, began to stir. A murmur rolled through them, soft but undeniable, as Kael’s words sank into the stone and marrow of the chamber.
Here stood a man from myth, a legend who had walked the ash-choked streets of Ashenhold and lived to tell the tale. And now, he was here, not as a tale told over ale, but as flesh and blood, offering more than just words. Offering a path through the dark.
Kael’s presence filled the room, his voice threading through the quiet like steel through cloth. “We need more than just warriors. We need more than just a plan." His eyes swept over the council, the weight of his gaze forcing even the proudest among them to listen "Like it or not, We need magic and we need to strike before Gufran digs his roots too deep.”
A scoff cut through the thin veil of approval. Rhygar, the Lord Regent, straightened in his chair, his fingers tapping a sharp, restless rhythm against the table’s edge. His voice emerged tight and edged, like a blade half-drawn. “But why come here?” His eyes narrowed, suspicion sharpening every word. “Why not go after him yourself? If you are so confident? Or are you expecting us to clean up your mess?”
The room shifted, the initial spark of hope dampened by old prejudices and hard-earned caution. Faces turned toward Kael with distrust, the weight of it as palpable as the stone walls around them. Blackridge had bled too often at the hands of magic and its wielders—charms turned to poison, whispers turned to ash. To them, Kael was no savior. He was just another threat.
“You say we need magic,” another voice called out—a grizzled captain with an eye as milky as his knuckles were white against the wood of his chair. “But the last time Blackridge let witches through its gates, we lost a hundred men to curses. What makes you different?”
Kael’s expression flattened. The charm he had worn as a mask cracked and fell away, leaving nothing but the hard, unvarnished truth beneath. He stood at the edge of the council’s distrust and did not flinch.
“What makes me different? You say?” His voice was steady, but there was a blade in it, honed and waiting. “Because I’m the only one who gave enough fucks to show up.”
The room bristled, a ripple of indignation running through the council. Kael didn’t give them a chance to push back. He took a step forward, his presence swallowing the space between them.
“Do you really think you have options?” His voice rose, sharp and cold. “Look around you. Your city is choking on fear. Your warriors-scared. You think iron and bravado will save you from what’s coming?”
He turned, his gaze dragging over every hardened face, the torches casting his shadow long and sharp against the walls. “Gufran has an army. Not a rabble of rotting corpses—an army. They follow orders. They build, they march, they plan. And if you march out there with nothing but steel and prayers, you will die.”
"Now that's a sight I’d pay to see," Kael said, a grin cutting across his face.
Rhygar’s lips pulled back into a sneer. “And we should just take your word for it? Trust the witches you dragged to our gates?”
Kael’s eyes narrowed, a dangerous light in them. “You don’t have to trust me. I don’t care if you do.” He spread his arms, the gesture as much a challenge as it was an invitation. “But tell me this—are you confident in facing Gufran alone? Confident that your men are ready to fight the kind of war he’s bringing to your doorstep?”
Silence. Thick and suffocating. The councilmen exchanged glances, each searching the other for an answer none of them had.
Kael’s voice dropped, every word falling like stone. “You can hate witches. You can hate me. But hatred isn’t a plan. And hatered won’t hold the walls when Gufran’s army comes.”
Voss stepped into the silence, his expression hard, but his eyes alive with a quiet fire. “We’ll take your help, Kael. But make no mistake—the Blackridge army is not led by witches or hunters. We fight on our terms.”
Kael’s expression didn’t soften, but there was a shift—something like understanding. “Fine. Fight on your terms. But if you want to win, you’ll need more than swords.”
He let the weight of his words settle, the reality of their position wrapping around them like chains. “I’m not here to save you. I’m here because I was curious.”
A slow, sharp smile tugged at his lips. “And you ought to thank whatever gods you pray to for that—because I’m the only shot you’ve got.”
---
Over the next few hours, Voss and Kael began to shape the bones of a plan. The council, their pride worn thin by desperation, finally agreed to a joint operation. Blackridge’s soldiers—disciplined, iron-clad, and wary—would march alongside Kael’s ragtag band of hunters, witches, and mercenaries. It was an alliance stitched together by necessity, the seams rough and uneven, but it would hold. It had to.
The strategy hinged on intelligence. Steel alone would not win this war. They needed to know what Gufran wanted—what dark purpose guided his undead army and where his next strike would fall. Scouts would be sent to follow the trails of bone and ash, and Kael’s witches would scry through water and flame, their whispered spells probing the shadows for truth, probing for any weakness.
As Voss moved among his commanders, he felt the weight of the task settling into his bones. This was not a battle they could win with familiar tactics. They would have to wield magic as a weapon—not as a crutch, but as a blade and adaptation would be their armor.
Kael had brought something more than experience. He had brought a sliver of hope, sharp and bright enough to cut through the dark.
---
As Kael took his leave to rally his forces, Voss remained in the war room, the map laid bare before him. Red ink marked the borders, lines like old wounds across the parchment. Blackridge’s line was a thin stroke of hope amid a sea of the unknown. Beyond it lay Gufran’s shadow—an enemy they had only just begun to understand.
But now, the confusion had lifted. The path was clear.
They would march.
And with Kael’s help, Blackridge would finally peel back the layers of mystery surrounding their true enemy. They would drag Gufran’s secrets into the light, strip him of his plans, and face him not as victims but as hunters.
Voss turned his back on the map, his silhouette sharp against the torchlight. Determination burned in his eyes—a flame that no storm could snuff out.
“We march at dawn.”
The hunt for Gufran had begun.