The white plains had become a sea of blood, the once-pristine snow stained crimson with the mangled remains of men and those monstrosities known as raksha. The corpses, human and beast alike, sprawled across the battlefield, sinking into the icy drifts. The winter wind howled in vain, struggling to carry away the stench of death. The battle raged on, but the crows had already gathered, circling in anticipation, waiting for the clash of steel to fade into silence.

Visker stood among the carnage, his white cloak soaked and heavy with blood—a banner of defeat draped over weary shoulders. His silver armor, once a symbol of defiance, bore the scars of relentless combat. His sword, chipped and battered, hung in his trembling hand. A deep gash carved across his left eye where his helm had been torn away. Blood smeared his face and body, a grotesque shroud that burned hotter than the icy winds of the North. The adrenaline coursing through his veins dulled the sting of his wounds, his heartbeat pounding out a rhythm louder than the chaos around him.

Frost clouded his labored breath as his hands quivered with exhaustion. He was too far gone to feel fear, too drained to care anymore. Thirteen grueling hours of battle had stripped away all but the barest will to stand. How many more hours could he endure? Ten? Twenty? It didn’t matter. He had marched out from those castle gates knowing he would die, prepared to meet his end with every swing of his blade. It was the burden of the white cloak. To wear it was to embrace the inevitability of sacrifice.

If only his father could see him now.

Summoning the last dregs of strength from deep within, Visker straightened, his voice a raspy whisper that somehow carried over the fray.

“Forward!”

The remaining 137 Armored men adorning the same white cloak drenched in red, their skin burned, eyes bloody, limbs missing, swords broken, charged against the hoard of thousands. When Visker suddenly felt a trickle of crystalized rain fall from the sky, he laughed. Hail was falling from the sky like a shower of glass; it must have been the goddesses’s tears. For she had to watch her children willingly rush into hell. But she had it wrong. Visker and the rest of the white cloaks were not rushing into hell. They were bringing hell with them.

The rashka were fast and strong.

The white cloaks were faster; and stronger.

A curtain of silver and white pushed back the hoard of black. A thousand raksha fell before a single white cloak. Visker’s sword, worn from the hours fighting, no longer sliced through the raksha. It ripped through them. Their wails, their cries, their blood. Visker bathed in it all, laughing while dancing along with his sword amongst the chaotic mixture of life and death. His lungs burned hotter than lava, his legs had long gone numb. His aura was thinner than paper. But all that mattered was that his heart still beat.

Amidst the battle, a white cloak was hung in the air. The rashka’s three eyes widened with its default predatory glint as its slimy and inhumanly long arms raised the white cloak further into the air. The victim slammed his fist into the raksha’s face over and over again but Visker saw a sneer curl onto the monster's lips before it stabbed at the white cloak's armor with its razor sharp knife-like talons. The raksha’s smirk faded and blood squirted from its sliced off arm, the severed flesh wiggled and squirmed as if fighting to survive but when Visker swiftly decapitated the raksha, the tendrils of flesh died with their owner.

“Don’t worry, comrade! Your children will be in safe hands!” Visker yelled to the fallen white cloak.

The man supported himself from a pool of his own blood like a demon back from hell. By the looks of him he shouldn’t even be able to talk but he had enough strength to bark, “Fuck you! I ain’t dead yet!”

Visker laughed and skipped back into the swarm of black where a flying raksha dove beak-first. Visker stepped to the side and chopped off its head like a guillotine. A beast raksha charged at Visker. He slammed a fist into its head, infusing what little aura he had, smashing a hole into the beast’s brain. Another flying raksha flanked him, dug its talons into his shoulder and quickly flew back into the air, taking with it pieces of Viskers skin. Visker could not afford to flinch at the pain, for another raksha charged at him from the front, ten more came from behind, twenty from the left, thirty from the right.

It took 378 raksha and fifteen hours of bloody battle, but Visker’s movements were finally becoming sluggish to the point he couldn't keep up. Layers of scars built onto his body as he lost the ability to hold his sword straight. The hail quickened. Visker’s mind was no longer in the battle. It was at home, with his wife and child. His annoying little brother and loving old mother. His life’s value went null the moment he joined the white cloaks, but they still had so much to live for. A talon finally ripped off his broken armor and the raksha slammed him onto the ground. He smelled the scent of that same old cheap perfume his wife always wore. Tears of blood slipped from eyes as he laid helplessly on the floor. A sneer curled onto his face as he glared at the raksha above. It took hundreds of these bastards to take down little ol him. This was it–an honorable death! He closed his eyes and gave one last wish. Please, Goddess of the Winter, protect my family, protect the North!

He tensed, preparing for the killing blow, but it never came. Instead, the snow flattened, the air became dense, the hail sprinted to the earth as if racing to stab the raksha infesting this pure and holy plain. When Viskle opened his eyes, the raksha was at his feet, face stuffed into the snow. It was immoble, but alive. Viskle fought against himself to stand, but a mysterious force hammered him onto the floor. He felt as if he suddenly weighed 100 times heavier. Was this the goddess? Did she answer his prayer?

No. Viskle’s eyes widened upon noticing it. The change in the air, the change in the raksha. Nothing moved, not even a flinch. An absolute authority over the battlefield. “This is…”

An Aura World!

A single seven foot tall man stepped into the jungle of corpses. His shoulders were moons, and his arms were boulders. His armor was torn off, his sword was sheathed. And despite being covered in blood, he had no wounds, and his white cloak was spotless. The world around him seemed to stop. He studied the battlefield, scanning the abundance of fallen cloaks with a sorrowful gaze. His boots stopped beside Viskle’s flat figure and only then was Viskle released from the pressure.

“Viskle Orlo,” the man said, his voice calm and deep. “Once a petty thief. Now an honorable member of the white cloaks.” The man knelt down, took out a vial of green liquid, and forced it down Viskels throat before setting him back down. Viskle felt an instant relief of pain and aches. “Rest now, honorable squire, you have done more than enough.” Viskle smiled upon seeing the man's face, it appeared he would get to live after all.

As the man visited each of the twelve remaining white cloaks, the pressure in the air got heavier, denser. And by the time he had healed the twelfth, the thousands of raksha could barely breathe, let alone stand.

“Dear raksha…” his anger could not be hidden behind his stoic expression. He pulled out his longsword, stabbed it into the snow, crossed hands on the tip of the hilt and looked out into the swarm of anxious, shivering raksha. “Seven hundred of my brethren have fallen on this battlefield. You creatures do not deserve the honor of killing any of them. Each one of their lives are worth 500 times any one of yours. And so I will be taking it back from you…” his eyes sharpen with a dangerous glare as his hands squeezed the handle of his sword. Visker gasped for air as his knees buckled under the pressure. Luckily for Viskle, the man's anger was not directed toward him.

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The raksha were not so lucky. Gradually, their bodies sank into the earth, creating small craters until their bodies couldn't handle it anymore and exploded at once. Like balloons, the raksha popped one by one, sprouting a confetti of blood at every death. Viskle’s jaw dropped; he couldn't count the exact number, but he knew in a short span of two minutes, this man had killed more raksha without even using his sword than he had in the battle. He had heard the rumors and whispers, but rumors of heroes were always exaggerated. At least that’s what he thought. Lord Vlad El Ironstone, The North's Titian.

Unfortunately, it seemed even Vlad could not keep his aura world active for long as it gradually died out. Freed from the mysterious pressure, the remaining raksha escaped from the mud. They had overcome one obstacle, but there was still one more. And it was in the shape of a very large human.

The raksha were an unintelligent species. Only the strongest of them could even speak at the level of a four year old child. But all of those slimy, shadowy figures had one thing. Instinct. The most fundamental aspect of every living thing. Even a wolf knows when it’s predator and when it’s prey. The raksha were prey.

After the hoard escaped further into the north, away from Vlad and the white cloaks, Viskle soaked in the silence. He thought he’d never feel the icy breeze again.

And then Vlad heaved an exhausted sigh and fell to knee.

“Lord!” Viskle and the other eleven white cloaks rushed to help, but Vlad waved them away.

“Not to worry. I have simply used far too much aura…” he stood up, using his sword as a crutch. “Some rest will do.”

“What now, lord?”

“We head back to Blighthold.”

…

The Great Wall reached for the skies, spanning 400 feet tall, 30 feet thick and 450 miles long. It created the region furthest north of The North known as the Red Curtain. Right behind it is Blighthold. The fortress was ancient and the second largest and strongest stronghold in the North. Older than the kingdom itself, created by the first builders. Yet, even such grandness wasn’t enough to completely keep out the great hoard of raksha.

The blood had long dried on Vlad’s torn clothing as he paced slowly on top of the wall, carrying a pained expression as he saw the scene before him. On the top of the wall, supposedly the safest place in Blighthold, the scent of death lingered. Crows nibbled on the corpses of white cloaks, stacked on top of each other like bricks. Some of them hung halfway off the edge, others still held onto their useless shields with looks of terror stuck on their face. Headless raksha was among the human corpses, their slimy substance spilled all over the men.

Vlad closed the eyes of a dead white cloak, took a deep breath and bit its bottom lip tightly. 1200 men. That was the biggest loss since he’s taken lordship over The North. If it had not been for Viskle and the others a lot more would have been lost. I must reward him when we get back.

Vlad gazed over the wall and past the endless plains into the snowy mountains. It was a graveyard of swords. The snow would bury his fallen comrades. The goddess would welcome them into the silver gates. He reached into his shirt, pulled out his necklace with the snowflake emblem and then said a silent prayer.

“You will be honored,” he said, speaking to the spirits of those courageous men.

The snow crunched behind him as a tall, aged man in silver armor and a white cloak and a young woman walked towards him. The woman's dress was soaked, her hair was a tangled mess and bags hung under eyes. But she didn’t let the fatigue make her forget proper etiquette as both she and the middle aged man knelt on the cold hard stone.

“M’lord!” They said in unison.

Vlad finally turned from the plains, glanced at his right hand man, and then shot a quick look to the young woman. Upon watching the poor slender woman shiver a few times, Vlad tore off his white cloak and covered her with it. Her eyes widened in surprise, but she took it with gratitude.

“Explain,” Vlad commanded, his tone clipped and unyielding.

”The woman has urgent news.”

“Urgent enough to bring her to the front lines?” Vlad raised an eyebrow.

The man paused. “She has nowhere else to go, m’lord.”

Vlad’s eyes met with the woman’s. Her beautiful blues quickly looked back at the ground; something about Vlad’s gaze created chills greater than the cold.

“Are you a scavenger?” Vlad asked the lady.

“N-no m’lord! I wouldn’t dare!”

Vlad studied her closely. No scavenger would tremble like that. She lacked the cunning for it. “Then why are you here?”

“I’m from Prey Village, m’lord,” she began, her voice trembling but earnest. “The men are trying to fight back, but they’re fishermen, not warriors. The children are starving. Scavengers are pillaging the village, raping the women, stealing the food!” Her voice rose with desperation, before she quickly caught herself. Bowing her head lower, she finished in a whisper, “M’lord.”

Vlad’s jaw tightened. “And what is Lord Snow doing?”

“He and his men are still fighting raksha along the wall,” she answered, her voice heavy with defeat.

I see. “Bronx,” Vlad said.

“Yes, lord.” The old man stood straight.

“Gather the men, tell them we're marching to Wolf Bay.”

“Umm…lord?”

“What?”

Bronx’s eyes met everything but Vlad’s. He fidget nervously with the hilt of his sword. “There is already someone heading to Brickstone…”

“If you are here and I’m here, who else has the authority to move the white cloaks?”

“They're not using the white cloaks, lord…” Bronx gulped before continuing. “It’s your brother, lord. Sir Vior.”

Vlad's head dropped and as he released a sigh. Bronx’s next words stuck the dagger further into his heart.

“He brought the Band of Fools with him.”

Recovering from the news, Vlad asked, “why is my foolish little brother heading into Wolf Bay?”

Bronx reached into his armor and took out a rolled up piece of parchment and handed it to Vlad before quickly backing away. On it was a letter:

Brother, brother, brother. I know you’re probably standing on that ridiculously tall wall right now, brooding over how you could have saved more of your precious white cloaks. But you focus far too much on what’s outside of the wall and not enough on what’s happening within. Even now as you ride out to save your men, scavengers are living their best life in Wolf Bay. Now, I know this little village is not our land nor is it our business who ravages it. But your heroism has inspired me. So I'll be taking charge to save the poor citizens of these great ol northern lands.

Vlad’s face squeezed together from confusion.

Hahahahaha! I’m laughing just thinking about the expression you're making right now. You probably actually thought I was there for the people. Nope! I just want to have some fun. But don’t worry, big bro! I’ll definitely beat the bad guys for ya! Hehehehe.

The note ended with a smiley face. Vior’s smiley face never meant anything good. Should I still bring the white cloaks? Vlad’s hands tightened on the parchment, fingers itching to tear it apart, though he settled for a slow exhale, forcing himself to let the message fly into the wind. Vior always knew just how to prod him.

He looked into the fortress from above and spotted no man standing with any hint of strength from. The place was a living cemetery. He sighed. It looked like he would have to rely on that fool.

“Lord?” The Bronx awaited further orders.

“Keep the scouts here. Let the rest get some rest at home. They’ve earned at least that much. And send that woman to the keep if she has no family. She can work as a maid for lady Helena.”

“Yes, lord.”