The southern march from Mor-Thal lasted five grueling days, the rolling vine-covered terraces of Val-Mora gradually giving way to decaying, water-logged peat and twisted groves of weeping willow. By the fifth twilight, the host of the Vanguard reached the edge of the world’s end: the threshold of the Sunken Marches.
Before them lay an impenetrable wall of sickly, luminescent grey fog—the Gloom-Shroud. It rose two hundred paces into the sky, blotting out the stars and casting the brackish water of the Black Mere into an oily, stagnant twilight. From within the mist drifted the discordant, mournful keening of water-callers and the distant, guttural thrashing of marsh leviathans.
The five thousand spears of Val-Roc halted in disciplined silence along the limestone bluffs overlooking the sunken causeway. Below them, where the ancient paved imperial road had once connected the eastern hills to the southern coast, there was only dark, churned water, drowned beneath ten cubits of floodwater.
Inside the forward command pavilion pitched atop the bluffs, the heavy canvas snapped against the damp, warm breeze rising from the bog.
Malakor stood over the iron brazier, his black plate reflecting the dancing embers. He had removed his pauldrons, revealing the thick cordage of muscle across his shoulders and neck. His eyes, dark as obsidian and flecked with embers of abyssal ether, were fixed on the wall of mist through the tent’s open flap.
"The scouts cannot pierce the shroud beyond fifty paces," General Kaelen reported, wiping condensation from his scarred cheek. "The fog rots compass needles and deadens sound. Two riders from the vanguard strayed into the shallows near the reed-beds an hour ago; only their severed saddles drifted back on the tide. Vespera’s venom-drakes are patrolling the submerged causeway."
"Then she is watching," Malakor rumbled, his voice dark and deliberate. "She waits for us to commit our vanguard into the mire so her skirmishers can drag our men beneath the black water."
"She will wait in vain," a clear, melodic voice sounded from the rear of the pavilion.
Aurelia stepped into the firelight. She was dressed in her midnight-blue war-tunic, trimmed in white fur, her long dark braids gathered with bands of silver star-iron. Since fusing with the Third Shard, her physical presence had taken on an ethereal, terrifying beauty. Her pale skin radiated a soft, crystalline luminescence, and her eyes held a steady, chilling glow of celestial silver that seemed to look through the mortal world.
Kaelen instinctively bowed his head in deference, stepping back toward the tent flap.
Malakor’s gaze locked onto her, the harsh, warlike tension in his jaw softening into that familiar, possessive hunger. He walked across the rugs, stopping until he towered over her, his large, calloused hand reaching out to wrap firmly around the side of her neck. His thumb stroked the curve of her jaw, feeling the crisp, crackling ether beneath her soft skin.
"Can you shatter the shroud, Aurelia?" he asked in a low, husky rumble, his breath ghosting hot across her forehead. "Or will it poison your frost?"
Aurelia looked up at him, her lips curling into a wicked, confident curve. She raised her hand, placing her palm against the warm steel over his heart, feeling the steady, rhythmic roar of his abyssal wellspring.
"Her shroud is made of stagnant water and decaying mist, Malakor," Aurelia whispered, her voice dropping into a lethal purr. "It does not poison me. It feeds me."
She stepped past him to the edge of the open pavilion, gazing out over the vast, drowned basin. She closed her eyes for a heartbeat, drawing upon the unified celestial core within her chest. A silver halo of light bloomed around her silhouette, the air inside the pavilion suddenly dropping ten degrees in temperature.
"Tomorrow at dawn, we do not march into her swamp," Aurelia declared, turning back to meet Malakor’s burning crimson eyes. "Tomorrow, I freeze the Black Mere from the bluffs to the coast. The causeway will become an avenue of diamond-hard ice three leagues wide. Her water-striders will have no water to glide upon, and her venom-drakes will be trapped beneath a ceiling of glaciers."
Malakor’s eyes flared with black fire. He closed the distance in a single stride, his arm hooking around her waist and hauling her flush against his chest with fierce, unyielding pride.
"And my five thousand spears will ride across the ice to her front door," Malakor growled, his lips descending onto hers in a bruising, possessive kiss that tasted of cedar, mist, and absolute dominion.
Aurelia gasped against his mouth, her arms tangling around his neck, matching his fierce hunger with an electric passion of her own as their powers melded in the quiet dark.
When he finally pulled away, his crimson gaze was alight with ruthless triumph. He looked over her shoulder at Kaelen, who stood frozen in awe at the entrance.
"You heard your queen, Kaelen," Malakor barked softly, his hand lingering firmly on Aurelia’s hip. "Sharpen the lances and grease the axles. At dawn... we ride across the frost."