The gates of Val-Ghol groaned open like the jaws of an ancient beast, disgorging six thousand steel-shod boots into the dying twilight.
Aurelia rode at the vanguard on a warhorse armored in blackened iron, its breath pluming in the freezing mist. Overhead, the sky had ceased to resemble anything born of nature. The violet fissure cleaving the eastern clouds had swollen into a jagged maw, weeping ash that fell like frozen black snow. It tasted of copper and burned incense on the tongue, dissolving instantly against cold plate and bare skin.
To her right, Malakor rode a shadow-drake steed, its scales absorbing what little light remained in the world. He wore his full helm slung at his saddlebow, his sharp features carved from ruthless stone, eyes sweeping the ridges of the gorge. Every soldier behind them marched in suffocating silence; they had fought drakes, drowned sorcerers, and shattered legions, but the unnatural stillness settling over the valley made even the hardened marines of Lady Vespera grip their halberds until knuckles turned white.
"The air is thickening," Lady Vespera said, bringing her bay mount alongside Aurelia’s left flank. The admiral’s cloak was dusted with dark fallout. "The horses are going blind three miles out. It's the miasma from the rift."
"It's not just miasma," Aurelia replied, her voice taut.
Beneath her breastplate, the Five Shards were singing—a discordant, shrieking resonance that clawed at the lining of her skull. The First Shard burned with the chill of glacial tombs; the Third hissed like molten ore; the Fifth, the Astral Tear ripped from the Sunken Spire, thrummed with a hollow, hungry gravity. They were pulling her forward, demanding she run straight toward the maw.
Malakor’s gauntleted hand reached across the space between their mounts, his leather-clad fingers locking firmly around her wrist.
The blistering heat of his shadow-magic surged through the contact, cutting through the icy discord in her veins like a cauterizing brand. Aurelia exhaled a ragged breath, the blur in her vision clearing as his dark tether anchored her mind back to the waking world.
"Keep your eyes on the road, little sovereign," Malakor murmured, loud enough only for her and the wind to hear. His grip was unyielding, bruising in its intensity. "Let them scream inside your marrow. They answer to your will, not the other way around."
"They know what waits in the valley, Malakor," she said softly, turning her wrist within his grasp to intertwine her fingers with his. "They recognize their makers."
The path narrowed as they entered the defile leading to the Valley of Wailing Runes. Jagged obsidian pillars, remnants of a civilization obliterated ten thousand years ago, rose like crooked teeth from the frost-hardened earth. Carved into their weathered faces were ancient glyphs, now weeping the same dark, luminous ichor bleeding from the sky.
A sudden, high-pitched keening echoed down the gorge.
It did not sound like wind. It was the sound of millions of distant voices mourning in a language that predated the birth of stars.
Ahead, the first scouts of the vanguard halted.
"Riders!" shouted Lord Boros from fifty paces ahead, drawing his broadsword with a ringing scrape. "Hold the line! Formation!"
From the veil of descending black ash, silhouettes emerged. They did not ride horses; they glided inches above the frost-covered gravel. Tall, gaunt figures cloaked in tattered shrouds of anti-light, their faces smooth expanses of polished bone without eyes, mouths, or nostrils. In their hands, they held spears formed of pure, crystallized void.
"Hollowborn sentinels," Malakor growled, releasing her hand only to draw his massive, jagged great sword from its scabbard over his back. The dark steel ignited with black fire that hissed violently against the freezing air. "The vanguard of the First Throne."
Aurelia did not hesitate. Reaching deep into her core, she wrenched upon the tether binding the Five Shards.
A shockwave of blinding silver radiance erupted from her chest, blowing away the weeping ash in a hundred-pace circle and bathing the rocky defile in divine, ruthless luminescence. Her sword cleared the scabbard, singing with lethal majesty.
"Break them!" Aurelia roared, digging her spurs into her mount's flanks. "Slay the sentinels and clear the path to the rift!"