Nerathil clawed and swarmed like living rot. Dreadblades swung fused greatswords with blunt, cruel arcs. Ironmaw hulks lunged with grinding jaws. The Stormguard answered in a hard, practiced rhythm. Nyzekh moved with the Void Domain coiling at his back, consuming space with absence and leaving slivers of nothing where enemies had been. Bruga fought like a volcanic tide, Pyrebite singing as it split corrupted bone. Seventy five Stormguard stood with them, round shields locked, falcatas and hatchets bright with sigil fire. Around them the Red Realm hissed and bled, a jagged horizon of serrated rock and boiling haze.
They were deep in the fight when the artifact detonated. One instant the clash of steel and the cries of men filled the air. The next a white violet inferno blossomed from the city gate and ran outward with the speed of a sunburst. The world convulsed under the blast. Stone became liquid. The sky flared like a wound opened to light.
Nyzekh felt it first as pressure, a line of force pushing the air before the light arrived. He barked a single command. "Shields, brace!"
Round shields slammed up, runes and sigils flared for the coming wave. Bruga wrapped molten qi around his own barrier until it glowed like forged amber. Men and women hunched beneath the shield wall, teeth clenched against heat that tasted of metal and old blood.
The leading edge struck like a fist. Ten were not fast enough. The light washed over them and memory recorded the moment in a terrible slow clarity. Armor blistered and ruptured. Flesh steamed and came away in blackened ribbons. For a breath silhouettes dissolved into ash and wind. Those ten were gone, scattered into the red gust like paper.
Nyzekh watched the wave bending around shields and peeling at wards. He understood it would not stop with those lost. He stepped forward, calm as absence, and let the Void Domain unfurl.
"Void Domain," he said.
The air broke open in front of him. A pocket of nothingness yawned, a wound of absence that swallowed part of the advancing blaze with a sound like cloth tearing. For a long, silent breath the world held. The edge of the wave ceased to be where the Void Domain had eaten it. Still, the blast's remainder hammered the line. Heat seared mail and seamed skin. The ground bucked like a trapped beast. Men screamed. Breath came ragged and burned like molten iron.
When the light finally bled away, sixty five remained standing. Shields were warped into strange curves. Faces looked like charcoal masks. Bruga's mantle hung in tatters. One arm was scorched down to bone. Nyzekh's Nullmantle Carapace was smeared with slag but had held. They lowered shields with hands that shook and lungs that tasted of ash.
Around them the city lay undone. Towers were sheared. Walls folded into molten coils. Streets ran with glass. Violet embers crawled hungrily along broken sigils. The air tasted of metal and rot. Steam hissed where flesh met stone. The crater smoked beneath a blood red sky.
Nyzekh moved down the line, methodical and spare. He checked breath and pulse, marked small signs that meant a man might still rise. He touched shoulders and forearms, felt tremors of life return, and noted the places the Void Domain had burned to absence and the places the blast had hollowed. He counted with a look and a nod because counts kept order from fraying into despair.
"Fall back to the gate," he ordered, voice flat with the weight of command.
They retreated in the careful cadence of the trained, boots crunching on glassed stone. The Red Realm's ridges loomed like teeth. Behind them the crater smoked. Hearts beat like dragged drums inside battered chests.
Relief rose when the obsidian arch of the dimension gate came into view. The portal might still hold. They had a chance.
Relief died the moment they reached it. Where the portal should have shimmered with fold and seam there was now only a perfect sheet of black glass, absolute and cool, reflecting nothing but the ruin. No glyphs moved. No doorway yawned. The surface swallowed light.
Bruga struck it with molten qi. The heat vanished into the stone like a knife into water. The glass did not warp. It offered nothing back.
"The blast sealed it," Bruga said, voice raw.
Nyzekh looked at the survivors like a man reading a map of exhaustion and injury. "We are cut off," he said. "We hide in the mountains. We plan from there. First, we secure ourselves. Food. Shelter. Wards. We will not die in the open."
They climbed until the air thinned and the jagged teeth of the ridge cut the red sky into ragged silhouettes. The route up had been a crawl of hands and boots, slipping over glassed stone and threading between blackened outcrops. When the line finally crested, a narrow cleft opened like a throat in the mountain face. It gave them shelter and sight.
Nyzekh chose the place at once. A ledge carved into the lee of a great basalt tooth offered a view down into the ruined plaza and the obsidian pane, and it kept them hidden from casual sight. The wind there bent around the rock and carried scent away from the ridge. From the ledge they could watch the city, the melted crater, the black glass, and the ridges that ringed the Red Realm. They named it Black Tooth Overlook without ceremony and settled into its shadow.
They moved with the precise slowness of men and women who had lived through sudden endings. The wounded were eased down first. Packs were unslung and opened. The small dimension rations were unfurled into cups that warmed with a single snap and a breath. Bandages were tied and re-tied around scorched arms. Nyzekh walked the line and cataloged their state with quiet efficiency. Sixty five alive. Fourteen badly burned. Nine with shattered limbs. Two with concussions that would need watch. He wrote no number lists aloud. He marked needs and set priorities.
The survivors were arranged and known by role and count. Nyzekh, Virak'tai Warden, held command. Bruga, Skarnulf Warden, anchored the perimeter. Stormguard, Null element, numbered thirty five. Stormguard, Skarnulf clansmen, numbered twelve and included Bruga. Stormguard, Virak'tai, numbered ten and included Nyzekh. Stormcasters, warmages, numbered five, four flame users and one earth and fire hybrid. Hospitalier Stormguard medics numbered three. The Virak'tai were the scouts by habit and by trade. The Stonehide Kin remained as waking sentries, spectral fur bristling like storm grass and smelling faintly of earth and frost.
Bruga set to work on the perimeter. He tore plates and scrap into hearth forms and lit coals with ember-sparks. He built quick braziers that would not smoke much and would not attract attention. From emberstone shavings and wicking cloth they made hot rations for the injured. His voice was a low rumble as he organized who would stand watch and who would rest. Where his hands could not mend, he gave orders so others could.
Concealment was the first task. Warmages draped sigil-veils across low shrubs and set damp wards that bent light into the rocks. Wardruids sank roots into cracks and fed them with the last of their energy so that the earth itself would hold a whisper of protection. The warmages fixed three lines of early warning: concealed watchers on ridge mouths, tethered probes that would signal with a single flare, and a band of scouts to slip down into gullies should movement be sought.
Nyzekh drew a small circle in the black dirt with the tip of his blade. He placed a single ward crystal at its heart and pressed his palm to stone until heat bled through his skin. The Void Domain hummed like a sleeping thing. He keyed the crystal with a simple pattern so it would only answer to their own cadence. The crystal would sound a silent alarm if anything tried to draw near along the same resonance.
They took bearings next. From the ledge they could see the obsidian pane like a blank pupil set into the plaza. It reflected nothing but ruin and distance. Beyond it the Red Realm spread in jagged teeth and molten scars. Nyzekh shaded his eyes and pointed. "Three ridgelines to the north are clear." He tapped his chin. "A gully at the east mouth might shelter a patrol if we need to move unseen. The south pass is open only for short bursts. The west ridge falls away into burned marsh. Mark that, avoid it at night."
Bruga spat and grinned with the sharpness of a man glad to still be able to spit. "We make a ring here. Two watches on the ridge mouths. Two men to feed and tend the wounded each watch. Warmages stay ready. If the glass blinks, we know at once whether it is the gate or a trick."
They arranged the wounded into a shallow shelter under the overhang. Yezari's frost wards, woven into the medicae earlier, were tightened by the Hospitaliers with gentle fingers. Men breathed easier inside that circle. The scent of soot and iron became small, human things again: hot broth, bandage salve, the faint, comforting smell of mended leather.
Nyzekh called the Virak'tai scouts together. "Pair off," Nyzekh said, voice clipped, "take the ridgelines and the west gully, map sightlines and cover, locate water and choke points and routes of retreat, note any Nerathil camps, tracks, sigil echoes or ward residue, and find a fallback site that offers better concealment, defensible approaches, and anchor points for our warmage wards; return with markers and sketches." The four dark elves melted along the rock like dusk. Their movements were quiet and precise, a language of footfalls and wind that the others, raised in open fields, could not match.
Night came in a shadow not like home night but like a painted sheet pulled over the world. The red sky dimmed to a bruise. Wards of pale witchlight hung in the air like motes of dust, hidden from unmarked eyes and visible only to the casters who set them. Their glow clung close to the stone, marking the camp's bounds without betraying its presence to the land beyond. Round shields leaned against stones, falcatas at hand. The Stonehide Kin lay along the slope like silent mastiffs, broad heads resting on spectral paws as if guarding a nursery.
They planned in low voices. Not the high, arrogant plans of command in comfort but the urgent, blunt charts of men who must survive until the next choice could be made. Nyzekh spoke to the warmages in short, precise commands. "Each of you will take turns setting detection wards at the gate. Make sure they signal if it stirs or opens again." He turned to the Stormguard officer. "Assign two guards to escort each mage on their rotation."
Nyzekh then did something that drew a small, weary laugh from the men and women about him. He asked, "Who here has skills other than killing?"
It should have been a light moment, but in this place and time it landed as something practical and necessary. Hands went up, hesitant at first, then with more confidence.
"A blacksmith," one Skarnulf said, voice like flint."I mend leather and straps," another offered."Warmage Third," she said. "I've worked with sigils and runes in engine rooms before the front. I know rune and sigil craft and protective bindings. Paired with a blacksmith, I can etch runes onto metal or anchors to make wards stronger and more stable."
Nyzekh nodded, letting each skill find its place where it would be most needed. "Good. We put all of it to use. Tarrien, you'll work with the warmages to properly inscribe and anchor the wards and probes."
They unpacked the small dimension packs, the compact satchels that unfurled into a week of food when opened. Rations steamed in small cups. Heat bandages were placed where needed. Ward crystals were checked. Each pack had the basics for survival: a week of food, spare flints, a folded tent panel, a strip of quick-seal canvas, a few simple sigil-pricks for emergencies. They were not luxuries, but they would keep them hidden, fed, and warded for the immediate future.
Nyzekh reached into his pack and drew out his ration, small cubes of compressed grain and dried meat. He poured a little water from a collapsible skin, letting the steam curl up in the chill wind. With the simple meal before him, he lowered himself onto the edge of the ledge, legs dangling over the drop, the weight of the world pressing lightly on his shoulders. He ate in quiet, measured bites, eyes tracing the ridges and chasms below, noting the light glinting off glassed stone and the distant scars of the city's ruin.
He lingered at the ledge, scanning the jagged horizon with slow, deliberate breaths. No movement. No heat shimmer of an approaching host. Only the distant glimmer of the molten crater and the low, restless hum of the Red Realm itself. It was neither victory nor safety, only a brief pause to catch breath, mend wounds, and sharpen steel. They would need all three.
Nyzekh sat in the shadow of a jagged outcrop, eyes sweeping the Red Realm stretched in severe grandeur. A sky of molten crimson churned above, streaked with black and violet clouds that rolled like smoke with intent. Mountains clawed upward into the dim light, their glassy slopes catching the sullen glow of magma rivers threading the valleys below. Sulfur and ash rode every breath of wind, seeping into the seams of armor and the taste of the tongue.
Between the ridges yawned deep chasms, their depths exhaling heat, while the shattered remains of an ancient civilization lay scattered across the land. Temples were broken like old teeth, statues sank beneath creeping rot, and plazas of black tile were veined with faintly pulsing sigils. Lightning tore the sky in jagged forks of red-gold, briefly revealing the skeletal frames of titanic beasts whose bones had fused with the cliffs. The realm seemed to watch in silence, its vastness alive with slow, unsettling shifts.
Bootsteps scraped against stone. Bruga came to stand beside him, emberlight guttering faintly along the seams of his armor. His eyes followed the landscape, jaw set.
"So," Bruga said quietly, "this is our new home?"
Nyzekh's gaze stayed on the horizon. "The Master will find a way," he said at last, voice steady. "But we cannot wait on hope alone. Somewhere in this realm, there may be another gate, one still open, one that leads us home."
Bruga gave a short grunt, neither assent nor refusal. They stood together in the high silence, the Red Realm stretching before them, harsh, yes, but in its own way, terrible and beautiful. Above, red-gold lightning split the heavens, casting their figures in stark relief against the endless, burning sky.