Dust swirled in the dim light of morning as Jareth stood atop the fractured ridge, overlooking the remnants of Fort Graven one of the last surviving Black outposts in Obsidian Vale. The fort's walls were scorched, its sigils half-melted from arcane fire. Smoke still lingered in the air.
Jareth's jaw tightened. He hadn't even officially claimed his domain, and already enemies moved against him.
Behind him, Ayaka scanned the charred ground with a sleek tactical lens. "It wasn't beasts. Not even syndicates. This was a warning."
Sera crouched by the corpses of three Black soldiers. Their bodies bore no wounds just blackened veins and burst cores.
"Voidfire poison," she muttered. "Solari assassins."
A distant whistle sliced through the air.
Jareth spun instantly.
A cloaked figure burst from the shadows between the ridge stones, blades glinting with dark light. He was fast faster than most S-tier assassins. His right arm blurred as he drew a curved dagger and aimed straight for Jareth's throat.
But Jareth didn't step back.
He stepped in.
He pivoted on his lead foot and slammed his palm upward into the assassin's wrist. The force shattered bone with a sickening crunch. The blade clattered to the dust.
With no pause, Jareth's elbow drove forward right into the attacker's solar plexus.
The man gagged, bending forward, but Jareth caught him with a spinning backfist across the jaw. Teeth flew as the figure staggered sideways.
Jareth closed the distance again, grabbed the assassin's shoulder, and drove a knee into his chest. Ribs cracked.
"Who sent you?" he growled, dragging the man up by his collar.
But the assassin only smiled blood in his teeth and activated a glyph under his tongue.
A pulse of energy erupted from the man's core. Suicide spell.
Jareth barely had time to act. He threw the assassin into the air with a surge of brute force and activated his internal shield.
The explosion lit the sky like a sunburst.
The shockwave hit Jareth's barrier hard, but he didn't flinch. Only dust coated his cloak.
Ayaka stepped forward, wiping grit from her eyes. "That wasn't just a probe."
"No," Jareth said. "That was a declaration."
He turned to his captains.
"Ready the warband. We're marching into the Shattergrove. If the Solari want a blood rite, they'll get one."
---
By dusk, the warband had reached the edge of the Shattergrove, an ancient, twisted forest mutated by thousands of years of realm leakage. Black roots jutted from the earth like bone. The air shimmered with unstable mana. Strange cries echoed between gnarled trees.
They moved in formation. Sera took point with a six-man recon unit. Ayaka flanked the left, scanning for spiritual disruptions. Jareth remained at the center with his elite guard.
Suddenly, the grove pulsed.
A blast of kinetic force knocked two of the scouts flat. Shadowy figures leapt down from the trees.
Solari warriors.
Clad in sleek exo-woven armor, their weapons crackled with stormlight essence. Each bore the twin-sun sigil of House Solari.
No words were exchanged.
The first wave attacked.
Jareth's feet slid back slightly as he dropped into a grounded stance, lowering his center of gravity. One of the enemy soldiers lunged at him with a spear crackling in blue lightning. Jareth sidestepped, caught the shaft beneath his armpit, and twisted.
The soldier tried to yank it free but Jareth had already turned, wrenching the spear down and slamming his heel into the enemy's ankle. Bone gave.
The soldier fell. Jareth yanked the weapon free and spun it in one smooth arc, embedding it straight through the second attacker's shoulder.
Another soldier came from behind. Jareth sensed him without turning. He ducked and swept the man's legs with a spinning low kick, then drove his fist into the downed opponent's neck. The body dropped limp.
All around him, the grove had become a battlefield.
Ayaka darted through the trees like a phantom, twin pistols blazing. She launched herself off a root and landed behind a Solari archer, snapping his neck with a twist of her thighs mid-flip.
Sera was a storm herself, her black blade carving crescent arcs of steel. She faced two at once, deflecting an overhead strike and countering with a slash that opened the enemy's chest in a geyser of lightblood.
Jareth grabbed the last standing enemy near him and slammed him into a tree trunk. "How many more?"
The soldier spat. "You'll never reach the Rift."
Jareth's eyes narrowed.
"Then we'll break through it."
He punched the soldier once, hard enough to collapse his chest and dropped the corpse.
---
Hours later, they stood in the heart of the Shattergrove, where a glowing rift shimmered between ancient stones.
It pulsed like a heartbeat.
Ayaka stared. "That's where they're coming from. It connects directly to the Solari Outer Realm."
Sera nodded. "We should destroy it."
"No," Jareth said. "We claim it."
He reached into his coat and pulled out a black crystal, the Core Key he retrieved from the First Realm.
Pressing it into the base of the rift, he murmured a phrase in an ancient tongue.
The rift flared, then dimmed… stabilizing. Shifting color.
From gold to red.
The frequency changed.
Now it pulsed with his energy signature.
He had taken it.
Ayaka exhaled. "This will force their hand."
Jareth turned to his warband.
"Let them come."