The drums had not stopped for seven days.
Not a beat missed. Not a pause for rest. Just that slow, steady rhythm—like a heart counting down to the end of the world.
In Lyothara, the Great Tree's light dimmed further. Leaves fell out of season, golden but brittle, crumbling to dust before they touched the ground.
Darien knew they were running out of time.
He had sent three emissaries beyond elven lands—paths no elf had walked in centuries.
Now, two had returned.
First came Malrik Darkuan, appearing at dawn like smoke given form. His cloak was torn, his face streaked with soot, and in his hand, he carried an axe unlike any elven forge could make.
Its head was black iron, etched with glowing silver runes that pulsed like veins. The haft was hewn from petrified heartwood, bound in braided dwarven steel.
"I went to Khaz-Dûmhar," Malrik said, voice hoarse. "The Stone Halls are sealed tighter than ever. But the King granted me audience… for old blood's sake."
He placed the axe at Darien's feet.
"The orcs you fight… they carry shards of the Voidstone—a mineral the dwarves mined once, deep beneath the world. They used it to power their forges. But it drank minds. So they sealed it away, behind seven doors and a mountain of oath-bound stone."
Darien picked up the axe. It hummed in his grip.
"What does it do?" Prince Kaelin asked.
"It breaks what should not be unbroken," Malrik replied. "The runes shatter anti-light wards. One strike can kill an orc—not turn it to ash, but truly kill it."
A murmur rose among the captains.
"But the King refused aid?" Darien pressed.
Malrik's eyes darkened. "He said: 'If the Voidstone walks again, then the Deep Seal is broken. And if that is so… we will not send our sons to die for elves while worse things rise beneath our feet.'"
Silence fell.
Even the drums seemed to pause.
Later that day, a second traveler arrived—hooded, cloaked in human wool, face hidden.
It was Prince Kaelin.
He had gone alone to the human city of Valeris, disguised as a scholar. Now he stood before the council, weary but urgent.
"The humans are fractured," he reported. "Three kingdoms, all suspicious of each other. But I found something worse."
He unrolled a stolen parchment—a crude drawing of a black shard, surrounded by kneeling figures.
"In Valeris, there are cults. Secret orders who call the shard 'The Eye of Rebirth.' They believe it will cleanse the world of the 'old races'—elves, dwarves, giants—and raise humanity as the pure children of shadow."
Elyar Morindel frowned. "They worship the enemy?"
"No," Kaelin said grimly. "They think they control it."
He looked at Darien. "The humans don't know the orcs are coming. But when they arrive… some will welcome them as liberators."
A cold dread settled over the hall.
Their war was no longer theirs alone.
That night, in Elmara, Lira sat with the breathing book open before her.
She had tried translating its glyphs using elven logic, celestial patterns, even tree-root diagrams.
Nothing worked.
Then, remembering Malrik's words—"The dwarves sealed it"—she sketched a dwarven rune she'd seen in an old trade treaty.
The moment her quill touched the page, the book reacted.
Ink surged like roots cracking stone, forming new lines:
"The Stone-Singers knew the truth:
Light without shadow is blindness.
Shadow without light is death.
Only the balanced hand may wield both."
Lira's breath caught.
The dwarves hadn't just sealed the Voidstone.
They had understood it.
And somewhere in their mountain halls, there might be more answers.
Meanwhile, far to the south, in the sacred groves near Silvira, Elyar Morindel knelt beside an ancient oak.
Its bark was blackened in patches, its leaves curling inward.
A dryad emerged from the trunk—her skin bark, her hair vines, her eyes pools of amber.
"They come from below," she whispered, voice like wind through dead leaves. "Not just orcs. Something older. It gnaws at the roots of your Tree… and feeds the shards above."
Elyar touched the blight. "Can the land heal itself?"
The dryad shook her head. "Not while the Heart of Void beats in the east."
Then she faded back into the wood, leaving only a single acorn—black as obsidian—in his palm.
Back in Lyothara, Darien stood once more before the Great Tree.
He held the dwarven axe in one hand, the black acorn in the other.
Hope and warning.
Steel and sorrow.
The drums began again.
Closer this time.
And for the first time, Darien did not wonder if the orcs would reach the Five Cities.
He wondered which of their allies would betray them first.