The gates of AshenVale clanged shut behind the last of the wounded, sealing out the battlefield stench that still clung to the air like a shroud. Inside the walls, the central square had become an impromptu field hospital: cloaks spread as pallets, elders directing water-bearers and bandage-weavers, the moans of the injured mingling with the crackle of hasty bonfires. The Tenebrae brothers moved among the chaos with quiet authority, directing their squads to secure the perimeter while they turned to the grim work outside.
Roland knelt beside one of the AshenVale elders—a wiry woman named Mara, whose gray braid was streaked with fresh blood from tending the fallen. Her face was ashen.
"The heads of the settlement?" Roland asked gently.
Mara's lips pressed thin. "Gone. Elder Thorne led the first defense at the gates—took a lizardman spear through the chest in the opening minutes. Elder Blackthorn fell to a harpy dive not long after. The rest of the council… scattered in the rout or cut down trying to rally the line. We're leaderless, Sergeant Tenebrae. You and your brothers are the only ones who held anything together today."
Roland exhaled slowly, the weight settling heavier. He glanced at his brothers—Chris wiping gore from his blade, Tom counting arrows, Sam already organizing litter-bearers, Harold and Jeffrey checking wards on the wounded, Matthew still wide-eyed but steady. They met his gaze with the same silent understanding: the mantle had fallen to them, whether they wanted it or not.
"First things first," Roland said aloud. "The dead deserve honor, and the living need safety. We clear the field."
He stepped back through the gates, raising his voice so every squad and every surviving AshenVale defender could hear.
"Listen up! Monster corpses are not just trash—they're assets. Harpy feathers for fletching and trade, talons for daggers and tools, bones for glue and reinforcement. Lizardman scales make fine armor plates, their venom glands fetch good coin from alchemists, and every one of them has a magical core in the chest—small, but potent for enchanting or trade. Harvest what you can. Gut them clean, separate the parts, pile the rest for burning at dawn. But first—every AshenVale fallen gets carried inside with respect. No one leaves a brother under filth. Move!"
The men sprang to work. Squads fanned out across the blood-soaked ground. Pairs dragged lizardman bodies to a designated pile near the treeline—scales scraped free with knives, venom sacs carefully excised and sealed in oiled pouches, magical cores pried from sternums with practiced care. The cores glowed faintly, fist-sized orbs of swirling green and violet light, pulsing like slow heartbeats. Jeffrey and Harold oversaw the collection, wrapping each in cloth inscribed with preservation runes.
Harpy corpses proved trickier—their wings tangled, feathers matted with gore. Men worked in teams of four, severing talons with heavy shears, plucking long primary feathers for quivers, stripping lighter down for padding. The magical cores here were smaller, brighter, crystalline and warm to the touch.
Amid the grim labor, banter surfaced like breath after a dive.
Chris hefted a bundle of iridescent harpy feathers, holding them up to the fading light. "Look at these—almost as pretty as Clarice's hair. We should save the best for her wedding veil. Tyrell can forge her a crown to match."
Tom snorted, wiping sweat from his brow as he gutted a lizardman. "Tyrell'll probably try to smelt them into chainmail. 'Here, love, wear your enemies to the altar.'"
Sam laughed, tossing a cleaned core into a sack. "Mother'll enchant them anyway. Turn the whole dress into a ward against in-laws."
Matthew, kneeling beside a harpy, carefully plucked a particularly fine plume. "Ophelia'd make these into prank arrows—shoot Belfin in the backside from across the yard."
Harold grinned despite the blood on his hands. "Roselda would weave them into a garden trellis. Black roses and harpy feathers—symbolic as hell."
The laughter was brief, ragged, but it kept the men moving, kept the horror at bay.
By the time the sun dipped below the western ridge, the field was cleared. Monster parts lay in neat stacks—feathers bundled, scales sorted, cores secured in rune-warded crates, venom glands in sealed jars. The AshenVale dead—forty-three in total—had been carried inside on litters, laid out in the square beneath a hastily erected canopy. Elders moved among them, closing eyes, placing tokens of home—a carved wooden fish, a pressed flower, a child's drawing—on their chests. Priests from the small chapel chanted low prayers to prevent the restless dead from rising as undead; salt and holy water were sprinkled liberally, wards of warding etched into the ground around the rows.
The brothers gathered at the gates as dusk settled, watching the last of the harvest burn in a controlled pyre far from the walls. The flames roared high, consuming what remained of the monsters, sending acrid smoke curling into the darkening sky.
Roland turned to an AshenVale runner. "Post this missive in the square, every tavern, every workshop. Read it aloud where people gather."
The parchment, scrawled in Roland's steady hand, read:
To every able-bodied man of AshenVale who calls himself a man of Fatum:
The wilds have taken your fathers, brothers, and elders. They will not take your home. Report at first light to the main gates. Bring whatever weapon you can hold—spear, axe, pitchfork, or bare hands if need be. We will train you. We will arm you. We will make you ready. No excuses. No delays. The Kingdom of Fatum does not cower.
—Sergeant Roland Tenebrae, on behalf of the Tenebrae Militia
The runner hurried off, and soon voices rose in the square—some fearful, some angry, many resolute.
Night fell heavy. The brothers took turns on watch, sleeping in snatches beside campfires. Roland sat last, staring into the flames, the weight of command pressing like a helm he could not remove.
Dawn broke cold and clear, mist rising from the river like ghosts. Roland walked toward the gates with his brothers at his sides, boots crunching on frost-kissed gravel. They rounded the last bend and stopped.
Three hundred young men waited.
Farmers in patched tunics, smiths with soot still on their arms, woodsmen with axes on shoulders, boys barely old enough to shave standing shoulder-to-shoulder with graying veterans who had hidden during the battle out of shame. Three hundred pairs of eyes—nervous, determined, angry—fixed on the seven brothers.
Chris let out a low whistle. "Gods above. That's more than we mustered in Eldermere."
Tom grinned. "Looks like the missive worked."
Sam folded his arms. "They're raw. But they're here."
Harold nodded slowly. "That's half the battle."
Jeffrey's fingers twitched, already tracing a ward in the air. "We'll make them steel."
Matthew puffed out his chest. "Like Father taught us."
Roland stepped forward, raising his voice so every man could hear.
"You came. That means something. Now we begin."
Miles away, in the iron mine beneath Eldermere, Byrt Tenebrae swung his pickaxe in steady, powerful arcs. The clang of steel on ore echoed down the shaft, mingling with the grunts of the handful of neighbors who had come to help. Sweat ran in rivulets down his back, soaking his tunic, but he did not slow.
The vein was rich, the work relentless. Yet his mind was elsewhere—south, on the road to AshenVale, with seven sons who carried his name and his lessons into danger.
Have to protect them, the thought repeated with every strike, a drumbeat beneath the physical rhythm. Have to protect them all.
He paused only long enough to wipe his brow, then raised the pick high once more. With a deep breath, he spoke the words aloud, voice low and fierce in the dim lantern light.
"I will protect them."
The pick came down with all the force of a father's vow—mighty, unyielding, driven by something deeper than muscle. Steel met stone with a resounding crack that echoed farther than it should have.
A bluish ray of light erupted from the wall where the pick struck, brilliant and cold, slicing through the darkness like a blade of winter sky. It pulsed once, twice, bathing the shaft in ethereal glow. The ore around the impact point shimmered, veins of iron suddenly laced with threads of luminous blue that had never been there before.
Byrt staggered back a step, pick still gripped tight, eyes wide in shock. The neighbors froze, tools half-raised, faces illuminated in the uncanny light.
The ray held for a heartbeat longer, then faded slowly, leaving only faint afterimages and the quiet drip of water somewhere deeper in the mine.
Byrt stared at the wall, breath coming hard.
Whatever lay hidden in that vein had just answered.