The first light of dawn bled across the horizon like a wound. Red streaks cut through the gray sky, casting the battlefield below in an eerie glow that looked too much like spilled blood. Smoke still curled from the wreckage of the Riders’ outer watchfires, smudging the air with the scent of charred wood and flesh. Every survivor on Nira’s side felt the heaviness of that air the warning of a day that would not end without cost.Nira stood apart from the others, her boots planted on scorched earth that crunched with blackened ash. The ridge gave her a vantage point, but it also forced her to watch everything. The valley stretched wide below, where the Riders’ forces gathered in disciplined lines, armor flashing like scales of some great beast. She felt the weight of their numbers pressing even from this distance, and yet, her hand rested steady on the curved blade at her hip.Behind her, footsteps broke the silence. It was Kael, his limp more pronounced after the last skirmish. His arm

The battlefield was no longer a field.It was a wound in the earth smoldering, bleeding, and howling beneath the clash of steel and the cries of the dying. The valley quaked beneath the thunder of hooves, Riders storming in waves that seemed endless. Above it all, the sky churned with fire and smoke, a roiling canopy that turned day into a bruised twilight.Nira’s cloak tore as she ducked beneath a Rider’s axe. Her blade snapped upward, a silver arc that slit the man’s throat before he could swing again. She didn’t pause. She couldn’t. Blood sprayed across her arm, hot and slick, but her eyes never left the center of the storm the figure still waiting beyond the tide.The Shadow Rider.Cloaked in black that seemed woven from night itself, he sat astride a beast with eyes like burning coals. His helm was faceless, his presence heavier than the clash of ten thousand soldiers. He had not yet drawn his sword, and still the earth trembled, as if the battlefield bent to his will.Roran char

The void screamed.The shriek came not from one throat but a thousand, the sound of broken oaths and shattered souls, echoing so violently Nira thought her skull would crack apart. Then came the first impact an armored boot slamming into the nothingness beneath them, sending ripples of black fire outwards.The knights had come.They were no mere illusions. Each was forged from shadow and flame, their armor glistening as if wet with blood, their visors hollow yet burning with hate. Swords long, jagged, impossibly heavy howled with every movement, as if they despised even being wielded.The first wave struck.Kael met them head-on. His blade, though chipped and stained, roared to life with his fury. Sparks and shadows exploded as he parried, the force driving him back a step, two but he did not fall. He roared right back at them, defiance burning brighter than any steel.“Come on, then! Let’s see what you’ve got!”Three knights descended on him. Their blades moved unnaturally fast, unna

The void quaked. From every fissure, black fire spilled, and from that fire rose more knights— faceless, armored husks, their blades glinting with death. Not a dozen. Not a hundred. Thousands. An army without breath, without fear, without end.Nira staggered back, chest heaving, daggers slick with her own blood and the champion’s shadow ichor. Her body screamed for rest, but her eyes—sharp, feral—refused to yield. She counted the figures as they emerged, but the count broke apart in her mind. Too many. An ocean.Kael spat blood into the void, dragging himself upright. His ribs jutted through torn armor, but his grip on his sword was steady. “We can’t kill them all.” His voice was steady, resigned, but there was no surrender in it.Isolde leaned heavily on her blade, frost-fire flickering weakly around her hand. She was pale as bone, silver hair plastered to her face with sweat and blood. Yet her gaze burned brighter than ever. “Numbers don’t matter.” Her voice was cracked, hoarse, but

The battlefield was no longer earth, but ruin. Where once grass and soil stretched in quiet valleys, now only torn craters and shattered steel marked the ground. Smoke rose in jagged columns, black and choking, painting the horizon like a scar across the dawn.Nira stood amidst it all, her breath ragged, her cloak torn to ribbons. The ash clung to her skin like second flesh, gray streaks cutting across the crimson of her wounds. Around her, the oath-sworn survivors struggled to regroup, their lines thinning with every passing hour.But it was the sky that broke her heart.Above, the air split with stormfire. Clouds, thick and burning, cracked open under the weight of unnatural power. Each flash illuminated the Riders’ ranks as they advanced, shields clattering, voices rising like one endless roar. And at their head moved a shadow darker than stormclouds the Shadow Rider himself. His horse, a beast wrought from smoke and bone, left no prints upon the earth. His eyes, twin coals in an e