Chapter 12: Monarch of Ashton and Blood
The skies wept cinders.
Ral’Tir’s gates opened for the first time in a hundred years—not to welcome, but to march. Ten wings of resistance fighters, four flamebound knights, two rune-engineered constructs, and one dragon... me.
The plan was clear. Strike hard. Burn fast. Break the Dominion’s soul-furnace before the Emberless King could move. And maybe—just maybe—we’d gain the upper hand in a war we hadn’t started but had been destined to finish.
Kaela rode beside me, her flame-blade humming softly. Her dark braid was tied tight beneath a helm of molten silver. Behind her, Master Thorne adjusted his war gauntlet, grumbling as usual. There were no chants of glory. No drums. Just the grinding silence of warriors with nothing left to lose.
I spread my wings.
The wind screamed.
And we flew.
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The Black Pyre
The Dominion’s fortress rose from the Deadlands like a wound on the world.
The Black Pyre—a former Ashborn forge city, now corrupted into a mountain of bones and steel. The spires bled smoke, and the sky around it shimmered with corrupted flame. Chains the size of towers bound drifting islands of molten stone together like a hellish constellation.