Chapter 65: Wrath’s End Begins
Raghor Bloodbrand stood at the edge of a vast crater, his massive infernal warplate radiating heat as it caught the dying embers of Tharn Karog’s volcanic dusk. His crimson cape snapped behind him like a tattered banner in the sulfur laden winds. What once had been a fortified command bastion of Mar’ghor the Smoldering, one of Nurrak’s fiercest and most feared Dark Sovereigns, now lay reduced to scorched ruin.
Ash coated the broken teeth of shattered watchtowers. Twisted steel, warped by unnatural heat, jutted from the blackened ground like claws. Charred banners, still marked with the sigil of Wrath, smoldered on broken poles. The stench of burned flesh and seared brimstone saturated the air, thick enough to gag lesser demons.
Hundreds upon hundreds of corpses lay strewn across the ruined outpost. Hellborn, Infernal Warriors, Flamekin, even a few Emberborne commanders. The battlefield bore no sign of siege or resistance, only surgical devastation. Many of the bodies were cleaved in half with near perfect precision. Others had been liquefied entirely. No wounds spoke of traditional magic. This was something else, controlled, targeted, devastating.
Yet the true horror for Raghor was the absence.
There were no Dreadlord corpses.
No remains of Dark Sovereigns.
Not even the ashes of their passing.
They were not killed.
They were taken.
"This isn’t a battlefield," Raghor growled, voice like gravel in a furnace. "This is a harvest."
He stepped forward, examining a scorched sigil etched into the stone at the center of the outpost. It had been seared by spatial magic, folded into itself like reality had been twisted and crushed. The wound in space still shimmered faintly.
He turned to his officers. "Spread the word. Organize the legions. I want all airborne scouts deployed. Sweep from the peaks of Shal’khath to the Blistered Reach. Search the molten trenches, the fractured valleys.. everywhere."