A glowing crimson seam followed as he drew it down.
The world answered with a scream.
The sky split.
A new doorway tore open into the Abyss, bleeding shadow and lightning as the wound widened. Mountains groaned and trees cracked, their roots torn free. Wind howled inward, dragged toward oblivion, carrying ash and the stench of old death.
The Wild Hunt poured from the tear in a black flood, riders of bone and shadow astride nightmare beasts, bursting into the world with a sound like a thousand graves opening.
Hooves struck the air and found ground where no ground should be, each impact fracturing stone and shattering wards. Their banners were smoke, their armor living darkness, and their eyes burned with a hunger older than the Realms themselves.
The sky dimmed around them and the Blood Moon swelled as if Vorak’s presence itself pulled it closer to the earth. Its light bathed the land in red.
Alora’s hand found Rune’s, light and shadow interlacing together. They spared one look, shared one breath, one thought humming through their bond.
Until the stars fall.
They launched into the air and split off, arcing toward Vorak with the force of exploding stars. Vorak watched them come. Their weapons struck and clashed against his hands with violent cracks of thunder, reverberating through her bones.
The clash split the night.
Below, the Harbingers led the charge against the Wild Hunt. The Midlands horns blew over the ridge with a deep bellow and the fae loosened their arrows. Drakon flew down, picking off riders. The humans roared and charged down the hills.
Rune’s blade swung again for Vorak’s neck and Vorak parried with his claws with a sound like worlds colliding. Shadow and crimson electricity burst outward in a shockwave that sent Alora nearly sprawling.
Rune’s shadows detonated outward in bladed arcs as Noctharion sang for blood. Alora followed on his flank, divine flame tearing from her like a comet, her glaive striking in rapid, ruthless succession. Shadow and light collided against Vorak’s crimson core in a maelstrom of motion.
Every strike met dark steel, to slow to cleave past his defenses.
Vorak flowed between their blows as if reality itself bent to accommodate him. His strikes fell like thunder, each one cratering the earth when they missed. Rune’s counters came like lightning, precise and furious, yet every blow that landed lacked the crushing weight of a Titan’s.
He turned Rune’s shadows aside with a flick of his wrist, crimson light shearing through darkness like glass. Alora’s flame crashed against him and slid away, devoured mid-burn. He laughed softly, almost indulgent, as though watching children exhaust themselves. Then his hand snapped out.
He caught Noctharion mid-swing.
The blade screamed. Vorak’s fingers tightened. The abysmal metal fractured, split, then shattered in his grip like brittle bone. Rune barely had time to react before Vorak drove a kick into his chest, the force of it catastrophic. Rune flew, body hurled across the battlefield, crashing through stone and smoke until he vanished from sight.
Alora launched herself at Vorak with an infuriated cry.
He caught her by the throat.
The moment his hand closed, agony detonated through her. Her limbs locked. Her breath vanished. The force of his power flayed her veins from the inside out. Alora screamed. Light and shadow peeled out of her body as he drank the magic directly out of her. The world narrowed to pain and pressure and the terrible intimacy of being consumed.
“Born in bloodlight,”Vorak laughed, his voice layered and vast, vibrating through her bones,“And destined to end beneath it.”
She had forgotten
It was the night she was born.
And the night she might die.
Sunfire descended with a roar.
The Sunstone blade slashed through Vorak from shoulder to stomach in a blinding arc of incandescent fire. The impact split the air itself. Vorak roared, his grip slipping. He staggered back, as crimson light bled from the gash, his form flickering, unraveling. Light burned into him, not cutting so much as unmaking, the wound blazing with a fury he could not swallow.
Alora was torn away from him.
Rune caught her against his chest, wings flaring wide. Shadows lashed like whips around him.“Don’t touch my wife,”he snarled.
