The air over Vyrehold crackled with unnatural energy. Kael stood at the center of the burned-out village, Ashrend's blade humming in his hand, its crimson edge alive with power. Around him, the stone husks of villagers—once human—lay petrified in ashen terror. The cliffside paths were scarred by black claw-marks that pulsed with a violet glow, as if the very rock had been carved by nightmare.
Darric's voice broke the heavy silence. "They weren't just killed. They were devoured by something… alive." He knelt to touch a twisted corpse, its flesh fused with clay, bone sprouting through skin.
Lyra, blade drawn, scanned the ruins. "This wasn't Veilspawn. This was summoned." Her breath hitched as a soft wind died suddenly. Then came the scream—a high, strangled wail from the cliff above.
They turned as a shape hurled itself downward: twenty feet of writhing black tendrils and broken plate, crowned by a cage of skulls with no mouths. It struck the earth with a thunderous roar, dust and debris erupting around it. The Veilbound Tyrant had come.
Kael didn't blink. "Lyra, the ridge. Darric, flank it." They moved as one—Lyra vanishing upward in a whirl of shadow, Darric racing right. The Tyrant swung a molten maul, scorching stone where it landed. Kael sidestepped in a flash of red light and reappeared behind it, Ashrend's edge meeting its spine in a searing clang that sent a spray of violet ichor across the air.
The beast staggered, bone knitting over the wound, but Kael was already gone—flipping backward to evade a retaliating sweep. It charged, only to have Darric's shield slam into its side and a warblade slam into its joints. Lyra's arrows rained down, each tipped in ancient Sovereign steel, piercing the Tyrant's eye sockets.
Still, the creature would not fall.
Kael landed on the slope, eyes narrowing. Ashrend glowed brighter, flames dancing along its length. He whispered a command as old as the first Sovereign.
"Ashrend… answer."
The blade flared, its aura erupting in a storm of red lightning. The world around Kael seemed to slow. Chains of flame wrapped around his legs, propelling him forward at inhuman speed. He cleaved through the Tyrant's chest in a single, brutal arc, then vanished again—reappearing behind the beast.
His voice was cold steel. "Crimson Severance."
The blade arced in perfect symmetry, unleashing a wave of crimson energy that unmade the Tyrant's neck in an explosion of violet smoke. For a heartbeat, it stood frozen—then its head rolled free, decapitated, and its massive form collapsed into a crater of ash.
Kael dropped to one knee, breathing heavily. Ashrend pulsed once, then dimmed. The wound in the earth echoed with the sound of absence.
Lyra and Darric regrouped, wariness and awe in their eyes.
Darric sheathed his warped blade. "That was… something else. What do you call it?"
Kael sheathed Ashrend without looking up. "The Sovereign's Judgment."
A tremor ran through the ground. From the crater's edge, violet runes flared, casting long, jagged shadows. The air rippled with a whisper deeper than wind:
"The Brand remembers... and so do we."
Kael rose, aura flickering. "Then let them remember who wields it."
He turned and strode away from the crater, cloak trailing behind him like a bleeding banner. Above, the sky darkened further, thunder rolling across distant peaks. Far to the north, in the black towers of the Pale Bastion, Malrik's eyes shone with grim satisfaction.
"He stirs," Malrik murmured. "And with each stroke of his blade, the world bends closer to ruin."
The wind carried Kael's name across the ravaged land, a promise of fire and fate intertwined.
He did not look back.
The Crimson Sovereign had awakened.