Mist clung to the stone ridges of Orion's Gate like a shroud refusing to lift.
No birds sang. No wind stirred the pines. Even the light from the Great Tree—usually a golden thread stitching sky to soil across the kingdom—felt thin today. Frayed.
Five elves moved in silence along the high pass, their silvered mail whispering against leather. Each bore the sigil of House Darkuan: an open eye within a circle, guardian of the eastern borders.
At their lead, Sergeant Faelin touched the copper ring on his finger—a gift from his younger sister before he left Lyothara.
"Come back before the leaves turn," she'd said.
He almost smiled. The leaves hadn't even begun to blush.
"We're too quiet," muttered one of the scouts behind him. "Even the crickets are gone."
Faelin didn't answer. His eyes scanned the ridge ahead. Something was wrong. Not danger—absence. As if the land itself held its breath.
Then the ground trembled.
Not an earthquake.
Footsteps.
From the jagged fissures of the cliffside, they rose.
Orcs.
But not as the histories described them—brutish, squabbling beasts driven by hunger and rage.
These stood in perfect formation. Silent. Still.
Their eyes were voids—no white, no iris, just endless black.
And across their scarred hides coiled strange, spiraling marks that pulsed with a faint violet glow.
"Shields up!" Faelin barked, raising his palm.
Golden light flared from his hand—the Dawnwarden's Blessing, the first spell every elven soldier learned.
But the light… dissolved.
Swallowed mid-air, as if the shadows had teeth.
Before he could shout again, they attacked.
No war cries. No taunts. Just blades flashing in the dim.
Faelin felt cold steel pierce his chest—not pain, but emptiness, as though something vital had been ripped from his core. He collapsed to his knees, vision blurring.
The last thing he saw:
One of the orcs knelt before him, holding a jagged black shard in its palm.
From it rose a whisper—in a tongue older than the Great Tree itself.
Then darkness.
Light never faded in the Hall of Valenor.
Crystal lanterns floated above, fed by the living roots of the Great Tree that coiled through marble floors like veins of gold.
King Aerion Valenor stood at the arched window, gazing over the city that breathed with ancient grace. Behind him, fourteen thrones of white stone sat in a crescent—three remained empty.
The seats of the Martial Houses.
The doors burst open.
A messenger staggered in, robes torn, face pale as ash.
"Your Majesty…" His voice cracked. "The patrol from Orion's Gate…"
He swallowed hard.
"Gone. All five. No bodies. No blood. Only… cold ash."
The King didn't turn. But his fingers tightened on the windowsill until the stone groaned.
From the southern shadow of the hall, a tall figure stepped forward.
Black armor. A scar running from brow to jaw. Eyes like storm clouds.
Darien Valtharis—High Blade of the Elves, Warden of the Four Houses.
"A thousand years," Darien said, voice low as grinding stone, "and no enemy has crossed our borders.
Today, they don't just cross—they erase us."
He turned to the King.
"This isn't war, Your Grace.
It's judgment."
Aerion finally faced him. His eyes burned with white-gold fire.
"Are our legions ready?"
Darien's gaze drifted to the empty thrones… then to the thinning golden thread in the sky.
"Our swords are sharp," he said.
"But I fear our enemy does not bleed."
Candlelight flickered over stacks of crumbling scrolls.
Lira Valtharis, daughter of Darien, traced her fingers over a book bound in strange, leathery hide—older than elven script, older than memory.
Its title shimmered in a dead language:
"Where Shadow Is Born, Light Dies."
She opened it.
The pages were blank.
Then, slowly, ink bloomed across the parchment—as if writing itself.
Her breath caught.
Outside, the wind howled through the trees.
Yet the branches stood utterly still.
Between the trunks, two black eyes gleamed in the dark.
Watching.
Waiting.
Then vanished.
In the Kingdom of the Elves,
light had always been enough.
But shadows do not need permission
to grow.