CHAPTER 1
Demonic Peril
Asearing wind tore down from the volcanic cliffs of Raga Gur, scattering ash into the air and dragging behind it the bitter stench of burnt stone.
Gorzod Greyswings stood motionless at the edge of the basalt platform.
His cloak fluttered once, then fell still.
He looked down into the valley — and what he saw there burned its shape into him, deeper than he would ever speak.
Where once proud campfires had blazed, where drums had spoken through the ravines, only stillness remained.
Not silence — stillness. The kind that follows ruin. The orcs stood at the edge of vanishing.
The battle lost at Ib’Agier, twenty years gone, had marked them not with scars, but with absence.
They had marched beneath the banner of Erwight of Entorbis, chasing the glint of a promise that had never been theirs.
And when it broke, when the alliance splintered and victory fled, it was the orcs who paid the price.
Their greatest warriors were gone — not remembered, not buried.
Swallowed by a war that offered no glory.
Only loss. Only shame.
Gorzod’s fingers clawed into the edge of the stone. The cold bit back.
Fury twisted through him — tight as iron. And beneath it — despair.
How long must they remain like this?