Stormwind burned.
Not with fire—but with Void.
The sky above Cathedral Square had torn open like wet parchment, leaking tendrils of shadow that coiled and writhed across the broken city. Buildings twisted into unnatural shapes. Statues wept ink. The old Alliance banners sagged, heavy with rot, whispering things in voices that weren't their own.
Nyxia stood alone at the heart of it all, one knee in blood, the other locked to keep her from collapsing. Her bow lay splintered at her side. The crescent blades she once wielded with grace were nowhere to be found. Her armor hung in ruined strips across her body, barely clinging to pale skin streaked with soot and blood.
Loque'nahak lay still beside her, his once-luminous fur dull and broken, eyes closed. Not fading. Just gone.
And around her…
The Ember Veil.
They had fallen one by one.
Perseus, the lovable oaf, had made his last stand shielding Eurydice from a Voidcaller's blast—his radiant Aegis crumpled around him like melted tin. His face still wore the stubborn hope that he could hold the line.
Boo, sharp-tongued and faster than any blade, had bled out laughing, slumped against the fountain steps, five daggers buried in five voidspawn. Her last words? "Bet you missed me." She'd said it to no one. Or maybe to Odysseus.
Miri, fire-eyed and reckless, had charged into the maw of the beast that devoured the gates. She died screaming a warcry that shook the stones, never knowing Zhurong had watched her fall with a whispered, "I never told you."
Zhurong, the tea-drinking, dragon-chasing mage, had burned the sky in her name. He set fire to the heavens—and was consumed by what answered.
Eurydice had died on her knees, channeling light into Odysseus's broken chest, long after her own ribs had caved in. A mother to the bitter end, hands glowing even as her heart stopped.
And Odysseus...
He didn't fall until Nyxia had. When her breath failed, when her blades shattered, when her knees finally met the stones, he was still standing.
A wall of steel. A voice like thunder. A man who could stop the world with words—and had. For her.
And then the Voidbeast struck.
A thing without shape. Hunger given form. It descended from the tear in the sky and swallowed him whole.
Nyxia tried to rise.
Tried to scream.
Tried to move.
But she was alone.
A broken huntress in a ruined city of ghosts.
The void closed in, whispering her name with too many mouths.
Nyxia… Nyxia… Nyxia…
She thought of Perseus's laugh. Boo's wink. Miri's wild grin. Eurydice's steady hands. Zhurong's tea kettle. Odysseus's terrible poetry.
She thought of all they'd lost, and all they could've been.
And as the void enveloped her—
She whispered, "Not again."
She woke with a gasp, heart slamming against her ribs.
The fire crackled.
Loque'nahak stirred at her side, unscarred and silent.
The forest was dark. Still. Whole.
No blood. No void.
Just her.
Young again.
Marked.
Remembering everything.