The endless field shifted again, and Iris knew it wasn't the wind this time. The flowers darkened, their colors bleeding into the soil as if the ground itself was drinking them dry. The air grew heavy, every breath tinged with the metallic irk of blood.
Lanard stood in front of her, his figure sharpening against the backdrop of a sky now dimmed to rust.
"You've seen the rivers," he said. "But you haven't yet heard the story of the seventh."
The field dissolved into shadow. In its place rose a landscape drenched in war — banners torn and smoldering, mountains split and bleeding molten stone, the ground a blackened wasteland littered with broken weapons and bodies too numerous to count.
"There was a man once," Lanard began, his voice low but resonant, "a warlord whose name was erased from the scrolls of Heaven and Earth. Not the greatest cultivator of his age, nor the most cunning tactician. Yet he became something no army could resist — a calamity wearing human flesh."
