The Stormtide Fleet set out under grey skies. Their sails stretched tight against a wind that moaned low across the sea like breath drawn before a scream.
Farthest from the heartlands, lost to maps and memory. Shrouded in endless fog and cloaked in silence, its shores were whispered of, not spoken plainly. No chart bore its true position. No sailor lingered near its reefs unless driven by madness or desperation.
Even the wind avoided it.
Forbidden to most, Orûn-Mal was steeped in myth older than the Dazhum. Its interior was blanketed in towering trees, ancient pines and gnarled oaks with trunks as thick as fortress pillars. Moss clung to bark like burial shrouds. Root systems rose and fell like ribs beneath the earth. What paths existed were swallowed by time and rot.
Ruins dotted the inland: weathered stone monoliths, their carvings obscured by lichen and time. The Veiled Spiral lay at the island's heart, once a high acropolis, now little more than jagged silhouettes buried in shadowed groves.
No birds sang. No branches cracked without cause.
Even the ravens circled wide, cawing only once before vanishing into mist.
Shattered Isles lore named it cursed. The old songs whispered of gods buried in root and stone. Druids spoke of it only in shadowed circles, calling it a place the earth itself tried to forget.
But now the isle had stirred.
The vanguard reached the coastline at first light. Through a break in the sea fog, the black shore revealed itself: stony, slick, and framed by steep forested hills. The warships dropped anchor in a silent formation, hulls creaking softly in the swell. Launch barges splashed down. Oars dipped once, twice. No words were spoken.
The Blacktide Cohort disembarked first. Behind them came Moorfire, veterans of Caerwynd and Threnar. A full cohort of 480 warriors, divided into forty twelve-man warbands. Each warband had its own warleader, independent and hardened by battles and moor warfare.
Newly appointed Threnari cohort warleader Connach of Clann Durnach. He was grim and iron-disciplined, clad in blacksteel with Kraneion helm, falcata and tidecut spear in hand. A shield-bearer of Threnar, his word held weight across all units.
His Threnari Warbands moved in practiced silence: Eorlas the sharp-eyed scout, Tuarin the survivalist, Aoan the tactician, Bradan the flanker, Maelin the calm spear-fighter, Urekh the archer, Sira and Firaen the eager youngbloods, Naelin the warhealer, and Vaegor the stoic wardruid.
Connach led the left screen. His boots sank into frost-damp loam. The air smelled of peat and old stone. A faint drizzle dampened cloaks and helms. He scanned the treeline. No movement. Only twisted roots and pale fog.
"Spread wide," he muttered. "Scout. Mark. Don't engage."
The Moorfire split silently. Eorlas and Tuarin took the rocks to the north slope. Firaen moved to the trees, blades sheathed but fingers twitching.
They moved with discipline, steps muffled in damp soil and slick stone. As the fog parted in glimmers, the isle's silhouette became clearer: twisted treelines, ruin pillars, unnatural stillness.
Tuarin muttered, low enough not to carry. "This place feels wrong. Even the moss smells like grave-dust."
Eorlas didn't slow. "You listening to tavern tales again?"
"They say the island's cursed. That it eats men whole. No signal. No remains. Just... gone."
Eorlas gave a dry grunt. "It's rock and trees. Everything else is ghosts talkin'. Stay sharp. We've got a job to do."
Tuarin exhaled, tightening his grip on his bow. "Aye. Eyes open, blades quiet."
While the engineers and warmages set to work, the Blacktide maintained perimeter security and oversaw the beachhead's formation.
Quickwalls rose from conjured timber and hardstone. Trenches were dug in the wet soil, angled to funnel enemy charges into kill-zones. Stone was shaped and cooled into barrier plates, while a makeshift dock unfurled like ribs along the shoreline: timber, ballast anchors, scaffold supports.
Amid the labor, a detachment of Stormguard known as the Stormcasters worked the arcane. Cloaked warmages whispered over earth and sea, their stone-scribed garments catching glimmers of runelight. Runes lit the fog like embers beneath snow, while sigil pikes hummed with stored energy, anchoring shield wards above the trenchline.
Connach passed one as it flared orange, indicating ward active. He didn't trust it. Not because it lacked strength, but because magic on this isle felt like threading fire through a sealed tomb. Something ancient pressed against their wards, testing.
"Still no signs?" he asked.
Eorlas returned from the treeline, face pale, boots caked in black mud. "Nothing. No tracks, no animals, no Dazhum. Just silence. The isle feels like it's waiting for something."
Vaegor stepped beside them, staff brushing wet moss. "Not waiting," he said. "Watching."
Connach's eyes narrowed.
"Like it knows we're here."
From the trees came a sound, not quite a voice, not quite a wind. A low resonance, like stone grinding beneath a mountain. It passed through them like a pulse. Vaegor flinched. Even the Blacktide paused.
Connach crouched, pressing a palm to the ground. Cold. Not just the chill of weather, but something deeper, a sentient stillness below the roots. Something aware.
He looked toward the ridge. The trenchline was half-built. Watchposts rose like skeletal towers. Signal runes flickered along the beach, each a color-coded pulse. One blinked blue: secured.
He didn't believe it. He'd seen too many signals lie in the moments before an ambush. Even magic could be fooled here.
"Moorfire," Connach called. His tone clipped now, issuing orders. "Advance to the second ridge, fan formation, mark ruins and terrain, do not pursue, eyes sharp, stay in twos."
They moved out, silent as smoke. A scouting crescent. Hunting without prey.
The beachhead now stood anchored. Dock, trenchline, and perimeter wall formed the first Stormguard warcamp. Within days, the rest of the Marine Legion would arrive with siegecraft, quartermasters, and full cohorts.
But Connach had seen too many dead fronts to relax.
They'd landed without resistance. That only meant the island was watching. And waiting.
The Moorfire Cohort held the flanks as the beachhead solidified. Four hundred eighty strong, broken into disciplined twelve-man warbands. They fanned out in staggered formation, their warleaders trusted to act without waiting for signal.
Connach's command warband remained central, anchor and eye of the whole.
They didn't speak. They listened.
And the forest said nothing back.
That night, cold camp was ordered.
No fire was lit. No voice raised. Just mist curling through the moss and root-choked hollows, thick as old breath. The warbands lay scattered in preassigned shells, twelve-man formations tucked beneath trees and stone. The island's silence pressed down like a weight.
Connach sat near the edge of his warband's position, sharpening his blade by feel, not sight. The fog dulled even moonlight.
Then he froze.
Not because of a sound, but the lack of one.
Three figures emerged from the mist without so much as a footfall. Their helms were black, faceless, forged in the old style. Smooth metal from crown to jawline with no slits for eye or mouth. Just blank, curved steel that caught no light. Silent. Ominous.
Connach's hand went to his falcata, but he held it. Then he saw the armor.
Void-threaded and sigil-marked, layered in blacksteel plates that shimmered faintly when leyline wards pulsed. The Nullmantle Carapace. Only one in the Stormguard wore it.
Nyzekh the Virak'tai.
A shadow-cloak hung from his shoulders, its weave thick with dampening thread that muted sound and devoured glow. Even at rest, his outline blurred at the edges, as if the mist bent around him. At his hips rested twin sabers. Eclipsed Fang. Their curved, black-forged blades were known to rupture more than just flesh.
Connach hadn't sensed them. Not even a whisper in the back of his skull. That unsettled him more than any beast or Dazhum warband.
Nyzekh stopped two paces away. "Status?"
Connach stood. "No contact yet. No signs beyond the mist and monoliths. Second ridge scouted. No movement."
Nyzekh gave a short nod. "Warden Kael is cut off at the Stone Circle. Surrounded. We march before the sun rises."
Connach didn't ask by who. He'd seen too much in the fog to pretend it would matter.
Nyzekh's voice was as flat as it was final. "Prepare and rest. The Qorjin-Ke will watch the lines."
Connach bowed his head in brief assent.
Then Nyzekh was gone. Just a ripple in the fog, leaving behind only the fading scent of burned cedar and cold steel.
The Qorjin-Ke.
Stormguard elite scouts. Ghost-walkers.
If they were deployed, the isle wasn't just dangerous.
It was filled with secrets best left undisturbed.