The trireme carved its path through black water beneath a moonless sky. Its red sail stretched taut by the wind, marked by a flame-sigil that blazed like a brand of war. Oars moved with mechanical precision, sixty blades rising and falling in perfect rhythm as they sliced the sea without sound. No one had spoken since the ruined coastline of Orûn-Mal had emerged in the distance.
At the bow, Flame Captain Therya Ralin stood unmoving. Her armor was scorched from past battles, and her helm adorned with ashline runes that glimmered faintly in the gloom. Beside her, Vice Captain Varess Dova gripped her spear tightly, her gaze locked onto the cliffs ahead with an expression carved from iron. Behind them, one hundred Flame Maidens of the Emberline stood in formation despite the swaying of the ship. Triad cells of Spearbearers, Bladewalkers, and Ward Flames held their lines without a sound. The air was thick with the scent of oil, steel, and ember-silk.
The ship drifted toward a desolate shore where burned ruins and melted fortifications greeted them like the aftermath of a forgotten cataclysm. Stone had warped under the memory of fire, and no welcome awaited them. Only scattered bones and the hiss of the wind. Therya disembarked first, her boots sinking slightly into the blackened sand. The rest followed in silence as ash crunched beneath their feet.
They advanced inland with methodical discipline, five squads arranged in a staggered column. Shields were raised and spearpoints faintly aglow with alchemical fire. The forest was a graveyard of petrified trees, stripped of leaves, their hollowed trunks whispering of old infernos. No birds. No wind. Only rot. The air was thick with death's breath.
After an hour of marching, they crossed a field that had once been farmland, now cracked stone overgrown with tumors of flesh-colored fungi. Tendrils of smoke drifted from fissures in the earth, and every Maiden knew instinctively not to touch them. This land had been poisoned by something deeper than flame, something that remembered pain.
"Six hundred meters to the outer walls," Varess murmured, scanning the sigil-map glowing across her bracer.
Therya gave a single nod. "Flank coverage. Tighten gaps."
Varess gestured with a sharp signal. Shields adjusted. Spearpoints angled. Then the earth betrayed them.
The first sign was a tremor. Then a hiss.
Then six Flame Maidens were dragged screaming into the soil, their legs snapped at unnatural angles as Crawlborn burst forth. Their wormlike torsos were slick with mucus, ribcages splayed like blooming meat-flowers, and faces peeled of flesh. One erupted so close its head struck a shield, and its needle-fangs punctured straight through the iron and through the Maiden behind it.
Another Crawlborn screeched and sprayed a cloud of larvae from its ruptured throat sac. The maggots burrowed into exposed skin, chewing flesh faster than fire could burn. A priestess screamed and lit herself ablaze, incinerating the infestation and herself with it.
Then came the forest.
The Skulkin emerged not in squads, but as a tide of stuttering madness. Their twisted, half-humanoid forms jerked forward like broken marionettes. Limbs too long. Joints bent backward. Eyes missing. Skin sloughing. Their claws shimmered green with rot, and where they scratched, flesh bubbled and split like paper in acid.
"Form shield crescent!" Therya bellowed.
The Maidens responded in an instant. Shields locked, spears readied, flames igniting along edges. The Skulkin crashed into them with shrieking force.
The first impact drove a Maiden off her feet. Her throat was torn in half, blood spraying in a fan across the others as her killer shoved two clawed hands into her chest and ripped her heart out, still twitching. Another Flame Maiden impaled a Skulkin through the jaw and yanked upward, splitting its head open like rotten fruit.
One Skulkin dragged a wounded Maiden by her hair and cracked her skull repeatedly against a stone, splattering gore across the ground before it was stabbed through both eye sockets by a retaliating spear.
Therya carved through them like a star gone nova. Her twin Flameblades screamed with heat, melting Skulkin flesh mid-swing. One leapt onto her shoulder, driving its claws into the seams of her armor, but she set it aflame from within, and it sputtered into ash as it thrashed and screamed, throatless and blind.
Then the Dreadblades arrived, and the sky turned crimson.
They strode out of the treeline like gods of rot, hulking brutes of fused armor and muscle, eyes burning with sick light. One dragged a cleaver the size of a cart, which it swung in a wide arc, bisecting three Maidens. The ground steamed with viscera and glowing bone splinters.
One Dreadblade tore a dying Maiden in half, not vertically but across the waist, and used her screaming upper torso as a flail, bludgeoning a second until her skull cracked.
Varess ignited her Torchslide and launched into a slide beneath the blow, her spear blazing. She carved a molten gash across its ribs, but it kept coming, leaking black steam and strings of burnt sinew.
A second Dreadblade towered over a fallen Maiden who had broken both legs. As it raised its weapon, she shoved a fire flask into her mouth and bit down, igniting herself in a screaming inferno that engulfed the creature's head. Both fell as flaming wrecks.
Then came the Hollowhands.
They floated forward, limbs twitching, faces smeared with tar and stitched shut. Their bodies opened at the ribs like floral sacs, spraying arcs of acidic bile that hissed on contact. One Maiden caught the blast. Her armor dissolved, and her skin sloughed from her bones in seconds. She didn't even scream. Her lungs had already melted.
Another Hollowhand opened its mouth to release a cloud of spores but was answered by a jet of fire from a Ward Flame's throat, incinerating its entire front half.
"Fall back to the stone ridge!" Therya shouted, amplifying her voice with Command resonance.
The retreat was disciplined. No cries. No panic. Wounded were dragged or left behind. The dead were stepped over like stepping stones. Behind them, fire traps ignited, turning the field into a hellscape of screaming beasts and crumbling flesh.
They reached the ridge, a narrow chokepoint flanked by basalt and old pyre ruins. Here, they could not retreat further. Here, they would burn or stand.
"Thirty dead," Varess reported, her armor cracked and soaked in black blood.
Therya's voice was ice. "We hold. Or we burn."
A new screech rose, deeper, not of a creature but of a world bleeding. The Nerathil came again, crawling over their dead, mutated and twitching. Some now bore metal limbs. Others had entire torsos fused into writhing coils. The worst were the Wretched Knights, their armor merged with bone, their swords made of ribcages welded into jagged blades.
"Bladewalkers, with me!" Therya shouted.
They surged forward.
At her side, a Maiden used her fallen sister's broken blade, gripping both hilts like shears, and scissored off the lower jaw of a Skulkin before stomping its throat in. Another was impaled but dragged her attacker close and bit its throat out, blood gurgling as both collapsed.
"Ward Flames, hold the crest! Burn everything that squeals!"
The line held. Shields cracked. Flames roared. Bones broke. A Dreadblade struck the wall of shields and was met by a flame bomb launched at point-blank, turning its insides into molten sludge. Another lunged, and three Maidens tackled it down, plunging blades into every seam of its plating until it burst open like an overripe fruit.
Therya faced a Wretched Knight alone, fire licking up her arms.
"You want flame?" she growled and threw both swords into its neck. As it staggered, she tackled it backward off the ledge, driving her knee into its plated chest. The knight landed first. Its spine cracked. She rose with one sword stolen from its ribcage, blood leaking down her face.
"If you stand, you kill!" she shouted, blood in her throat. "If you fall, make them burn with you!"
And the slope burned with them. The ridge became a funeral pyre, a sanctum of flame.
The Maidens did not yield.
They were death in crimson light.
And they were not done yet.