When the blood-soaked hush of the coliseum finally slipped into the distance, Ash wasn't about to waste a single unnecessary day.
It wasn't impatience—he had centuries if he wanted—but a cool, calculated resolve. Clearing out the worst remnants of the old regime before his own truly began just made sense.
An hour's flight over the Ashfall Plains took them from dusty red emptiness to a sky growing heavier, hotter, thick with the bite of scorched stone and faint brimstone.
The nearer they came to Dravenholt's heart, the more the land seemed to remember it had once been hell. Rivers of molten fire wound across the horizon, glowing veins feeding the massive silhouette looming ahead.
Sanctum Primaris, the Crown of Living Fire, was a city built deep within the throat of an extinct volcano, its towering walls of black glass climbing so high they seemed to swallow half the sky.
