The night grew impossibly deep.
The ink-black sky hung low like a massive, overturned iron cauldron, sealing away the Blackwood Forest and the sprawling plain beneath a shroud of absolute darkness. There were no stars; there was no moon. Only the relentless north wind, howling like a chorus of vengeful spirits, tore across the landscape. It transformed into invisible, freezing blades of bone-scraping air that sought to sap the warmth and life from any living creature left exposed to its wrath.
In this frozen wasteland ruled by shadow, three silent undercurrents crept out from the maw of the Blackwood Forest.
They resembled a great, three-forked serpent slithering forth from the abyss, its lethal tongue flickering in the dark. Each fork carried a unique, deadly venom, sliding soundlessly but with absolute intent toward the massive, sleeping behemoth camped twenty-five miles away.
The third detachment, commanded by Colin and comprising the bulk of the host, formed the heavy, unshakeable spine of the viper. They advanced through a naturally recessed gully, cloaked by jagged rocks and low hills. The one hundred and thirty-six Wolf Riders and their Snow Giant Wolves—looking like grim reapers carved from ice and shadow—moved without producing a single stray sound, as if they were nothing more than darkness itself flowing through the ravine.
The second detachment, led by Hask, formed the thrashing, deceptive tail of the serpent, designed to draw the prey's eye. They took a more exposed, sweeping trajectory, making a wide detour toward the eastern flank where the enemy's defenses were spread thinnest. Though they fought to maintain operational silence, the violent, volcanic battle lust vibrating within them was nearly impossible to contain. It hummed in the air, a bloodthirsty energy waiting to fracture the night into an earth-shattering war cry.
But it was the first detachment, led by Reze, that formed the serpent's razor-sharp fangs, dripping with ghostly cold venom.
They were executing the legendary, almost supernatural infiltration techniques of the Forest Trail Cavalry—a display of stealth so absolute it would drive any master thief to despair. Sixty premier forest hunters, comprised of agile Fox-folk and graceful Deer-folk, completely abandoned any conventional routes a human scout might anticipate. Instead, they plunged headlong into a chaotic hellscape of jagged cliffs, tangled briars, and rushing streams—a sector the human commanders had dismissed as entirely impassable.
At the vanguard, a diminutive Fox-folk scout froze. His nose, twitching with the precision of a fine instrument, caught a subtle scent in the freezing air. Without a second thought, his hand cut through the dark in a tactical gesture: Danger ahead. Pivot left.
Behind the deceptively still thicket ahead lay the faint but unmistakable odor of humanity—a stale mixture of sweat, unwashed leather, and waste. A hidden, well-camouflaged sentry post was nestled there, completely blind to the specters passing them by.
The Deer-folk riders pushed their innate sense of balance to its absolute limit. Guiding their nimble, sure-footed mounts like elves dancing on the edge of a blade, they found silent, impossible footholds along the crumbling gravel slopes, defying the laws of gravity.
In this manner, the sixty hunters slipped past one defensive picket after another, bypassing a supposedly seamless perimeter.
Finally, they slithered into the deep shadows of a massive boulder cluster. They were less than a hundred paces from the mountain of fodder and grain.
From this vantage point, they could hear the heavy, rattling snores of the exhausted supply guards. They could smell the parched, sweet fragrance of dry earth and summer grass radiating from the massive haystacks.
Reze peered over the crest of a jagged stone, his cunning, fox-like eyes greedily taking in the scene.
Dozens of human soldiers lay slumped against low barricades built from grain sacks, using them as makeshift windbreaks. The vast majority were deeply asleep. A miserable few struggled to keep watch, shivering over a dying campfire, muttering low, vulgar curses at the bitter weather and the high-ranking officers who kept them up all night.
They had no inkling that out in the consuming dark, a mere hundred paces away, sixty-one pairs of cold, predatory eyes were measuring their graves.
Reze checked the sky. The iron-black horizon to the east was beginning to bleed a faint, deep navy-blue hue.
It was the third mark of the Hour of the Tiger—the precise moment when the night is at its coldest, the dark is at its deepest, and the human mind is most vulnerable to sleep.
Now.
Reze did not hesitate. He turned back to his warriors, who held their breath in agonizing readiness, and let a single, raspy command slip through his teeth like the hiss of a viper:
"Release."
The order struck like a silent current.
Dozens of Fox-folk archers drew their bows into perfect, rigid arcs. Beside them, the powerful Deer-folk warriors readied their throwing spears. Tinder and flint struck in unison, igniting the lethal payloads.
Swoosh—swoosh—swoosh!
In an instant, dozens of arrows and spears wrapped in oil-soaked linen tore into the sky. They hissed like a nest of awakened fire vipers, carving brilliant, mesmerizing arcs of orange-red across the pitch-black canopy—an ominous meteor shower raining down from the heavens. They arched gracefully, plunging with terrifying accuracy into the two massive mountains of dry fodder.
Simultaneously, the Deer-folk hurled heavy, grease-soaked bundles of kindling, their raw strength launching the blazing spheres deep into the camp.
The slumbering guards by the campfire didn't even comprehend the falling stars until it was too late. One sentry, blinking away sleep, looked up stupidly at the descending points of light, a bizarre, poetic thought flitting through his mind: How beautiful...
The next second, hell arrived with a roar.
Boom—!
The parched fodder didn't merely catch fire; it detonated.
The moment the first fire arrow pierced the haystack, a violent tongue of orange flame erupted several meters into the air, looking like a fire demon bursting its chains. Then the second struck, then the third, then the tenth—dozens of ignition points detonated in perfect synchronicity.
Driven by the fierce north gale, which acted like a massive forge blower, the flames expanded, coalesced, and mutated with terrifying speed. Within seconds, the two golden hills were completely swallowed, transformed into a raging, towering sea of purgatory. The sudden, blistering thermal wave slapped against the faces of Reze and his men, even a hundred paces away.
And the fire was hungry.
Embers whipped up by the gale danced through the air like tens of thousands of bloodthirsty locusts, raining down upon the surrounding sectors. The walls of grain sacks caught instantly, their heavy tarps melting into liquid fire. The long rows of wooden baggage carts groaned as they were enveloped in sheets of orange. Finally, the dry wooden planks and thatched roofs of the sprawling stables caught the spark, turning into an unbroken canopy of fire.
A catastrophe—absolute, irreversible, and apocalyptic—unfolded in the most brutal, magnificent fashion.
"Fire! The supplies are burning!"
"Enemy attack—! It's an enemy attack!"
Shrill, terrified screams broke out like the cries of strangled fowl, violently shattering the false peace of the pre-dawn hours. Shrill, discordant alarm horns began to blow from every corner of the camp in a chaotic, panicked cacophony.
The soaring inferno painted the sky a sickening, blood-red hue. Billowing columns of black smoke, choked with millions of sparks, were driven forward by the gale, rolling over the camp like a black dragon emerging from the underworld to tear the living to pieces.
Yet, a terror far worse than the fire was brewing in the stables.
Thousands of prime warhorses, smelling the acrid smoke and feeling the blistering heat, looked out at the apocalyptic wall of fire closing in on them. The primal, hardwired terror of the herbivore awoke instantly in their veins.
Neigh—!
The night fractured under the weight of thousands of agonizing, terrified shrieks. The beasts' eyes turned blood-red, consumed by madness. They threw their weight forward, their heavy, iron-shod hooves battering the fragile, burning wooden barriers of their pens.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The scorched fences shattered like twigs.
Thousands of crazed warhorses, breaking free from their halters like demons unleashed, surged out of the burning ruins of the stables in a massive, black torrent of raw flesh and panic. They had only one instinct: to flee the burning hell behind them.
They launched an insane, blind, and unstoppable charge directly into the brightly lit, heavily populated heart of the camp.
The ultimate nightmare had begun: a catastrophic self-stampede.
Countless human soldiers, stumbling out of their tents with bleary eyes and half-donned armor, looked up to see a tsunami of thundering hooves bearing down on them. Their expressions turned more horrified than if they had looked upon a demon.
They were instantly bowled over, trampled into the earth, and crushed into a unrecognizable slurry of flesh and bone. Tents were shredded, caught by the stampede, and dragged into the spreading embers.
The great, armored steel beast had begun to violently stamp its own heavy hooves into its soft, unprotected underbelly.
The camp was entirely lost to chaos.