Raghor Bloodbrand stood at the edge of a vast crater, his massive infernal warplate radiating heat as it caught the dying embers of Tharn Karog’s volcanic dusk. His crimson cape snapped behind him like a tattered banner in the sulfur laden winds. What once had been a fortified command bastion of Mar’ghor the Smoldering, one of Nurrak’s fiercest and most feared Dark Sovereigns, now lay reduced to scorched ruin.
Ash coated the broken teeth of shattered watchtowers. Twisted steel, warped by unnatural heat, jutted from the blackened ground like claws. Charred banners, still marked with the sigil of Wrath, smoldered on broken poles. The stench of burned flesh and seared brimstone saturated the air, thick enough to gag lesser demons.
Hundreds upon hundreds of corpses lay strewn across the ruined outpost. Hellborn, Infernal Warriors, Flakin, even a few Emberborne commanders. The battlefield bore no sign of siege or resistance, only surgical devastation. Many of the bodies were cleaved in half with near perfect precision. Others had been liquefied entirely. No wounds spoke of traditional magic. This was sothing else, controlled, targeted, devastating.
Yet the true horror for Raghor was the absence.
There were no Dreadlord corpses.
No remains of Dark Sovereigns.
Not even the ashes of their passing.
They were not killed.
They were taken.
"This isn’t a battlefield," Raghor growled, voice like gravel in a furnace. "This is a harvest."
He stepped forward, examining a scorched sigil etched into the stone at the center of the outpost. It had been seared by spatial magic, folded into itself like reality had been twisted and crushed. The wound in space still shimred faintly.
He turned to his officers. "Spread the word. Organize the legions. I want all airborne scouts deployed. Sweep from the peaks of Shal’khath to the Blistered Reach. Search the molten trenches, the fractured valleys.. everywhere."
A massive, four ard demon bearing glowing blood glyphs slamd its fist to its chest and bowed low. "At once, Lord Bloodbrand."
Raghor’s gaze trailed to a faint trail of scorched terrain leading south. Trees blackened to dust. Hills cracked open. An unseen hand had carved a path of annihilation.
He clenched a clawed fist.
"Let’s see how long you can keep hiding."
--
Far from the warhorns and howls of the legions, Corvin strode silently through the ravaged corelands of Tharn Karog, his cloak trailing smoke and his boots touching only silence. His presence seed to mute the very wind.
His body moved with cold purpose, elental energies spiraling around him in layered halos, frost misting at his shoulders, lightning humming from his fingertips, ember trails igniting in his wake. With every step, he carved the land further from its master. He was not walking through enemy territory.
He was repurposing it.
He no longer counted his kills. His senses had sharpened beyond the need. Infernal battalions fell before they even saw him, crushed by gravity wells, swallowed by spatial fractures, or reduced to molten dust by elental surges. Fire spells cracked apart under his pressure. Blades shattered before touching his skin. He did not even bothered to absorb them. Only demons of rare and arcane affinity was worthy of getting absorbed. These, he fed on. Their power was ager, but clean.
The air around him buzzed, alive with latent aether, the ground itself trembling with anticipation of his passage. The very ley lines of Nefrath bent subtly to his will, drawn to the gravity of a Planarch.
Then, as he stepped through another broken demonic sanctum, sothing shifted.
From the far eastern ridge of a bastion he had annihilated a day prior, movent flickered. Structured, and ordered. Not the chaos of retreating demons, this was organized redeploynt. Flight scouts in formation. Signal beacons lit from vantage stones.
He knelt beside a twitching Emberborne pinned to the ground by its own lted armor, still conscious, barely. Its remaining eye widened in terror as Corvin’s presence dimd the very light.
Without a word, Corvin reached out and pressed two fingers to the creature’s temple.
Mindwalk.
The demon’s thoughts splintered under the force of his entry, but Corvin shaped the fragnts into clarity.
There, a na. A voice shouted in guttural, broken tones. Orders. Structure. Authority.
Raghor Bloodbrand.
A Demon Lord.
Corvin withdrew his hand. The demon exhaled a final breath and stilled.
He rose slowly, the corners of his mouth curling upward into a thin, predatory smile. The shadows at his feet shifted eagerly.
He could feel the weight of Raghor’s presence in the distance, like two celestial bodies drawn into orbit. It was ti.
No more harvests. No more echoes.
It was ti to face sothing that might actually try to stop him.
With a whisper of displaced air, Corvin vanished, blinking forward through the haze of sulfur and ruin, his path aid directly at the Demon Lord who now hunted him.
The predator had marked his prey.
--
Corvin arrived unseen, hovering in the upper haze of a shattered ridge overlooking Raghor Bloodbrand’s camp. What lay before him was no re outpost, it was a war engine, a bastion of Wrath’s fury incarnate.
The encampnt sprawled like a festering wound carved into the charred skin of Nefrath, each of three legions organized in concentric rings of military precision and demonic dread. These were not re soldiers. They were war forged instrunts of destruction, forged in the hellfires of ambition and servitude.
A legion in Nefrath ant between fifteen hundred to two thousand demons. Each a weapon, each a scream etched in flesh.
At the outer periter, patrol hordes of Flakin hissed and cackled in tight formations. These fire born miscreants, lean and twitching, moved like sparks on dry parchnt. Their bodies constantly flickered, limbs alight with unstable fire as they hurled molten embers between one another for sport. Though crude in power, they were many, gnats with claws, dangerous in swarms.
Behind them, the Emberborne drilled with coordinated grace. Their charred armor glinted red from within, glowing with the infernal runes etched across their bodies. Each one carried twin axes or polearms infused with core fire. Officers of the lower tiers, their presence imposed discipline through violence and fear. Their orders were given without words; only gestures and glares were needed.
Further in, ranks of Hellborns ford a wall of muscle and scar tissue. Hardened veterans with fused tal skin and deep aether burns across their torsos, they brandished jagged halberds and tower shields shaped like howling mouths. Their chants echoed like a forge roaring to life.
Infernal Warriors ca next. Columns of fully armored elites. Their blackened steel bore burning war glyphs that flared with every synchronized stomp. Arcane pulses rippled outward from their heavy steps. They were the anvil upon which Wrath would forge a counterblow.
Amid them road Abyssal Champions, commanding with flaming brands and staffs of brimstone. Towering and mask faced, they directed lesser demons with growling incantations and bursts of controlled fla. Their command was precise, engineered savagery.
And at the heart of the camp, within a circle scorched by infernal rites, stood a conclave of Dreadlords. Tall, gaunt figures cloaked in infernal silk and bone weave armor, they walked over the cracked basalt floor. Their eyes burned with pact born insight as they traced lines on arcane maps hovering midair. Voices like venom whispered orders to unseen subordinates.
Towering above all, brooding upon a throne of molten obsidian, stood Raghor Bloodbrand. From his perch, he observed all with a predator’s silence.
Corvin narrowed his eyes.
And the world shivered.
He raised both hands, and the weave of reality itself recoiled.
Aether responded.
The winds halted.
The skies grew dim.
From his fingers, threads of elental fury unspooled.
And the sky scread.
Without warning, the earth surged upward in a violent cascade in Northern Periter. Jagged stone spears burst from beneath the Flakin, skewering dozens instantly, snapping like jaws around their shrieks. Fissures cracked open, swallowing survivors and vomiting fla into the air. The northern patrol lines dissolved in an instant.
The wind whistled high, carrying death in Western Ridge. A storm of spear sized icicles fell like divine wrath, shards of frost honed to lethality. The Emberborne formation broke as leaders were impaled mid command. Their burning axes fell silent. Those who ran were flayed by follow up gusts of cutting ice, skin and armor torn away in ribbons.
On the Southern Watchtowers, chain lightning laced the air, cracking from cloud to soil in arcs of blinding blue white. Infernal Warriors scread as the electricity surged through runic plates, overloading enchantnts and boiling blood beneath armor. Watchtowers collapsed in flaming wreckage, detonated by cascading overloads of volatile magic.
Cold winds spiraled from above, laced with elental void. They cut through tents and flesh alike. Abyssal Champions in Central Encampnt tried to summon wards but were frozen mid chant, their limbs snapping under pressure as blood turned to crystalline shards. The central court beca a frozen graveyard of shattered bodies.
Finally the Inner Sanctum of Command, Firestorms fell, dense columns of searing fla laced with forked lightning spears. The Dreadlords’ chants faltered as infernal scrolls turned to ash. One tried to conjure a barrier, only to be engulfed by a teor of plasma. Screams echoed as magic failed and reality obeyed a new master. The command circle cracked, its power broken.
Cries rose. Chaos followed.
And through the dust and fla descended a Rave, cloaked in arcs of blue white lightning, shrouded in threads of golden fla. His steps did not touch the ground.
His presence unraveled order.
His gaze made fire tremble.
And where he looked, death obeyed.
These were not soldiers. Not to him.
They were offerings.
And he had co to collect.
--
It wasn’t supposed to be her job. Not entirely.
Valyne stood at the gates of Raven’s Nest, arms folded and one brow twitching dangerously as the last mber of the envoy’s entourage bowed kindly before her. This one was from the Obsidian Gate, five mbers in total, their leader a pale skinned Magus nad Thaelys with cheekbones sharp enough to slice fruit and an ego twice as sharp.
"Welco to Raven’s Nest," Valyne said, voice polished but lined with exhaustion. "Follow the maids. You’ll be housed in the east wing. Dinner is in two hours."
She didn’t wait to see if they bowed again. She spun on her heel and walked back inside, muttering curses in three dialects of Elvish. Loud enough for the statues to blush.
The east wing was her wing. Why? Because it had better windows. And now it was the "ambassador dormitory." She would bet a satchel of silverleaf that Corvin was laughing at her from whatever dark ruin he was brooding over. Brooding and probably conjuring lightning with one hand while sipping sothing smug with the other.
She hadn’t even made it past the entrance hall when one of the guards approached with another report.
"Magistra Valyne, a second envoy has arrived. Aurelian delegation. Four in total. Magus Kelorien leads them."
Valyne blinked. "Of course they have," she murmured with a dead smile. "Why wouldn’t they? Do we have enough rooms, or do I have to put one of them in the stables with the ravens?"
She turned to the nearest maid. "You know what to do. Set them in the west wing, opposite our delightful Synod guests. And may the Dark Mother have rcy for you if they cross paths before dinner. Actually..." she sighed. "No, scratch that. If they do, bring a bottle of wine and a sturdy chair. I’ll watch."
As she strode down the hallway, her boot heels clicking with increasing sharpness, she muttered under her breath, "Feather headed, arrogant, infuriatingly handso fool... Where in the na of Mother are you?"
Behind her, one of the maids, flawless in appearance, turned slightly.
"Master is already aware of the happenings, Magistra," she said smoothly, her tone respectful.
Valyne nearly jumped out of her skin.
"Do not sneak up on like that!" she snapped, then paused. "Wait, what? He’s what?"
"He is aware," the maid repeated gently. "All that occurs in Raven’s Nest is within his knowing."
Valyne’s hands clenched. "Of course it is. Because he’s apparently part demigod, part ghost, part bird and part spoiled peacock!"
The maid inclined her head with the faintest of smirks.
"Dinner will be served on ti, Magistra."
As the maid vanished down the hallway, Valyne groaned into her hands.
Two envoys. Opposing factions. One dinner table.
And no Corvin.
She had spent weeks sailing from Thalasien under direct orders from the Synod, endured storms, creepy Shadows, nightmares, Kaelyn’s nightgown diplomacy, and now she was a glorified receptionist. Not even a thank you note.
"if he doesn’t return by tomorrow I’m holding a summit in my nightgown just to spite him. And I’ll borrow the red one."
Sowhere at Raven’s Nest, a raven tilted its head and sent the echo of her outburst to its master.
And Corvin, wherever he was, probably smirked.
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