Kaelen Ironhand knew better. The mist was a lie, just like the peace.
He stood on the shattered ramparts of the north gate, the jagged scar of a Hellcannon impact still raw beneath his boots. Below, the camp followers and refugees huddled around flickering braziers, their faces hollow. Once, these walls had bristled with the banners of a dozen knightly orders. Now, only a tattered griffon standard hung limp from the keep.
Kaelen touched the rune-brand on his forearm—the mark of the Slayer’s Oath, though he had never taken it. Not formally. His shame was not failure, but survival. Three winters ago, in the tunnels beneath the Howling Heights, he had watched his entire Stonebeard throng fall to a Bloodthirster’s axe. He had been the last, trapped under a collapse, listening to the daemon’s laughter fade as it turned toward the surface. return of reckoning
The mist over Praag had not lifted in seven years. Some said it was the breath of the Dark Gods, lingering after the Storm of Chaos. Others, the wiser ones, called it shame—a land holding its breath, waiting for a dawn that might never come.
The mist curled around them as the three walked toward the war council. Somewhere in the darkness beyond the gate, a bell tolled—slow, wet, wrong. Kaelen Ironhand knew better
Kaelen pulled a crumpled parchment from his belt. It was stained with rust and something darker. “This came by gyrocopter last night. Karak Eight Peaks is not reclaimed—not fully—but enough dwarfs have retuned to their anvils. King Belegar promises two hundred Ironbreakers, if we can hold the line for thirty days.”
Return of Reckoning , they called it. The slow, brutal crawl back from the edge of annihilation. Below, the camp followers and refugees huddled around
Tomorrow, he would break the count. Or it would break him.
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