The march to Brightharbor began beneath a bleeding dawn.
Columns of orcs, goblins, and undead stretched for miles across the blackened plains, the banners of the Red Maw snapping in the salt wind. Ahead, the sea glimmered pale and cold; beyond it, smoke rose from the coastal city a wall-ringed jewel of stone and timber.
Brightharbor was no mere village.
It was the heart of Sungrace’s outer trade, guarded by radiant clergy and disciplined militia, its walls etched with golden runes that shimmered faintly even under cloud.
The Fanglord’s shadow had finally reached civilization.
At the edge of the marshes, Vris convened his war council beneath a canopy of stretched spider silk. The air was thick with ash, sweat, and argument.
Dunzok slammed his fist against the table. “We go straight through! The walls aren’t half as high as Fairehaven’s, and their men are soft from coin!”
Across from him, a scarred Fleshfeeder chief Gresk growled, rows of teeth strung on his necklace. “Your orcs charge too loud. We hunt from shadows, strike when they pray.”
Their voices collided like thunder. Steel scraped.
Vris leaned forward, the Heartfang’s red light reflecting in his eyes.
“Enough. You both want blood? Then earn it together. Dunzok, you take their gates. Fleshfeeders cut their throats when the gates open. One without the other dies uselessly.”
Both fell silent. Neither satisfied, but neither bold enough to defy the Fanglord’s glare.
Maz the Lasher, standing to one side, smirked faintly. “You lead beasts well,” she said when the others had gone. “Almost like you used to be one of them.”
Vris turned his head toward her, brow furrowed.
“Almost.”
She stepped closer, her red skin glowing faintly from the forge heat still clinging to her. The obsidian whip hung coiled at her hip.
“You think love is weakness,” she said quietly. “But even gods had consorts. Fire burns hotter with something to consume.”
For a heartbeat, he said nothing.
Something old stirred behind his eyes the echo of sunlight through a window, a girl’s laughter, the smell of coffee and old books. He didn’t know why the memory hurt.
He blinked, and it was gone.
“Love burns things that should live,” he said, turning away. “And I’ve burned enough.”
Maz smiled sadly. “Perhaps the Red Goddess isn’t done testing you.”
When the first boulders struck the walls, Brightharbor answered with light.
From its towers rose pillars of gold, radiant energy weaving into a dome that shimmered like liquid sun. Arrows bounced harmlessly from it. Fire guttered against it. Even Maggra’s plague winds broke apart and vanished.
The Radiant Clergy stood at the center of the city, their hymns rising over the roar of battle. Every verse strengthened the barrier. Every prayer made the air hum with divine pressure.
For three days, the Fanglord’s host hammered at it.
For three nights, they found no weakness.
Dunzok’s orcs broke siege towers under the heat of holy fire. The Fleshfeeders clawed at the walls only to be burned alive by radiant sigils that scorched their flesh. Even the Webmother’s brood could not cling to stone that shone like the sun.
Vris watched from the hills, rage simmering cold behind his eyes.
“They call it light,” he muttered. “It’s just another cage.”
At dawn on the fourth day, the cage struck back.
The hills around the encamped Red Maw erupted in horns and flame. Human cavalry poured down from the slopes knights, mercenaries, and zealots bearing golden spears. The shock tore through the ranks like a blade through silk.
Dunzok rallied his warbands, roaring defiance. Maz’s forge-guard met the charge head-on. The Fanglord rode into the chaos astride Skara, the Heartfang carving crimson arcs through steel and flesh alike.
For every man cut down, two more appeared. The humans’ war-songs rose above the clash, echoing across the plain like a challenge to the heavens.
And then one of them saw him.
A commander in gilded armor, face half-hidden behind a sunburst helm, pointed toward Vris and shouted, “There! The halfbreed devil!”
The cry rippled through their lines.
Arrows and spells turned toward him. He became the storm’s center every hero, every zealot, every desperate fool trying to claim the Fanglord’s head.
Skara took a dozen wounds shielding him. Dunzok was thrown from his mount. The Fleshfeeders broke ranks entirely, turning to feed in the chaos. The encirclement was closing.
Vris raised the Heartfang one last time, ready to die standing.
And the sun went out.
A shadow blotted the light from horizon to horizon.
Wings like stormclouds unfurled above the battlefield. The air stank of ozone and fire. The humans froze, every head tilting upward as the shape passed over them scales like black glass, eyes burning blue-white, older than nations.
The dragon descended with a roar that shattered stone.
The radiant barrier around Brightharbor flickered, then collapsed in a rain of golden sparks. Heat rolled across the land in waves, boiling blood in veins.
It did not seem to favor either army at first, and Vris clenched his sharp goblinoid teeth until his own mouth bled. The pressure from the wings as the giant black scaled beast roared overhead. Then a gout of flame erupted between both armies. It continued forward until the shimmer of faith died, and the magical barrier fell inert.
When its wings beat, the sky screamed.
The human army broke first, retreating toward the city in terror. Even the clergy fled, dragging their wounded behind the ruined walls. The dragon landed upon a hill of ash, folding its wings as if surveying insects.
For a long time, it looked directly at Vris.
In its eyes, he saw neither rage nor mercy only recognition, as though it saw through him, down to the thing that had crawled out of another world and stolen power it was never meant to hold.
Then the creature turned, beating its wings once, and rose into the clouds. The sky swallowed it whole.
Silence. Then the slow, sick sound of retreat.
The Red Maw limped from the field that night half its banners gone, its warriors broken. Skara bled from claw marks the size of axes. Dunzok’s armor was cracked; Maggra’s staff dimmed. Even the Webmother’s children hung in tatters.
Only Maz remained unbowed, her hand on Vris’s arm as he stared toward Brightharbor’s burning silhouette.
“You saw it too,” she said quietly.
“Yes.”
“Then you know.”
“That we are not the only monsters,” he murmured. “And not the greatest.”
Back in the Burrows, Vris stood before the map of the continent. The fires of Brightharbor still burned in his eyes.
He placed a claw on the Emerald Woods, then on the mountains of Harrowhall.
“The Radiant Clergy has power drawn from heaven,” he said. “If we can’t burn heaven, we’ll climb its walls. We’ll find its cracks.”
Maz approached, resting her hand lightly on his shoulder. “And if the dragon returns?”
Vris smiled faintly.
“Then I’ll make it kneel too.”
He turned from the map, cloak whispering behind him.
“Send the scouts. The world thinks the Fanglord broken. Let them believe it. For now.”
Above the burrows, the night wind carried two sounds:
the echo of distant human bells ringing for victory, and the low, rumbling growl of something ancient turning in its sleep.
Neither knew it yet, but the Age of the Red Maw had only just begun.