The silence in their chambers after the assassins' dissolution was a fragile skin stretched over a screaming void. Alex felt Kaelen's Weave-energy, now tinged with the faint, crackling blue of his own storm, attempt to soothe the icy burn in his side. The physical pain was a dull throb, a distant echo compared to the roaring inferno of rage and violation that consumed him. They had come for her. In his city. In their home. The sheer, unadulterated audacity of it, the casual cruelty, stripped away the last vestiges of Alex Maxwell, the bewildered photographer, the reluctant leader. What remained was the Herald, the Emperor of Storms, and he was a being forged in lightning and loss, now incandescent with a singular, chilling purpose.
When Lyra Snow, Ignis, Sylas, and the first wave of responding Stormguard warriors burst in, they found not a panicked victim, but a predator. Alex stood, Kaelen's hand a steadying pressure on his arm, his eyes no longer the uncertain blue of a Terran sky, but the hard, electric cobalt of a supercharged capacitor about to discharge. The faint scent of ozone around him was thick, almost suffocating, a promise of imminent, catastrophic violence.
"They will pay for this," Alex's voice was a low, guttural rasp, the sound resonating not just in the air, but as a thrumming vibration in the very stones of Kyanos. It wasn't a shout; it was a vow, cold and absolute. "Every last one of them."
There was no council, no debate. Word of the assassination attempt, of Kaelen's injury, of the Herald's chilling fury, spread through Stormfront like wildfire. The disparate Sky-fallen, beings from a hundred broken worlds, united in a singular, incandescent rage. They had found sanctuary here, a fragile hope. This attack was not just on their leaders; it was on that hope. And they would not suffer it.
Lyra Snow's psionic network, usually a tool for communication and coordination, became a weapon of intelligence. Within an hour, sifting through the terrified mental echoes of captured Horde scouts from previous encounters and the fresh, panicked psychic chatter from the Blasted Wastes (Vorlag's forces were not known for their subtlety, even in retreat), a target was identified: a fortified Iron Horde staging post and supply depot known as Blackfang Peak, nestled in a jagged volcanic caldera three days' march west. It was a crucial logistical hub for Vorlag's planned incursions into the territories bordering the Weirdwood, and its garrison, while formidable, was not expecting a retaliatory strike of this magnitude, this speed.
Alex didn't ask for volunteers. He simply stated his intent, his voice resonating through Lyra's psychic broadcast to every corner of Stormfront. "Blackfang Peak. We will make it a monument to Vorlag's arrogance. A funeral pyre for his ambitions."
The response was overwhelming. Every Sky-fallen capable of combat, every being whose world had been shattered by tyrants like Vorlag, every soul who had found a sliver of hope under the Herald's improbable banner, clamored to join. Alex, with Kaelen's quiet counsel and Lyra's pragmatic assessment, selected a strike force that was less an army and more a collection of living calamities.
Ignis, his obsidian skin already beginning to glow with internal fire, his eyes burning like miniature suns. Sylas, a deeper shadow than usual, his form seeming to bleed into the very darkness of the pre-dawn light, a dozen of his most lethal shadow-adepts materializing silently beside him. Zephyr and a squadron of his fiercest Aerian warriors, their leathery wings already flexing, their eyes like chips of obsidian. A hulking, rock-skinned Earthshaper named Bor, whose fists could shatter granite. A lithe, quicksilver being called Shimmer, whose body could refract light, rendering her nearly invisible. And Kaelen.
She had insisted, her amber eyes blazing with a fierce, protective light that mirrored Alex's own fury. The crimson line on her arm was a stark reminder of the violation, but her Weave-energy, now permanently intertwined with the blue echo of his Speed Force, crackled around her with a dangerous, untamed potency. Her Silvanesti grace was still there, but it was now overlaid with a predatory stillness, a warrior's lethal focus. She would fight by his side. Not as a Warden of the Weirdwood, but as a Sky-fallen of Stormfront, avenging an attack on her home, her love.
They moved not as an army marches, but as a storm gathers. Alex, at their head, was a blur of motion even before he fully unleashed his speed. The journey that should have taken cycles was compressed into a terrifyingly short span of hours. He didn't just run; he created a slipstream, a corridor of distorted time-space through which the strike force moved at a velocity that defied natural law. The landscape around them became a streaky, indistinct smear of blighted earth and skeletal trees.
Blackfang Peak loomed before them as the twin moons began their descent, its crude, iron-reinforced walls and watchtowers silhouetted against the bruised pre-dawn sky. The Iron Horde garrison, confident in their remote, fortified position, were caught completely unawares. Their sentries, brutish figures in spiked black plate, barely had time to register the faint blue shimmer on the horizon before all hell erupted.
Alex was the tip of the spear, the heart of the storm. He didn't bother with stealth, with subtlety. This was not an assassination; this was an extermination. He hit the main gate like a living thunderbolt, the Speed Force a focused, incandescent battering ram. The massive, iron-banded gates, designed to withstand siege engines, exploded inwards in a shower of molten metal and shattered stone, the shockwave alone flinging a dozen nearby Horde warriors through the air like broken dolls.
Then, the Stormguard was upon them.
Ignis became a walking inferno, streams of molten rock and superheated plasma erupting from his hands, turning sections of the fortress walls into rivers of lava, incinerating any Horde soldier foolish enough to stand in his path. The screams of the burning were a horrifying, short-lived chorus against the roar of his power.
Sylas and his shadow-adepts flowed through the chaos like wraiths, their blades, forged from solidified darkness, finding throats, piercing eye-slits, severing spines with chilling, silent efficiency. They moved unseen, their attacks sudden, brutal, leaving trails of butchered corpses in their wake. One moment a Horde warrior was bellowing a war cry, the next his head was rolling across the blood-slicked courtyard, his eyes wide with an uncomprehending terror.
Zephyr's Aerians descended from the sky like demonic gargoyles, their talons tearing through flesh and armor, their razor-sharp wing-edges decapitating unsuspecting foes. They dropped volatile crystalline shards, harvested from the deeper caverns beneath Kyanos, that exploded with concussive force, sending limbs and shrapnel flying in all directions.
Bor, the Earthshaper, became a living earthquake, his massive fists pounding the ground, sending shockwaves that cracked foundations, toppled watchtowers, and sent Iron Horde warriors sprawling, their bones shattering from the concussive impacts. He ripped chunks of rock from the earth, hurling them with devastating force, crushing siege engines and flesh alike.
Shimmer was a phantom of refracted light, a dozen illusory duplicates of herself appearing and disappearing, her true form a blur of motion as she delivered lightning-fast strikes with energy daggers that seemed to materialize from thin air, each blow targeting vital points with lethal precision.
And Kaelen… Kaelen was a whirlwind of silver and blue, her Silvanesti grace transformed into a deadly dance of destruction. Her twin swords, now wreathed in a faint, crackling aura of Speed Force-infused Weave energy, moved with a speed and precision that was breathtakingly lethal. She didn't just cut; she unwove her enemies, her blades passing through armor as if it were air, leaving trails of disrupted matter and fading life force. Her arrows, loosed with impossible speed, found targets through the narrowest of openings, each one imbued with a potent, explosive charge of her unique, hybridized energy. She moved through the battlefield like a vengeful goddess, her amber eyes blazing, her grief and rage channeled into a focused, terrifying lethality.
Alex was everywhere and nowhere at once. He was a blue streak of pure, unadulterated vengeance. He didn't just fight; he annihilated. He phased through walls, through shields, through ranks of terrified Horde warriors, his vibrating hands, now wielded with a chilling, conscious intent, reducing armored brutes to screaming, dissolving piles of molecular dust. He created miniature sonic booms with his speed, shattering eardrums, collapsing lungs. He moved so fast that the air around him superheated, scorching flesh, igniting flammable materials. He saw a group of Horde berserkers, their eyes wide with battle-lust and profane enchantments, charging towards a group of injured Aerians. Alex was there in a heartbeat, a blur of motion. He didn't even seem to touch them. One moment they were roaring, their axes raised. The next, they were simply… gone. Reduced to a fine, crimson mist and the lingering scent of ozone and burnt flesh.
The battle for Blackfang Peak was not a battle; it was a slaughter. A brutal symphony of destruction played out by beings of unimaginable power against an enemy utterly unprepared for the storm that had been unleashed upon them. The Iron Hordes, for all their brutality, their dark sorceries, their numbers, were simply outmatched, outmaneuvered, out-everythinged. They died screaming, they died confused, they died in ways their battle-scarred minds could not comprehend.
Alex found the commander of Blackfang Peak, a hulking brute named Grull Bloodfist, cowering in the ruins of his command tower, surrounded by the dismembered remains of his personal guard. Grull, a veteran of a hundred bloody campaigns, a warrior who had personally flayed Silvanesti scouts alive, looked up at the approaching blue storm, at the Herald whose eyes burned with a cold, cosmic fury, and for the first time in his miserable, violent life, he knew true, abject terror. He tried to beg, to bargain, to offer fealty.
Alex didn't even slow down. He phased his hand into Grull's chest, the sensation a cold, vibrating intrusion. He felt the panicked, frantic thumping of the warlord's black heart. And then, with a thought, with a flicker of his will, he squeezed.
Grull's eyes bulged, a choked, gurgling sound escaping his lips as his heart imploded within his chest. He collapsed, a lifeless heap of armor and offal.
Alex withdrew his hand, the blue lightning around him dimming slightly. He looked at the carnage around him, at the burning fortress, at the mangled corpses of the Iron Hordes. There was no triumph in his expression, only a cold, weary emptiness. He had sent his message.
As the first, blood-red rays of the Unheavens' dawn began to pierce through the smoke and ash, the Stormguard strike force regrouped amidst the ruins of Blackfang Peak. They were bloodied, exhausted, their powers drained, but they were victorious. The Iron Horde outpost was a smoking, corpse-strewn ruin. Vorlag's supply lines were shattered. His ambitions, at least in this sector, were crippled.
Kaelen came to Alex's side, her face smudged with soot and gore, her swords still dripping with a dark, viscous ichor. She looked at him, at the lingering coldness in his eyes, and her own heart ached. This victory had come at a price, a price paid not just in enemy lives, but in a small, vital piece of Alex's soul.
"It is done, Alex," she said softly, her mental voice a gentle balm against the ringing in his ears.
He nodded, his gaze still fixed on the burning ruins. "Yeah," he said, his voice hoarse. "It's done." He looked at his hands, at the faint, residual shimmer of blue energy. "I hope Vorlag got the message."
He had. The psychic shockwave of Blackfang Peak's annihilation, the sheer, brutal efficiency of its destruction, would soon reach the Obsidian Citadel. And Warlord Vorlag, for all his power, for all his dark alliances, would know that a new, terrifying force had truly awakened in the Unheavens. A force that did not play by the established rules of war. A force that answered to a Herald whose grief had been forged into a weapon of unimaginable fury.
The Stormguard had drawn first blood. And it was a torrent.