The Stormmere Marches lay at the farthest reaches of the Bloodbane Empire, a place where the wind cut like a knife and the sea howled like a mad god denied his offering.
Here, the land was a treacherous mix of jagged cliffs, misty marshes, and forests so thick they swallowed men whole.
It was a place where exiles, outlaws, and forgotten sons of fallen nobility often found themselves appointed as "wardens," which was just a polite way of saying the Empire needed bodies on the border and didn't much care whose.
Beyond the walls of fortresses Blackthorn, the sea stretched out like a great silver plate, calm and endless under the evening sun.
Fortress Blackthorn—a monolith of black stone and iron, perpetually damp with sea spray—was the first and last line of defense against any who dared cross the Stormmere Marches.
The view here was almost serene—if one could ignore the fact that this was a place where pirates, raiders, and worse made their home.
It was also, regrettably, several weeks' hard ride from the capital, meaning any cry for help would be an echo in a graveyard by the time it reached imperial ears. After all, magic Towers with mages capable of teleportation were often in the more... Richer territories.
The men on duty had long since learned to appreciate what little peace they could find here, after all for a long while their job was to stand on the walls, tell smugglers to piss off, and hope no one important bothered them.
"Say what you will about this damned posting," said Jarek, leaning against his spear, "but at least we have the best view in the Empire."
His companion, Tomas, snorted. "You can keep your view. I'd trade it for a good whore and a mug of something that doesn't taste like horse piss."
"You've no appreciation for the finer things in life, my friend," Jarek said, taking a deep breath of the salty air.
"You ever been to the capital? I hear the emperor has paved the streets in gold."
"Only if gold smells like shit," Tomas replied. "And is trampled by a hundred thousand boots a day."
A few of the others chuckled.
Jarek sighed. "I'm telling you, nothing ever happens out here."
Then Tomas saw something in the sky.
At first, he thought it was birds. A flock moving fast, too fast—black shapes against the deepening sky, dozens, maybe hundreds.
"Hey... what in the hells is that?" he muttered, squinting.
Jarek frowned, following his gaze.
"Wyverns?"
"Don't look like any wyverns I've ever seen."
The shapes were getting closer.
The sun caught them at an angle, and suddenly, they were shimmering—not wings, but metallic hulls, gleaming like polished steel. They had no wings, no beating membranes, only strange, humming appendages on their sides, shifting and twisting like great insects.
And beneath them, they carried men.
Jarek's blood ran cold. "The hell!?"
"Sound the alarm!" someone bellowed.
The bells rang out in shrill, frantic cries.
Shouts erupted from the walls. Men scrambled for their weapons. Archers took their places, fumbling to notch arrows as they tried to make sense of what they were seeing.
The largest of the sky-beasts bore a flag—scarlet background and a golden sun, the flag of the Akerian Empire.
"The Akerians?" Tomas gasped. "That's not possible!"
"Tell that to them!"
"What in all the hells do we do?" a young recruit muttered.
The captain, a veteran with more scars than fingers, spat over the side of the wall. "We do what we always do, boy. We fight."
Brave words... Foolish words.
The attack began before the archers even had a chance to draw their bows.
The airships opened their bellies, and men began to fall from the sky.
Not falling—descending.
They came like raindrops in a storm, clad in armor that caught the light in unnatural ways, and at their backs, strange devices flared with blue energy, slowing their descent at the last moment.
By the time the archers loosed their first volley, the enemy had already touched down inside the fortress.
Steel met steel in the courtyards, but Bloodbane blades shattered against Akerian armor.
From the ships above, bolts of white-hot fire rained down from strange rotating cylinders, turning stone walls to molten slag.
Tomas and Jarek fought as best they could, side by side, knowing they were doomed.
Jarek swung his spear at one of the invaders, but the Akerian moved ducking beneath the strike and driving his blade through Jarek's chest.
Tomas barely had time to scream before something blinded him in white fire.
The fortress was a maelstrom of death.
Flames devoured the upper battlements, sending gouts of smoke curling into the twilight sky. Screams—raw, wretched things—mingled with the clash of steel and the sickening, wet sounds of bodies being torn apart.
Captain Varek, the scarred veteran who had spat over the wall only moments ago, was already half-buried under the corpses of his own men. He swung his war axe in desperate, brutal arcs, hacking into an Akerian's shoulder. The weapon bit deep, shattering metal and bone alike—but the bastard didn't fall.
The enemy soldier let out a rasping laugh, his teeth stained with blood. He seized the shaft of the axe, his gauntlet humming with eerie blue light, and ripped it away as though he were pulling a twig from a child's hand.
Then came the counterstroke.
Varek barely had time to move before the Akerian's glowing blade carved through his chestplate like it was boiled leather. The captain let out a strangled grunt, staring dumbly at the molten edges of the wound that now split his ribcage.
He fell. He did not rise.
"Fall back!" someone bellowed—a sergeant, maybe, or some fool who still believed there was a battle left to fight.
But there was nowhere to fall back to.
The courtyard was a butcher's yard, filled with the dying and the soon-to-be dead. Blood pooled in the spaces between the cobblestones, steaming in the night air. The fortress walls, once Blackthorn's greatest defense, had been reduced to searing slag, glowing like an open wound in the earth.
The Akerians fought without hesitation, without mercy. Their armor warped and shifted, as though the plates themselves were adjusting to each movement, allowing them to move faster than any man should. Their weapons—thin, elegant things that glowed like captured starlight—cut through swords, shields, and bone as though they were made of parchment.
And then, the sky screamed.
A deafening roar—not from the dying, not from the flames, but from above.
One of the great airships had descended lower, its vast metal belly yawning open once more. But this time, it did not drop men.
It dropped something else.
A great, pulsing orb of light, humming with a sound that made the bones of every man still standing ache. It descended lazily, like a falling star… until it touched the earth.
Then, it erupted.
A wave of blinding blue energy exploded outward, slamming into every soldier still fighting. Those closest to the impact were simply gone—reduced to shadows burned into the stone. Those further away dropped their weapons, screaming, as the metal of their armor seared their flesh.
The Akerians—somehow untouched—pressed forward, stepping over the corpses with the casual ease of butchers at work.
Amidst the carnage, one man still stood.
Sergeant Haldor, a bear of a man with arms thick as tree trunks, clenched his mangled, half-burned fists and roared, "Bastards! Come take my head if you dare!"
An Akerian obliged.
The warrior was smaller, faster—his sword hissed through the air like a whisper of silk. Haldor blocked it with his gauntlet—only for the metal to shatter on impact, his hand splitting apart in a spray of blood.
He had just enough time to look surprised before the second stroke took his head from his shoulders.
His body swayed for a moment, as though refusing to believe it was dead, before collapsing.
Above it all, the Akerian banner unfurled in the burning wind.
The fortress was theirs.
The battle was over.
Not that it had ever been much of a battle.
The fortress lay in ruins, bodies stacked like broken dolls, the walls molten slag, the airships looming above like silent gods watching the aftermath of their wrath.
Captain Vaelin Oras of the Akerian Empire stood atop the battlements—or what remained of them—his crimson cloak fluttering in the salty wind. His armor, unlike that of his men, bore intricate engravings—serpentine sigils curling along the blackened steel, a mark of his station. In his gauntleted hand, he held a strange cylindrical device, its surface humming softly with blue energy.
"Status." His voice was sharp, cold, devoid of anything resembling sympathy.
A lieutenant approached, his visor retracting with a soft hiss to reveal a pale, clean-shaven face, almost boyish were it not for the coldness in his eyes.
"Resistance has been eradicated, Captain," the man reported, stepping over a Bloodbane soldier who was moaning weakly, reaching for a broken sword with a hand that no longer had fingers. He did not spare him a second glance. "We lost seventeen men. Most to structural collapses. The Bloodbanes lost… well." He gestured to the carnage around them.
Vaelin barely glanced at the corpses. "Seventeen is sloppy."