In the Brass Castle, deep in the ash-choked valleys of Kharaz'Dhul, the Council of the Red Oath stood wreathed in smoke and rage.
"Vraj is dead," came the report, delivered by a trembling acolyte with blood still staining his robes. "Killed by the Abyss-Slayer."
"Slain?" growled one of the elders, eyes like dried pitch. "Our Hound of the Southern Maw? Broken like common chattel?"
Another voice spat from across the chamber, "It was the one they call Kalem—the Lord of Armaments."
The council chamber erupted. Seething warriors, tattooed zealots, and half-mad priests howled in indignation. Some struck the floor with their ritual blades, others began to chant war-songs.
"He has defiled our blood-path! Desecrated the Hunt!"
Then the clamor parted like smoke as a figure rose—a brute of an orc in brass-scaled armor, skin the hue of dried clay, twin axes chained to his wrists. His presence sucked the heat from the room.
Ardra the Blood Lord.
"I declare the Blood Crusade," Ardra thundered. "No retreat. No surrender. No quarter. We march. We burn. We reduce the world to cinder!"
A deafening roar followed. Across the grim heartlands of the Red Oath, horns blared and bloodfires were lit. A river of fanatics—eight hundred thousand strong—began to move.
In Arsenic – The Iron Keep
The messenger who brought word to Kalem knelt trembling, soaked in sweat.
"They've… they've declared the Blood Crusade, my lord. All of them. All eight hundred thousand."
Kalem, seated on the stone steps of the southern bastion, ran a whetstone down the edge of a massive cleaver-like blade, expression unreadable.
"And they're coming here?"
"No, lord. Toward Redis. Toward the open field."
Kalem nodded. "Good. I sent the message just in time."
The messenger paled. "You—what message?"
Garrick stepped in, a scroll in his hand. "Kalem's reply. Simple. Elegant."
He read aloud:
'The field of Redis. Let us fight there. Such declares Kalem, Lord of Armaments.'
The hall fell into stunned silence.
Garrick turned to Kalem. "You do realize… this reply terrifies every lord within a hundred leagues of Redis? They're evacuating their cities. Emptying fortresses."
Kalem looked out toward the horizon. "Then they are wise."
The Great Exodus – Redis and the Surrounding Realms
As word spread like wildfire, dread swept across the heartland realms.
In Harrund's Vale, bells rang ceaselessly as thousands of peasants fled the border towns. In the city of Velmara, nobles wept openly as their homes were abandoned to wind and ruin. Even in the mountain fastnesses of Dor-Vehran, ancient dwarven lords ordered their gates sealed—better stone than fire.
One lord, Baron Haldrik, packed his treasury into carts and cursed loudly: "Let the gods decide who wins! I shall not wager my estate against that butcher's playground!"
The weight of what was to come drew eyes from every corner of the map.
The Jade Lotus sent a priestess with an emerald crystal that pulsed with stored light. The Pale Tribunal sent a frozen-eyed scribe accompanied by a dozen skeletal scribes. From the Golden Table, Queen Seleria herself departed with an escort of Sun-Spears, determined to watch with her own eyes.
From the Black Bell Conclave, a nightmare of a man—hooded and blindfolded—arrived with a crystal grown from soulglass.
And with them came historians, bards, and lorekeepers, all drawn by the madness of it—a single man challenging a war-cult of nearly a million.
Kalem stood amidst the tall grass of Redis Plain, surveying the terrain. The wind rolled like waves across the flatlands, peaceful, silent.
Garrick approached, his brow tight. "The observers are arriving. Hundreds. And there are now twenty-seven crystals recording your every step."
Kalem grunted. "Let them see it. Let them write it."
"You're going to fight them all alone?" Garrick asked quietly.
"I always fight alone," Kalem replied. "That's why I forge."
He raised his hand, and in a shimmer of blue-white mana, a new weapon dropped into his grasp—a sword with a blade like a sliver of midnight, humming with a dull pulse.
"What's this one called?" Garrick asked.
"Ashbringer. It burns through conviction."
Garrick chuckled. "Poetic."
Kalem nodded. "I forged it after the Abyss. In silence. For days I could not sleep. So I worked metal instead."
"Do you have enough?" Garrick asked again, quieter this time.
"More than enough," Kalem replied, eyes fixed to the horizon. "What I don't have… is time. And they are giving it to me."
From the east, the sky darkened.
Like a tide of rust and flame, the Red Oath swept across the land—chanting, snarling, banners soaked in blood. Entire fields turned to mud from their tread. Animals fled the forests. Trees lost their leaves.
They moved not as a proper army, but as a divine calamity. Eight hundred thousand strong—priests, warriors, beastmasters, berserkers, and soul-drinkers.
At the lead rode Ardra, his axes clanging like bells of war, eyes fixed ahead.
"Kalem!" he roared, even leagues away. "We are coming for your heart!"
That night, Kalem sat alone in the central tent. Garrick waited nearby but didn't speak. There was nothing more to say.
Weapons hovered around the Lord of Armaments—swords, spears, cleavers, glaives, and unnameable things wrought of mana and iron and soul.
Kalem whispered to the empty air, not in prayer but memory.
"Nara, Isolde, Lyra, Jhaeros… you'd laugh if you saw this. A whole world watching me fight like a wild beast."
He picked up a small knife—not magical, not forged in power, but a plain iron blade once gifted to him by Isolde.
He tucked it into his belt.
"I'll try not to embarrass you."