The fortress of the White Lady rose from the marshes like a half-forgotten nightmare, its walls slick with damp, streaked with a fungal rot that no amount of spellcraft could cleanse. Crooked towers clawed toward the sky, wrapped in climbing brambles that seemed to bleed a dull red ichor. It was an unholy place, a monument to curses. The wind wailed through broken arrow loops, carrying with it a scent of wet stone and the coppery tang of old blood.
Banners embroidered with a blood-moon insignia snapped against the iron ramparts, echoing a silence that felt more menacing than any battle cry. Down below, where the fortress walls gave way to the swamp, twisted sentries watched from behind their bone-forged helms, their pale eyes as lifeless as dead fish, swords crusted in dry gore.
Aldric took in every detail, heart clenched in a wolfish snarl. The Crescent Wolf banner at his back fluttered ragged but unbowed. Behind him, an army of Frostfang's battered survivors gathered — some armored, some clothed in nothing more than peasants' rags, but every single one of them ready to die rather than let the White Lady hold Frostfang in her rotten grip a day longer.
Rowena stepped up beside him, quiet as an arrow. Her emerald-and-silver cloak was torn at the shoulder, blood crusted around her left temple, but her eyes shone bright with rage. Her voice was cold iron as she surveyed the looming keep.
"Today," she said, "the world changes. One way or another."
Aldric nodded, feeling the truth of that statement like a hot coal in his ribs.
"Frostfang stands," he growled, and raised his sword to the grey sky. "And Frostfang will rise."
A roar answered him, a roar so wild it startled the carrion crows from the battlements. Children clutching broken pitchforks raised their voices alongside battle-hardened warriors. The forest wolves, their fur bristled with mud and ash, joined the chorus with howls that shook the bones of the marsh.
Aldric's heart swelled with a furious, uncontainable pride. This was what the White Lady could never understand — no black magic could break the will of a people who had nothing left but each other.
He gave the signal.
They charged.
The Breaking of the Lines
Steel rang on steel as the front ranks collided. The corrupted soldiers fought with a cold, terrifying precision, their movements puppetlike and unnatural. They did not scream, did not falter, did not bleed properly — black ichor oozed from their wounds instead of true blood.
Aldric met them head-on, a living blade of fury. Each time his sword struck, a corrupted soldier fell. The moonsteel edge of his weapon sang through plate and bone alike, splitting their curses in half.
Around him, the Frostfang warriors were a pack of starved beasts. Brannoc, wielding a hammer the size of a small anvil, smashed his way through a wall of spearmen. A girl no older than sixteen fought with two kitchen knives, dancing between the armored giants and cutting hamstrings before they even saw her.
Rowena was everywhere — a green flame in the madness, her knives moving in a pattern older than any language, a dance of death that seemed to warp time itself. She gutted a corrupted axeman, spun, and stabbed a silent knight through his eye-slit in one breath.
Overhead, the crows circled lower and lower, as if drawn to the feast of souls about to be unleashed.
The clash of weapons, the screams of the dying, the thunder of boots on soggy earth — it all melded into a single, unstoppable tide of violence.
At the Fortress Gates
The towering gates of the White Lady's fortress loomed, built of blackwood and banded in iron, reinforced with sigils that burned a hateful white.
Brannoc and a handful of hillmen dragged a massive battering ram through the mud, a felled oak bound with chains.
"Clear the path!" Brannoc roared, voice shaking like a god's thunder.
Aldric and Rowena surged forward to guard the battering crew. Together they cut down the corrupted knights trying to defend the gate, severing limbs, heads, memories.
"Hit it!" Aldric shouted.
The battering ram slammed forward with a deafening boom. The iron bands shook but held.
"Again!"
BOOM.
A fracture split one of the sigils, sparking with dark magic that spat curses into the air.
The corrupted soldiers wailed, as if feeling their mistress's fortress groaning beneath the assault.
"One more!" Aldric bellowed.
They struck a third time.
The gates buckled, screaming on their hinges, and then collapsed inward in a spray of shattered wood and flickering spell-lights.
Inside the Walls
The fortress interior was worse than any nightmare.
Black candles burned in twisted chandeliers, dripping wax that smelled of rotten herbs. The walls were scrawled in languages that made Aldric's head pound, shifting runes that refused to stay still, as if alive.
Corpses hung from iron hooks, eyes sewn shut, their mouths still moving as if in prayer. The corrupted soldiers took up positions along the inner courtyard, their armor fused to their flesh, faces void of anything human.
Aldric felt bile rise in his throat.
Rowena stepped closer, her presence grounding him. "Stay with me," she murmured. "Focus."
He swallowed hard, nodded.
They advanced.
Every hallway was a killing ground, every staircase a gauntlet of blade and spell. Aldric's sword grew slick with dark blood until he could barely hold it. His knuckles cracked against the hilt, fingers half-frozen from the cold magic bleeding from the walls.
They reached the grand hall, finally, after hours that felt like years.
The Throne of Bone
At the far end, upon a throne made of polished skulls and witchlight, sat the White Lady.
She looked carved from ice, so pale she almost glowed. Her gown of spider-silk clung to her body like night itself. A crown of twisted silver marked her brow, ancient and hateful.
She lifted one lazy hand, and the corrupted soldiers fell still.
"Aldric." Her voice was soft, cold, motherly — a mockery of every warm memory he had ever known. "My beautiful child returns."
Aldric fought the surge of nausea, memories threatening to slip through the holes in his mind.
"No." He stepped forward, voice a blade in its own right. "I am no child of yours."
Her eyes narrowed, a crack of true fury shining through the facade. "You were always mine," she hissed. "Born from my will, shaped by my hand. And now you will kneel."
Rowena spat on the stone. "Never."
The White Lady rose from her throne. Black magic spilled from her fingertips in a choking cloud, carrying the taste of burnt flowers and grave-soil.
The corrupted knights collapsed as the curse sustaining them was drawn back into their mistress, leaving only a circle of cold silence between Aldric and the White Lady.
The Final Duel
Aldric advanced, sword steady.
She struck first, a coil of shadow that hissed through the air. He pivoted, letting the curse split the stone floor instead of his spine.
They circled.
"Do you really think," the White Lady whispered, "that the wolf you have become can stand against me?"
Aldric answered by lunging forward, blade aimed for her heart.
She parried with a burst of magic, sending him sprawling. The smell of scorched leather filled his nose, but he rolled to his feet, teeth bared.
Rowena called from the edge of the hall. "Aldric! Remember!"
He saw her then — every battle they had shared, every night under the same blanket of stars, every time she had refused to give up on him.
"I do remember," he whispered.
The White Lady lunged, talons of darkness reaching for his throat.
He ducked, slashed, opened a cut across her belly.
Black blood poured out, thick and bubbling.
She screamed, the sound cracking every candle in the hall.
The Breaking of the Curse
She tried to drown him in illusions — showed him Frostfang burning, showed him his father's dying breath, made him taste the fear of every child who had ever bled on these stones.
But Aldric was no child now.
He was the wolf.
He let the rage fill him, let the pain become his shield.
Then he plunged the moonsteel sword through her heart.
Her body shuddered, frozen mid-curse, and then a black wind ripped free of her, pulling her soul screaming into oblivion.
The fortress walls began to collapse. Sigils burned out, bleeding white flame.
The soldiers, freed from her control, fell to their knees, sobbing, clutching their heads as if lost in a storm.
Rowena reached Aldric, pulling him close, breath ragged.
"It's done," she said, tears tracking down her cheeks.
He nodded, though he could barely believe it.
The Collapse
Brannoc and the hillmen charged through the doors, waving the Crescent Wolf banner high.
"Out!" Aldric commanded, voice hoarse.
They fled the fortress as its bones came apart, stones exploding outward in a rush of dark light and crumbling magic.
When they reached the marsh, they turned to watch the White Lady's fortress fall, towers imploding, walls sucked down into a black pit that swallowed even the memory of her reign.
The crows fled shrieking.
The Dawn of Wolves
The army stood silent, eyes wide, as the first sunlight in weeks broke through the clouds, falling warm and golden over the marshland.
No more darkness.
No more chains.
Aldric raised the Crescent Wolf banner high, and a roar went up so loud it seemed to rip the sky itself.
They had won.
Rowena clasped his hand, refusing to let go. "What now?"
He looked across the broken land, eyes blazing. "Now we rebuild."