The substrate beneath Dragonblight communicated it long before the sound ever breached the northern sky.
It was a violent, unnatural reverberation—the deep stone registering the massed movement of tens of thousands of armored bodies, followed by the percussive, localized quakes of high-tier magic and heavy siege engines striking solid iron.
Leylin stood at the sharp, wind-scoured precipice of his northern outpost, the collar of his heavy cloak snapped flat by the Arctic wind. Beside him, Arcturis crouched low, the spirit bear's translucent blue form flickering like a pale flame against the stark white drift. Both of them stared toward the jagged horizon that masked the valley of Angrathar—the Wrathgate.
"It's begun," Leylin murmured softly.
He couldn't see the gate—not with his physical eyes. The towering peaks of the Dragonblight cut off direct line-of-sight. But through the his sensitivity through magic, he knew the alliance had started their attack.
For months, the two factions had been grinding its way toward this single choke-point. Bolvar Fordragon's heavy vanguard was striking first. They hit the Scourge lines like an iron wedge driven into decaying wood.
Then came the Horde. Dranosh Saurfang's Warsong offensive hit the flank, a surging, brutal tide that complemented the Alliance's grinding anvil.
For a brief, suspended moment in time, the impossible was happening. The bitter, blood-soaked hatred of twenty years had been paused. Side by side, silver banners and crimson pennants surged toward the towering iron gates of Icecrown.
Leylin's hand tightened around the hilt of Sanctity strapped across his back. They might actually tear the gate down, he thought, a rare spark of genuine expectation flaring in his chest.
Then, the ambient temperature dropped ten degrees in a single second.
It wasn't a natural frost. It was a suffocating, necromantic signature. The spiritual density of the northern sky collapsed inward, turning black and deadly.
The shift was instantaneous. The iron doors of Angrathar ground open, and Arthas Menethil stepped through the threshold.
Even from dozens of miles away, the weight of his presence pressed down on the earth. Frostmourne's hunger radiated across the ley-lines like a shrieking nerve. The momentum of the mortal armies didn't just slow; it shattered.
Through the bear's spirit-senses, Leylin saw a streak of brilliant crimson armor burst from the Horde front. Young Saurfang.
"No, you fool..." Leylin breathed, his voice swallowed by the wind.
He knew the gap. He had fought Arthas personally years ago in the frozen depths; he understood with terrifying clarity what lay between a mortal hero and the fully awakened avatar of death holding Frostmourne. Dranosh was brave, radiant with young honor—and utterly doomed.
A single strike. A flash of pale, soul-devouring light echoed through the substrate. Leylin felt the vibration of Dranosh's axe shattering, followed by the sickening, resonant hum of a heavy blade drinking a noble soul.
Leylin closed his eyes, taking a single, slow breath. When he opened them, his face was cold stone.
Then came the anomaly. It didn't register as magic. It didn't register as the Scourge.
Beside him, Arcturis threw back his massive head and let out a sound Leylin had never heard the spirit bear make before. It wasn't a roar of aggression or a growl of warning; it was a high, frantic whine of pure, primal revulsion. The spiritual tether connecting Leylin to the beast flooded with an overwhelming sensation—wrong, wrong, wrong. A foulness that defied the natural order of life, death, and spirit alike.
Leylin felt a cold droplet of sweat trace down his neck despite the freezing air. Not Arthas. The Scourge did not build weapons to destroy their own necrotic flesh. This was living alchemy, honed in secret, refined across years of desperate, dark iteration.
The Forsaken Royal Apothecary Society.
High above the battlefield, on the icy ridges overseeing the gate, green-slime catapults unlimbered. Grand Apothecary Putress stood at the edge, his voice carrying down the canyon through arcane amplification—a manifesto of absolute, mad betrayal.
"Did you think we had forgotten? Did you think we had forgiven?"
The first barrels rained down. The horror that followed echoed through the earth. The plague did not merely kill; it melted armor, dissolved bone, and stripped the flesh from living soldiers and Scourge fiends alike.
The screams of five thousand Alliance veterans and thousands of Horde warriors rolled across the Dragonblight like a physical wave.
Even Arthas—the Lich King—staggered. Frostmourne dropped slightly as the caustic gas ate into his ancient plate and melted the necrotic fibers animating his vanguard. The Lich King turned, his terrifying majesty ruined by an indiscriminate chemical nightmare, and retreated behind the closing iron gates of Icecrown.
"He's retreating..." Leylin whispered, his jaw tight. "The plague is hurting him."
A shadow fell over the snow. The sky above Angrathar ignited. Sweeping in from Wyrmrest Temple, the Red Dragonflight arrived not as saviors, but as cleansers.
Alexstrasza's drakes opened their maws, raining down holy, life-binding fire to cauterize the airborne plague before it could spill over the mountains and consume the entire continent.
The fire purified the air—and incinerated every survivor left writhing in the slime below.
Silence descended. A heavy, suffocating silence that pressed into the substrate like lead.
Leylin didn't wait for the ashes to settle. He quickly turned on his heel and strode rapidly and went to the Wrathgate, his heavy boots echoing off the stone. Arcturis bounded closely at his heels, the bear's form still trembling from the spiritual shockwave.
He quickly reached for his long-range communication array—a massive crystal construct integrated into a localized ley-node. His fingers flew across the control runes with precise, urgent efficiency.
He began drafting his first message to Alleria Windrunner.
The assault at the Wrathgate has collapsed into total catastrophe. A rogue faction of the Forsaken—led by Grand Apothecary Putress—has deployed a hyper-caustic alchemical weapon at Angrathar. Indiscriminate casualties. Bolvar Fordragon is down. Dranosh Saurfang is dead, his soul taken by Frostmourne. Arthas was forced to retreat into Icecrown.
He paused, his eyes narrowing as he calculated the immediate politcal fallout.
This was a coup. Putress could not have mobilized this volume of ordinance without high-level coordination inside Lordaeron. Varimathras and the dreadlord faction have moved. The Undercity is almost certainly compromised. Tell Jaina Proudmoore immediately—if she could not mediate this, the two factions will continue to fight making this expeditipn against the Scourge useless.
He hit the transmission rune, watching the blue light pulse down the ley-line toward the south.
Without stopping, he cleared the slate and began the second message, directed to Khadgar's private rune-frequency.
Khadgar. Prepare Dalaran for war—not with the Scourge, but with each other. Varian Wrynn will see the green fire and the Forsaken banners at Angrathar and he will see only one thing: Horde treachery. The alliance between the factions is dead. Do not let him march blindly into the Undercity without knowing the full truth, or the war for Northrend ends before we ever reach the Lich King.
He sent the second missive, then continued marching through Dragonblit, running a hand over his face. The strategic map of Azeroth had just been shattered and reassembled in ten minutes.
Five years of careful monitoring, five years of balancing the scales, and a single catapult barrage from a mad alchemist had thrown the entire mortal coalition into chaos. Varian would march on Lordaeron.
The Forsaken would fight back. The Horde and Alliance would tear at each other's throats while the Lich King sat in his high tower, recovering from the blight and watching them bleed.
"The Crusade," Leylin muttered to the empty room. "Tirion Fordring and the Ebon Blade are all that's left to hold the center."
He was looking north once more. The sky above Angrathar was stained a bruised, unnatural purple, streaked with the lingering white smoke of red dragonfire.
The wind howled down from the ice shelf, bitter, indifferent, and violent.
Leylin reached through the air, slowly materializing Sanctity in his hand. The quiet years of watching were over. The world was burning, and if he wanted to ensure Arthas fell, he would have to carve a path through the ash himself.
Leylin quickly continued mounting Arcturis to reach Wrathgate, and see whether there were still survivors or not. As far as he knows, Bolvar Fordragon would live but he would barely look like human.
The flames of the Red Dragonflight may contain the power of life but who knows whether it could truly purify the plague launched by the Forsaken. When even the Scourge was retreating from its destructive force.
Leylin wondered whether the Horde really knew what their newly undead ally did. Or were they also unluckily targeted by the Forsaken's vengeance against the Lich King.
Trust between the the two factions may deteriorate badly because of this sudden move. Leylin already did what he could sharing equally information between the two factions just so they could stop the Scourge but if they wont cooperate and would hinder the progress.
He would gladly make the two factions pay, because he already made a gamble five years ago. And he would try to resolve it even if it means making enemies of both sides.