The fall of Ravenspire did not begin with a deafening roar.
It began with the sickening, wet snap of rusting iron.
Darius was already chest deep in the freezing mud of the outer courtyard when the first line of his guards collapsed.
He had no time to shout orders, no time to call out the names of the men dying around him.
The freezing rain turned the churned earth into a thick soup of blood and gray ash, blinding them in the dark.
His defecting soldiers were desperately trying to retreat, searching for a gap in the chaos to escape the city they had once sworn to protect.
But the enemy had not come to fight a conventional war.
The Blood Court Inquisitors did not move like soldiers.
They glided across the mud like ribbons of dark silk caught in a violent draft.
Dressed in deep crimson robes that seemed to drink the rain, they carried no heavy shields or broadswords.
They wielded long, razor thin blades that hummed with a low, hungry vibration.
