Chapter III:
The man choked on his own breath.
He staggered half a step backward.
Then, in one swift motion, he pulled a short dagger from inside his robe and raised it to his throat.
Aeryon shouted,
"Watch out!"
But the man was not trying to attack anyone.
He was trying to kill himself.
To die before he could reveal what he knew.
Yet the shadows of the hall moved before he could succeed.
Zalrik vanished from his place for the briefest instant, then reappeared beside him. One strike of his dagger sent the blade flying from the traitor's hand, while black strands of shadow erupted from the floor, coiling around his arms and legs, crushing all movement from his body.
The man dropped to his knees, breathing in ragged bursts.
Arkath approached him slowly.
"You will not die that easily."
The traitor lifted trembling eyes and whispered in a broken voice,
"You do not understand… you have no idea what is coming."
Ignar slammed his fist against the table, rage flashing through him.
"Then speak!"
The man let out a short, wounded laugh.
"You think Magor is the enemy…"
Then he slowly raised his head and said:
"Magor is only the beginning."
Every face in the room froze.
Arkath stepped closer.
"What do you mean?"
A pale smile touched the traitor's lips.
"He is only opening the gate… for something far older."
The sacred flame trembled for a moment, as though it had understood the words before any of them did.
Zalrik's voice came low and distant.
"It seems the war we see… is not the real war at all."
The Shadow Ambush
Arkath did not kill the traitor.
Nor did he hand him over to the wrath of the gathered leaders.
He kept him alive… because his life had suddenly become more useful than his death.
The man sat bound in shadow-chains, pale-faced and hollow-eyed, while Arkath stood before him and said coldly,
"You will help us."
The traitor lifted his head slowly. A desperate resistance flickered in his eyes.
Tharin stepped in.
"You will send a message to the man you have been communicating with."
The traitor understood at once.
A deception.
A trap.
He hesitated.
Then Arkath said in a low voice,
"If you ever want to see your wife and children again…
you have no other choice."
The silence stretched.
At last, the man lowered his head and whispered,
"…I'll do it."
The following night, a small team set out toward Crow Valley.
It was not an army.
It was a band walking the narrow edge between courage and suicide.
Arkath.
Tharin.
Zalrik.
Ignar.
Aeryon.
Morvan.
And the traitor.
They stood among the rocks in silence, waiting.
Mist drifted through the valley like a wandering spirit, and the wind carried the scent of ancient ash.
Aeryon murmured,
"Will he come?"
Zalrik did not blink.
"He will. Magor's men do not leave loose threads behind."
And indeed…
After a short while, a man in black armor bearing the mark of the Black Guardians appeared among the rocks, moving cautiously, his eyes sweeping every shadow.
He stopped before the traitor.
"What is it? Why did you ask for this meeting?"
He never finished the sentence.
In one instant, shadows fell from above, flame struck from the side, and wind crashed into him from behind.
The man hit the ground before he could even cry out.
Ignar lunged in to crush his resistance, while Zalrik's shadow-binds burst upward from beneath the man's feet and pinned him in place.
Arkath's voice cut through the night.
"Take him alive."
The captured man was forced to his knees, terror clear in his eyes.
Arkath spoke first.
"Where is the camp?"
The prisoner gave a tired, mocking laugh.
But Tharin stepped closer and knelt slightly before him.
"We know there are hostages."
The man's face tightened.
"And we know you had a hand in guarding them."
Then Tharin lowered his voice further.
"If you speak now… you might live."
But the man said nothing.
Instead, in a sudden motion, he bit down on something hidden between his teeth.
Tharin's voice cracked sharply.
"No!"
Too late.
The man's body went still and collapsed onto the earth.
Aeryon stared.
"He killed himself!"
Silence swept over them.
But Zalrik was not looking at the dead man's face.
He was staring at his hand.
Then, without warning, he drew his blade and severed the dead man's hand at the wrist.
Morvan recoiled.
"Have you lost your mind?"
Zalrik lifted the severed hand calmly.
"I did not do that without reason."
Then he added:
"The gates of the Black Guardians' camp do not open to just anyone."
Another silence followed.
Tharin spoke slowly.
"A blood gate…"
Zalrik nodded.
"And this man was one of its wardens."
Arkath stepped toward the map and said,
"Then we go in."
He lifted his head toward the others.
"But not as an army."
Tharin finished the thought.
"As a shadow."
Into Crow Valley
The night had grown darker by the time they reached the cliff overlooking the camp.
Below them, the fires of the Black Guardians' encampment spread across the valley floor like burning scars on flesh.
Black tents stood in ordered rows. Wooden towers watched over narrow pathways. Guards moved through them like parts of a war machine that never slept.
Zalrik pointed toward a descending rock face along the side.
"The gate is there."
The group descended in silence until they reached a sheer stone wall that looked like nothing more than part of the valley itself.
But the carvings upon it were unnatural.
Zalrik stepped forward and pressed the severed hand against the dark sigil at the center of the stone.
The lines glowed for an instant.
Then the ground trembled.
The wall split apart slowly, revealing a hidden passage into the heart of the camp.
Ignar smiled, heat flashing behind his expression.
"Good."
But Arkath answered him at once.
"The hostages first."
They moved inside.
From within, the camp felt even more oppressive than it had from above.
Under the cover of the thin mist Morvan released, they slipped between black fabrics, crates of weapons, and scattered war supplies until they reached a large tent on the eastern side.
The traitor whispered,
"There."
Aeryon rushed in first, with Tharin at his back.
Inside, a woman and two children were bound in chains.
The moment the traitor saw them, his voice broke in his throat, and he ran toward them as though the distance between them had been an entire lifetime.
Aeryon cut their restraints quickly, while Morvan spread a veil of mist in preparation for their retreat.
Then—
every fire in the camp went out.
Darkness fell all at once.
A heartbeat later, the torches blazed back to life—not one by one, but all together.
As if the camp itself had opened its eyes.
Black Guardian soldiers emerged from every direction.
Then a deep voice thundered above them.
"I was beginning to wonder… when you would arrive."
The leaders lifted their eyes.
A towering man stood upon a stone platform, clad in black armor veined with crimson cracks, as though fire were trying to break free from within it.
Zalrik looked at him without emotion.
"A general."
The man smiled.
"Dragor."
Then his gaze settled upon Arkath.
"Opener of Ashen Gates."
Opener of Ashen Gates
Dragor spoke calmly.
"I knew you would choose the path of shadows."
Arkath stepped forward.
"So you were waiting for us."
A faint smile touched the general's lips.
"No.
I was preparing this place for you."
In the next instant, dark gray fissures tore open in the air around them, as though space itself had split apart.
Morvan whispered,
"Gates…"
But Zalrik answered at once.
"Stay away from their edges."
The warning came too late.
From the first opening burst a black chain like a serpent, then a second, then a third.
Within moments, the center of the camp became a web of living snares.
Chains emerged from the earth, the walls, and the Ashen Gates themselves, wrapping around legs, arms, and weapons alike.
Dragor's voice rang across the battlefield like something born from its very core.
"This is the Black Bind."
He raised his right hand slightly, and every chain trembled at once.
"The more you resist… the tighter they become."
Arkath was the first to move.
It was not the reckless charge of an angry man.
It was the charge of a commander who understood, in a single instant, that leaving this enemy in control of the battlefield meant death for them all.
Above, Zalrik moved across the rooftops of the tents with lethal grace, studying the pattern by which the gates opened and closed.
As for Arkath, he cut through the first wave of chains with swift, brutal strikes. Then one slammed into his arm, another struck his shoulder, and a third tried to wrench the sword from his hand.
The bind tightened.
A black weight seeped into Arkath's muscles—not merely restraining his body, but gnawing at his very will.
Dragor smiled.
"Even you… will kneel."
But Arkath suddenly yanked on the chain wrapped around his arm instead of fighting against it, using its momentum to pull himself closer.
Dragor's eyes widened slightly.
For the first time, he was forced to step back.
An Ashen Gate opened beside him, and from it shot a black blade toward Arkath's side.
Yet Zalrik dropped from above at precisely the right moment, knocked the blade aside, and turned behind Dragor in the same movement.
"I found you," he said coldly.
His shadow lashed across the ground toward the general's foot.
But Dragor opened a gray gate beneath himself and slipped half a step aside, leaving Zalrik's strike to hit nothing.
In response, two chains burst from twin gates—one toward Zalrik's chest, the other toward his throat.
He twisted away in time, but the edge of one chain tore across his shoulder.
Then he spoke in a low voice, eyes fixed on the shifting gates.
"The gates follow his line of sight…"
He had been watching them moment by moment.
Each gate appeared only after a specific motion of Dragor's hand—or a flicker of his focus.
And each chain fed on the breadth of ground under his control.
Arkath understood at once.
The wider the distance, the more dangerous Dragor became.
The closer they forced him, the more unstable his gates would be.
"Keep him close!" Arkath shouted.
And he surged forward again.
This time, he did not strike directly at Dragor's body. Instead, he drove his blade into the ground at the general's feet, forcing Dragor to evade by opening a side gate.
The instant it appeared, Zalrik descended onto its edge and drove his dagger into it.
A sharp sound tore through the air—like metal scraping across cracked glass.
The gate shuddered violently.
For the first time, true irritation crossed Dragor's face.
"So that is your weakness," Zalrik said.
In that moment, they all understood.
The Ashen Gates had unstable cores at their edges.
If struck at the moment of formation, they faltered.
Dragor let out a cold laugh and opened three gates at once around himself, sending a new wave of chains from every direction.
But Arkath was no longer fighting the chains.
He was fighting the system that ruled them.
He allowed one chain to coil around his armored arm, then used its pull to hurl himself toward the general with even greater force.
This time, he entered sword range.
A range Dragor's power did not welcome.
Arkath's blade collided with the general's armor, and a violent clang thundered across the camp.
Dragor stumbled back two steps and opened a gate behind him to retreat—
but Zalrik had already read the move.
He appeared through shadow behind that forming gate before it had fully stabilized and struck its edge once more.
The gate cracked.
Then it shattered like scorched glass.
Its energy surged backward through the chains connected to it. Dragor's arm spasmed, and the Black Bind across the battlefield faltered.
From the rear, Tharin shouted,
"Now! When the gates break, the bind weakens!"
Arkath moved without hesitation.
The first strike forced Dragor to raise his armored forearm.
The second split the armor at his shoulder.
The third would have reached his throat—
had the general not opened one final Ashen Gate in a desperate motion.
But this one was malformed.
Its edges were fractured. Unstable.
Zalrik looked at it once, then said with killing calm:
"You're finished."
He threw his dagger.
It struck the gate's edge.
The entire fissure exploded, and the surge of energy rebounded onto Dragor himself.
The chains across the field burst into wild disorder for a single instant, then shrank away as though they had lost their master.
The general staggered.
Then dropped to one knee.
Arkath stood before him, sword at his throat.
Zalrik landed beside him like a shadow that never missed.
Dragor slowly raised his head.
And despite his defeat…
he smiled.
"Good…"
He spat black blood onto the ground and continued:
"That is what Magor wanted to know."
Every face tightened.
Arkath's voice hardened.
"What do you mean?"
Dragor laughed weakly.
"He wanted to see… how you fight.
How you break traps.
Which of you reads weaknesses… and which of you charges first."
Then he lifted his eyes to Zalrik.
"The Shadow Lord… is more dangerous than we expected."
And then to Arkath.
"And you… are no longer merely the leader of a clan."
Arkath's eyes narrowed.
Because the truth struck him all at once.
The ambush had not been set merely to kill them.
It had been set to test them.
To test their powers.
Their methods.
Their weaknesses.
Which meant Magor had begun the war… already knowing more about them than he should.
The Scroll
Dragor remained on one knee, black blood running through the cracks in his shattered armor.
Arkath stood before him with his sword at the general's throat, while Zalrik landed beside him in silence, ready for any final treachery.
But before the moment could be settled—
the sound of hurried footsteps burst from deeper within the camp.
Everyone turned.
It was Tharin.
He emerged from between the tents and smoke, and there was something on his face the others had never seen there before.
In his hand…
was a black scroll.
He walked forward without a word until he reached them.
Then he threw the scroll down before the gathered leaders.
It rolled across the ash-stained ground, its edge loosening slightly.
The others moved toward it at once.
One of them crouched first and reached down to open it.
And the moment his eyes fell upon what was written inside—
he froze.
A crushing silence followed.
Then his expression changed at once, as though the blood had been drained from his face in a single heartbeat.
The others stepped closer and looked as well.
Eyes widened.
Faces hardened.
Even the air in the center of the camp seemed to stop moving.
Then suddenly—
one of the leaders shouted, his voice shaking the entire camp:
"Everyone is in danger!"
And in that moment—
no one was looking at Dragor anymore.
Because whatever was written inside that scroll…
was more terrifying than the ambush itself.
Arkath slowly raised his head and fixed his eyes on the opened scroll before them.
But before he could speak a single word—
the decision had already been written
across every face around him.
End of Chapter Three
So what was written inside that scroll…
that made one of the clan leaders cry out: Everyone is in danger?