As the turf war moved to a new location, the air was thick with the stench of decay and burning sulfur. Kael hardly had a moment to catch his breath when a strange silence fell over the ruined courtyard. The last enemy crumpled at his feet, their body evaporating into a puddle of shadows that slithered back into the darkness.And then a slow, methodical clap rang out in the night.Kael’s eyes shot up, his body stiffening as a looming shape stepped from the shadows. Draped in ragged black robes, its skeletal body was shackled in rusted chains that clanged with every move. An oppressiveness rippled through the air around it, suffocating and ancient. Kael was supremely aware of two empty pits where eyes should have been boring holes into him, pouring darkness like molasses.“Kael of the Shadowborne,” the creature’s voice was a low rasp, but it carried through the courtyard like the echo of a death knell. "Your defiance intrigues me."Kael tightened his grasp on his twin daggers, his puls

Only the faintest traces of the last fight had begun to wrinkle a stony ankle when the coldness enraptured the remnants of the underground temple. A stillness enveloped the space, heavy and anticipatory, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath. The dim glow of a torchlight raged wildly in the dark, shadows waltzing as if haunted by some restless spirit. That brief moment of relief was short-lived another enemy had arrived.A slow, deliberate clap shattered the silence. A nightmare of a figure stepped through the broken columns from the shadows beyond. Swathed in a torn black cloak, its face concealed behind an elaborate bone mask, the creature was somehow all menace. Iron manacles ached around its arms, rusted but unbreakable, and slack but not free, carved with runes old as time and older than creation.“Impressive,” the figure intoned, its voice a growl so distorted that it seemed like a composite of unnatural echoes. “You have butchered the Forsaken Sentinels with admi

They are born of darkness and shadow and evil and will corrupt everything in this world. The remains of the last skirmish, debris and broken weapons, and the dying embers of last night's attack still remained. But there was no time for a catch-up. A sinister new presence loomed, vengeful, lurking.Blood dripped down Kael’s brow; his breath is ragged but steady. He felt it before he saw it an overwhelming, oppressive force emerging from the abyss itself. There was a chains rattling sound from the ruins. An unnatural mist coiled about them as the temperature dropped, frost crawling across the jagged stone.Out of the flickering darkness came its shape, wearing torn vestments over the skeletal remnants of rust-edged armor. Its eyes burned with the sickly glow of a thousand damned souls, and in its grip, a blackened scythe hummed with unspeakable power.“The Abyssal Warden,” muttered Kael. A myth, they said, a myth that consumed those who defied the demands of the underworld. This was not

Kaiza's heart pounded in his chest as he looked over the battlefield. The silence was oppressive, the echoes of war hanging in the air like the smell of an old nightmare that had long since faded. His gaze searched frantically for any glimpse of Mina, but there was nothing only the desolate wasteland of ash and smoke where the sky had been consumed by darkness. The Keeper's cold laughter still lingered in his mind.It is done, Kaiza," the voice thundered, cold and icy, as sharp as the edge of steel. "You cannot be freed from the cycle. You cannot be free of me."Kaiza's breast constricted, and he was momentarily suffused with the pressure of the centuries weighing him down. The Keeper's statement was not an utterance but a fact that stirred deep in the recesses of his being. The immortal curse had weighed on him for so long, but it was not solely his own pain that he bore. He had witnessed countless lives flicker out, cherished loved ones lost to the passage of time, and civilizations

The sound of combat echoed across the wasteland, the air shaking with the fury of the Arbiter's strength. Kaiza's blade radiated with a light beyond mortal sight, yet even with all his might, the Arbiter was too strong. The shadow it wielded engulfed the light, the earth itself creaking and groaning, as if the fabric of existence was being warped to its demand.Mina stood beside him, her presence a steady beat of warmth and flame, the light she gave off a contrast to the heavy, smothering shadows of the Arbiter. But even as she tried to draw more power, the Arbiter's crushing aura drained her, each spark of life fading beneath its chill.We must put an end to this," Kaiza growled through clenched teeth, his own voice nearly drowned out by the din of the Arbiter's dark magic. "This is not simply a fight for our souls, Mina. It's for all of it. The world itself is on the line.Mina's eyes flashed with the heaviness of his words, but there was another quality there, one Kaiza could not d