The air burned before they even saw the sea.
Aethyros stood upon a rise of blackened glass, the ground beneath his talons cracked and steaming. Beyond, the Ravaged Coasts sprawled to the horizon — a molten shoreline where the ocean boiled in crimson waves and geysers of fire erupted like the breath of gods. Every gust of wind carried ash and the scent of scorched metal.
Behind him came the thunder of hooves and clawed feet — his warflock, dozens of Tzaangors adorned in brass charms and feathers singed by the heat. At their center strode Khar’vhal the Riftborn, the Ogroid Thaumaturge. Each step he took sank deep into the molten earth, steam hissing from his hooves. His horns glowed with warpflame, and his third eye burned with restrained fury.
“So this is the edge of creation,” Khar’vhal rumbled, his voice like boulders grinding together. “A place where even flame devours itself.”
Aethyros raised his staff — a twisted rod crowned with a shard of Emberstone that pulsed like a living heart. The crystal shimmered brighter as it drank in the heat of Aqshy’s winds.
“Not the edge,” he said softly, his avian voice warbling with excitement. “The beginning. Here the flame remembers its birth, and so does the world.”
Before them, jagged pillars of basalt jutted from the molten sea — the ruins of some forgotten citadel half-sunken into lava. Between those ruins, faint motes of light flickered in rhythmic pulses, each one a vein of Emberstone waiting to be claimed. But the light moved. It breathed. And the air shimmered with the roar of something ancient stirring below.
Khar’vhal’s nostrils flared. “I smell sorcery. And blood.”
Aethyros smiled — or at least, the closest thing a Tzaangor’s beak could form to a smile. “Good,” he whispered. “The Emberstone guards itself. As all wisdom does.”
He pressed a talon to the ground and began to chant, his voice rising like a storm. Runes of light unfurled across the blackened sand, swirling around him in spirals of blue and gold. The warflock joined in, their cries echoing the rhythm of his incantation.
From beneath the waves of fire, a vast form began to rise — scales of obsidian and eyes like burning coals. Aethyros’s laughter echoed across the inferno.
“Come forth, guardian of flame,” he cried. “We have come to learn your secret — and to take it.”
Beside him, Khar’vhal hefted his staff, flames coiling around his horns. Together, shaman and giant stood against the blazing horizon, their shadows dancing like living smoke. The first battle for the Emberstones had begun, and with it, another turn in the endless spiral of change.