Draenor burned.
Not in the wild, uncontrolled way of fel corruption alone, but with the deliberate fury of war, steel grinding against steel, siege engines pounding ancient stone, and the endless roar of battle echoing across the broken skies of Shadowmoon Valley.
The Alliance Expedition had lingered too long.
Seeking the artifacts needed to seal the Dark Portal and end the threat once and for all had cost them something precious, time. And the Horde, fractured though it was, had used that time well.
From the jagged coastlines overlooking the Black Temple, sails appeared on the horizon like a spreading stain. Crude but massive warships, stitched together from ironwood and bone, cut through the blackened waters. Wyvern riders wheeled overhead, their shadows passing over Alliance fortifications like omens of death.
A great orcish armada had come. Drums thundered across the sea. War horns answered from the cliffs.
Alliance scouts returned breathless with reports: the Horde had mustered everything it had left. Warsong berserkers, Bleeding Hollow reavers, Shadowmoon warlocks, and shattered remnants of clans thought broken beyond recovery.
For the first time since their arrival on Draenor, the Alliance Expedition found itself on the defensive.
The fighting was relentless.
At the beaches, human infantry and dwarven riflemen clashed with wave after wave of orcs attempting landfall. Arrows blackened the sky. Fel fire scorched the earth, while gryphon riders dove screaming from above, lances punching through ranks.
Danath Trollbane personally led countercharges along the cliffs, his armor scarred, his blade never still. He fought not like a commander directing war, but like a man determined to deny the enemy every inch of ground.
Further inland, Khadgar and his magi held chokepoints where magic itself seemed to tear under the strain. Blizzard spells froze advancing orcs solid, only for firestorms to shatter the ice moments later. Arcane barriers flickered, failed, and were reforged again and again.
Casualties mounted. Supplies dwindled. Yet the Alliance did not break.
Recognizing that the armada could not be allowed to anchor safely, Khadgar and Danath devised a brutal but necessary counterstroke.
They would burn the Horde's coastal fortresses to the ground.
At dawn, Alliance forces struck with surgical precision. Gryphon riders neutralized watchtowers. Siege engines advanced under cover of spellfire. Human knights smashed through gates while elven archers silenced parapets with merciless efficiency.
One by one, the orcish strongholds guarding the approaches to the Black Temple fell.
The coastline burned for three days.
Smoke rose like funeral pyres to a broken sky. With the armada crippled and supply lines shattered, the Alliance Expedition turned toward its true objective.
The Black Temple loomed over Shadowmoon Valley like a wound in the world.
Its spires pierced the clouds, stone warped by ancient magic and fel corruption. The air around it hummed with power, raw, volatile, dangerous.
The Alliance attacked without hesitation.
Inside, the fighting was savage beyond description. Orcish death knights and warlocks fought with the desperation of those who knew there was nowhere left to run. Demonic constructs stalk shattered halls. Shadows themselves seemed to lash out at intruders.
It was here that Turalyon met Teron Gorefiend.
Their duel shook the temple.
Holy light clashed against necromancy, each blow echoing through the ancient corridors. Gorefiend's mastery of death magic was terrifying, but Turalyon fought with the conviction of a man who carried the hopes of an entire world on his shoulders.
In the end, faith and steel prevailed.
Teron Gorefiend fell, his body dissolving into ash and shadow, his reign as the Horde's greatest death knight finally ended.
The remaining death knights scattered, broken and leaderless.
Victory seemed close. Too close.
—
Deep within the heart of the Black Temple, Ner'zhul stood alone before a constellation of glowing portals. And Ner'zhul listened.
The old shaman felt Draenor's magic bend beneath his will. Leylines twisted. Space folded. Entire realities trembled as the portals stabilized, one after another, each leading to a different world, unspoiled, unclaimed.
Power flooded him.
Not borrowed.
Claimed.
When Khadgar and his companions broke into the chamber, they felt it immediately, the shift, the imbalance, the terrifying certainty that they were already too late.
Ner'zhul turned to face them, eyes glowing with cold, alien light.
"You cannot stop this," he said calmly. "I am beyond you now."
Spells flew.
Runes shattered.
But the portals held.
Despite Khadgar's desperate counter-incantations, despite the combined might of the Alliance heroes, the Spell of Conjuration had reached completion.
One by one, Ner'zhul ordered his followers through the portals.
Chosen warlocks. Loyal guards. Shadowmoon elites.
They hesitated only briefly.
Behind them, the Horde still fought and died across Shadowmoon Valley unaware they had already been forsaken.
Obris, one of Ner'zhul's most devoted servitors, finally stepped forward, horror dawning in his eyes.
"Warchief," he pleaded, "what of the Horde? What of our people?"
Ner'zhul did not even look at him.
A casual gesture sent a blast of arcane-fel energy slamming into Obris, hurling him across the chamber. Bones shattered. Blood stained the stone.
"The Horde is nothing," Ner'zhul said coldly. "I am everything."
Without another word, he stepped through the first portal.
The others followed. The portals began to collapse behind them.
Obris lay dying, vision fading.
With trembling hands, he clutched the object he had concealed, the Book of Medivh.
The artifact pulsed softly, its power intact.
With the last of his strength, Obris hurled it across the chamber.
"Khadgar…" he rasped. "End him."
The book landed at the archmage's feet.
Ner'zhul was gone.
The Horde was abandoned.
And Draenor itself began to scream as unstable magic tore at the fabric of the world.
Khadgar stared at the Book of Medivh, understanding dawning in his eyes.
The war was not over. It had only changed its shape. Ner'zhul's triumph was brief.
The portals he had torn open did not behave as the careful, measured gateways once shaped by Medivh. These were raw wounds in reality, jagged, screaming tears between worlds, forced open by greed and desperation rather than balance or understanding.
As more gateways flared to life, the skies above Draenor fractured with arcs of unstable energy. Thunder rolled without clouds. The land itself groaned, as if the world had become aware of its own impending death.
Mountains cracked. Seas withdrew and surged in violent tides. The very air shimmered, thick with arcane distortion.
Ner'zhul had escaped but the price of his ambition would be paid by Draenor itself.
Ner'zhul and his loyal Shadowmoon clan passed through the largest of the newly created portals, as massive volcanic eruptions began to break Draenor's continents apart. Ner'zhul and his followers however were immediately apprehended by the demon lord Kil'jaeden in the aftermath of their escape from Draenor.
Even as the planet began to unravel, war did not pause.
At Hellfire Peninsula, the Alliance's fortifications came under relentless assault. Abandoned by their warchief and driven by fear, rage, and desperation, thousands of orcs surged against the walls. They were poorly armed, many wielded scavenged blades, broken axes, or little more than crude spears but their numbers were overwhelming.
Wave after wave crashed against Alliance defenses.
Human pikemen braced their lines as orcs hurled themselves forward without regard for life or loss. Dwarven cannons roared until their barrels glowed red-hot. Elven spellcasters unleashed arcs of frost and fire that tore through charging ranks, yet still the orcs came on.
They fought not for conquest, but for escape. Behind them, Draenor was dying.
Far from the chaos of Hellfire, the magi of the Kirin Tor had once sought refuge on the floating lands of Farahlon. There, amid crystalline ruins and drifting stone, they founded Kirin'Var Village—a fragile sanctuary of arcane study and quiet resolve.
For a time, it had been a place of calm in a world at war.
But after Ner'zhul's betrayal, even Kirin'Var felt the tremors. Leylines twisted violently beneath the settlement, and spells that once behaved predictably became volatile and dangerous. The magi quickly realized the truth: Draenor could not be saved.
It could only be sealed away.
As chaos spread, old hatreds lost their meaning.
The Laughing Skull clan, long considered mad and unpredictable, approached the Alliance under a banner of truce. They, too, had been abandoned. They, too, had seen the sky crack and the ground split beneath their feet.
Pragmatism overcame pride.
With the Laughing Skull guiding them through hidden passes, Alliance forces secured the treacherous routes of the Blade's Edge Mountains without resistance. From there, they launched a decisive strike against the Thunderlord clan, smashing their stronghold and scattering its survivors.
For the first time since the invasion, the Alliance could move unopposed through the region.
But victory felt hollow. Everywhere, the world was coming apart.
As Turalyon's forces fought to hold their ground and carve a path back toward the Dark Portal, Draenor's death accelerated.
The sky split open in great spiraling fissures. Entire landmasses tore free, drifting into the void. Rivers reversed course or vanished entirely. Gravity itself seemed uncertain, shifting without warning.
Soldiers marched as the ground crumbled beneath their boots.
Some were lost to sudden chasms. Others were swallowed by arcane storms that erased them in flashes of blinding light.
Yet still the Alliance pressed on. They knew what had to be done.
At the foot of the Dark Portal, its energies surging wildly out of control, Turalyon and Khadgar stood together in silence. Both understood the truth without speaking it.
To destroy the portal from Draenor's side would sever the connection permanently but it would also trap everyone still on this world forever. There would be no escape. No return to Azeroth.
It was a death sentence. And yet, there was no hesitation.
"If we do nothing," Turalyon said quietly, gripping his sword, "Azeroth burns."
Khadgar nodded, clutching the Skull of Gul'dan and the Book of Medivh, feeling their immense and terrible power thrumming against his mind. "Then this is the only ending that matters."
As Khadgar began the ritual, the battlefield erupted.
Orcs hurled themselves at the Alliance ranks in a final, desperate frenzy. They screamed curses, prayers, and pleas all at once. Some begged to be let through. Others fought with feral rage, determined to break free or die trying.
Alliance soldiers locked shields and stood fast. They knew what they were defending.
Steel rang. Blood soaked the broken earth. Gryphons fell from the sky. Spellcasters burned themselves out, collapsing where they stood.
Still, the line held.
Alleria's arrows flew until her quiver ran dry, she quietly murmured while clutching the silver necklace "Leylin…"
Turalyon fought at the front, radiant with holy light, each strike buying Khadgar precious seconds.
The ritual reached its climax.
Khadgar unleashed the combined might of the Skull and the Book.
The Dark Portal screamed.
Green fire imploded inward, collapsing the gateway upon itself. The massive stone arch cracked, shattered, and finally detonated in a blinding explosion of arcane force that tore a hole in the sky itself.
When the light faded, the portal was gone.
Sealed. Forever.
For the orcs stranded on Azeroth—Grom Hellscream and others like him, the realization would come slowly, painfully.
There would be no return. No home to reclaim. Draenor was lost.
And on that dying world, as reality unraveled around them, the heroes of the Alliance Expedition stood their ground, having paid the ultimate price to ensure that Azeroth would endure.