Commander Resh'kala stood on the observation tower of Fort Nal'therin, scanning the northwestern horizon with the bored expression of a man who'd performed the same duty for seventeen years without incident. The fort guarded Ul'varh'mir's coastal approaches—a strategic position that saw more merchant traffic than military threats.
Behind him, sailors worked the docks, loading supply ships and maintaining equipment. The afternoon watch had just begun, sailors rotating positions with the practiced efficiency of routine. Someone was singing a bawdy song about a tavern girl in Velkyn. Laughter drifted across the water.
Then the lookout's spyglass clattered to the deck.
"Commander," the young sailor whispered. "Commander, there's—"
"Use your words, boy. What do you see?"
"Ships. Sir. Many ships." The lookout's hands shook as he pointed northwest. "Flying... flying elvish banners."
Resh'kala snatched the spyglass and aimed it at the indicated bearing.
His blood turned to ice.
The horizon was filled with sails. Not a handful. Not a small fleet. Dozens of vessels—sleek elvish warships that moved against the wind with impossible grace, their hulls gleaming white like polished bone, their sails shimmering with colors that shouldn't exist in nature. Each mainmast flew the silver tree banner of Xyi'vana'mir, the symbols clearly visible even at this distance.
And they were advancing. Slowly. Deliberately. A wall of ships stretching fifteen kilometers across, moving toward Ul'varh'mir's territorial waters like destiny made manifest.
"Sound the alarm," Resh'kala said, his voice surprisingly steady. "All hands to battle stations. Send signals to every coastal fort within visual range. Get riders to—"
"Sir, they've stopped."
Resh'kala looked again. The elvish fleet had indeed halted just outside Ul'varh'mir's territorial boundary—the twelve-kilometer line that international law recognized as sovereign waters. They sat there like a blade pressed against a throat. Not cutting. Not yet. Just... present. Threatening.
Around the fort, chaos erupted. The alarm bells clanged their harsh warning. Sailors dropped tools and grabbed weapons. Archers sprinted to the walls. Mages who'd been relaxing over midday meal suddenly found themselves channeling defensive wards.
"HOW MANY SHIPS?" Resh'kala roared at the lookout.
"I... I count sixty-three, sir. No, sixty-five. Wait, there's more appearing from behind the lead elements—"
"FORGET THE COUNT! GET A TYRIN BIRD! MESSAGE TO VELKYN IMMEDIATELY!"
A handler sprinted to the aviary, returning moments later with a tyrin bird—a creature that looked like the unholy fusion of hawk and lightning bolt, its feathers crackling with barely contained energy. These birds could fly at speeds approaching sound itself, covering distances that took horses days in mere minutes.
Resh'kala scrawled the message with shaking hands:
ELVISH FLEET AT NORTHWESTERN APPROACHES. SIXTY-PLUS WARSHIPS. STOPPED AT TERRITORIAL BOUNDARY. XANADU PROTOCOL. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
He tied the message to the tyrin bird's leg, whispered the destination coordinates, and released it.
The bird vanished in a crack of displaced air, leaving only a scent of ozone and a sonic boom that echoed across the water.
On the lead elvish warship Vel'synthara's Grace, Admiral Kel'tharon watched the human fort dissolve into panic through his enhanced vision. High Elves didn't need spyglasses—their eyes could resolve details at distances that would require human optical instruments.
"They're terrified," his first officer observed. "Look at them scrambling."
"Good." Kel'tharon's expression remained serene. "Fear is the first lesson. Let them understand that when Xyi'vana'mir speaks, the world listens."
"The sacred alignment begins in one hour, fifty-three minutes, Admiral."
"Excellent. Maintain current position. All ships hold formation. When Vulcan's rings align and the mana flows peak, we strike." He turned to face his assembled ship captains via magical projection—their translucent forms hovering in the air around him. "Remind your crews: we do not target civilians. We do not burn cities indiscriminately. Our targets are military installations, command structures, and infrastructure supporting the purge operations. We are not here for conquest. We are here for justice."
Sixty-five captains saluted in perfect unison.
Kel'tharon looked toward the distant shore, where tiny human figures ran like disturbed ants. "Two hours until the alignment. Two hours until the king of Ul'varh'mir learns that genocide has consequences."
The tyrin bird covered four hundred eighty kilometers in eight minutes, its flight path marked by a continuous sonic boom that drew confused stares from everyone below. It dove through Velkyn's open war hall window with the precision of a guided missile, slamming into the message handler with enough force to knock the man backward.
In the war hall, King Ashtherion'vaur sat at the head of a massive oak table, surrounded by his generals and the Vel'koda'mir delegation. Maps covered every surface. Troop deployment schedules. Supply line calculations. Defensive fortification plans.
"If we concentrate forces here," General Vex was saying, pointing to a map section, "we can create a defensive line that—"
The door exploded inward.
A runner—a junior officer who should never have been anywhere near the war hall—sprinted through, his uniform disheveled, his face sheet-white. He didn't stop at the threshold. Didn't kneel. Didn't observe any protocol whatsoever.
He just screamed.
"ELVISH FLEET! NORTHWESTERN COAST! SIXTY-FIVE WARSHIPS AT THE BOUNDARY!"
The war hall froze. Every conversation stopped mid-word. Every general turned to stare. The king's hand, which had been reaching for a wine cup, hung suspended in air.
"What," the king said very quietly, "did you just say?"
The runner was hyperventilating, the words tumbling out between gasps. "Tyrin bird from Fort Nal'therin, Your Majesty. Commander Resh'kala reports elvish fleet at territorial waters. Sixty-five confirmed warships. Xyi'vana'mir banners. Stopped at the boundary. They're just... sitting there. Watching."
Ambassador Drek'char of Vel'koda'mir had gone grey. "That's... they said thirty days. The declaration specified thirty days."
"Apparently," General Vex said, his voice cutting through the shock with clinical precision, "they lied."
"They don't lie," another general protested. "High Elves don't lie. It's against their cultural principles or some such—"
"Then they changed their minds!" Vex snapped. "Does it matter? They're here. NOW. Not in thirty days. Not in five days. NOW."
The king stood slowly, his chair scraping against stone floor with a sound like nails on slate. "How long until our coastal defenses are fully manned?"
"Your Majesty, the defenses are skeleton crews during peacetime. Full mobilization would take—"
"HOW. LONG."
"Twelve hours. Minimum."
"And they're already at our waters." The king's voice had gone flat. Empty. The tone of a man watching his carefully constructed plans collapse in real-time. "How long until the Vel'koda'mir reinforcements arrive?"
Drek'char opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. When he finally spoke, his voice cracked: "Three weeks. We said three weeks. Our armies are still mobilizing. The southeastern border is two thousand kilometers from the coast. Even if we started forced march today—"
"So we're alone." The king's hands pressed flat against the table, knuckles white. "Facing the strongest military power on the planet. With skeleton coastal defenses and no allied support."
Silence. Horrible, absolute silence.
Then Ambassador Drek'char found his voice again, and what came out wasn't diplomatic double-speak. It was raw, unfiltered terror: "They're going to kill us all. Ashtherion, you don't understand. When the High Elves go to war—when they actually commit to violence—they don't just win. They erase. They annihilate. The last kingdom they fought doesn't exist anymore. Not conquered. Not absorbed. It just... ceased to be."
"That was two thousand years ago—"
"THEY DON'T FORGET!" Drek'char was shouting now, all pretense of composure shattered. "They live for centuries! Their generals remember battles from a thousand years past like they happened yesterday! They've spent two millennia watching, learning, preparing for a conflict they never expected to fight but always knew how to win!" He pointed north with a shaking finger. "And you gave them reason to deploy that knowledge. You gave them moral justification. You gave them an enemy they can righteously destroy without any kingdom daring to intervene because you're committing GENOCIDE!"
The words hung in the air like a curse.
King Ashtherion'vaur sat back down slowly. Stared at the maps spread before him—maps that suddenly looked like children's drawings. Irrelevant. Inadequate. Artifacts from a world that had existed ten minutes ago but would never exist again.
"How long," he asked very quietly, "until they attack?"
General Vex was already calculating, his tactical mind processing variables. "If they're sitting at the boundary watching us panic, they're waiting for something. Optimal conditions. A signal. A—" He stopped. His face went from pale to grey. "The sacred alignment. Vulcan's rings. It happens twice per year, lasts exactly three hours, creates peak mana flow conditions."
"When?"
Vex checked a celestial chart hanging on the wall. His finger traced the current date, the time, the planetary positions.
"Two hours," he whispered. "The alignment begins in two hours."
The king of Ul'varh'mir, sovereign of three million souls, master of four hundred thousand soldiers, looked at the ceiling as if it might offer answers.
It didn't.
Outside the war hall's windows, Velkyn continued its daily life. Citizens walking streets. Merchants selling goods. Children playing. Three million people who had no idea that in two hours, war would arrive on wings of elvish righteousness and mana-powered devastation.
And in the war hall, surrounded by maps and plans and strategies that no longer mattered, King Ashtherion'vaur understood with perfect clarity that he'd made a catastrophic miscalculation.
He'd thought genocide could be committed quietly. Efficiently. Without consequences from powers that preferred isolation.
He'd been wrong.
And now the storm—held at bay for two millennia—was about to break against his shores.