Kael's POV
We hit the ground running.
Literally. The fall from my window was twenty feet, and my legs nearly buckled when I landed. Ashira grabbed my arm, hauling me upright as alarm bells exploded behind us.
"STOP THEM!"
Guards poured from the stronghold gates. Arrows whistled past our heads.
"This way!" Ashira pulled me into the darkness beyond the mountain fortress. We ran through narrow paths between rocks, climbing over boulders, sliding down slopes.
My lungs burned. My legs screamed. But terror kept me moving.
"Where are we going?" I gasped.
"Away first! North second!" She vaulted over a fallen tree with the grace of a deer. I crashed through it like a wounded ox.
Behind us, torches bobbed in the darkness. Pursuit. They were coming fast.
"Ashira!" Grimmar's roar echoed through the mountains. "COME BACK!"
She flinched but didn't slow down. "I'm sorry, Father," she whispered. "But I have to do this."
We ran until the torches faded. Ran until the stronghold disappeared behind mountain ridges. Ran until I collapsed against a rock, vomiting from exhaustion.
Ashira let me rest for exactly ten seconds. "Get up. They'll track us at dawn."
"Can't... breathe..."
"Then die here." She started walking. "I'm going with or without you."
I forced myself upright and stumbled after her. "You're... mean."
"I'm practical. Mean would be leaving you for the wolves." She glanced back. "Though that's still an option if you slow me down."
Despite everything—the pain, the fear, the impossibility of what we were attempting—I almost laughed. "Has anyone ever told you you're terrible at inspirational speeches?"
"Has anyone ever told you you complain too much?"
"Frequently."
"Then stop proving them right."
We walked through the night in hostile silence. But it wasn't truly hostile—more like the silence of two people too tired and scared to waste energy on small talk.
As dawn broke, painting the mountains gold and purple, Ashira finally stopped. We'd reached a high ridge overlooking valleys that stretched northward forever.
"There." She pointed to a dark smudge on the horizon. "The Cursed Lands. Three days if we push hard. Five if you keep collapsing."
"What makes them cursed?"
"Everything." She sat down, pulling dried meat from her pack—the supplies she'd somehow grabbed during our escape. "Ancient battlefields. Thousands died there centuries ago. Their spirits still haunt the place. Also, there are death spiders the size of horses, poisonous plants that scream when you touch them, and sinkholes that drop straight into underground rivers."
"You're joking."
"I wish I was." She offered me the meat. "Eat. You'll need your strength."
I took it gratefully. We ate in silence, watching the sunrise. It was beautiful and terrible—a world at war, but nature didn't care about human or orc problems. The sun rose anyway.
"Tell me about your brother," Ashira said suddenly. "The real Kral, not the ten-year-old who died."
I blinked, surprised. "Why?"
"Because we're probably going to die in the next three days, and I want to remember him as more than just another victim." Her amber eyes were softer now, vulnerable. "Tell me who he was."
So I did. Not about Kral—I'd never known him. But about the brother I'd lost in a different way.
"Aldric was everything," I said quietly. "Golden hair, perfect smile, gifted with a sword before he could walk. Everyone loved him. Father especially. And me?" I laughed bitterly. "I was the mistake. The proof that Father had strayed from his marriage bed. Every time anyone looked at me, they saw his shame."
"That's why you joined the war. To prove yourself."
"Yeah. Stupid, right? I thought if I could be brave, if I could be useful, maybe Father would finally see me as worthy. Maybe Aldric would accept me as a real brother." I stared at my hands—still stained with blood I couldn't wash off. "Instead, I discovered they were monsters. And I'd been helping them commit genocide."
Ashira was quiet for a moment. Then: "My brother Kral—he carved wooden toys. Wolves, bears, birds. He'd sell them at market, so proud when humans bought them. He thought humans were fascinating. Always asking questions about human customs, human stories."
Her voice cracked slightly. "The night before he died, he showed me this wooden dragon he'd carved. Said he was going to give it to a human merchant's daughter he'd met. A little girl named Emma who thought dragons were real. He wanted to make her smile." She wiped her eyes roughly. "They burned him in his workshop. All his carvings turned to ash with him."
"Ashira—"
"We're both fools," she cut me off. "You thought proving yourself in war would make you matter. I thought if I fought bravely enough, killed enough enemies, I could somehow avenge my family. Bring them back through violence." She met my eyes. "But they're still dead. And we're still here. And nothing we do will change that."
"So what do we do?"
"We stop more families from dying. We stop your brother from unleashing whatever evil he's planning. And maybe—just maybe—we prove that orcs and humans don't have to be enemies." She stood, offering her hand. "Deal?"
I took it. Her grip was strong, calloused from years of weapon training. But gentle too.
"Deal."
We traveled in silence for hours, following game trails north. Ashira taught me to move quietly, to read tracks, to spot danger before it spotted us. I was terrible at all of it, but I tried.
By midday, the landscape changed. Trees became twisted, branches reaching like clawed hands. The air felt wrong—thick, oppressive, tasting of old metal and rot.
"We're entering the border of the Cursed Lands," Ashira said quietly. "Stay close. Don't touch anything that looks unusual. And if you hear voices calling your name, ignore them."
"Why would—"
A child's laughter echoed through the trees.
We froze.
"Hello?" A small voice. Young. Scared. "Is someone there? Please help me!"
"Don't," Ashira grabbed my arm when I stepped forward. "It's a trap."
"But what if it's really a child—"
"It's NOT." Her grip tightened. "The Cursed Lands use your guilt against you. They make you hear things you want to hear. See things you want to see. That 'child' is probably something that will eat your face."
The laughter came again, closer now. But this time it sounded wrong. Too high-pitched. Too long.
Something moved in the shadows between trees. Not a child. Something that walked like a spider but had a child's face stretched across its body.
"RUN!" Ashira shoved me forward.
We bolted through the twisted forest. The creature gave chase, its spider legs clicking against rocks. More appeared—faces of people I'd killed in the war, stretched and distorted across insect bodies.
"Kael..." one whispered with the face of the young orc girl I'd failed to save. "Why didn't you help me?"
"They're not real!" Ashira yelled. "Keep running!"
We burst through a clearing and found ourselves at the edge of a massive canyon. The ground just... ended. A thousand-foot drop into darkness.
The creatures closed in behind us. No escape that direction.
"Can you climb?" Ashira asked, pointing to a narrow path that hugged the canyon wall.
"I can barely walk!"
"Then learn fast!" She grabbed a rope from her pack, tied it around both our waists. "If you fall, I'll catch you. If I fall, you better catch me. Ready?"
"NO!"
"Good enough!" She jumped onto the path.
I had no choice but to follow. The path was maybe two feet wide, crumbling rock over a bottomless drop. Wind howled through the canyon, trying to push us off.
The spider-creatures reached the edge but didn't follow. They just watched with their stolen faces, waiting for us to fall.
We inched along the path. My hands bled from gripping sharp rocks. My legs shook with every step. Below, I heard water rushing—that underground river Ashira had mentioned.
"Don't look down," she called back.
I looked down.
Mistake. The canyon spun. My foot slipped.
I fell.
The rope snapped tight, jerking Ashira backward. She slammed against the rock wall, gasping in pain, but her grip held.
"CLIMB!" she screamed, bracing herself. "I can't hold you forever!"
I scrambled at the rock face, finding handholds, pulling myself up inch by inch. Ashira hauled on the rope, her face twisted with effort.
I grabbed the path edge. Pulled myself up. Collapsed beside her, both of us gasping.
"Thanks," I wheezed.
"Thank me when we survive." She stood shakily. "Come on. We're halfway across."
We made it to the other side just as the rope frayed and snapped. Another second, and we'd both have fallen.
"That's one day down," Ashira said, checking her map. "Two more to reach the ruins."
"I don't think I can handle two more days of this."
"You will. Because the alternative is falling into a canyon." She started walking. "Besides, tomorrow's probably worse."
"How can it be worse?"
She pointed ahead. In the distance, through the twisted trees, I saw ruins. Ancient stone structures covered in glowing symbols. And circling above them, massive shapes with wings.
"Dragons?" I whispered.
"Dragon-wraiths. The spirits of dragons killed in the ancient war. They guard the ruins." Ashira's voice was grim. "We have to get past them to find the artifacts."
"That's impossible!"
"Yes. But we're doing it anyway." She looked at me. "Still want to save the world?"
Before I could answer, a horn sounded behind us. Back where we'd come from. More horns joined it—a war call echoing through the mountains.
"What is that?" I asked.
Ashira's face went pale. "That's my father's war horn. He's mobilized the entire clan." She turned, and I saw tears in her eyes. "He thinks I've been kidnapped. He thinks you forced me to help you escape."
"But you chose to come!"
"He doesn't know that! And now he's leading our warriors south to rescue me—right into your brother's army!" Her voice broke. "Kael, we left them a note explaining everything, but if Father didn't find it, if he didn't believe it..."
The implication hit me like a hammer. Grimmar was marching five hundred orc warriors straight toward Aldric's five thousand human soldiers.
It would be a massacre.
"We have to go back!" I grabbed her arm. "We have to warn them!"
"We can't! If we go back now, we lose the only chance to stop Aldric's ritual! The artifacts are our only hope!"
"But your people—"
"Will die whether we go back or not!" She pulled away, anguish written across her face. "Don't you understand? This is what Aldric planned! He wanted my father to bring the warriors out of the stronghold! Wanted them to attack his army! Every orc death feeds the Bloodveil entity! He's using us as fuel!"
Horror crashed through me. "It's a trap. All of it was a trap."
"Yes." Ashira wiped her eyes roughly. "So we have a choice: go back and die with my people, or go forward and maybe—MAYBE—find something that can stop this."
Behind us, more war horns. Grimmar was coming fast.
Ahead, dragon-wraiths circled the ruins that might hold our only hope.
And somewhere south, Aldric was preparing to turn a battle into a blood sacrifice.
"What do we do?" I asked.
Ashira stared at the ruins, then back toward the war horns. When she looked at me, her amber eyes were filled with pain and determination.
"We do what we came here to do. We find those artifacts. We stop my brother from awakening an ancient evil. And we pray to every god that exists that we're fast enough to matter."
She started toward the ruins.
I followed.
But the war horns kept calling behind us, and I knew that whatever we found in those ruins, we were already too late to save everyone.
The only question was: could we save anyone?