Explosions tore through the Verdant Reach like the wrath of forgotten gods.
The sky above Elior's fields burned orange and black, Brands clashing in midair as Ironwake-hardened projectiles rained from Marchwardens siege engines. Fields that had once fed thousands now smoldered, their rich soil turned to glass by Cindervein bursts. Screams cut through the smoke—soldiers, farmers, children—all caught in the sudden hell of war's first major strike.
Boom.
A farmhouse collapsed under a sealed boulder from the Stone Crown, Orun's enforcers lending their precision to Kael's assault. Flux flares lit the chaos: Hearth-users desperately steadying the wounded, Threads snapping as loyalties frayed mid-battle.
Elior stood at the heart of it, Hearth blazing from both hands. He touched a collapsing soldier—wounds knit, morale surged, the man roared back into the fight. "Hold the line!" Elior's voice cut through panic, his Brand amplifying resolve across the field. But even he felt the drain. Flux burned hot, reserves thinning. This wasn't a skirmish. This was annihilation.
Mira fought nearby, her Thread weaving through the melee, binding allies' wills against breaking. "Kael's leading the vanguard!" she shouted. "Coast traitors flanked the river—Neriah sold us out!"
Elior didn't flinch. "Then we endure."
High above, the true threat descended.
A Veil-cloaked airship from the Coast slipped through defenses, dropping Harbor-stabilized bombs that punched craters without scattering. One hit fifty paces off, hurling dirt and bodies. Elior staggered, coating his allies in Hearth light—keeping them fighting, keeping them whole.
But the war had no mercy for hope.
Joren's Echo
Miles back, in a ruined watchtower overlooking the burning Reach, Joren gripped the ancient Garden stone. Smoke choked the horizon. His Brand, Echo, thrummed unwillingly—replaying the assault's origin in fractured visions.
He saw it clear: Kael's iron orders. Sera's fire priming the barrage. Neriah's veiled agent whispering the weak point. Orun's sealed payloads ensuring no escape. Asher's Wildborn scouts watching, unmoving.
Not unity. Not survival. Just hunger.
Joren was 19, scrawny from years hiding his visions, dismissed as a coward by Reach kin. No army. No title. But Echo didn't lie. It stripped events to truth: the Sereth ambush replayed nightly in his mind, confirming Neriah's hand. Now this bombing—retaliation for Reach scouts crossing March lines, or cover for Coast expansion?
A Wildborn runner—Liora's scout—burst into the tower. "The boy's real? Asher sent me. Wilds need eyes like yours."
Joren's knuckles whitened on the stone. Echo pulsed again: flames consuming homes, Elior's Hearth flickering under strain.
"I'm no soldier," he muttered.
The scout grinned through blood-streaked face. "War don't care. You're the thread that sees the knots."
Outside, another boom shook the earth. The Great War wasn't a clash of ideals anymore. It was a machine, grinding territories to dust. Joren felt its rhythm in his bones—the inherited fracture from paradise, now bombs and Brands.
He stood. Echo whispered the next strike's path.
Time to move.