As Khaltar, Jhon, and Aruzhan soared through the sky, the golden sands of Sandy Shores stretched before them. Below, the Silver Axes were already at work, reinforcing the straits with deadly traps—hidden spikes, submerged barricades, and explosive barrels rigged to sink any orcish warship daring to sail toward Sol-Minora.
However, their sudden arrival sent a wave of shock through the camp. "What in the abyss...?" One of them muttered, stepping back.
The warriors stopped what they were doing, eyes locked onto Aruzhan—a Zharyk, a creature thought extinct for years. Some instinctively reached for their weapons, others simply stood in awe.
Among them, Zharyk's presence hit Khufra Zhant with "By the gods..." Zhant whispered. "I thought they were gone."
Khaltar dismounted. Without skipping a beat, he simply replied "Long story."
He walked straight toward the war council tent, his voice carrying the weight of command. "Prepare the warships. We're not waiting for the orcs to come here. We're taking the fight to Sol-Mayora."
The warriors hesitated. Zhant stepped forward."You mean to face the necromancer head-on?"
Khaltar's eyes burned with resolve."Yes."
"And what of the Prophet? Did he—"
"Dead." Khaltar cut him off. "He lied to us. The Guardians were never meant to save us. They were meant to destroy everything. We end this the right way—by killing the shamans and breaking the necromancy ourselves."
The Silver Axes exchanged glances. Then, one by one, they nodded. Zhant grinned, gripping his axe. "Now that's more like it. Let's give these bastards a real fight."
The warhorns were sounded. Men rushed to their warships, loading supplies and sharpening their blades. The sea was restless, as if sensing the storm to come.
The other side, once-vibrant skies of Sol-Mayora had turned into a swirling abyss of dark purples and sickly blacks, as if the heavens themselves recoiled in horror at the scene unfolding below. Winds howled like tormented souls, carrying with them the stench of decay, burnt flesh, and corrupted magic.
The very ground trembled, but not from natural tremors—it was the march of The Fallen.
A grotesque horde of more than 740 species of resurrected horrors, their forms twisted and broken, marched in perfect unison under the will of the Rhazhak the Ash-Tongue. They were a grotesque mockery of life, their flesh barely clinging to shattered bones, their soulless eyes glowing with necrotic energy. Their numbers were terrifying:
The Fallen:498,200 (A vast mixture of undead rotting and skeletal giants)
Goblins:32,780 (Led by the savage and cunning Ghur'Zir the Goblin King.)
Orcs:10,150 (Commanded by the brutal warlord Khadag the Breaker of Host.)
Among the nightmarish ranks, Ghur'Zir the Goblin King led his 32,780-strong goblin army with a twisted glee. He was giant, among goblin, draped in bones and trinkets scavenged from the corpses of his enemies.
His goblins swarmed across the battlefield like carrion birds, prying weapons, armor, and even teeth from the dead. "Take everything, boys!" Ghur'Zir shrieked, his voice like rusted metal scraping against stone. "Shaman's pets don't need treasure! Let's feast on their flesh and drink their marrow!"
The goblins howled in agreement, their jagged knives and rusted blades flashing in the dim, cursed light.
Standing atop a ridge of cracked obsidian, Khadag the Breaker of Host watched as his 10,150 orc warriors stood in formation, their battle chants echoing across the wasteland. Their blackened iron armor, adorned with the symbols of the Iron Maw Clan, clanked ominously as they raised their weapons in unison.
Khadag, a monstrous orc with charcoal-gray skin and tusks thick as daggers, turned to the Rhazhak standing beside him. His voice rumbled like distant thunder. "Can you raise more?"
Rhazhak, draped in robes woven from flayed skin, his skeletal fingers gripping a staff topped with a screaming skull, hesitated.
"I can..." he muttered. "But I fear... awakening what lies beneath."
Khadag narrowed his golden, wolf-like eyes. "What do you mean?"
Rhazhak slowly turned his gaze toward the distant horizon, where Ember Sands stretched endlessly like a graveyard of forgotten gods. The winds howled louder, as if whispering forbidden secrets. "This place is not just a wasteland, Warlord..." The shaman's voice lowered to a whisper. "It is a tomb. The resting place of something far worse than any Fallen, worse than any army you or I could summon."
Khadag growled. "Speak plainly."
The shaman inhaled deeply. "It is the tomb of Nahz'Khaal the Dread Tyrant."
The Warlord of the Orcs—who had faced legions of the undead, who had bathed in the blood of dragons, who had conquered countless foes—felt an unfamiliar sensation.
Nahz'Khaal was not a mere beast. It was a cataclysm given flesh. A titan among monsters. It stood over 1400 meter tall—a colossus of scale, bone, and madness.
Its head was shaped like a monstrous fusion of a Tyrannosaurus and a dragon, with teeth like jagged obsidian spires. Six eyes burned with ancient hunger, each the size of a warship, their glow capable of melting flesh.
Its spine was lined with the jagged, crystalline plates of a Stegosaurus, pulsing with eldritch energy. Four colossal wings, akin to a Pterodactyl's, stretched across the sky—wings that could summon storms with a single beat. Its tail was an Ankylosaurian club, each strike capable of flattening entire battalions. Its claws, longer than any siege weapon, could shred fortresses like paper.
The blood in its veins boiled with raw magic, corrupting the land wherever it dripped.
It was the nightmare of a thousand civilizations. Entire empires crumbled when it last walked the world. The angels themselves had torn apart the sky to bind it in chains of light, sealing it beneath Ember Sands—and ensuring no fool would ever dare wake it again.
"Then we do not dig deeper." Khadag exhaled slowly.
For the first time in decades, he felt hesitation.
"If we dig too deep," Rhazhak continued, "We will bring ruin upon ourselves."
Khadag clenched his fists, his claws digging into his palms. He had no love for gods, no fear of death. But if this Nahz'Khaal was truly as terrifying as the legends whispered...
The shaman hesitated. His gnarled fingers trembled around the staff, not from age, but from the weight of the words he was about to speak. The firelight flickered in his hollow eyes as if the spirits themselves recoiled at what he was about to unveil.
His voice, cracked like dry earth, finally broke the silence. "Nahz'Khaal is one of many."
Khadag frowned. "What do you mean?"
The wind outside howled, carrying the distant cries of the dead. The shaman did not answer immediately. Instead, he turned his gaze toward the vast expanse beyond the camp—toward the endless dunes of the Ember Sands. His grip on his staff tightened.
"Beneath these lands lie more than the bones of the fallen. Beneath them, titans sleep."
Khadag scoffed. "Superstitions."
The shaman's gaze snapped back to him, and in that moment, something in his eyes made the warlord's heart clench. Not fear—Khadag did not fear myths. But what he saw was something far worse. Certainty. The shaman inhaled deeply before speaking again, his voice thick with old terror.
It is said that Nahz'Khaal was once the firstborn of Gorom, the Dragon of Destruction, a titan whose mere presence shattered kingdoms. Unlike his siblings, who ruled through cunning or magic, Nahz'Khaal was destruction made manifest—a force of nature rather than a being of reason.
His form was an abomination of scale and bone—a towering beast that walked like a Tyrannosaurus, yet bore the wings of a dragon, their torn membranes trailing dust storms in his wake. A crown of jagged stegosaurian spines lined his back, glowing with the molten light of the earth's core. His six burning eyes pierced through the veil of time, seeing all that walked upon the land. Where he tread, the world broke.
Mountains did not stand in his way—they cracked, split, and tumbled into the abyss beneath his feet. His breath did not burn—it liquefied rock, turning entire landscapes into oceans of magma. When he roared, the earth itself trembled, and the echoes of his fury could be heard even in the land of the dead. And yet, even he was not the worst of them. The shaman's breath shuddered as he continued. "He is not alone beneath these sands."
Beneath the broken peaks of the Volcanic Lands, where fire and stone had long waged war, another horror sleeps. Ulthog-Vorr, the beast that swallowed the sky.
A quadrupedal colossus, his obsidian hide is cracked with veins of molten fire, his very breath a plume of smoke thick enough to blot out the sun for centuries. His maw, lined with serrated, blackened teeth, is an abyss—one that never closes, never stops hungering.
Legends claim he was the first eruption, the beast that bled the mountains dry and left behind the molten veins that now carve through the world. Wherever he wakes, volcanoes rise to greet him, spilling rivers of fire across the land, drowning all in an ocean of ash. To wake him is to set the world ablaze.
The Scorching Flatlands were not always so. Once, it was a land of lush valleys and strong rivers—until Dhurnos opened his eyes.
A serpent, if such a thing could be called that, whose golden scales shift like flowing sand, vanishing into the dunes. He has no true form—his body is the desert itself, an endless length of shifting coils that stretch farther than the horizon. His many eyes, burning like trapped suns, watch from beneath the surface. Waiting.
Where he slithers, the land ceases to be. Solid ground collapses into an ocean of golden death, swallowing entire armies in the blink of an eye. His breath is the storm—the great sand tempests that strip flesh from bone, that howl with the voices of those already consumed. And though he sleeps, the desert still moves in time with his breathing.
Khadag exhaled through his nose. "These are mere stories."
The shaman ignored him, pressing forward. His hands trembled now—not with weakness, but with something far heavier. "You do not understand. These are not mere creatures. They are gods of ruin. And if you awaken them, there will be no battle. No victory. Only death."
Khadag opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, the shaman continued.
Varkhos was never meant to be a beast. Once, he was a city, or so the legends say—a temple of the gods, a place of peace and wisdom. But wisdom did not save those who dwelled within him.
His form is an architectural horror—his limbs carved from the very pillars of civilization itself, his face nothing but a single, glowing eye the size of a mountain. Wherever his gaze falls, life ceases—not in death, but in stillness. Men turn to stone. Rivers become frozen statues. Even time holds its breath.
The Sacred Sand City still stands because it is not a city—it is his victims, frozen forever in his wake.
The shaman took another breath, his voice barely more than a whisper now. "There are more. Many more."
He did not speak of Othraal-Ka, the Verdant Tomb, whose steps bring life before they take it away.
He did not speak of Thalak-Dur, the Labyrinth of Stone, who twists the world itself into an inescapable maze.
And he did not speak of Kharthuun, the World's Spine—for there were no words for the thing that moved mountains with a breath. But he did not need to.
For the first time, Khadag said nothing. Silence stretched between them, heavy as stone, thick as the dunes that covered the horrors below.
Then, finally, the warlord exhaled. His fingers curled into fists, his tusks grinding against each other. "...Then let us pray that we never dig too deep."