In the midsouthern reaches of the continent lay the scattered dominions of the orcish kingdoms. Among them, the largest and closest to the human realms was the Bloodfang Empire, a nation long torn by civil strife. For years, the royal clans had been locked in stalemate with rebel tribes rising from within their own borders.

Wang Yu had had few dealings with these orcs. The only time their paths had crossed in battle, he had merely watched from afar as Skyborne City annihilated a herd of berserk chimeras, creatures born from the rebels' failed wizardry.

Beyond that, the orcs' quarrels were theirs alone. As a neutral power, Skyborne City, much like the Church of Light, rarely meddled in the internal affairs of any race. It intervened only when something threatened to bring ruin beyond repair.

The royal legions still commanded roughly sixty percent of the Bloodfang Empire's might, with the insurgents holding the rest. Their battlefront lay along the Talban River, a natural divide between north and south, where clashes erupted endlessly across its blood-stained banks.

The ceaseless wars had tainted the Talban River with the green blood of the orcs. Its ecosystem had long since changed as a result.

Many herbivorous fish had gone extinct entirely, replaced by warped, blood-feeding species and monstrous carnivorous breeds that multiplied in terrifying numbers. When battles raged, the river boiled with feeding frenzies. Giant fish waited for corpses to drift by, sometimes even leaping ashore to drag the living down.

Some said these monsters were the work of enemy shamans, yet no proof had ever surfaced. In truth, no orc much cared. The fish ate orcs, orcs ate the fish, and the world went on.

South of the river lay the rebels' largest encampment, the Stoneheart Tribe, though "tribe" and "army" were more or less synonymous among orcs. Every orc was a born warrior, a soldier from the cradle, and every tribe could rise as a warhost at a moment's call.

The sprawling camp was built from hides and great branches, the tents braced with bone and bound with sinew. Among the rows of crude dwellings, orcs of every shape and hue moved about. Some were furred, some bare-skinned, some tusked like beasts, others bearing teeth no different from men. Children shrieked and laughed as they darted between adults carrying fresh kills, their hungry eyes gleaming at the scent of blood and roasted meat.

There was little trace of war's despair here, and none of the cold solemnity that had hung over Aleisterre or Selwyn even at their darkest hours. It was evening. By the rushing riverside, female orcs crouched in the water, washing blood from their weapons and armor.

All of a sudden, the water exploded. A massive catfish-like creature, over three meters long, burst from the river and clamped its jaws around a female orc's head, dragging her beneath the churning surface.

Before it could savor its kill, a spear flew from the bank with brutal precision, skewering the monster clean through.

"Ha! Scared the life out of me... but that's one more meal for the children."

The same orc the beast had attacked rose from the water, prying apart its jaws. Her crimson skin gleamed under the dusk light, thick muscles rippling across her shoulders and neck—still marked by the fish's teeth. Her body had entered a state of berserk fury the moment danger struck, and the creature had never stood a chance of biting clean through.

"Thank you, Lord Garesh," she said in the orcs' harsh tongue, bowing her head to the warrior who had saved her, massive fish in tow.

"Be wary of the river," Garrosh rumbled. "That was just an ordinary beast. I wouldn't have been able to save you from a magical mutant."

Garrosh was enormous even by orcish standards. His skin was hairless and the color of burnished hide, and his body built like living iron. Two massive tusks curved from his mouth, savage and imposing.

The ritual markings etched into his face marked his rank: warchief, king of hunters, the first among the tribe's warriors, even the cunning commanders who served beneath him.

He said no more as he strode off toward the heart of the camp. There were more important affairs that he had to handle.

Wherever he passed, orcs stepped aside, bowing low. Even the wildest of their young went silent at his approach, guided not merely by learned reverence but by instinct: the raw, oppressive aura of his overflowing life force.

Garrosh moved on without a word toward the largest tent of the encampment. He lifted the flap and stepped inside.

The air was dim and thick with a strange, bitter scent. A great cauldron simmered over a low fire that burned with green flames. The cauldron bubbled with a viscous brew whose glow shifted between blue and sickly green.

"You're here," croaked the tribe's shaman, a hunched figure lost within a black robe. "Good. Taste this."

Garrosh accepted a bowl of the potion and downed it without hesitation. It was thick, gritty, and foul, yet potent. As it flowed into his gut, he felt energy surge outward through every vein, flooding his body with raw vitality.

"No problem," he said at last, his voice rumbling low as the war-marks across his face began to shine with living light. "More than sufficient life force. It's stronger than your last batch."

He was focusing on digesting the excess vitality from the brew.

"Excellent." The shaman nodded in satisfaction. "Then the bodies are ready to be shaped. Bring me what I asked for."

Garesh left the tent without a sound. Behind him, the shaman shuffled toward a bound orc lying in a corner. Though broad of frame, he breathed faintly, clearly having been drugged into oblivion. Without hesitation, the shaman drove his staff's spike into the orc's chest and began to chant.

A stream of green luminescence, the man's very life, rose from his body and transformed into a pulsing sphere of living light. As it drained away, the man's flesh shriveled and collapsed, melting into a smear of bone and sludge upon the ground.

As Garesh left, the shaman placed the glowing orb into the cauldron. The potion flared brighter, thick and luminous. Its radiance whispered of the immense vitality trapped within.

The orcs, after all, were masters of life force. In their crude, visceral way, they were superior even than the elves. What Wang Yu called Cursed Fire was child's play compared to the shamanic craft of these tribes.

Their knowledge, though narrow in scope and passed down exclusively through the tribe, was sealed tightly: unknown to outsiders, unshared even among their race.

Garrosh broke into a sprint across the snow-dusted plain, heading toward the rear of the camp. There, beyond the last line of tents, the ground dropped away into a vast pit yawning at the heart of a low mountain.

Inside the vast crater stood a towering spire, rising more than a hundred meters high, though much of its mass still lay buried beneath the earth. Its structure and architectural style were clearly alien to the orcs. Nothing in its design bore the marks of their kind.

The tower had appeared only days ago, yet neither the shamans of Garesh's Stoneheart tribe nor those from neighboring clans had shown the slightest surprise.

This was not the only one, either. Similar spires had surfaced in many places. Their distribution, however, shared one peculiar rule: they existed only south of the Talban River, within the territory held by the rebel orcs. Not a single one had emerged in lands loyal to the royal bloodline.

A few days earlier, the shaman had instructed Garesh to place certain offerings here. The shaman had offered no explanation, though Garesh's keen hearing had caught fragments of muttered words—"the old era", "nodes", and other cryptic phrases whose meaning lay beyond his grasp.

Garerh bent to lift a skull that had half-fused to the ground, its surface sticky from the fluids that had seeped and dried within. The offering crafted by the shaman's hand pulsed faintly in his grip. Compared to before, it felt different.

When the shaman had first given him the skull, it had been nothing more than a vessel swollen with life force, no more alive than the tonic brews Garush drank to strengthen his body. But now, he could feel the skull breathing. It was alive.

"..."

He stood silent for a long while, the skull resting in his palm, before turning back toward the shaman's tent.

"Good," the shaman croaked after examining the relic. "Then it is ready. Garesh, our dream of an orcish paradise may soon take form in this age!"

With approving grunts, the shaman traced another war-mark across Garush's face, a sign of his favor, then lowered the skull into the bubbling cauldron.

The thick, luminous broth stirred violently, threads of rich life force winding toward the vessel, knitting flesh from light and fluid.

"Ah, the process is going well," came a low, resonant voice. "Tell me, what age is this? Have the abyssal creatures been dealt with? I would not have them pollute our ideal realm."

Within the cauldron, the newborn being turned its half-formed eyes toward Garesh and the shrouded shaman, speaking with the eager curiosity of one awakening from a long slumber.

Elsewhere, beneath the banner of the Church of Nightfall, the Dusk Consortium operated a magitech emporium in one of the dwarven cities. Inside a wagon behind the shop, Damian and two fellow adherents of the Lightless Order had just finished unloading a shipment. After collecting their rations from the mess hall, they returned to their small wooden quarters to eat.

Since joining the Church, they had spent a long time working under Elliot's caravans. As the merchant's ventures flourished, even less-favored devotees like them—those without the close ties of the Church's first generation—were assigned to manage its growing network of trade branches.

Damian and his two comrades had first spent a year in the kingdom of elves, then followed the Alliance's expansion into dwarven lands.

Over the years, they had watched the Church of Nightfall spread with staggering speed, reshaping trade, faith, and influence across the continent. Now, each of the three possessed modest but respectable fortunes of their own.

Damian pushed open the door with one hand, the other holding a meal box—only to freeze mid-step.

Someone sat at the table inside. The figure was familiar, so familiar that, by all reason, he should have felt no shock at all. Yet his heart stuttered; a strange sense of unreality crept through him, as though his memory and reality no longer aligned.

"You've done well," the man said, smiling faintly. "Far better than mere erasure. The Lady of the Night, dangerous as she is, will serve our design far more effectively if turned to our purpose. Now then, take this."

A dagger landed neatly in Damian's hand. He stared down at it, feeling the pulse within the blade: countless fragments of consciousness trapped between life and death, sealed within a crystal no larger than a thumb. For the first time in many years, Damian felt something like doubt.