Chapter 2
The Frostlands had become the eye of a gathering storm, watched by every major power in the surrounding regions.
Three Blades Alliance. Thorne's Territory.
Their Territory sat along the western edge of the Frostlands, which put the strange midnight glow practically on their doorstep.
Bianca had been on watch when the omen appeared. She woke Thorne and Brom at once.
The three of them spent the next several hours debating whether to investigate.
For once, they couldn't agree.
Thorne argued against another reckless gamble. Their last expedition had ended with them crossing paths with Lilith, and he had no desire to blunder into a second enemy like her.
Brom insisted that exploration was the whole point of being a Lord. Opportunities this valuable didn't wait around for the cautious.
Neither of them was entirely wrong, and the discussion came close to boiling over into a real argument.
Then, hours in, Bianca suddenly went quiet.
Thorne and Brom were still talking when she raised a hand.
"Shut up."
Both men stopped.
They traded a glance, then turned toward her.
Bianca wielded sound as her element. It served for attack and support alike, but its greatest advantage was her hearing.
From miles away, she could pick up movement and identify approaching creatures by their footsteps, heartbeats, and breathing.
There was one limitation: she needed to have encountered the species before, or at least know enough about it to recognize the pattern.
This time, the sounds were unfamiliar.
Bianca was, in effect, a living detection array. When she focused like this, Thorne and Brom knew better than to interrupt.
Something was coming.
And with the Frostlands glowing in the distance, its destination wasn't hard to guess.
Several seconds passed before Bianca spoke again.
"They walk on two legs. Light steps—but no heartbeat, and no breathing."
She hesitated.
"They sound like the vampires we ran into before."
Like them, but not the same species. Of that much, Bianca was certain.
"Bipedal?" Brom asked.
His expression hardened.
Humans were far from the only creatures in this world that walked upright, and more often than not, a bipedal species meant intelligence, tools, and an organized society.
Intelligent native races were rarely weak.
"There are a lot of them," Bianca went on. "Coming in from the west, more than ten miles out. If they hold their current course, they'll find our Territory."
Her hearing had never failed them.
The Three Blades Alliance was in serious trouble.
Thorne opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
The debate over the omen had just been settled for them.
Survival came first.
He recovered quickly.
"Then we'll—"
Brom cut him off with a raised hand.
Bianca had gone still again, her attention locked on another distant sound.
The two men exchanged a grim look.
"There's more?" Thorne asked.
The situation was worse than they'd thought.
After another moment, Bianca nodded.
"A second force, closing from the northwest. They move like Simon's werewolves."
Both groups were large.
Unfortunately, sound alone told Bianca nothing about strength. She had no way to gauge how powerful either force was.
Their leaders, though, were almost certainly Veterans at minimum.
Engaging an unknown native race without solid intelligence would be suicide.
This wasn't a game. None of them had a second life to gamble with.
Bianca could hear the Frost Sabertooths on the move throughout the region as well.
No one needed to say it aloud.
The Frostlands were about to erupt.
Yet when the three Lords looked at one another, not one of them suggested relocating.
They had prepared for emergencies, but this threat had come too fast. Uprooting three Territories and an Alliance Hall now was no longer realistic.
"Activate the Wonder's concealment effect," Thorne ordered.
His hands were already moving across the interface.
Their Wonder was built entirely around secrecy. It offered almost nothing in the way of conventional support, because every one of its functions existed for a single purpose: hiding them from detection.
The three Lords trusted it completely.
The frozen ground beneath their feet began to tremble.
A deep vibration rolled through the Territory.
Then the three castles and the towering Alliance Hall began to collapse.
No—not collapse.
They were sinking.
Within moments, all four structures had vanished beneath the ice.
The surface sealed over them without leaving so much as a crack. The snowfield looked untouched, as if no Lord had ever claimed this land.
The Three Blades Alliance had buried itself to ride out the coming danger.
Absolute concealment came at a price: their normal routes to the surface were now sealed off.
Thorne had planned for that.
For the next several days, while the Frostlands descended into chaos, the Alliance would stay underground.
Above them, the blizzard raged on.
Before long, fresh snow blanketed the area and erased the last trace of their presence.
...
Not long after, a group of vampires in crimson uniforms crossed into the snowfield.
Bianca's detection had been right.
These were native vampires, though—not the Vampiric Undead summoned through Lilith's Barracks. The two races shared similarities, but they were not the same.
The vampire at the head of the column stopped abruptly.
His boots sank into the snow as an invisible pressure rippled outward from his body, sweeping across the surrounding land.
He frowned.
Something had snagged his attention.
Yet after combing the area, he found nothing.
"Perhaps I was mistaken. Move."
His voice was cold and flat.
The thirteen vampires dissolved into streaks of shadow and vanished into the storm.
Three hours had passed since the Frostlands omen first appeared.
The glow was gone, and the region lay buried once more beneath darkness, wind, and snow.
Curiously, the vampires were not heading toward the site of the omen.
Investigating the disturbance was apparently only one of their objectives.
They had another mission in the Frostlands.
And the vampires were merely the first outsiders to arrive.
Humans, Goblins, and Frost Sabertooths followed close behind.
Each belonged to an intelligent, organized race. Until they understood the situation, they kept their presence hidden and steered clear of open conflict.
That fragile restraint lasted right up until the werewolves arrived.
They brought chaos with them.