Once,the sweet smell of grass was every field's centerpiece but on this day,greens became reds.The clang of swords rang like the roar of thunder across the battlefield. Sparks flew in every direction as metal clashed with metal, and the air reeked of blood, smoke, and burning flesh. Screams tore through the silence of death, and for every breath drawn, another was stolen by a sharpened blade. Neck bones snapped beneath the weight of swinging axes. Limbs were severed. The sky itself seemed to flinch at the carnage laid before it.
The red-stained banners of the Emberblood Dynasty stood amidst the chaos, fluttering defiantly in the scorching wind. Thousands of bodies—friend and foe alike—lay scattered like discarded dolls, their eyes wide with the final gaze of horror. The ground was drenched in blood, and the soil drank deep the price of war.
King Daemar, sovereign of the Emberblood Dynasty, stood in the eye of the storm. His obsidian armor shimmered with veins of molten red, steam rising from its surface as though the flames of his house still burned within.
Recognizing the leader of the rebellion among the troops advancing towards his,he drew the arrow of an archer around him and charged.His screams of war,pain and blood searing alongside him.With a swift movement,he drove the arrow into the neck of the rider's horse, it neighed in agony, throwing the war leader off its back as it galloped into the battlefield.
The pale warrior growled,his white eyes in fury and his voice laced with venom,pointing his curved sword toward him.
"Vrash'ek tal Vorrak!"
King Daemar narrowed his eyes as if he understood what he meant. "Then come take it."
The commander charged head on,grabbed the king's left hand and swords clashed with the other hand.An exchanged head butt to the face released their grip on each other.
Realizing he wouldn't win in a contest of strength as he was knocked down, the king signaled for an ambush.
His personal knight,Diego, swiftly disabled the warrior by his feet bringing him to his knee.
"Zha'kul" He abused, spitting on the ground.
With a cry that cut through the mayhem like a blade, King Daemar gripped a nearby spear and thrust it deep into the chest of the weakened Jaka'ar war leader.
The man—the Jaka'ar were almost ghostly, with hair and eyes stark white as bone—let out a guttural howl,It was not a cry of pain but of fury and defiance. Even dying, he tried to reach for the king, his hands trembling from the venom of defeat. Behind him, held tightly by chains of seared iron, was the war leader's wife.
"Vel'nari!" He screamed but blood gushes from his mouth, his pain expressing his struggle to breathe.
The Jaka'ar held a unique custom—wives were to fight beside their husbands.Their sons to witness and feel the heat of war that will forge them into a beast no one would dare challenge.They were not merely companions but heirs of strength, embodiments of their tribe's ancestral flame. To defeat a Jaka'ar war leader and capture his wife was not just victory; it was devastation. It was the unraveling of a bloodline.
Daemar tore his spear free, and the warrior fell like a felled tree. Blood sprayed in wild arcs, mingling with the ash. He turned, locking eyes with the woman now on her knees, her white hair drenched in crimson, her face expressionless.
She didn't scream. She didn't fight. She simply stared at him, and her eyes—those eerie white eyes—held not fear, but knowing.
All around them, the remaining Jaka'ar scattered, slipping into the cover of rising smoke and shattered terrain. The warriors of Emberblood, what remained of them, formed a circle around their king. Weapons at the ready. Breaths shallow. Eyes sharp.
"Secure the line," Daemar barked, wiping his blade clean on a fallen Jaka'ar's cloak.
Diego stepped forward, bowing with a bloodied face and fractured armor. "The fields are ours, my king."
Daemar didn't respond immediately. He looked past the battlefield, to the setting sun that cast the sky in hues of orange and red—colors far too close to flame and blood. "Ours for now," he murmured. "But peace will not come easy."
He turned to the Jaka'ar woman. She did not flinch under his gaze. Daemar had fought beasts, men, and kings—but her stillness unnerved him. Her hands were bound, yet her spirit was untouched.
"What is your name?" he asked, knowing full well she could not understand his tongue.
She tilted her head. Then, softly, a whisper in her own language. "Vel'nari."
Daemar glanced at his men. None of them spoke the Jaka'ar language. They were alien—foreign in tongue and culture. But he knew what he needed. A translator. A seer. Someone who could understand the ways of these strange people.
One of the younger knights approached. "Shall we take her to Virelia, sire?"
Daemar looked once more at the fallen war leader, then at the woman. "She's more than just a prisoner. She would be a useful tool.Take her alongside the rest…our duty here is done,victory is certain."
They began the long march back through the field of ruin. Horses whinnied nervously, sidestepping the dead. The Emberblood standard bearer held the banner high, its flaming crest catching the last light of the day. Victory had come, but at a cost.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, smoke curling into a darkening sky, a chill settled over the battlefield.
Diego, soothed his blade with a clothing piece.Watching as Vel'nari whispered once more, her eyes not on the king upfront but the heavens: "Dravon suul'vera… en'sul embera."
And though no one understood the words, a strange silence followed.
A silence… that felt like a warning.
What did the captive woman mean? And what did the king bring home with him besides glory?