In silence, as always, it began.
Hush stood beneath the hanging moss of an old watchtower outside Oakhold, the sky above heavy with the green-glow shimmer of the Emeraldite domain’s twilight. The wards that once shimmered faintly across the village borders had already faded. A slow death by surgical sabotage. Glyph by glyph, undone by his hand across three moonless nights.
He watched now as the last sigil on the old stone wall cracked and vanished into dust.
Oakhold was no ordinary settlement. It was a keystone, an outpost of trade, knowledge, and leverage. Guarded by old magic and older politics. Its fall would be noticed. But more importantly, its call would not be ignored.
Hush withdrew three identical letters from his coat. Simple parchment. Sealed with no insignia. Each read the same:
"Oakhold calls for aid."
He did not sign them. He simply sent them. Each arrived simultaneously through raven directly to the thrones of three kings: King Gol of Deepmark, King Tyr Raewyn of Tyrmrdis, and King Louwen of the Emeraldites.
Then he vanished....
Gol was nothing if not opportunistic. The moment word of Oakhold's weakened defenses reached his court, he declared a mandate to protect it. Deepmark soldiers moved in with mechanical precision, planting banners before the villagers even understood they had been claimed.
Tyr Raewyn of Garmrdis, a foolhardy king, saw what was coming. An Emeraldite retaliation meant war. He rode not for conquest, but to prevent it.
He allied with Gol beneath Oakhold’s right wing, swearing an oath that chilled the air.
Two kings now stood against the Emeraldites. Hush smiled from the shadows. The dominoes had begun to fall.
One.
Tyr Raewyn sat on his throne of iron, there was something troubling him. The message from Oakhold had stirred something deep within him-opportunity, or perhaps dread. But when reports came that the Order of Cerise was moving toward the village, his paranoia sharpened into cruelty.
He issued orders to his spies in the South: abduct the apprentice of Headmagister Ada, a young woman named Beroe, known for her faewild druidry. The hope was to ransom her, use her safety as leverage to bar Cerise from meddling in Oakhold’s fate.
But Tyr underestimated the Order’s resolve.
They tracked him across the frostbitten spine of the North, over icy ravines and through blizzards. There they cornered him in his secluded cabin and whisked him into a cage of trees and rose thorns.
The battle was short.
A group Cerise mages, an Emeraldite Knight by name of Richard, and the druids of the Garden subjected him to brutal beatings and devastating spells.
Richard and Cessair, the wife of Beroe, gave Tyr his final stand. He mused on the grounds for which they did this, stating he hoped for peace instead of death, but his curse would never allow him anything else.
Cessair swiped his head off with an axe. There was no mercy for a man who harmed her dearest.
When his body hit the ground, the crowd said very little. Tyrmrdis lost its king. Cerise retrieved its daughter.
The first domino had fallen.
Two.
In the wake of Tyr’s death, fear and rumor spread through the kingdoms. With Deepmark now stationed in Oakhold, and the Emeraldites caught between diplomacy and retribution, King Louwen called for a summit.
The chosen site was Grastagg, an ancient fortress-city perched above a roaring river in the Southern Steppes.
King Gol arrived with soldiers in tow, cloaked in the armor of practicality. He claimed his occupation of Oakhold was mercy, that he had merely answered a cry for help.
Magisters of Cerise, robed and austere, sat like statues across from him, their brows furrowed.
King Louwen, emerald-robed and graying, presided over the chamber with weariness. He wanted answers. He wanted order.
Tension crackled between every syllable.
Gol deflected accusations of aggression. Ada questioned his intentions. Louwen pushed for a democratic vote from the citizens of Oakhold.
And above them all, Hush listened... a specter in the rafters, noting every word, every tremor in their voices.
He did not need to act.
Because others already would.
The room turned to arguments and accusations.
But even the most well-guarded walls could not keep out prophecy.
It began with the wind.
A sudden stillness fell over Grastagg. The debate stopped mid-sentence. Outside, clouds swirled unnaturally, folding into a spiral.
Then came the shriek.
The wytches of the Steppeshorn Coven, thought long since splintered, descended upon Grastagg in a storm of hexes and howling laughter. Shrouded in bone-laced cloaks and burning oils, they cracked the ceiling with a bang and entered like a curse made flesh.
Cerise mages raised shields. Deepmark soldiers formed walls. But the wytches didn’t engage.
They moved like lightning- straight for Louwen.
They caught him fleeing through the stairwell. A clawed hand found his shoulder. Another gripped his crown.
There was no fight.
A single word... “Now,” was whispered, and Louwen vanished in a torrent of purple smoke and twisting shadow. Gone. Not dead. Taken.
By the time the chaos subsided, the roof cracked and half the guards lay screaming with plague-sigils burning in their skin, the coven was gone.
Only silence remained
Three.
Days later, Gol returned to Deepmark. He ordered a deeper excavation of the mines, determined to uncover the rumored leyline deep beneath its roots.
The moment the miners cracked the third gate, something stirred.
No tremors. No rumble. Just the caw of a raven.
Then... collapse.
The tunnel twisted in on itself as if crushed by invisible hands. The supports shattered like glass. Screams echoed once... then nothing.
Twenty men and a king vanished into the earth.
Cerise said it was luck. Deepmark called it sabotage.
Hush? He called it prophecy.
