Chapter 481

The wind howled a deadly song through the jagged peaks, whipping the banners of the orcish horde into a frenzy. Dust, kicked up by thousands of heavy boots, swirled in the air, a gritty ochre cloud clinging to the marching columns.

At the vanguard, the Yohan First Horde, under the command of their chieftain, marched with grim determination. Their banner, a snarling crimson wolf upon a stark black field, a symbol of brutal strength, snapped and cracked in the wind, its eight-petaled white flower emblem a stark counterpoint to the beast's ferocity.

Beside it, the personal standard of Ikarush, the First Horde, a simpler banner depicting melting wings, flapped less dramatically, a symbol perhaps, of the fleeting nature of power.