Wrath Ascending

The outpost hadn't stood a chance. Black smoke spiraled into the pre-dawn sky, twisting in patterns that defied natural wind currents. Captain Merren stared at the devastation from the safety of the tree line, his stomach turning at the scene before him.

What had been a fortified alliance checkpoint just hours earlier was now a slaughterhouse. Bodies—or what remained of them—hung suspended from makeshift crucifixes fashioned from the outpost's own structural beams. Some had been flayed, their skin peeled away with methodical precision. Others had been dismembered, limbs arranged in geometric patterns that formed divine sigils when viewed from above.

"Gods have mercy," whispered his lieutenant, the hardened soldier's voice cracking.

But mercy had clearly abandoned this place. Blood-soaked soil had crystallized into ruby-like formations that pulsed with unnatural light. The air itself tasted metallic, charged with lingering energy that made their teeth ache and vision blur.

"Sir," his scout approached, visibly fighting the urge to vomit. "We found survivors."

Merren's head snapped up. "Where?"

The scout pointed to a structure that had once been the command post. Now it resembled an anatomical display, walls peeled outward like a blooming flower, support beams twisted into shapes that mirrored a human ribcage.

Inside, three soldiers knelt in perfectly aligned formation. They were alive—technically. But as Merren approached, horror froze him in place. Their eyes had been removed, replaced with pulsing crystals that wept golden fluid. Their mouths had been sewn shut with what appeared to be their own hair, twisted and hardened into needle-like filaments.

When the survivors sensed Merren's presence, they raised their arms in perfect unison, pulling up their tunics to reveal a message carved into their collective flesh, the wounds cauterized to ensure clarity: "TELL DAIN I'M COMING."

"Captain," his lieutenant whispered urgently, "something's happening."

The air temperature plummeted so rapidly that frost formed on their armor. Sound dampened as if reality itself were holding its breath. The three mutilated survivors began to convulse, the crystals in their eye sockets pulsing faster, brighter.

Then they exploded.

Fragments of crystallized bone and flesh tore through two of Merren's soldiers before anyone could react. Where the survivors had knelt, a swirling vortex of golden energy formed, reality peeling back like a scab to reveal something beneath.

Orin stepped through the opening, but this was not the divine champion Merren had heard described in reports. Where once Orin had blazed with golden certainty, now his form flowed with energies that seemed to resist classification—divine light shot through with threads of something deeper, more primordial.

His armor had transformed into a grotesque exoskeleton that pulsed like a beating heart, veins of golden energy running through plates that appeared forged from crystallized flesh rather than metal. Faces—dozens of them—pressed outward from within the armor, mouths frozen in silent screams, eyes blinking in desperate terror.

"Captain Merren," Orin's voice carried harmonics that made blood vessels rupture in the ears of two nearby soldiers, who collapsed clutching their heads. "How considerate of the alliance to send me fresh materials."

Merren's hand went to his sword, but froze halfway. Not from fear, but physical impossibility—reality around him had thickened like congealing blood.

"Your predecessor was similarly brave," Orin continued, gesturing to a particularly prominent face protruding from his shoulder armor. The face's eyes blinked in recognition, tears of golden fluid streaming down cheeks that merged with the metallic surface. "Captain Hallen, wasn't it? He maintained his courage until I peeled away his third layer of skin."

Merren struggled against the invisible restraint, watching in horror as his soldiers suffered the same paralysis.

"Where is Dain?" Orin asked, his voice almost gentle as he approached a young scout who couldn't have seen more than eighteen summers.

"We don't know," Merren managed, desperate to draw attention from the terrified youth. "We were sent to investigate a distress signal. Nothing more."

Orin's transformed head tilted, the movement unnaturally fluid. "Loyalty. Admirable." He reached out, fingers elongating into crystalline talons that caressed the scout's cheek, drawing five perfect lines of blood. "Misplaced, but admirable."

With a movement too fast to follow, Orin plunged his hand into the scout's chest. The young man didn't even have time to scream as Orin extracted his still-beating heart, the organ crystallizing in his grasp.

"Your body understands truth even when your mind resists it," Orin said, studying the heart as it continued its futile contractions. "Every beat is an admission. Every pulse a confession."

He crushed the heart, its crystallized remains scattering like diamond dust in the wind. The scout collapsed, body shriveling as if aging decades in seconds.

"Who's next?" Orin asked, gaze sweeping over the paralyzed soldiers. "Perhaps the lieutenant? Or shall we make this more efficient?" He spread his arms. "I can extract the truth from all of you simultaneously. A collective sacrifice to expedite our conversation."

"The knight travels east!" shouted a soldier at the back, terror shattering his discipline. "To the abandoned fortress at Sorrow's End! They're setting a trap for you!"

The air around the soldier crystallized instantly, freezing him in a perfect moment of terror and betrayal.

"Thank you for your contribution," Orin said, making a small gesture that caused the crystallized soldier to shatter into thousands of pieces. "Efficiency is always appreciated."

He turned back to Merren, who struggled to maintain composure despite the horror surrounding him. "A trap. How predictable. How... disappointing." Orin's transformed features arranged themselves into something that might have been a smile on a human face. On him, it looked like an open wound. "I had hoped for more creativity from Dain. And from his scheming ally Lysara."

"Lysara doesn't serve the alliance anymore," Merren found himself saying, desperate for anything that might save his remaining soldiers. "She defected to Kael's forces."

"I know." Orin's smile widened, the wound deepening. "Two betrayers finding common cause. Poetic."

With a gesture that defied physical laws, he released the paralysis holding Merren and his surviving soldiers. They stumbled, muscles screaming from the unnatural restraint.

"You wonder why I let you live," Orin said, reading the question in Merren's eyes. "It's not mercy, Captain. It's purpose. Dead men deliver no messages."

Reality rippled around him as he began to reshape the clearing, the ground itself rising to form a throne of fused bone and crystal. He sat, the faces embedded in his armor moaning softly as he settled his weight.

"Tell your alliance this, Captain." The air itself seemed to hold its breath as he spoke. "While they plot and scheme and set their little traps, I have been remaking myself. Becoming something beyond divine or void, beyond life or death." He leaned forward, the throne creaking beneath him. "Gods demand worship. The void offers choice. But vengeance? Vengeance simply is."

With a casual gesture, he caused one of Merren's soldiers to rise into the air, the man's armor peeling away like paper to expose vulnerable flesh beneath.

"Watch closely, Captain," Orin commanded as the suspended soldier began to transform, bones cracking as they rearranged themselves, skin stretching and tearing as it reformed into something that barely resembled humanity. "This is but a taste of what awaits Dain. What awaits Lysara. What awaits anyone who shields them from my retribution."

The soldier's screams gradually changed pitch, becoming something inhuman, something broken. When the transformation completed, what remained was neither human nor divine—a twisted messenger, its body a living canvas of Orin's promises.

"Take this one with you," Orin said as the transformed creature collapsed to the ground, twitching. "Let them study it. Let them understand the futility of resistance."

Rising from his throne, Orin ripped open reality itself, creating a tear that led somewhere beyond conventional space. Before stepping through, he looked back at the traumatized survivors.

"Run to your masters. Show them what you've witnessed. And know that every step you take, every breath you draw, brings me closer to Dain and Lysara." His final words echoed as he vanished through the dimensional tear: "I am no longer divine champion or mortal man. I am the price of their betrayal made flesh."

The tear sealed itself with a sound like reality screaming. Captain Merren and his surviving soldiers remained motionless, the transformed creature still twitching at their feet, the crystallized remains of their comrades glittering in the growing daylight.

When they finally gathered the courage to move, they did exactly as Orin had commanded—they ran, carrying his message, his transformed victim, and the terrible certainty that no fortification, no alliance, perhaps not even void-touched power could stand against what he had become.

The alliance war chamber had been silent for nearly five minutes after Captain Merren concluded his report. The captain himself sat slumped in a chair, a healer attending to wounds that went far beyond the physical. In the center of the room, contained within multiple protective barriers, the transformed soldier continued its inhuman whimpering.

"Impossible," King Aldric finally whispered, his face ashen. "This goes beyond divine punishment or void corruption. This is..." Words failed him as he stared at the twisted creature.

"Sadism," Lady Sylvaria supplied, her ancient eyes reflecting horrors witnessed across millennia. "Deliberate, calculated cruelty designed not just to kill, but to break spirits. To inspire terror beyond rational response."

Thane Duran's bushy eyebrows had drawn together, his usually ruddy complexion pale beneath his beard. "Can your scholars reverse this transformation?" he asked, unable to look away from the creature that had once been a human soldier.

"We're trying," Duke Blackthorn answered, his customary aggression subdued by the horror before them. "But the energy patterns are unlike anything we've encountered. It's as if the God of Souls' power has been..." he struggled for the right word, "...perverted by Orin's emotional state."

Dain stood apart from the others, his weathered face set in lines of grim determination. "This is my responsibility," he said quietly. "Orin's vengeance is directed primarily at me."

"And at Lysara," Ardyn added from his position by the window, even his usual sardonic manner dampened by the evidence of Orin's brutality. "Let's not forget our missing scholar."

"We need help," King Aldric stated, the admission clearly painful. "This is beyond our capabilities to counter."

As if summoned by his words, a void-touched emissary materialized from the shadow cast by the war table. Not with dramatic flair, but with the practiced efficiency of someone who navigated spaces between realities daily. Lord Drenmir's void-marks pulsed rapidly as he took in the scene, particularly the transformed soldier within its containment field.

"I see we're late," he observed, his scholarly detachment barely masking genuine concern. "We detected a massive energy surge consistent with Orin's signature, but this..." He approached the containment field, studying the creature with clinical precision. "This exceeds our projections of his capabilities."

"Can Kael help us?" Aldric asked directly, years of diplomatic indirection abandoned in the face of immediate threat.

Lord Drenmir's void-marks pulsed as he conducted a more thorough analysis of the transformed soldier. "Yes," he answered finally. "But not from a distance. Not with conventional methods." He turned to Dain. "You are central to this. Not just as his target, but as a potential key to his undoing."

"I know," Dain replied simply. "What does Kael want?"

"Your presence. Immediately." Lord Drenmir gestured, and a small contingent of void-marked specialists emerged from folded spaces nearby. "And this specimen. Our research facilities are better equipped to understand what Orin has done—and possibly how to reverse it."

"Out of the question," Duke Blackthorn objected. "We cannot surrender an alliance soldier to void experimentation."

"Look at him," Lord Drenmir countered, his voice uncharacteristically sharp. "Is this existence you wish to preserve? We may be able to restore him—or at least release him from this torment."

Before the argument could escalate, the transformed soldier began to convulse violently. Golden light erupted from its twisted form, pulsing in patterns that made the containment barriers flicker and warp.

"It's destabilizing," Lord Drenmir warned, his void-marks flaring in response. "Orin didn't just transform him—he weaponized him."

"Evacuate the chamber!" Aldric commanded, but it was already too late.

The creature exploded in a burst of crystallized flesh and divine energy. Lord Drenmir's void specialists managed to contain most of the blast, but fragments tore through the war table, embedding themselves in walls and flesh alike. Where they struck, reality itself began to warp, small pockets of divine crystallization spreading like cancer.

As healers rushed to attend the wounded, Lord Drenmir turned to Dain, who had remained unmoved despite a crystalline shard protruding from his shoulder. "Now do you understand? This isn't just vengeance. This is calculated terror. Orin is sending a message written in corrupted flesh and warped reality."

Dain removed the shard with a single efficient movement, golden energy hissing as it met his blood. "I understand perfectly," he said, his voice calm despite the chaos surrounding them. "When do we leave?"

"Immediately." Lord Drenmir gestured to his specialists, who had already begun preparing a dimensional transit. "We cannot afford further delay."

"I'll accompany Sir Dain," Elaris announced, stepping forward. The young squire had been oddly silent throughout the proceedings, his keen mind clearly processing tactical implications. "My knowledge of divine energy patterns could prove useful."

Lord Drenmir nodded, though something in his expression suggested he had expected this request. "Of course. Kael asked for your presence as well."

As they prepared for immediate departure, the alliance leaders gathered in hasty conference. Contingency plans needed revision, defensive positions needed reinforcement—all while processing the horrific evidence of what awaited anyone who stood in Orin's path.

Captain Merren, still trembling from his ordeal, found his voice one last time. "There's something else you should know," he said, drawing their attention. "Before Orin left, after everything he'd done, he smiled. Not like a person—like something wearing a person's face. And he said: 'I am no longer divine champion or mortal man. I am the price of their betrayal made flesh.'"

The void-touched transit shimmered into existence, reality peeling back to reveal a pathway to Kael's hidden sanctum. As Dain and Elaris prepared to step through, King Aldric placed a hand on the knight's uninjured shoulder.

"Return to us," he said simply. "Whatever Kael offers, whatever power he promises—remember who you are."

Dain nodded once, his weathered face betraying no emotion. "I know exactly who I am," he replied. "The man who killed Orin once before. And who will do so again—no matter the cost."

The transit closed behind them, leaving the alliance leaders surrounded by the aftermath of Orin's message—crystallized blood, warped reality, and the terrible certainty that worse was coming.

Outside the fortress walls, frost spread across lands that had never known winter. Reality itself seemed to shudder in anticipation of what approached—not with the overwhelming force of divine armies, not with the fluid adaptation of void-touched strategy, but with the single-minded brutality of vengeance itself.

Patient. Methodical. Absolute.