The Crimson Avalanche

The wind changed before the world did.

A low moan echoed through the northern peaks, a sound that wasn't wind at all but the ancient groan of a realm being reshaped. The clouds had darkened to a bruised iron, and snow that once fell softly now spun violently in strange, unnatural spirals. Selena rode hard along the ridge overlooking Volda Pass, her breath clouding thick and fast, her eyes scanning the jagged cliffs and shadowed crags for any sign of the enemy. But what she found instead was a terrible, suffocating silence—deep, dreadful, unnatural. The kind of silence that presses against your skull and whispers of something ancient rising from beneath the bones of the world.

Dante was gone.