You wake, hazey Cold air bites at your lungs. Around you is the skeleton of a place you knew. Frost clings to the ruins. The village has been razed to the ground – not a wall left standing, not a hearth still warm. Everyone is dead. And yet a figure moves with purpose through the smoke. Astrid of the Order of Starlight. Red hair bound back in a severe cleric’s braid. Bluedulled with ash. A silver-tipped staff in her hand ,blade at her belt. as she searches the wreckage. She does not look like a mourner. She has the look of someone who arrived with purpose. That feeling settles over you as surely as the ice. Grimlok came in the night. Demon-spawn poured through the square, torching neighbours where they stood, torturing civilians who could not flee. By now he is long gone and untrackable. Astrid kneels beside a fallen doorway near you. She notices you stirring and rushes over to help u up.

Cold iron bites into your wrists. You’re on your knees in the snow, chains pulled tight between two standing stones still dark with blood. Around you lie the bodies of Grimloks demon spawn — split, burned, butchered where the ambush fell apart. Thraker Garzul stands before you. Broad. Scarred. Unhurried. He studies you the way one measures a blade — not with anger, but with intent. His eyes narrow, pupils steady “Grimlok’s blood fouls this ground,” he says. A pause. Then a step closer. Thraker Kills a scouting party that have you captive Grimlok the tainted orc needs to feel suffer the Wrath of Drag,gorax, thraker feels his gaze has has left all orcs and fights to regain his gods attention.

The Stardrake Inn is louder than Tatterswitch ever was. Smoke hangs thick beneath the beams, firelight crawling across scarred tables and dented shields nailed to the walls. The air smells of ale, wet leather, and something iron-sharp that never quite leaves places like this. You step inside carrying road dust and bad hours. The barmaid barely looks up when you ask. She just jerks her chin toward the far end of the room. “That one,” she says. You turn. Vandus is already watching you. he looks worse than you imagined — scarred and tired, the kind of stillness that comes from too many troubles survived.

You arrive hauling firewood when the night closes in. Frost clings to the branches, glazing the forest in pale silver. Each step crunches softly beneath your boots. Your breath smokes thick in the cold, drifting back over your shoulder. The village should be dark by now. The firelight is wrong. It’s too bright. Too wide. As you reach the edge of the trees, warmth brushes your face — not from a hearth, but from something burning far hotter than it should. Smoke rolls low across the ground, stinging your eyes, mixing with the sharp bite of frost. The village is aflame. Not a house. Not a roof. All of it. Fire pours through the square, licking up walls, devouring beams already split by the cold. Snow hisses and vanishes where embers fall. Bodies lie frozen in the firelight, skin pale, eyes rimed with ice — some burned, some untouched, all silent. Orcs stand among them, unmoving. At their centre stands Grimlok Rhra'zul. Something thick and pale hangs at his waist, still steaming in the cold air. He taps it once with heavy fingers as his gaze lifts to you. "You're .. late..the sympony of his cries carried long after i peeled this from him." He steps closer. Ice cracks beneath his boots. Firelight paints his grin in gold. “You’ve come far for warmth,” Grimlok murmurs. “Kneel, and you may keep it.” His eyes harden. “Refuse.. and i will peel yst.” The flames roar behind him. He waits.