The cavern was a sepulchre of perfect, unnatural stillness, buried so deep beneath the earth that the concept of a sun was nothing but a forgotten, hateful myth.

  ?It was a subterranean expanse so monolithic that the absolute darkness effortlessly swallowed the ceiling. Massive stalactites hung from the unseen heights like the jagged, petrified teeth of a sleeping god. The air here did not circulate. It hung heavy and stagnant, a physical pressure upon the skin, smelling of ancient dust, oxidised iron, and the sweet, cloying scent of magically preserved rot. It was a place where time had simply ceased to function, locked away from the cycles of the living world above.

  Above this abyssal space, upon a dais of jagged obsidian, sat the Wight, Voros.

  ?He was a monument to inevitable slaughter, a towering silhouette of blackened, spiked plate armour seated upon a massive throne carved directly from the bedrock. He was so large that he mocked the proportions of mortal men. A gigantic greatsword, its rusted blade etched with dormant, glowing runes of suffering, rested across his armoured knees. Beneath the heavy, shadowed visor of his horned helm, two pinpricks of cold, balefire blue burned with a terrifying, ancient, and endlessly patient intellect.

  He simply waited. He was the anchor, the fulcrum upon which the entire subterranean tomb rested.

  ?Standing at the base of the dais, rigid and attentive, was the Lich Thul-Kasha.

  ?Unlike the sheer, immovable brute mass of Voros, the Lich was a creature of withered elegance. His mummified, leathery flesh was stretched impossibly taut over an elongated, predatory skeleton. He wore tattered, overlapping robes of midnight silk that whispered faintly against the stone when the subterranean drafts, born from shifting tectonic plates, caught them. His eyes were milky, dead spheres, yet they saw the flow of magic, the invisible currents of the world, with a clarity that would have driven a living archmage to weeping madness.

  ?Spread out before them, filling the cavern floor until they vanished into the absolute dark, was the host.

  ?It was an ocean of the dead. It was a testament to their genocidal ambition. Hundreds, no, thousands of skeletal warriors, mummified archers, and hulking, stitched-together abominations stood in perfectly symmetrical, silent ranks. Beside the infantry stood ranks of spectral cavalry, their skeletal mounts draped in decaying barding, their hooves hovering an inch above the stone. Further back in the gloom loomed the Grave-Goliaths, trolls and giants resurrected with dark iron bolted into their bones to hold their rotting frames together.

  ?They did not breathe. They did not shuffle. They did not hunger. They were a lake of glossy, empty eyes and hollow sockets, an army suspended in the eternal, suffocating silence before the slaughter. They were a weapon pointed at the throat of the world, waiting for the hand to pull the trigger.

  They had been gathered for a purpose, and their time was nigh.

  ?It didn't begin with a sound, but with a sensation. A sudden, violent, precipitous drop in the atmospheric pressure of the cavern. It was as if a massive, invisible weight had suddenly shifted above them.

  ?The Lich’s head snapped up, the vertebrae in his neck popping like dry kindling. His milky eyes widened, staring sightlessly through the miles of solid rock above. He raised a skeletal, rune-etched hand, his elongated fingers splayed as if trying to physically grasp the invisible currents of the air.

  ?"Do you feel it?" the Thul-Kasha hissed. His voice was the sound of dry leaves scraping across a marble tombstone, echoing loudly in the absolute quiet. "The currents. They are shifting. It is beginning."

  ?The Wight did not speak, but the balefire in his visor flared infinitesimally brighter, casting a pale, ghostly light over the jagged, rusted spikes of his shoulder plates.

  ?The ambient mana in the cavern, a thick, necrotic miasma that had hung stagnant for an age, was suddenly moving. It was being pulled. Not by the Lich, and not by the Wight. It was being dragged upward, outward, drawn by a massive, cosmic vacuum on the surface of the world.

  ?The Wight closed his dead eyes, his jaw unhinging slightly as he tasted the shifting magic. He began to laugh, a dry, rasping sound devoid of any joy.

  ?"The living," Thul-Kasha whispered, awe and cruel amusement bleeding into his voice. "They are frantic. They are terrified. I can taste their desperation bleeding through the bedrock. They are burning through the world's leylines faster than the earth can replenish them. They are not ready to fight the war that is to come"

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  ?Varos remained motionless, a statue of blackened steel, the ugly laughter coming from within his chest the only sign he was awake.

  ?"It is exactly as they said," the Lich continued, turning to face the endless sea of motionless soldiers, his arms spreading wide. "The living gorge themselves on peace until they grow soft, and then the lesser beasts rise to cull them. The plan will work.”

  ?The Lich turned back to the Voros, his dead eyes burning with sudden, fervent zeal. "Soon, the humans will be expending everything they have to survive the night. And when the sun rises, even if they are victorious, they will be hollowed out. Their walls will be broken, their heroes exhausted, their mana depleted. They think the first wave as their cataclysm. They do not know that the horde is merely the plague that softens the meat for the butcher."

  ?As if in response to the Lich’s words, a deep, resonant tremor shook the cavern. Dust cascaded from the ceiling. Miles above them, a massive exertion of kinetic and magical force had just occurred, a detonation that cracked the very foundations of the earth.

  ?"A breach!" the Lich crowed, his voice rising to a shriek. "A massive, uncontrolled expenditure of force! Their gates have fallen! The world's reserves are gasping, and the world seeks to balance the scales!"

  ?Behind the throne, rising from a deep, glowing fissure in the rock, stood the Apex Crystal.

  ?It was a jagged monolith of raw, unrefined dungeon quartz, standing thirty feet tall. For centuries, it had pulsed with a slow, rhythmic, sickly green light, serving as a battery.

  ?Now, it was screaming.

  ?The slow, rhythmic green light vanished, instantly replaced by a blinding, volatile violet. The crystal began to vibrate, emitting a high-pitched, crystalline hum that set the teeth of the dead chattering in their hollow skulls. The crystal was feeding on the chaotic backlash, drawing the ambient, panicked energy of the world above and filtering it through its necrotic core. It was gathering the mana the world was bleeding, hoarding it, preparing to meet the needs of the army it anchored.

  ?The hum grew to a deafening, physical roar.

  ?CRACK.

  ?A bolt of pure, jagged violet lightning blasted out from the apex of the crystal. It struck the ceiling of the cavern, showering the front ranks of the Grave-Goliaths in a cascade of molten rock and sparks.

  ?Then, another bolt. And another.

  ?The cavern erupted into a strobe-light nightmare of flashing violet arcs. Lightning chained from the crystal to the stalactites, grounding itself violently into the iron-rich bedrock. The sheer atmospheric static caused the tattered, ancient banners of the undead host to snap and flutter as if caught in the grip of a hurricane. The magic didn't harm the undead; it washed over them, soaking into their marrow, empowering them, breaking the invisible chains of their stasis.

  ?Voros slowly rose from his throne.

  ?The movement was agonizingly deliberate, accompanied by the heavy, shrieking protest of rusted metal joints and grating, petrified bone. He lifted the massive greatsword with one hand, a weapon that would have required three strong men to lift, and rested it effortlessly on his pauldron. The balefire in his eyes was no longer a patient flicker; it was a raging inferno, perfectly reflecting the violent, arcing violet lightning of the crystal.

  ?The Lich turned from the overloading crystal to face the sea of soldiers. The ambient mana of the world was churning, feeding the crystal, and in turn, feeding the host. The long wait was finally over. The world above had cracked itself open, offering its soft, unprotected underbelly.

  ?"When we march," Thul-Kasha hissed to the endless ranks, his voice magically amplified to carry over the roar of the lightning, "the sky will weep ash. The green woods of their pathetic kingdoms will turn to petrified glass. We will take their shattered walls and build our monuments with their bones."

  ?The Lich raised both of his skeletal hands high into the air, his tattered robes billowing in the sudden, magical wind. He opened his jaw, revealing rows of sharpened, yellowed teeth.

  ?He snapped a single, sharp command. A word of absolute power, spoken in the dead, guttural tongue of a fallen, forgotten empire.

  ?The sound cut through the roar of the lightning like a physical blade.

  ?Instantly, a shudder ran through the entire cavern. The lake of glossy, empty eyes ignited.

  ?Thousands of pinpricks of cold, blue balefire flared to life in the absolute darkness, stretching out for miles. The sound of shifting armour, clattering bones, and drawing steel rose like a tidal wave, a terrifying, metallic roar that quickly drowned out the hum of the crystal.

  ?The host was awake. Every single head turned in perfect, mechanical unison. They stared at the raised platform, a unified, terrifying consciousness waiting for direction.

  ?Voros stepped down from the dais, his heavy, spiked boots cracking the obsidian stone beneath his weight. He stopped beside his friend, looking up at the ceiling of the cavern, towards the surface world where the living were currently bleeding themselves dry, completely unaware of the true doom that stirred beneath them.

  ?The violet lightning flashed one final, blinding time, casting the Warleader's terrifying, spiked silhouette against the far cavern wall.

  ?The armoured monster lowered his gaze to the waiting, glowing eyes of his limitless army. His voice, when he finally spoke, was not a sound meant for mortal ears. It was the sound of grinding tectonic plates, of collapsing tombs, and of crushing, inevitable despair.

  ?"It is time."

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