THE LAST KEEPER

The bitter mountain air of Kovura Pass smelled of burning blood, crushed pine, and cold iron as the northern defense line collapsed beneath the howling blizzard.

Grand Zorath Zaka Asakana stood atop a mound of shattered shields, his twin battle axes chipped and his heavy armor dripping with dark crimson.

Beside him, Kaka swung his axes with ragged breaths, his shoulders bruised and his northern warplate cracked in three places.

Squad 25 formed a tight, desperate defensive circle around the broken stone gatehouse, fighting back-to-back against relentless waves of frost-armored Soulless.

”Incoming from the eastern ridge!” Kiuga shouted, adjusting tactical wards as cold mist blinded their vision.

Just then, a volley of glowing tracer bolts tore through the freezing fog, accurately striking the joints of five charging frost enforcers.

Through the smoke rushed Banga, leading a spearheading vanguard of veteran northern warriors in reinforced combat tunics.

The silent genius of Squad 25 had finally reached the frontlines, wearing a leather harness loaded with custom alchemical tools and mechanical parts.

Over his eyes rested his latest war invention: specialized night-vision and blizzard-penetrating thermal crystal goggles that cut through the darkness.

”Equip these now,” Banga said in his usual calm, quiet voice, tossing pairs of the night-vision visors to Kaka, Kiuga, Maita, and the rest of the squad.

”They track necrotic cold signatures in the dark,” Banga explained, deploying a perimeter of rapid-release kinetic tripwires that blasted the next wave of enforcers into scrap.

With Banga’s night-vision visors, Squad 25 and the veteran warriors could finally see through the pitch-black blizzard, cutting down hidden flankers with lethal precision.

Further up the slope, Kiana flicked her silver void needles with blinding speed, while N’varu’s ten Sandshades weaved through the blizzard like lethal phantoms.

Yet over sixty thousand Lanka shock troops and colossal frost-tusked war beasts pressed forward without end, drowning the pass in a sea of jagged ice and steel.

At the head of the invading horde stood Lanka’s Frost General Vorkas, a seven-foot brute clad in enchanted glacial-forged plate.

”Shatter their bones!” Vorkas roared, raising a colossal spiked ice-warhammer that crackled with necrotic frost. ”Harvest every soul for Glacial Lanka!”

The heavy siege engines released a barrage of black ice boulders that smashed through the remaining northern barricade, throwing northern warriors through the air.

Kaka dropped to one knee, coughing blood as a massive frost beast lunged for his throat with razor-sharp fangs.

”Kaka!” Chief Zaka roared, lunging forward to shield his son, but three heavy Soulless enforcers tackled the old chief to the snow.

Just as the icy claws reached Kaka’s neck, the storm clouds above Kovura Pass split open with an earth-shattering titan roar that shook the entire mountain range, causing avalanches to cascade down the distant peaks.

Colossal Zaira descended from the heavens like a falling mountain of obsidian armor, her crimson eyes burning with ancient, primal fury.

The massive titan serpent slammed directly into the center of Lanka’s siege line, her impact creating a seismic shockwave that flattened three hundred enforcers instantly.

With a terrifying sweep of her colossal armored tail across the valley floor, Zaira pulverized iron siege ballistas and turned giant frost beasts into clouds of red mist.

Total, suffocating terror gripped the battlefield as both armies froze in place, unable to comprehend the mountain-crushing monster before their eyes.

Then, from atop the colossal serpent’s brow, a lone figure stepped into the open air.

It was Sagiri.

The moment his boots touched the frozen earth, a towering pillar of pitch-black darkness and blinding void silver erupted from his body, tearing the snow from the ground and splitting the bedrock beneath his feet.

The sheer pressure of his sovereign presence fell upon the battlefield like an iron sky, suffocating sixty thousand enemy troops where they stood.

Frost beasts throughout the gorge collapsed onto their bellies, whimpering and clawing at the frozen earth in uncontrollable panic.

Sagiri did not utter a single word.

His left eye burned with ancient crimson authority, while his right eye shone with piercing, radiant void silver.

He walked forward through the blizzard, and with a simple flick of his wrist, the twenty Silver-Veined Void Blades detached from his back.

The twenty blades became streaks of silver-black starlight, dancing through the enemy vanguard in a mesmerizing display of silent slaughter.

The blades phased straight through enchanted frost-shields and heavy armor, severing alchemical cores with absolute, effortless perfection.

Hundreds of Soulless shock troops collapsed simultaneously, their heads and limbs sliding cleanly from their bodies before hitting the snow.

Sagiri strode through the sea of falling enemies without a single speck of blood touching his black cloak, a walking god of death on the mountain slope.

Chief Zaka, Kaka, and Banga stared in breathless awe as the young Keeper cleared an entire valley floor in less than thirty seconds.

”You insolent southern rat!” Frost General Vorkas screamed, his face twisting with rage as he stomped forward in his seven-foot runic plate.

”I am the Frost General of Lanka! You are nothing but flesh and bone!” Vorkas bellowed, swinging his massive spiked warhammer with mountain-shattering force.

The colossal hammer tore through the freezing wind, carrying enough kinetic weight to pulverize a stone fortress gate.

Sagiri did not dodge, nor did he call upon Nokai’s blades or raise a protective shield.

Sagiri simply raised his bare left hand into the path of the descending warhammer, catching the massive iron weapon mid-swing.

The deafening collision sent a shockwave of compressed air blasting across the pass, blowing the snow off the surrounding trees for half a mile.

Yet Sagiri did not move a single inch, his bare palm stopping the seven-foot titan’s full strike dead in its tracks.

Vorkas’s eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated horror as he tried to pull his weapon back, but Sagiri’s grip was like solid bedrock.

Sagiri squeezed his fingers, and the heavy runic warhammer crumpled like dry parchment, shattering into a shower of useless iron dust.

”My turn,” Sagiri said, his voice cold and devoid of human warmth.

Before Vorkas could even scream, Sagiri stepped inside his guard with blinding predator speed.

Sagiri drove both of his bare hands directly through the Frost General’s enchanted glacial chestplate, punching through the four-inch runic steel like wet paper.

With a terrifying roar of raw physical power, Sagiri gripped the heavy iron plates and wrenched them outward, ripping the armor and cybernetic conduits completely off Vorkas’s chest.

Vorkas shrieked in agony as black alchemical blood gushed from his exposed torso, but Sagiri was not finished.

Sagiri grabbed the seven-foot general by the collarbones and throat with his bare hands, lifting the massive brute high into the freezing air.

Channeling the indestructible density of the absorbed Living Stone into his muscles, Sagiri tore the Frost General apart with his bare hands.

Black blood, shattered mechanical conduits, and severed limbs rained across the pristine white snow as Sagiri tossed the broken remnants onto the ground.

Sagiri stood covered in the frost-blood of his enemy, his dual eyes glowing through the mist like twin stars of absolute dominion.

Silence fell over the entire sixty-thousand-man Lanka army—a silence of pure, paralyzing horror.

The unfeeling Soulless shock troops took a collective step backward, their programmed artificial minds overwhelmed by primal terror.

Just then, the grand horn of the South blared from the southern ridge above the pass.

General Zafaru and forty thousand southern spears crested the heights in battle formation, while heavy Molakwa kinetic cannons locked onto the frozen valley below.

Squad 25, Kiana, and the northern warriors erupted into a deafening roar of triumph as their Supreme Chief stood victorious over the enemy commander.

The Last Keeper had arrived, and the slaughter of Glacial Lanka had officially begun.