Reaper's Gale/Prologue

Kurald Emurlahn

Kilmandaros by Corporal Nobbs

The Elder Warren of Kurald Emurlahn
Age of Sundering

The Elder Goddess, Kilmandaros, is witness to a landscape torn with grief where several dragons are lying dead. She strides across the realm to a slowly healing rent created by someone who has already escaped. Behind her, the warren of Kurald Emurlahn is in its death throes, civil wars are still raging, and the fragmenting of the realm has already begun. No one had imagined a realm could die in such a manner, but there had been too many powers, too many betrayals, and too many crimes this time. Scavengers keep arriving, tearing away their own private pieces of the world and destroying each other for the scraps. The world's fragments would either heal around themselves or die. She strides through the rent.

The future continent of Lether

The ruined K'Chain Che'Malle demesne
after the fall of Silchas Ruin

Gothos travels through the realm as the ritual he promised Mael covers the landscape in the ice of Omtose Phellack. The magic is powerful enough to seal the truth with ice until the day Omtose Phellack itself shatters. He muses about the mortality of Omtose Phellack, and now firmly believes that all of it is going to come to an end someday. He follows a path of carnage to where two Elder Gods have just concluded a battle with a Soletaken Eleint. He hears the two Elder Gods arguing and descends a fissure to find Mael and Kilmandaros, with a mortally wounded and now immobile Scabandari Bloodeye cowering some distance away. Kilmandaros has injured him irrevocably and means to kill him for his betrayal of Silchas Ruin. Kilmandaros wants to kill him immediately, while Mael tries to explain that because of the ritual that has descended on this realm, death itself is denied. In return for both Mael and Kilmandaros owing him a debt, Gothos fashions a Finnest that will hold Scabandari's soul after his death. Having made this arrangement, Kilmandaros crushes Scabandari's skull, killing him. As repayment of the debt that the two just acknowledged, Gothos keeps the Finnest with himself, informing Mael that he intends to do something horrible to Scabandari's soul now residing there.

Kilmandaros returns to the rent to find Anomandaris Purake waiting. She tells him he is unwelcome in Kurald Emurlahn, but he offers his assistance since Edgewalker is committed elsewhere. Kilmandaros is surprised by Rake's seeming indifference to the fate of his brother and warns that Silchas will not be inclined to forgive him when he eventually escapes from his Azath prison. After some negotiations, both agree the Throne of Shadow should remain unoccupied, and they form an alliance to drive away the pretenders from Kurald Emurlahn. They pass back through the rent and set about cleaning the realm.

Awl'dan

The Awl'dan, in the last days of King Diskanar

Atri-Preda Bivatt is commanding an expedition of two hundred soldiers of the Tattered Banner Army, along with thirty Bluerose cavalry and four hundred support staff. They have spent three weeks crossing the Awl'dan from Drene to reach a stretch of the coast on the Bluerose Sea that is extremely dangerous for shipping traffic. The violent waters here have sunk many a ship and even a Meckros city once, eighty years in the past. The alarming reports from a fisher crew, whose boat was wrecked on the rocks here, are correct. The Atri-Preda observes four to five thousand war canoes drawn up in rows on the beach and stacked high. By the looks of it this happened at least some months, or possibly years, back. Bivatt estimates that each craft would have held around a hundred occupants. The merchant who had been contracted to supply the Atri-Preda's expedition, Letur Anict, estimates that upwards of half a million people have landed on the Awl'dan coast and vanished. He is astonished that such a large number of invaders could have avoided notice. And where are they now? The Atri-Preda commands him to have his mages learn every detail they can, while she quietly does the same with Ceda Kuru Qan's acolytes. She does not trust the merchant, the new Factor of Drene, and expects his report to be filled with lies and half-truths benefitting his own interests.

The Awl’dan, following the Edur conquest

While awaiting the return of his companions, a lone rider walks his horse through the aftermath of a last stand made by some soldiers, whose bodies have been fed upon by wolves. The rider's face is hidden behind a mask of crimson scale, and his horse is dying from snakebite. Even though he is familiar with the different Letherii legions, the soldiers of the neighboring kingdoms of Bolkando and Saphinand, and the plains warriors of Ak'ryn and D'rhasilhani, he does not recognise the origin of these dead. These soldiers are pale skinned, with red or straw-coloured hair. Many are women. A closer look at their armour reveals the sigil of two wolf heads painted on their hauberks--one white-furred and one-eyed, while the other is silver and black-furred. He concludes they are foreigners. He observes one other thing, the wolves had fed not in a normal fashion, but had ripped open the soldiers' chests and devoured their hearts. He soon hears his companions returning, their talons hissing through the grass.