The grass swayed gently beneath the Broken Moon of Erath, its fractured halves—Luna Majora and Luna Minora—casting an eerie glow across the plains that stretched toward the horizon. Captain Varro stood with his company of twenty men atop the eastern watchtower, his weathered hands gripping the stone parapet as he stared at the colossal Hel Portal in the distance. The Rift towered into the night sky, hundreds of miles wide and reaching as tall as the mountains in the west, its edges pulsing with a deep crimson energy that bathed the entire landscape in blood-red light. It was this eternal glow that gave the grass its crimson appearance and the Empire its name. Even from two leagues away, Varro could see the rift intensifying, the red light growing more vivid, more angry. Thirteen years he'd served on this cursed border, and still the sight of it made his throat go dry. "Father's beard," he muttered, unconsciously making the Embrace with his calloused hands. "It's happening again."

"Sir?" The voice belonged to Nevin, a boy barely seventeen summers old with eyes that had yet to witness the horror of a full daemon incursion. He was the youngest of Varro's Crimson Guards, stationed at Outpost Vigil on the eastern border of the Empire. "The portal... it's growing stronger, isn't it?"

Varro nodded grimly, watching as the air around the portal began to shimmer and distort, the crimson glow intensifying until it seemed to throb like a wounded heart. "Sound the alarm. Wake the rest of the company." His voice was steady, betraying none of the fear that coiled in his gut like a serpent. "And send a rider to Fort Dauntless. Tell them we have a breach imminent."

As Nevin rushed to obey, the rest of the men on watch duty gathered around their captain. These were hardened veterans who had survived previous incursions—men with scarred faces and haunted eyes who knew what awaited them. Sergeant Thorn, his right-hand man for the past decade, stepped forward and spat over the parapet. The burly man's beard was streaked with gray, his face a map of old battle wounds.

"How bad, Cap?" Thorn asked, the question simple but loaded with meaning.

"Bad," Varro replied, gesturing toward the horizon where the Rift's scarlet glow had intensified, the crimson light so bright now that it cast long shadows behind them on the watchtower floor. "The vibrations are stronger than last time. Look at the grass."

The entire field seemed to tremble, the blades bending away from the portal as if cowering in fear. Even at this distance, they could feel it—a deep, bone-rattling pulse that seemed to echo through the earth itself. The men shifted uncomfortably, hands instinctively moving to weapons. Some made the Embrace, raising their hands in silent prayer to The Father and The Mother.

Thorn squinted at the horizon, his weathered face illuminated by the growing crimson light of the portal. "By O Mother's heart," he whispered, "that's at least a three-tier breach." He turned to Varro, eyes grim. "The fort won't get reinforcements here in time."

"I know," Varro said quietly, watching as the first waves of crimson energy began to surge outward from the Rift, rolling across the plains like a tide of blood. "But they need to know what's coming."

The alarm bells began to toll, their frantic ringing cutting through the night air. Men scrambled from their barracks, still buckling on armor, gripping weapons with sleep-stiffened fingers. Nevin returned, his young face pale in the crimson light. "Messenger sent, Captain. Taris is our fastest rider."

Varro nodded, his eyes never leaving the horizon. "Good lad. Now take this." He removed a small journal from his breast pocket, its leather cover worn from years of use. "If we fall, someone needs to report what happened here. Detailed accounts help the strategists at Fort Dauntless."

The boy hesitated. "Sir, I should stay with the company—"

"That's an order, Guardsman," Varro said, his voice leaving no room for argument. "You'll observe from the western ridge. Record everything you see. If the position is overrun, you ride west. Understood?"

Before Nevin could protest further, the first thunderous crack split the air. The sound was like nothing in nature—the screaming of reality itself as it was torn apart. The crimson tide from the Rift suddenly surged upward, forming a towering wave that crashed back down to earth with devastating force. When it receded, they could see them—dark silhouettes moving across the plains, too many to count.

"Djit'ma," Thorn breathed, his fingers tightening around the hilt of his sword. "That's no ordinary incursion."

Varro turned to his men, his face grim but resolute in the bloody light. "Defensive positions! Archers to the east wall! Heavy shields to the gate!" He grabbed Nevin by the shoulder, pushing the journal into the boy's hands. "Go now. Tell Fort Dauntless we face at least a hundred daemons, possibly more."

Nevin swallowed hard, his eyes wide with fear, but he took the journal and nodded. As he descended the watchtower steps, the first screams began—inhuman wails that sent chills down his spine. He glanced back one last time to see Captain Varro drawing his sword, the blade catching the crimson light as Thorn and the others readied themselves around him.

"The Father fights to protect," Varro called out, the traditional battle prayer of the Empire's defenders.

"And the Mother nurtures our courage," his men responded in unison, their voices steady despite what approached.

Nevin ran. The heavy journal tucked inside his tunic, he sprinted to the stables and mounted the only horse left—an old mare named Thistle that nobody else wanted. He rode to the western ridge as ordered, his heart hammering against his ribs. From this vantage point, the entire outpost lay spread before him, illuminated in that terrible crimson glow.

The daemons came in a wave of twisted forms and impossible geometries. Some resembled men, if men were built of smoke and shadow. Others moved on too many limbs or soared through the air on wings that shouldn't have been able to support their bulk. All of them burned with the same crimson energy that poured from the Rift.

With trembling hands, Nevin opened the captain's journal and began to write, recording the time, the estimated numbers, the types of daemons he recognized from his training. He tried to keep his hand steady as the first of the creatures reached the outpost's walls.

The battle was brutal and swift. The defenders fought with the desperate courage of men who knew they were already dead. Varro led a charge at the eastern gate, his sword cleaving through a daemon's midsection, the creature's essence dissipating like smoke. Thorn stood at his side, a massive axe in his hands cutting wide arcs through the attackers. For a moment, they seemed to be holding.

Then the second wave hit.

From the Rift emerged larger forms—hulking monstrosities that towered over the first wave of daemons. At their center walked a red daemon, its body pulsing with scarlet light that outshone even the Rift's glow. Unlike the black daemons surrounding it, this creature moved with terrible purpose, each step leaving smoldering footprints in the earth. Its form shifted constantly, as if reality itself couldn't agree on what shape it should take, but its core remained the same—a twisting mass of crimson energy suspended within a framework of obsidian bone and sinew. Six arms extended from its torso, each ending in blades of crystallized energy that seemed to cut the very air as it moved.

When it reached the eastern wall, it paused, its face—if it could be called that—turning upward to where Varro stood. The o' captain could hear it speak, not in words but directly into his mind, a language that tasted like metal and smelled like lightning. The red daemon raised four of its arms simultaneously and struck the wall. The stone didn't just break—it seemed to surrender, crumbling away as if it had forgotten how to be solid. Varro and three of his men were crushed beneath the falling rubble, the captain's final cry cut short as the daemon stepped over their bodies with indifferent precision.

Nevin bit his lip until he tasted blood, forcing himself to continue writing even as tears blurred his vision. He recorded how Sergeant Thorn rallied the remaining defenders, how they formed a desperate circle in the courtyard, backs to each other. How, one by one, they fell.

Thorn was the last to go. The grizzled veteran stood alone in a sea of daemons, his axe broken, wielding a fallen comrade's sword in one hand and a jagged piece of wood in the other. He took four more daemons with him before a blade of crimson energy pierced his chest.

Nevin closed his eyes, unable to watch anymore. When he opened them again, the outpost was overrun. Daemons swarmed through the ruins, their bodies casting long, distorted shadows in the crimson light. They would be coming for the western ridge next. He had to move.

With one last look at the fallen outpost, Nevin turned his horse westward. As he spurred Thistle into a gallop, he heard a new sound cutting through the night—the thundering of hooves and the battle cries of fresh troops. Reinforcements from Fort Dauntless.

He reined in his horse, turning to watch from a distance as the reinforcements crashed into the daemon horde. At their head rode a figure unlike any Nevin had ever seen—a woman clad in armor that seemed to absorb the crimson light around her. In her hands, she wielded a great-sword that burned with violet fire, cutting through daemons as if they were made of mist.

Her face was hidden beneath a helm shaped like a crow's head, but even from this distance, Nevin could see her eyes—glowing with the same violet energy as her blade. Wherever she rode, daemons fell. The reinforcements rallied around her, driving the creatures back toward the Rift with organized precision.

"Too late," Nevin whispered, his voice breaking. "You came too late."

The woman seemed to hear him, impossible as it was across such distance. She turned her helm in his direction, and for a moment, Nevin felt as if those violet eyes were staring directly into his soul. Then she returned to the battle, her great-sword carving a path of destruction through the daemon ranks.

By dawn, it was over. The daemons had been pushed back, the breach contained. But Outpost Vigil was nothing more than smoking ruins, and all twenty of Captain Varro's Crimson Guards lay dead among the rubble. Nevin watched as the mysterious woman stood alone amid the carnage, her violet blade thrust into the ground before her like a marker. She removed her helm, but Nevin was too far away to make out her features. He saw only that she bowed her head, offering what seemed to be a prayer for the fallen.

Then, without a word to her own troops, she mounted her black steed and rode northward, not toward Fort Dauntless, but toward the Rift itself, her form gradually disappearing into the crimson haze that eternally shrouded the border of the Empire.

As the reinforcements began to collect their dead, Nevin clutched Captain Varro's journal to his chest and turned his horse westward once more. Someone needed to tell their story. Someone needed to warn them of what was coming.