The Ashen Spire loomed in the distance like a festering wound in the earth, its jagged peaks belching plumes of sulfurous smoke into Aeltheria's bruised sky. Captain Alastair Reid adjusted his dust-scarred goggles, watching as ash settled on his sleeve like gray snow. The air tasted of burnt copper and regret.
"Charming place," Williams remarked, kicking a charred bone fragment from their path. "Remind me to book our next team-building retreat here. Nothing says 'relaxation' like spontaneous combustion."
Reid ignored the jab, though he was privately grateful for the sergeant's relentless humor. It was the only thing keeping morale from cratering faster than the terrain around them. They'd been hiking for two days through the Blightmarch—a wasteland of glassy obsidian plains and geysers that spat acid instead of water. Every step closer to the Spire made their equipment whine in protest, the ley-line corruption here so thick it fogged scopes and scrambled comms.
"Hostiles at ten o'clock," Singh called, her voice crackling through Reid's earpiece. "Scouts. Same markings as the ones that hit us yesterday."
Reid crouched behind a smoking fissure, counting six figures picking their way across the brittle rock. Seraphine's trackers wore armor forged from blackened scale-mail, their helmets shaped into leering demonic faces. Efficient. Theatrical. Annoying.
"Williams," Reid whispered. "Take Zhang and flank left. Singh, suppressants on my mark."
The team moved with the quiet precision of soldiers who'd survived too many ambushes to count. Reid waited until Williams' group was in position, then raised three fingers.
Two. One.
The world erupted in gunfire and chaos. Dwarven-forged rounds punched through scale-mail as Singh laid down covering fire. A scout lunged at Reid, jagged blade raised—only to stumble as the ground beneath him melted, courtesy of Whitaker's hastily-tossed alchemical pellet.
"Acid geysers have their uses!" the historian called, ducking behind a rock formation.
"You're enjoying this!" Williams accused, putting a round between another scout's glowing eyes.
"Academic curiosity, Sergeant! Controlled demolition is fascinating!"
Reid didn't have the heart to tell her that "controlled" was doing heavy lifting in that sentence.
By nightfall, they'd repelled three more scouting parties. The team huddled in the lee of a collapsed lava tube, passing around canteens of tepid water. Maeve sat apart, her fingers tracing the obsidian floor. The ley-line markings on her skin pulsed faintly, mirroring the sickly orange glow of the Spire's slopes.
"It's worse here," she murmured as Reid approached. "The Spire isn't just a volcano. It's a... cage."
Reid followed her gaze to the towering peak. "For what?"
"Nothing good." She pressed a palm to the stone, flinching. "The Forgotten Flame was forged here to burn away corruption. But now..." Ash swirled around her boots, coalescing into brief, screaming faces before dissolving. "It's become what it was meant to destroy."
A chill crept down Reid's spine, unrelated to the biting wind. "Can you still sense the Flame?"
Maeve nodded. "It's there. Calling. But the path is... wrong. Like a fever dream given shape."
"Cheerful," Williams muttered, cleaning his rifle. "Next you'll tell us the rocks are alive."
"They are," Maeve said simply.
Everyone stared.
"Kidding," she deadpanned.
Reid blinked. Was that a joke?
"Progress!" Williams grinned. "Next you'll be making pub jokes about Seraphine's fashion sense."
Dawn brought them to the Spire's base, where Whitaker nearly tripped over history.
"Captain! Look!" She knelt, brushing ash from a half-buried stone slab. Faded carvings showed robed figures—human and Aeltherian—working side by side at a massive forge. "This predates the Sundering! See the symbology here? The Flame wasn't just a weapon—it was a coalition. Our ancestors built it together."
Reid studied the ancient artistry. A human hand gripped a druidic staff, their combined magic funneling into a blazing orb. "What happened?"
"The usual," Williams said. "Someone got greedy. Someone got dead. Rinse, repeat."
Whitaker glared. "Or perhaps they succeeded, and we're standing on the ashes of their victory. This place wasn't always a hellscape. The corruption came later."
A rumble shook the ground. Maeve staggered, clutching her temples. "They're coming."
"Scouts?" Reid asked.
"Worse."
The earth split. Molten rock surged upward, coalescing into hulking figures with magma for blood and flames for eyes.
"Fire elementals!" Singh yelled. "Fall back!"
Too late.
The lead elemental swung a fist the size of a car, smashing a boulder into shrapnel. Reid dove, rolling as a heatwave seared the air where he'd stood.
"Whitaker! Can we kill these things?"
"The carvings!" she shouted, dodging a lava spray. "They mentioned water runes! Look for—"
"Less talking, more not dying!" Williams emptied his magazine into an elemental's chest—to zero effect. "Okay, new plan!"
Maeve stepped forward, ley-lines flaring along her arms. She pressed her palms to the ground, and the obsidian moved. Spikes erupted beneath the elementals, shearing through molten flesh.
"Temporary fix!" she warned. "The Spire feeds them!"
Reid grabbed a grenade from his belt—Whitaker's latest concoction, labeled ACID/ICE MIXTURE—DO NOT SHAKE. "Everyone down!"
The explosion painted the sky in neon blue.
When the steam cleared, the elementals were gone—for now.
"Well," Williams coughed, plucking a glowing cinder from his sleeve. "That's one way to make an entrance."
Reid stared up at the Spire's smoldering peak. Somewhere in that inferno lay their only hope against The Weaver.
And Seraphine knew it.
As ash fell like poisoned snow, Task Force Valkyrie pressed onward—into the heart of the flame.