The sharp scent of wet shale replaced the sulfurous reek of the marsh as Caleb Conway led his squad up the rocky slope of the Central Ridge.
Below them, carved into the red earth like a butcher’s trough, lay a sunken amphitheater of broken boulders and thorny briars where eleven disciples of the Lunar Edge Sect were fighting for their lives. Their standard white and azure robes were shredded, stained with black mire and dark blood, their swords chipping against the hide of a dozen armored bone-wolves that circled their shrinking perimeter. The beasts were twice the size of northern war hounds, their bodies covered in jagged plates of calcified bone that clicked together in a terrifying, rhythmic clatter as they snapped at the faltering formation.
The trapped disciples were completely spe
