The winter gales crossing the English Channel had flattened the remaining defenses of the old world long before the first black hulls appeared on the horizon. In the outskirts of London, the ancient stone fortress of the Silver Claw Pack stood hidden behind massive medieval oak woods—a sprawling stronghold that had dictated the laws of the British territories for five hundred years since The Ancient Cleansing. Simultaneously, deep within the isolated, mist-shrouded valleys outside of Paris, the gargantuan obsidian castle of the regional High Council elders sat silent, its ancient gothic gargoyles staring blindly into the freezing rain.
For generations, these fortresses had been the absolute monuments of Alpha tyranny and sorcerer supremacy, their underground catacombs packed with the hist
