Only moments after they had opened the memory-sarcophagus, Zel received Zef’s message of warning and relayed it to the Revenant King.

The old King raised his left hand, snapping his fingers, which resounded like the crack of thunder.

Northlight raced across the night sky from his keep’s highest spire, banishing the stars. Its glow reached the furthest borders of Borea and beyond; all the Revenant King’s demesne was bathed in twilight, even the lands which were merely inhabited by those of Borean blood. Even Boreans far from their ancestral home beheld the phenomenon.

Seven suns rose into the twilit sky, and all knew of His waking.

“NOW, LET US MAKE HASTE FOR OASEBY, ERE WE ARRIVE TO UTTER CALAMITY. I WILL NOT SEE ANOTHER HOME OF MY PEOPLE MET WITH HYPERBOREA’S ULTIMATE FATE.”

He stomped his foot, and a great wall of glacierglass arose from the ground before them. With two skillful slashes of his blade, he carved a circle into it. With a gesture, excess ice was blown away by wind and merged into the ice sheet the moment it fell upon it. A few more gestures which correlated to a flurry of precise slashes rendered the appropriate runes into the glacierglass gate, and the Revenant King sheathed his sword.

That same incantation from before.

“DEEP INTO THE STARLIT NIGHT WE SHALL STRIDE, CARVING THROUGH RAGING WAVES OF DEATH AND FATE.”

Yet again, an aura of incredibly dense magic enshrouded the gate, running up its circumference, dripping skyward. This gate didn’t hold up nearly as well as its stone counterpart, cracking and resonating under the strain.

“BEFORE ME NO GATE NOR LOCK SHALL STAND, MINE OWN PATH I CARVE! OPEN!”

Crack. Crack. Tear.

A weeping wound in the world. The King strode through with a sense of urgency that impelled Zelsys to do the same. Both the world-wound and the ice-gate collapsed behind them.

In the course of their hasty return journey upon the Sea of Fog, a blockade arose from the cosmic waters; a gigantic obelisk of ominous stone bedecked by twitching flesh, decorated by murals depicting sacrifice and torture. A hole ran through it in the middle of its lower third, and within it was suspended a skinless body, impaled by numerous brass needles.

Its brass-plugged eyes gazed down, leering.

“Long, it has been since we last saw one another. When was it, the Fourteenth Battle of the Lunar Capital? Ah, no. The Sinking of Hyperborea, that’s when you last called on me. How is eternity?” the Skinless One smugged towards the Revenant King. He gave no reply, and so the being wasted no time in redirecting its attention to Zelsys.

“And you… I had hoped to speak properly, at the Spirit Grove, but alas. Sacrifice the Dragon. Strike its third eye with my token. A fragment of its power will break off inside. You will retain the ability to use it as a sacrificial tool for other purposes, but it will not be able to hold the dragon’s essence longer than a lunar month. When the time comes, use my token as the hammer in reforging your blade. Hold it in your bare hand; you shall know that the dragon’s strength has been transferred when my token crumbles in your grasp. The great beast need not be slain in order to be sacrificed.”

Hundreds of kilometers passed in the span of minutes.

In the span of those minutes, the assault on the Hulson longhouse continued and only grew more intense.

Surrounded by accursed flame, the Hulson clan did battle against those who sought to snuff them out. Several of them laid dead or dying, and others bore grievous wounds that would have killed any normal human.

Only a few of the poor souls who had been sent to assault the longhouse came from the Ramdall or Aase clans; most were branch family members, or at best warriors of Buhaug and Eisen descent. Those Aase which were included near universally had command roles. Valiantly they fought, nonetheless, with Fryg and Yvonne cooperating to create a nightmarish hall of mirrors through which most of their would-be attackers couldn’t make their way. The Hulsons had holed up in deeper parts of the longhouse, shamelessly using ambush tactics to fight such an undeniably superior enemy force while the wounded were either healed or frozen, depending on the severity of their wounds.

“The mirror maze won’t hold up when the main force arrives,” Jorfr hissed to his grandmother.

“We needn’t count on that,” Fryg replied.

Gunnar had yet to return, but going by the sound of combat from outside, Jorfr hoped that his father still lived.

Both of them bloodied and their surroundings decimated by their duel, Gunnar faced down Gjermund one last time… Only for the Aase elder to collapse where he stood, his own flesh rebelling against him; a horrifying, full-body cramp had gripped him.

“Nghrrrh, not now! Thrice-damn it… Gunnar Hulson, I ckh… Concede this victory to you! Ismar, help me!” he bellowed, trying to stand even as his legs writhed out from under him.

One of the men behind him stepped up, a spitting image of Gjermund. His son, both in face and body, though Ismar’s inhuman muscularity was far more restrained than Gjermund’s. Clearly, the son had learned from the father’s mistakes.

Ismar came up behind Gjermund, helping his father up with one shoulder.

“Thank you, boy,” the Aase elder said, turning his attention to Gunnar again. “Return to your people. You have five minutes, as promised. Run. Run from Borea, I know that you have the means. Else Eisengeist will scour you all from the face of this land alongside your longhECK-”

Ismar buried a chitinous spike into Gjermund’s ear. It was one of Rikke’s. Bloody tears ran down the Aase elder’s face as he turned his eyes to his offspring, whose face had contorted into a power-hungry grimace of gleaming starmetal teeth.

“Why?”

“There will be no five minutes. Why would there be? Feigning surrender in your duel, the nidingr Gunnar Hulson used a weapon of subterfuge given to him by Zelsys Newman. Is that not what happened, men?!”

All those present howled in agreement.