Last Time on Emberheart Z: Emberhearth Has Fallen (The Witch Unbound)

🔥Last time on Emberheart Z!🔥

In the wreckage of what was meant to be a coming together, Emberheart found nothing but tragedy and loss.

The Vault Open House began as any formal gathering might. Guests from the Northeastern Coalition were present—Master Vreth and Lieutenant Esvinyra among them—alongside Drakosh Mok’thar, envoy of the Horde Council. He had arrived days earlier under the guise of diplomacy: to inspect the Expedition’s efforts to settle their granted lands, to offer thanks for their valor in the Highlands, and for answering the call to arms and driving back the bolstered Twilight’s Hammer, now reborn as the Twilight Blade.

His gratitude came in the form of a dagger plunged into Dorant’s chest during the opening speech—and the sudden unveiling of the cultists he had smuggled in at his side.

The battle that followed was fierce, chaotic, and desperate; eight against seven, a blow given was a blow traded back. Every strike answered another. Dorant was close to falling from his grievous wound until Journa called upon the power of the Infinite Dragonflight and wrenched his personal timeline backward to the instant before the ambush, stripping the poison from his fate. 

A spellcaster among the attackers activated a relic Vreth had brought—ignorant of its true purpose—and awakened its ravenous hunger before Esvinyra permanently silenced her tongue. Seeking to consume the Cartel-Ta containment field and the bronze strands of time magic protecting the Urn, it dragged Vreth along with it in its haste. Holding him back became a battle within the battle, as efforts were extended to keep the head of NEC from making contact with the Urn. This became even more imperative when another cultist broke from the melee and deactivated the containment field, aided by Journa's draconic leap. 

And still, little by little, Emberheart forced the tide to turn. In desperation, the Twilight Blade revealed their true purpose. They had not come for Emberheart at all, but for the Urn—for the prisoner bound within it. One by one, they hurled themselves against the bronze bubble that served as the final ward, and although they paid for it with their lives, it did not matter. In the end, their deaths were enough—Vaer Ming, sensing that her prison bars were weakening, threw her power against the cracks. 

With the damage cascading beyond control, a choice had to be made. Dorant ordered Emberheart and the Northeastern Coalition to retreat. He alone remained to face the Mogu Witch. 

When she emerged, the violence of her release shattered the Urn outright and sent a psychic shockwave howling through the Vault—perhaps through the entire Enclave. Vaer Ming stepped into reality, no mere specter now, but a very real, very enraged living being. She rambled half-coherently and venomously about whispers she too had heard—the same whispers that had haunted Emberheart for months. She spoke of escape, of the coming Harbinger feared, yet despite her desire to escape, she hungered for vengeance above all else. Before the stunned survivors, Vaer Ming raised her hand and uttered a curse, tearing Dorant’s soul from his body as easily as one might pluck a thread from cloth. With his soul clenched in her grasp, Vaer Ming opened a rift into the void and fled before she could be stopped. Her final words: Death by her hand would have been a kindness compared to what Xal’atath would bring when she came for Azeroth.

Silence followed. In a scene dishearteningly familiar, Dorant’s body lay motionless on the platform. Unlike when Merada found herself in the same position, he could not be woken. Though his breathing remained steady and his pulse still beat, there was nothing to be done to wake him.

Corpses lay scattered across the stone, the air thick with the stench of burning flesh and disbelief. Emberheart bore Dorant’s body from the Vault to meet the reinforcements who had arrived too late.

The Urn of Endless Halls, prison of Vaer Ming, before it was shattered...

---------------------What awaits the Expedition? Find out next time on Emberheart Z!!------------------