The Iron Wolves of Blackmoor
Rain turns the ruins of Grenmarch into a throat of mud and memory, and Sergeant Kael Ashford counts his dead by the way their blood thins in the water. Eight men and women who marched beside him through the salt-fens of Calderon, held the line at Blackwater Crossing, laughed at his terrible jokes on the road out of Ashvale, now slack-faced and staring, dumped into a trench that might have been a garden once. The Iron Wolves have been broken before. Never like this. Something hunted them through the last valley, something that did not bleed the way a man bleeds, and the standard they carried into battle lies shredded in the mud beside its bearer. As the rain keeps falling and enemy horns echo through the ruins, Kael must rally the shattered remnants of his command, uncover what truly slaughtered his Wolves, and drag the survivors through one more impossible fight. Loyalty is the only currency he has left, and the cost of failure will be measured in more than eight names. If the Wolves fall again, the war follows them into the dark.