Deorla did not have to search long.
Sereg had chosen his ground with the instinct of a born commander — and she recognized it immediately. His base lay cradled in a bowl of blackened stone near Anglach, the mountains rising steeply on all sides like clenched fists. Only a single road led inward, narrow and steep, choked with sharpened wooden stakes and iron-spiked barricades. Watchtowers rose at measured intervals, each manned and alert. Fires burned low and disciplined, never flaring high enough to betray their numbers.
Deorla paused at its edge, studying the layout with an approving eye.
Perfectly chosen, she admitted silently.
Paranoid. Isolated. Patient.
She did not skulk this time.
She walked openly down the road, cloak drawn back just enough to show steel beneath. Crossbows snapped into readiness. Spears leveled. Voices barked orders in the tongue of Rhûn.
“Stop there!”
She stopped.
Several men stared harder than the rest. One lowered his weapon slowly.
“…By the East,” he murmured.
“That armour… I’ve seen it before.”
Deorla raised her chin.
“I seek Sereg,” she said. “Tell him I have returned.”
Steel shifted uneasily.
After a tense pause, a runner was sent inward
Sereg did not arrive with ceremony.
He came like a storm.
The moment he emerged between the towers, he lunged — His golden halberd flashing, heavy and brutal, forged for war rather than show. No words. No warning. No hesitation.
Deorla barely twisted aside in time.
Steel rang against steel, the sound echoing harshly against the mountains. The first blow drove her backward. The second split the air where her throat had been. Sereg fought like a man who had spent years expecting betrayal — relentless, precise, merciless.
She countered with speed and experience, but he was stronger than she remembered.
They circled.
Clashed.
Bled.
Her blade nicked his shoulder; his pommel cracked against her ribs. The watchers did not interfere — they understood.
This was not an execution.
It was judgment.
Sereg drove her to one knee with a sweeping strike, kicked her sword from her hand, and placed his halberd blade at her throat. Her breath came hard. Her vision narrowed.
Then—
The pressure vanished.
Sereg stepped back.
Slowly, deliberately, he lowered himself to one knee before her.
The camp froze.
“I was testing,” he said, voice low and steady.
“Too many tricks lately. Too much sorcery. Too many ghosts wearing familiar faces.”
He looked up at her, eyes sharp and searching.
“Now I know it is you. Flesh and bone.”
“The Herald.”
Deorla exhaled once, bitter and breathless.
“You always did enjoy theatrics,” she rasped.
A corner of his mouth twitched — not a smile, but something close.
“You taught me not to trust appearances.”
He helped her to her feet without ceremony.
Around them, the camp slowly relaxed, though no weapons were lowered. Sereg gestured for her to follow him inward, toward a command tent reinforced with scavenged iron and stone.
Inside, maps of Udûn lay spread across a heavy table. Routes were marked. Supply lines noted. Anglach circled in red.
Sereg spoke without looking at her.
“Ugrukhôr grows bold. His machines crawl closer every season.”
“He calls himself lord of the Pit, but he knows I will not kneel.”
“And yet you remain,” Deorla said quietly.
He turned to her then.
“I remain because this land is unfinished.”
“Because Mordor does not belong to orcs alone.”
“And because you named me commander — and I do not abandon what I am given.”
Silence settled between them, thick with memory and unspoken history.
Outside, the forges of Anglach throbbed faintly, like a distant heart.
Deorla straightened, pain set aside.
“Then listen carefully,” she said.
“Because Udûn is about to choose a ruler.”
Sereg inclined his head.
“I am listening.”
