The land of Draenor was dying—rotting from the inside out like an overripe fruit left under a demon's armpit.
The soil was poison. The skies, a choking stew of ash and despair. Not even weeds had the audacity to grow anymore.
A turbid wind swept across the cracked plains, heavy with heat and despair, pressing down on lungs like invisible anvils. Breathing felt like snorting powdered rust.
With no plant life, the food chain collapsed like a fel-flame house of cards. Herbivores vanished. Carnivores followed. The only thing that still flourished was hunger—and madness.
Above, the stars trembled, smothered by a sun that had all but given up trying to shine through the bruised sky. The world looked like it had been left on broil for a few centuries too long.
The wind stopped mid-groan, and in its place came a deep, ancient horn blast—a sound so low and long it vibrated the bones and made even the ground seem to listen.
Dust settled. Air stilled. And then...
Lumbering titans, massive silhouettes marching as one toward the source of the horn. Giant wolves padded between them, their fur ranging from snow-white to shadow-black. But most were the green-skinned goliaths of orcish blood, musclebound to absurdity. Each orc looked like they'd won a wrestling match against a bear and then bench-pressed it out of boredom.
Even the women looked like they could arm-wrestle mountains.
Weapons clanged, tusks gleamed, and their every step cracked the brittle earth. It wasn't just footsteps—it was the percussion of an apocalypse in motion.
The ground beneath them splintered like stale bread, groaning with every impact. The land itself seemed to recoil.
Then, as if heaven had had enough, a fork of lightning ripped through the sky, illuminating the darkness in a ghastly flash. A reddish-skinned orc looked up, pupils shrinking.
"What in the elements is that?"
In the sky, a vertical tornado churned—unnaturally straight, unnervingly steady. Like the planet's soul was being vacuumed through a straw.
"Durotan, don't look," growled a voice behind him. "That reeks of Gul'dan."
But Durotan couldn't tear his eyes away. His ice-blue gaze locked onto the swirling vortex, every instinct in his war-hardened body screaming: this was not nature.
Chieftain of the Frostwolf Clan, Durotan was a walking fortress. Towering, braided, and bedecked in fang-trophies and animal hides, he held an axe large enough to split a horse and the wagon it came in on.
At his side padded his white wolf, a monster of muscle and fang, snarling like it had just remembered it hated gravity.
Durotan clicked his pierced tusks together, the iron rings threaded through them giving off a sharp metallic ting.
"Orgrim," he muttered, "this has Gul'dan written all over it."
Orgrim Doomhammer, Durotan's brother-in-arms and future warchief of all orcdom, tilted his head.
"I don't think one orc can kill a world."
"Have you met Gul'dan?"
Orgrim, slightly shorter but no less terrifying, hefted the hammer that bore his name—a slab of metal so heavy it needed its own zip code. His armor jangled with the fangs of beasts he'd slain personally, each one a receipt of violence.
As the pair descended the hill, more and more orcs came into view.
They arrived in waves: roaring, thumping their chests, challenging rivals to impromptu brawls that often left the ground dented. It was like someone had dumped a hundred warbands into a mosh pit and set the tempo to "battle cry."
"The Warsong, Blackrock, Shadowmoon, Shattered Hand..." Durotan counted. "Everyone's here."
"Well, yeah," Orgrim said. "The world's imploding. No better time for a meeting."
Then the crowd noticed them.
A hush fell. Orcs stepped aside like parting seas. Respect? Fear? Both. Durotan and Orgrim weren't just warriors. They were legends in progress.
And then, stomping onto a wooden platform that looked like it had been built by angry trolls, came a slab of iron and intimidation: Warchief Blackhand.
Two stories tall, layered in enough steel to be mistaken for a siege tower, and swinging a hammer with dried blood crusted into the grooves, Blackhand didn't speak so much as threaten the air with noise.
His mere presence made weak orcs step back. The bravest held their ground and tried not to look directly at him, like he was an eclipse of fury.
"Frostwolf clan," he barked, voice like a forge collapsing. "South. Now."
Durotan and Orgrim thumped their fists to their chests in salute. Blackhand didn't wait for a reply.
An hour later, the Frostwolves had pitched camp, and then the real horn sounded.
Long, low, and ancient. It didn't just summon warriors. It summoned history.
Thousands of orcs surged toward the gate—a colossal stone arch hundreds of meters high, ancient and foreboding, like the world itself had grown a pair of teeth.
The weakest orcs were pushed to the edge. This was no place for the frail. The front rows belonged to monsters in green flesh.
And then, atop the steps of the gate, came a figure more terrifying than any blade.
Hunched, cloaked in darkness, draped in skulls and bones like some grim shamanic Christmas tree, the orc limped forward. Spines jutted from his back, and skulls clicked together with every twisted step.
He was smaller than the others. But power bled from him like a wound.
The betrayer. The warlock. The harbinger of doom in a skull-faced bathrobe.
He didn't speak. He didn't need to. His presence said it all:
You want survival? You want power? You want to escape the dying corpse of Draenor?
Then follow me into damnation.