Corporal Stewart’s Journal, Twelfth of Videas, 281 AMR

I’m used to nightmares. My first drop. Normandy. The Battle of Migol’s Tomb. Finding Private Chapman dead in the rain. I’ve grown accustomed to these nightly visitors. But I don’t think I’ll ever grow accustomed to her.

Me and the other Airborne Elite had been holed up at Kallden Fortress along with a detachment of Jandar’s finest knights and minutemen. The place had a reputation

for being unassailable. We had fought back wave after wave of Orcs, Wolves, and even those hideous Marro, and none had so much as marred the paint on the front door. Spirits were high. At this rate, we would easily last until winter.

There was hardly any warning. No tremors or telltale sound of sappers digging beneath our feet. Only a prickling on the back of my neck, a primal thought deep in my skull. Not the probing and grasping shackles of Ne-Gok-Sa or Kee-Mo-Shi that I knew all too well, but a gnawing hunger and an uncanny pull toward oblivion.

Then a deafening explosion of stone and earth. A flurry of skinless arms. Six good men pulled bodily into a mass of tendrils and devoured.

This repeated for hours. Silence. Dread. Death. When we did manage to tag her with blade or bullet, her next attack came even deadlier than the last.

The garrison was decimated. The gates swung open by sundown.

Now Jandar wants us to work by her side as she carves up this Citadel. This thing that was engineered specifically to break us. This creature whose horrible lidless eyes are etched in the back of my own eyelids whenever I close them.

I’ll do it because I owe Jandar my life and because he has promised to send us all home. But when that day comes, I’m going to hold back and make sure she goes home first.

Kha-Re-Ga is available in the Might of the New Alliance army expansion for a July 2026 release!