Mount Wundagore

The portal closed silently at the foot of Mount Wundagore, its last spark fading away.

Chu Hang's double looked up and surveyed the mountain range before him.

A layer of thick black liquid enveloped the summit. It was no mist, but a writhing, semisolid magical substance, like a vast living thing clinging to the mountain. Every pulse gave off a nauseating energy.

The air was heavy with a cloying stench of rotting flesh and hellish sulfur, almost enough to choke him.

He released his mental power, spreading it up the mountain like an invisible web.

There were things on the mountain, and more than one. Their mental fluctuations were muddy and frenzied, their awareness dim and their thoughts fractured. Only their bone-deep hostility was clear, a beacon in the night.

"Corrupted guardians..." Chu Hang's double murmured, recalling the information he had pulled from Mordo's memories.

Mount Wundagore's wardens had once been dark mages who pursued power above all else.

They had sacrificed their flesh and souls to the Darkhold in exchange for a twisted immortality.

After centuries, they were no longer human. They were far more troublesome than Kamar-Taj's rule-bound sorcerers.

Not because of their strength, but because of what they were: beings that feared no death, felt no pain, and had none of the weaknesses one might expect.

They were creatures of pure darkness, born to kill.

Chu Hang's double started up the mountain.

He chose neither flight nor teleportation. He simply stepped onto the ink-black ground and climbed.

The black substance beneath his feet churned violently as he approached, like living tissue splashed with boiling oil. Yet it recoiled in instinctive fear, leaving an empty circle two meters wide around him.

The dark magical substance could clearly sense the Law of Death within him, a power that stood