At the end of year 26 of the Dark Portal, as a new year approached, Azeroth itself remained steeped in a solemn atmosphere. In another shattered world, however, a war over Azeroth's fate had already quietly begun.
By the middle of the second month after their return from Mardum, the Burning Legion had begun launching scattered attacks. Clearly, the Deceiver had discovered the Lord of Outland's betrayal. Following the Burning Legion's usual approach, these scattered attacks would be followed by a full-scale invasion.
Illidan was not worried about fighting a war in Draenor World, however. Over the past few years, he and his friends had thoroughly transformed this shattered world into a true battlefield and prepared it for war. More importantly, with the Sargerite Keystone in his possession, Illidan was no longer content with passive defense. While the Burning Legion prepared for war, he was preparing a war of his own.
And soon, those preparations would be complete. Then the era of the great counteroffensive would begin.
Countless fragments of land lined Netherstorm's outermost reaches. These were pieces torn from the earth during Draenor World's Great Sundering, some large and some small, including floating islands that had remained intact. The portals for the demons' invasion had been placed here. Hidden among these rubble belts, the Burning Legion's vanguard had established more than a dozen Demonforge Camps to await the arrival of the forces behind them.
But just as the Illidari could not thoroughly search every floating island in the void, the demons could not monitor everything happening on every island. At that moment, on a large floating island far from the Demonforge Camps, a group had gathered on a broken stretch of land the size of a city. They appeared to be planning something.
There were roughly a dozen of