The birds, as ever, were the first to flee.
Those who survived said later that the forests had fallen silent first. On the first day the skies were clear and empty, with no bird visible to the eye nor able to be heard; their absence was noted by the woodsmen as an omen of the greatest ill. They said later that by the fourth day after the birds departed, the great woodlands of the Kingdom - once home to all the game and wild beasts known to Man - were as somnolent as the grave.
On the seventh day after the forests fell silent the earth itself split apart.
It began with the roar of tortured stone and the howl of splintered wood. Great fissures yawned wide in the ground, swallowing men and livestock whole; entire villages and towns were utterly obliterated, the dwellings of commonfolk and nobles alike either sucked into the ravenous earth, or collapsed where they stood, burying their inhabitants alive.
The greatest of the Kingdom's fortresses, once bulwarks against the Dark, fared no better. The pride of the Order, its inviolate and implacable citadels, were shattered and ground to dust as the earth itself moaned and shuddered, heaving whole armies into the dark depths beneath the world.
So it was that the once-proud and noble Kingdom ceased to exist in a single day. The devastation of the commonfolk and the eradication of the nobility consigned the Kingdom, as a realm of Man and political entity, to the grave. The Order, the ancient brotherhood of warriors who had existed to battle and hold back the Dark, was likewise sundered.
In the days and weeks that followed, there would be survivors who emerged from the rubble and tortured earth to discover a world turned upside down. The devastation of the old Kingdom had been absolute, and the struggle for survival in its aftermath was bitter and desperate, as the lakes and rivers ran dry and the once-rich forests yielded little in the way of sustenance. Many of those who survived the cataclysm lived only to die mere months later to starvation and thirst.
And yet for those who lived, having survived the destruction of the world as they knew it, the greatest trial was yet to come.
On the hundredth day after the skies fell silent, the crows returned to the forests of the Kingdom. And as the cries of carrion-birds echoed once more through the desolate woodlands and shattered plains where cities and towns had once stood, the shadow of the Dark fell upon the lands of the Order once more.
For Honor images and artwork copyright of Ubisoft Entertainment SA
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