The battles had been long. The trials had been cruel. She had gained and lost more friends than she had reason to recall, and yet here she was, staring at the dying heart of a world.
Somewhere, in the countless battles of her time on Draenor, something had broken. She was no mage, and thus her attention had been on stemming the flow of blood rather than upon the mechanics of arcane theory, but she had somehow known that the rules had changed.
The Iron Horde was gone. The Legion suddenly seemed restored. Where great machines had belched clouds of acrid smoke into plush jungles and feral beasts had torn flesh and bone, suddenly demons poured over a cracked and baked landscape. Great gouts of green fire erupted from mountains and flowed freely from fissures in the flesh of the planet itself. Gone were the Pandaren and Tauren and Trolls. Gone were the Human and Gnome and elves of both breeds. Gone were the Horde and Alliance. Gone was her most exalted Lady Sylvanas.
Gone was time proper. And in its stead, the great monoliths and alters of the Burning Legion. Upon the flesh of Draenor crawled and scuttled and seethed the tainted bodies of the original horde... the demon tainted souls of the orcish clans and the evil will of the Eredar. Standing before them all, only a handful of valiant souls, screaming in agony as the very soul of the planet bled and died.
She stood, watching in horror as the Light deserted them... as the strain of so much evil tore apart the very body of that which sustained them.
And then.... the world broke.
A great tremor rippled through the ground followed by the keening wail of the twisted wildlife of the place. Plumes of burning ash and globs of molten stone erupted from fissure and peak alike. Before her eyes, an entire swath of the horizon seemed to jolt and then disappear into the cloudy murk of a rapidly approaching crack.
With horror, she realized that she was witnessing the final moments of Draenor... the final seconds of the planet as it tore itself to pieces, casting them off like so much chaff.
She turned to run, to hide, to do anything, but even as the glow of her magics lit upon her flesh, the ground dropped from beneath her feet and tumbled into the twisting magics of a realm sundered. Momentarily weightless, she grasped at her mace, clutching it tightly as she prayed for aide, for salvation... for forgiveness of what she had had to do.
And then the cold came.
She hadn't needed to breathe for years, but the creeping chill sapped her strength and stole her will. She found her fingers refused to open and her tattered cloak would no longer flutter with the passage of the errant stone or tumbling mass. Her eyes had been missing since her first death, but even the pale yellow of the wisp of magic that resided in her vacant sockets seemed stripped of its freedoms.
She gazed out of the depths of space, the strange twisting splays of ether, and tumbled slowly through its emptiness. Every few minutes, her tumble would afford her a falling view of the remains of the ruined sphere, suspended in the reaches of space, growing smaller with each turn. She saw other victims, likewise cast off, slowly tumbling as well, though a number would be missing with each turn, victims of debris or perhaps other less obvious failings.
Eventually, even the segments of the realm that had been blown off along side of her had faded into the distance, leaving her drifting... tumbling slowly... through the darkness.
Finally, she prayed again.
"I cannot bear this nothing. I knew what had to be done, and for that I am sorry, but I cannot bear this purgatory longer. Please, Sylvanas, Light, Anyone.... h........ help me."
And into the darkness, a voice crept.
"Dear Maker... what have they done?"