Malfurion and allies prevent Sargeras’s entry

Full History

By the final stages of the War of the Ancients, the fate of Kalimdor rested upon the Highborne's portal at the Well of Eternity. Demons had already crossed into Azeroth, and their commanders had brought widespread ruin to the night-elven empire. The greater threat was Sargeras himself. If the Legion's master entered through the gateway, the assembled defenders had little reason to expect that the world could withstand him.

Malfurion Stormrage became central to the effort to disrupt the magic holding the way open. His understanding of forces beyond the conventional arcane practice of Azshara's court distinguished him from the Highborne who had empowered the portal. Tyrande's defense of her people, Jarod Shadowsong's leadership of the resistance, the contributions of allied peoples, and the costly interventions of the ancients and dragons.

The final struggle also drew in figures whose later histories would become famous in their own right, including Illidan and the orc warrior Broxigar in the period novels. The surviving accounts connect the Dragon Soul and the contest at the portal to the effort to prevent Sargeras's arrival. In the end, the passage failed. That failure stopped the immediate invasion but destabilized the Well on which the empire had been built.

The destruction that followed was the Sundering, the collapse of the Well and the breaking of the original continent. The victory over the Legion could not restore the cities, peoples, and geography consumed by the catastrophe. The survivors faced the need to rebuild a civilization while carrying the memory of the magic that had imperiled it. Malfurion's role in averting Sargeras's entrance became part of a historical turning point in which the salvation of Azeroth and the destruction of ancient Kalimdor were inseparable.