Godfang - Chapter 1: Born from the Grave

This series takes place in Etheroth, the same world first introduced in my previous serial Black Sun Revenant. While the stories are connected by the setting, they explore different corners of this dying realm; thus, no prior reading required.

Content note: graphic violence, gore, and body horror. Reader discretion is advised.

Darkness pressed in from every side, suffocating and stinking of rot. Kaelvor’s first breath was not air but a gulp of blood-soaked earth and worms. He gagged and coughed, his chest spasming as the taste of death filled his mouth. His fingers tore at the crush of decaying flesh above him, cold and wet against his face. The world was a tomb.

He screamed, but no sound escaped the choking mass. He tried to move, but he was tangled in limp limbs, his fingers sinking into the slackened meat of the dead. Nails snapped as he clawed upward through a sea of corpses. Ribs cracked under his weight. He felt maggots writhing in his mouth; they burst against his tongue as he bit down before spitting them out.

With a final surge, his left arm burst through the surface of the burial heap, obsidian-black and scaled like a dragon from fingertips to elbow. His head followed, long golden hair matted with gore, one eye blazing demonic green amid black scales that caught the distant red light like glass, the other blue-grey and human, burning with fury. He hauled his shoulders free and dragged himself out of the corpse-pit like some undead beast, sucking in the warm night air in harsh, desperate breaths. Above, the starless sky hung black and choked with ash, volcanic fires glowing on the horizon and painting the clouds an angry red.

He collapsed to his knees, shaking as he vomited bloody grit. Pressing both hands against the sides of his skull, Kaelvor let out a roar of grief and raw rage that split the night.

Memories flashed: his tribe’s hateful faces as the axe hacked through the meat and bone of his left arm, the dagger driving into his eye socket, the wet pop as they tore it free. Then came the plunge into the corpse pit, and the cold dark that followed. The agony of betrayal cut deeper than any blade.

He had passed from life, but in the silent black abyss, the God Beneath had come, offering him a choice: rise as its champion or remain among the dead.

Kaelvor had chosen.

A sound broke the silence. His head snapped up as shapes crept from the gloom—hunched, twisted, and each the size of a small man. They crawled on all fours, gaunt bodies and elongated limbs covered in grey skin stretched tight over bone.

Rhake. Demonic carrion feeders of the burial grounds, called corpse-eaters by some. They were cowardly alone, but efficient killers in packs, and dozens were coming for him.

Kaelvor rose to his feet just before the first lunged. He sidestepped and brought his boot down on its spine, vertebrae shattering with a wet crunch. It convulsed, dragging itself forward with its front claws. He snatched up a fist-sized rock and smashed its skull to pulp. Two more rushed him from opposite sides; he caught one by the arm and swung it like a flail into the other. Before they could recover, he dropped onto them, fists rising and falling in a brutal cadence, pulverizing skulls and ribs until the bodies were broken meat. A shrieking rhake leapt at him, and he slammed his open palm into its face, driving its head back into a spike of rock with a reverberating crack.

Another of the creatures latched onto his thigh. Its teeth sank deep, its entire head spinning in a full circle as a whirling ring of fangs carved a perfect cylinder of flesh from his leg. Kaelvor bellowed as muscle tore away revealing bone beneath. The blood that sprayed from the wound was molten, like liquid fire, hissing as it struck the rhake’s face. The thing shrieked as its skin steamed and sloughed off.

Kaelvor looked down. The wound was grievous, but glowing blood flooded the gouged-out muscle, sealing the injury in a rush of cauterizing heat, new flesh knitting raw and red before settling into living tissue. His eyes widened in horrified amazement—then they were upon him.

The demon horde surged, a rushing tide of grey limbs and gnashing mouths. He tore one creature’s arms from their sockets and flung the severed limbs aside while its armless body staggered away to bleed out. Another wrapped around his upper body, and Kaelvor sank his teeth in, ripping away half its throat in a hot spray of blood. The swarm crashed over him in a flurry of clicking teeth and clutching claws. He backhanded one, sending it cartwheeling into the dark, then drove his fist down like a hammer atop another’s skull, crushing it into its sternum.

Talons raked bloody channels down his back, muscle tearing under their grip. His burning blood sprayed in hissing arcs and splashed across grey flesh, causing skin to bubble and char. One rhake dropped to the ground in spasms as the blood burned away its eyes. Others recoiled, shrieking as they smoked and fled into the night. Claws scraped at his ribs and shoulders, biting deep into human flesh but skittering off the black scales of his transformed limb. Wherever his mortal skin split, blood spilled in scalding ribbons, searing anything it touched. The night filled with the stink of burnt flesh and bestial screams.

They piled onto him, their weight dragging him down. Heads spun with mouths gaping wide, whirling circles of fangs boring into his flesh. Claws hooked deep, pulling and tearing, trying to rip him apart in their desperation to feed.

He was strong, stronger than he had ever been. But there were too many.

A spinning fanged mouth moved toward his face. He drove his elbow up in a blow that smashed the jaw shut in a shower of shattered teeth. More rhake slammed into him and forced him to one knee. Claws sliced through his scalp, drawing fresh rivers of molten blood.

His vision blurred, eyes burning with rage and stinging with sweat and gore, his breath ragged and hot. Blood poured from countless wounds, hissing wherever it met enemy flesh and filling the air with steam and the acrid reek of charred meat. And then, through the thrashing limbs and gnashing teeth, he saw it. Half-buried in muck at the corpse-pit’s edge, a great sword jutted upward. Bone-white. Waiting.

Kaelvor snarled and surged up with everything he had left. Rhake clung to him, teeth and claws sunk deep. He wrapped his massive arms around several bodies and squeezed until spines snapped one by one. He dropped the broken creatures and charged toward the corpse pit like a maddened bull, half a dozen of the things still hanging on as his scaled hand reached out and closed around the hilt.

Power detonated through him. His blood erupted from every wound in a flash of blistering heat, and the rhake clinging to him screamed as their flesh caught fire. They tumbled away, rolling through the ash in vain attempts to smother the flames that devoured them.

Kaelvor ripped the greatsword free from the putrid muck. The blade was massive and jagged, but it rested in his grip like something he had always known. He felt it. Knew it. This weapon was meant for him. A fang from the very mouth of the God Beneath.

The demons rushed him again.

He swept the blade in a wide arc and caught a rhake at the waist, cleaving it in two. Its upper half slid away while its legs stood for a heartbeat before collapsing. The next leapt to clear his swing, but he raised the sword and split the creature from groin to crown. Two more closed from behind. He spun and carved through both at the hip. Another lunged from atop a boulder. He lifted the blade diagonally, letting the rhake impale itself, then ripped it free as it thrashed weakly.

A trio pressed in close, and he scythed through their knees, severing legs in a burst of stringy tendons and crimson ichor before stepping aside and bringing the blade down in a single overhead stroke that took all three heads.

He thrust the blade through a charging rhake’s chest, then drove forward, impaling a second behind it. The sword skewered both bodies and pinned them against a slab of stone. He twisted savagely, grinding through organs and bone before ripping the blade free.

Two more tried flanking. He pounced sideways and drove the sword through one’s face, then tore it free in a diagonal cut that opened the second’s throat. One grabbed his leg. He severed both its hands at the wrist. It reeled back, wailing. He silenced it with a slash that took the top half of its skull.

The wall of whirring teeth and grey flesh closed in from all sides, trying to crash over him. Kaelvor spun, blade extended, and became a hurricane of death. The god-fang sword whirled in a lethal cyclone, carving a widening ring of dismembered flesh and flying offal. Bodies separated and severed limbs flew. Entrails piled like bundles of slick pink rope.

When the attack ended, a mountain of butchered rhake surrounded him, minced meat and shattered bone piled high. The ground could not drink all the slaughter. Blood pooled at his feet in a dark lake that ran in sheets over the rim of the corpse-pit from which he’d emerged. Kaelvor stood at the center of the carnage, chest heaving, breath coming through clenched teeth, his demonic green eye flaring with furious bloodlust.

Only five of the corpse-eaters remained. They hesitated.

Kaelvor walked toward them, sword dragging a furrow through the ash. Golden hair hung in matted ropes around his face, his mismatched eyes hard and unblinking. Steaming blood dripped from his wounds and pattered into the black pool of blood below, while the bone-white blade gleamed dully in his scaled, blackened grip. He lifted the sword and leveled it at them, loosing a guttural war cry.

The remaining demons broke and ran, scrambling over stone in blind panic as they fled into the wasteland. Kaelvor watched them flee. Then silence reclaimed the night. He raised the sword toward the starless sky and loosed a primal roar that echoed through the dunes.

All would know that the Blackfang Chieftain walked the world once more.

Kaelvor examined the carnage. Rhake corpses littered the burial grounds like broken dolls, their blood steaming where it pooled, flies and wasps already accumulating on the remains.

A prickle crawled up the back of his neck, the sudden sense of eyes on him. He was being watched. He lifted the sword instinctively.

Something moved in the shadows.

Two jackals stepped forward. No, one jackal. The same body, but two heads rising from a single neck, skulls fused at their base. Dark fur rippled over lean muscle, and four red eyes glowed like coals. Both mouths hung open, teeth gleaming, tongues dangling.

Kaelvor’s blackened hand tightened around the sword’s hilt. “What are you?”

Neither mouth moved, yet the voice sounded in his skull—deep, resonant, and dry as desert wind through bone. You know what I am. You called to me in the darkness. And I answered.

“I called to no one. You came to me.”

The jackal’s twin heads tilted in opposite directions, amused. Semantics. You were dead. I offered. You accepted. And now look at you. Alive. Armed. Powerful.

“Why?” Kaelvor growled. “Why me?”

The red eyes burned brighter. Long tongues dragged across sharp teeth. Because you carry enough rage to burn the world, and I have use for that fire. The jackal sat. One head tilted left, the other right, mirroring each other perfectly. I want hands that kill in my name. With my power and your violent fury, we will become legend.

Kaelvor spat into the ash. “I serve no one. Not you. Not them. Not anymore.”

Oh, but you already do. Both mouths split into a smile. The fang you wield in your hand is mine. Every life it claims is an offering. Every drop of blood spilled is a sacrament in my name.

Kaelvor glanced at the blood-slick blade, then back to the god. “Then you chose poorly, dog. I bow to no one.”

The jackal’s laughter was warped and discordant, a noise that set his teeth on edge. You may not kneel, but you are still my instrument.

“Keep talking, and I’ll show you what your instrument can do.” His grip tightened until his knuckles went white. “I’ll start by cutting out your tongues.”

You have so much hate. The eyes burned brighter still. Good. Hate them. Kill them all. I ask nothing more for now, other than what you already crave. Carve your path and make the world whisper your name in fear.

“And what do you get?”

Glory. Worshippers. Power. The jackal stepped closer, both heads grinning. Debts paid in kind. I gave you an eye and an arm. I returned you from the grave. And one good favor deserves another, yes? One day, you will repay what you owe.

Kaelvor’s jaw tightened. He had heard promises like this before. There were no free gifts; mortals and deities alike always wanted something in return. But this god, at least, was honest about its intentions. He could respect that, if only for now.

I have other gifts for you. Gifts you will discover in due time. My fang, the eye, the arm, and the blood—those are only the beginning.

“I don’t trust you,” he said, voice hard as iron. “But I don’t need to. I’ll use you as you use me. And when it’s time to settle the debt, I’ll decide what I owe.”

I leave you with one last gift, champion: the location of your kin. The Blackfang tribe has moved northwest, toward the volcanic highlands. The jackal’s heads turned in opposite directions before pointing back to him. But the path is perilous and… occupied. The journey for your vengeance will not be easy.

“I don’t care what’s in my way.”

No, came the response, tinged with wry amusement. I suspect you don’t.

The creature stepped back into the dark. Kill well, champion.

And then the avatar of the God Beneath was gone, melted into the shadows.

Kaelvor studied the blade once more, then lifted his gaze to the horizon. He started walking. Toward the ones who had betrayed him. Toward whatever stood in his way.

Thanks for reading. Kaelvor's quest for vengeance continues in Godfang Chapter 2.