Godfang - Chapter 3: Orchard of the Dead

The Story So Far

In Chapter 1, Kaelvor clawed his way from a corpse pit in the wastelands of Etheroth, reborn after betrayal, mutilation, and murder at the hands of his own tribe, the Blackfang. A mysterious entity known as the God Beneath, called the Carrion God by some, found him in the afterlife and raised him as its champion, gifting him a black-scaled demon arm, a burning green eye, molten blood, and a fang torn from its own mouth, forged into a greatsword Kaelvor would name Godfang. He cut through a swarm of rhake, carrion demons of the burial grounds, before the god’s two-headed jackal avatar appeared to strike a bargain: power and legend in exchange for a debt to be claimed later. The Carrion God also gave Kaelvor what he desired above all else—the location of the Blackfang, and of his beloved twin sister, Draega.

In Chapter 2, the road to vengeance led him through a mountain passage into the fortress of the Iron Witch. She captured him and sealed him inside her spike-lined body, where he was meant to die slowly in agony. Instead, his burning blood liquefied her from within, and he tore himself free through her melting form, walking out the far side of the mountain.

Now Kaelvor continues his march to exact revenge on the Blackfang and reunite with Draega.

Welcome to Chapter 3: Orchard of the Dead

The mountain fortress was far behind him. Kaelvor kept reminding himself of that.

The wounds from the Iron Witch had closed, but that was not the same as healed. His body felt used up, like meat left too long on the curing rack, deep tissue trauma lingering where the spikes had driven through. At times his muscles seized without warning, locking him in place until the spasm passed and he could move again.

In his mind he saw the spikes puncturing his wrist, his lung, his throat. He shook the images away and focused instead on his steps, his breathing.

* * *

The smell of rot on the wind reached him as he moved through a low pass. He recognized it. He had grown up on battlefields and knew mass death by its smell.

The settlement emerged through the ash and haze of sulfur. A sprawl of timber and dried mud structures, ringed by a palisade of sharpened stakes.

The dead were everywhere.

Hundreds of wooden X-frames stood in rows like a grotesque orchard, each bearing a body left to the elements. Men. Women. The old. He saw a cluster of shorter frames, the bodies on them much smaller—he turned his eyes away, refusing to look at them too closely. Flies and locusts churned in a thick black cloud. Orange-backed tarantulas and pale lizards picked at the remains. High above, dark shapes circled.

Kaelvor walked the rows of dead, studying the display. This was not the destructive aftermath of a raid, where killing and looting blurred together. This was organized and deliberate. The frames were built, not improvised, the cross-members notched and fitted. Iron nails fixed the dead to the wood, driven through palms, ankles, and shoulders.

At the settlement’s center stood a banner he did not recognize. A crimson fist gripping a broken crown on a field of black. From the crossbeam hung a cord with dozens of small, shriveled objects—eyes dried to dark raisins, and tongues curled like salted meat. Someone had taken the time to cut them from the crucified victims. To thread them. To hang them here. The banner rippled in the hot wind, and the cord of grisly trophies swayed with it, clicking softly against the pole.

This wasn’t just slaughter for sport. This was a message. A display of raw power—cruel and unyielding.

He moved along the rows until he found what he needed. A large man, broad in the chest, near his size. The corpse wore a dark grey cloak, the heavy cloth intact despite the weather. Kaelvor’s own garments hung from him in scorched rags.

His demonic hand closed around the first iron nail driven through the palm, then pulled. The black-scaled fingers tore it free with a dry, splintering shriek. One by one, the others came loose, rusted spikes rasping as they slid through dead flesh. When the last came free, the body sagged. He caught the corpse by the shoulder and lowered it to the ground.

Kaelvor took the cloak, tunic, dark leather bracers, and belt. The rest he left in the ash. He dressed without looking at the dead man’s face.

At the settlement’s edge, deep track marks scored the hard-packed earth—something massive had passed through, dragging its weight toward the wasteland. Northwest. The same direction he was already headed.

What leaves a mark like that?

His gaze lifted to the banner’s clenched fist. Whatever had done this was somewhere ahead, standing between him and his tribe—that was its misfortune.

He raised the hood on his cloak and walked out of the settlement without looking back.

* * *

Exhaustion began to take him. His vision blurred. His movements turned clumsy. He needed a place to rest, and a few miles beyond the murdered settlement, he found it.

An ancient watchtower rose from a hill of jagged black stone—a leaning cylinder of mortared rock, a crack running its full height. The base and thick walls remained solid despite the damage. Whatever civilization had possessed the knowledge of such masterful masonry was long gone. The wooden stairs inside had rotted away, leaving only corroded iron brackets fixed to the walls.

Kaelvor climbed to the top floor using the brackets and protrusions. His arms burned before he was halfway. His legs trembled but held.

At the top, he pulled Godfang from his back and set it within reach, then let himself fall, rolling onto his back. One section of the tower wall had collapsed, opening a view to the sky and land beyond—miles of wasteland in every direction, grey, streaked with obsidian, cut by glowing veins of lava.

He stared at the red horizon until sleep took him.

* * *

In his dreams, Kaelvor was no longer in the tower. He was home, among his tribe, a boy of five.

The raid came at dusk. The invading Ashborn tribe fought naked, their skin painted in a pale grey paste made from the bone-ash of their dead. They believed the dead rose inside them when they wore it—the way the wraith-like warriors moved through the sun’s failing light, curved blades in hand, made it hard to say they were wrong.

Kaelvor and Draega had been cut off from the rest of the camp. Their mother stood between them and four of the invaders, pressing her children back against a shelf of jutting rock, twin axes in hand.

The first man’s attack came. Their mother caught his blade on one axe and split his face from chin to brow with the other. Blood and broken teeth hit the dirt.

The next warrior was on her before the first had fallen. She blocked his blade, then chopped his fingers from the hilt. He screamed. She spun both axes in a downward chop into his shoulders, breaking his collarbone—both arms dropping limp as the muscles in his shoulders severed beneath the bite of her blades.

She ducked the third warrior’s attack and opened the woman’s throat with a backhand cut.

The fourth attacker was much larger than the rest. He slammed into her from the side and crushed her in a bear hug. She tore one arm free and drove the spike at the base of her axe into his ear canal. He roared, plunging a short blade into her side, then released her to tear at the weapon buried in his ear. Her other axe caved in his skull a heartbeat later.

She pulled both weapons free and pressed a hand to her side. The wound was fatal. Turning to her children, she went to one knee.

More of the Ashborn were coming.

Draega was pressed against the rock, her jaw set in a snarl of ferocity that didn’t belong on a child’s face. There was fear in her eyes, but it had curdled into something hard and primal, a cornered wolf pup ready to bite.

Kaelvor was crying uncontrollably. Blood spread through their mother’s clothing in a dark bloom, and he could not look away.

She pressed one axe into Draega’s hands, closing her fingers around the haft. Then she turned to Kaelvor, took his face in both hands, and forced him to meet her eyes.

“You must be strong, my love,” she said. “You must fight.”

She pressed the other axe into his grip—his small fingers wrapped around the leather handle, slick with her blood.

“Kill, Kael! Kill or be killed!”

Then an Ashborn’s blade took her head from her shoulders. Her hands fell from his face. It was the last time he would feel her touch. The world went red. Gore spattered across him as her body collapsed. He watched, stunned, his own crying distant and strange.

The warrior who had killed her stepped toward them. Kaelvor slammed the axe into his thigh. The blade bit deep. The man screamed and bent forward. Draega stepped in and swung with both hands, her axe cracked into his temple. He dropped at once, body convulsing, eyes rolled back in his head.

Then their father was there. He came out of the dark at the head of his warband, eight of the Blackfang’s best. His broadsword carved through the Ashborn in wide, punishing strokes. He did not stop until he reached his children. Then he fell to his knees and pulled them in, one arm around each, crushing them to his chest. He smelled of blood and smoke and iron.

He carried them from the carnage, one on each hip, while his warriors made certain none of the Ashborn remained alive.

Kaelvor still held his mother’s axe. His face was hot and wet with tears. He pressed it against his father’s shoulder and closed his eyes.

The sounds of death came from behind them. The Ashborn screaming. Steel hacking through flesh and bone. Beneath it all, he heard his own heartbeat, fast and small.

Kill or be killed. Her final words echoed in the chamber of his mind.

He did not stop crying. But he did not let go of the axe.

* * *

Twenty-seven years had passed since the night his mother died, and still not a day went by that he did not miss her.

Kaelvor sat on a rock at the edge of camp, staring at the horizon where the two suns hung in the afternoon sky—one burning amber, the other a black void beside it, devouring its companion’s light. The scarred horizon glowed a deep, troubled red, the sky above the western ridge the color of cooling iron.

Behind him, the encampment of animal-hide tents spread across the valley floor. Somewhere, a skin drum beat in slow pulses.

Draega hopped onto the rock beside him and snatched the strip of dried meat from his hand before he could take a bite.

“That was mine,” he said.

“Yes, it was.” She chewed without remorse. “Now it’s mine. Besides, it tastes awful. You’re welcome.”

She grinned sidelong, golden hair loose around her shoulders, their mother’s hand axes at her belt. She had their father’s eyes, pale grey and sharp as flint.

“You’re going to get yourself killed one day, stealing people’s food,” he said. “And I’ll be standing right there when it happens, saying nothing, because you’ll have had it coming.”

“No,” she said. “You’ll weep like a baby. Openly. In front of everyone.”

“I’ll piss on your grave.”

“No. You’ll build me a monument.” She tore off a piece of the jerky. “Something tall and fancy. My name in gold. Draega. She Was Right About Everything All The Time. Especially The Meat.”

“Gods, you’d have made a terrible chieftain.”

She snorted. “I’d have made a magnificent chieftain, and you know it. Shit luck, coming out second.” She took another bite. “Four minutes. That’s all that kept me from being chieftain, and you serving as my Blood-Brother instead of the other way around.”

“And yet here we are,” he said.

“Here we are.” She grinned. “You giving speeches, me winning the battles.”

“We win the battles,” he said, and snatched the meat from her hand, quick as a striking viper.

She stared at her empty hand, then at him in feigned shock. They laughed.

For a moment it was just the two of them on the rock in the afternoon light. Siblings enjoying a moment of peace.

Then the war-horns sounded.

Draega was on her feet before the note died. They looked at one another—no words, none needed. They had shared a womb. Some things that existed between them had long since passed beyond the need for speech. They grinned, both eager for the fight.

She gripped his arm once, hard, above the elbow. He returned it, and they turned to face the warriors assembling around them.

“Listen to me, you dogs,” Draega shouted. “The snakemen’s hides are scaled and thick. Good for making leather, but hard to cut. And the iron plates they’ve nailed to themselves?” She shook her head. “Don’t even try. You’ll break your arm before you dent them.” She lifted a leg, tapping her knee. “Put your blade here. Joints. Throats. The soft skin under the arms. Nothing else. If you take their knees, they can’t walk. If they can’t walk, they can’t fight. If you take their elbows, they can’t swing. If they can’t swing, they can’t fight. If you take their throats, they can’t breathe. If they can’t breathe, they die. And if you take their balls, give them to Kaelvor. He’s missing his.”

Laughter rolled through the tribe. Kaelvor shoved her from behind and she stumbled forward a few steps. The smile faded and his expression hardened. “As the Blood Sister says, get in close. Work their weak points.” His gaze swept the gathered warriors. “Fight smart. Don’t die stupid.”

A bloodthirsty roar went up from the warriors.

* * *

The enemy came from the east. They were not human, or not entirely.

The Vraaken stood a full head taller than any Blackfang, bodies dense with corded muscle wrapped in dark-scaled skin. Iron plates covered their chests and backs, nailed through the skin with spikes that had calcified into permanent fixtures. Most carried thick, serrated blades. Others bore barbed chains with iron weights at the ends the size of a man’s fist. Their eyes were dark blue, almost black, set in reptilian faces.

“They outnumber us ten to one,” Draega said, studying the horde. “We’ve faced worse odds.”

Kaelvor glanced at her. “When?”

“I can’t remember, but I’m certain we have.”

Behind the front line, Vraaken warlocks moved into position. Six of them in iron-grey robes, chanting in a guttural, atonal drone.

Kaelvor raised his greatsword and roared. The tribe surged forward. He ran at the front, the black iron blade in both hands.

Kill or be killed.

The two armies collided with a crack of metal and flesh, bodies slamming together with the sound of a slab of meat falling on a butcher’s block.

Chains whirled, the iron weights lashing out at skull height. Kaelvor dropped beneath the first swing and drove his shoulder into the chain-bearer’s chest, hard enough to send it sprawling. He buried his blade in its throat when it hit the ground and twisted until the wound was a red ruin of minced flesh and cartilage, then tore it free and pressed on.

The next attacker swung its chain in a horizontal sweep. Kaelvor stepped inside before it could gather force, the chain wrapping harmlessly across his back, and drove his forehead into the creature’s face. Bone cracked. Its skull snapped back. His blade opened its throat so deeply the head fell and hung by a flap of gristle.

Around him Vraaken were dying, but so were the Blackfang.

The snakemen’s weighted chains burst heads like ripe fruit. To his left, a warrior took one full in the temple. Half his skull ripped away and Kaelvor saw the glisten of brain before the man fell.

A barbed chain wrapped around another warrior’s head, the hooks biting deep into her face. The Vraaken yanked. The chain ripped through flesh and bone, sawing the top half of her head free. The revolting sound was something Kaelvor would never forget.

A third tribesman lost his sword arm at the elbow. The limb hit the ground and he stared at the stump for a single, stunned moment before the next blow removed his head.

To Kaelvor’s right, Draega was a storm.

She moved like a river flowing over stone, always finding a path, always accelerating. A Vraaken swung a chain at her head. She slid beneath and buried her axe in its elbow, splitting the joint. Its lower arm tore free and hung for a heartbeat from a string of scaled-flesh before ripping free. It hissed in anger, then her axe swept through the back of its knee, severing tendons. The next strike ripped open its throat, and she was gone before its heart stopped beating.

In the time it took most warriors to manage a single kill, Draega left three foes broken or dead. Behind her, Vraaken lay in the dirt, some still alive and bleeding, their limbs reduced to ruined meat that would never move again.

Then the Vraaken warlocks struck. Their chanting had been building beneath the clash of weapons, a subsonic pressure Kaelvor felt in his molars. Now they raised their hands in unison, and the ground between them split.

Something rose from the rift—writhing and corpse-white. It split as it climbed, a spectral serpent uncoiling, one head dividing into many. Each split again, multiplying like fractures in ice until the sky above the battlefield boiled with thrashing necks and snapping jaws.

They fell upon Kaelvor’s tribe. Translucent heads plunged into chests, jaws snapping around hearts and lungs. Warriors screamed as the serpent tore through them, the pale forms ripping out through their backs trailing light and bloody sprays of shredded flesh. The tribe buckled under the sorcerous assault.

From atop a rock outcrop at the battlefield’s edge, the Blackfang Shamanka watched. Seven women in crimson and black robes, faces painted white and marked with deep blue sigils. Talons, bones, and cured thumbs hung at their throats; raven feathers threaded their braids. They began to chant in a high-keening wail that drowned out the noise of battle and made the air tremble.

The ground answered, stirring beneath both armies. The Shamanka drew on the land’s memory—every corpse rotted into this soil, every bone ground to dust, the buried torment of forgotten wars fought here since men first learned to hate. They dredged the dormant suffering up from the flesh of the earth and gave it shape.

From the earth rose a vast, amorphous mass of black soil and rot, seething with ancient rage. It surged to meet the serpent, the two forces colliding in a writhing clash. The spectral serpent vanished into it, swallowed whole.

The Vraaken warlocks screamed in fury, a sound between hiss and howl.

The Shamanka’s eyes turned solid black, their keening breaking into shrieks that burned away the boundary between ritual and frenzy. They snarled, teeth bared, hands clawing at the air, fingers hooked as if tearing unseen fabric. Then they raised their hands to the sky.

And their hands kept going.

Their limbs stretched, slowly at first, then faster. Fingers lengthened to impossible spans. Arms became pale, rope-like extensions of flesh reaching skyward as the Shamanka below shrieked, black eyes fixed upward, gums bared. The elongated limbs twisted in the air, then plunged into the earth.

Three heartbeats passed. Then, across the battlefield, the ground erupted beneath the Vraaken warlocks. A Shamanka’s hand burst from the dirt and closed around one’s ankle. The snakeman had time to glance down before he was yanked upward, upside down and screaming. Another limb tore free and seized his wrist. For a moment he hung between them. Then they pulled, and he came apart at the waist.

Blood and viscera rained over the others. Their formation broke. Warlocks stumbled over the torn remains of their companion, one tripping on the exposed spine.

More hands rose among them, snapping ankles and wrists, crushing throats. They tore through the cadre of warlocks without mercy until every last one lay broken.

The Shamanka stepped back from the rock outcrop, black eyes fading, stretched limbs contracting to their natural forms. Their sorcerous power was spent. The battle would now be decided by steel.

Kaelvor drove his blade through a Vraaken’s throat, tore it free, and looked up. The Vraaken line was parting. At its center stood the reason why.

Their chieftain was enormous, broad through the chest and shoulders. The iron plates nailed to his body were larger than those of his warriors, the calcified spikes longer and thicker. He held a massive axe in both hands, its haft built from human spines, the length of a man from base to blade, the head a brutal wedge of dark iron.

His eyes found Kaelvor and locked there with pure contempt. He spoke in the Vraaken tongue, a short, rasping command. The warriors around him pulled back, forming a half circle. They understood what this was. A challenge between leaders. To the death. Winner takes all.

The Blackfang warriors formed the other half of the circle behind Kaelvor.

The two leaders moved toward each other.

The Vraaken chieftain struck first. The axe came at chest height with enough force to cut a man in half, and it nearly did. Kaelvor leapt away, the blade passing so close he felt the displaced air against his skin.

He exploded out of the retreat, lunging forward and slamming his shoulder into the creature’s ribs before the chieftain could recover from the swing. It was like hitting a wall.

The chieftain barely shifted. His elbow slammed down between Kaelvor’s shoulder blades and drove him face-down into the dirt.

Kaelvor rolled before the axe fell, heard the blade split the earth where his head had been, and came up with a cut that found the chieftain’s wrist, opening it to the bone.

The chieftain looked at the wound. Then at Kaelvor. He tilted his scaled head, dark eyes burning with fury.

“Know this, Blackfang,” he said in Kaelvor’s tongue, the words thick and guttural. “When you are dead, I will take your golden-haired Blood Sister as my plaything. Her first task as my slave will be to skin your corpse. She will wear your hide as a cloak for the rest of her days. And that will only be the beginning of her torment.”

He paced side to side, slowly turning the axe in his hands.

“My warriors will use her body every hour. My people will feed on yours like cattle. And when I finally grow tired of your sister, I will drown her in the blood of her own tribe.”

Kaelvor said nothing, just stared with cold focus. The chieftain stepped in, axe raised as if to strike, then feinted and drove the butt toward Kaelvor’s face. Kaelvor slipped aside and kicked the snakeman’s iron chest plate, knocking him back.

Kaelvor swept his broadsword at the chieftain’s knees. The snakeman leapt the cut and brought the axe down in a diagonal strike. Kaelvor met it with his sword, deflecting the attack and letting it slide past. He stepped in and hammered his elbow into the chieftain’s jaw. The snakeman’s head snapped sideways.

Kaelvor swung his blade in a horizontal cut into the iron chest plate. It sparked and rang, staggering the brute back, but he recovered quickly and strode forward.

Their weapons collided again, and a kick from the Vraaken sent a cloud of ash into Kaelvor’s face. He blinked, shaking his head to clear his stinging vision. A backhand caught his temple and he stumbled sideways.

The chieftain pressed in with a sweeping stroke meant to take his head. Kaelvor dropped to one knee as the axe screamed overhead, close enough to stir his hair.

From his crouch, Kaelvor saw an opening and drove his broadsword up into the exposed armpit. The blade punched deep. The chieftain roared and reached for Kaelvor’s throat with his free hand. Kaelvor caught the wrist with both hands, then jumped, wrapping his legs around the Vraaken’s neck and dragging the brute down with him.

As the chieftain pitched forward under Kaelvor’s weight, the hilt of the buried sword struck the ground and drove the blade deeper, parting muscle and sinking into the heart.

The chieftain twitched, then went still.

Kaelvor shoved the corpse aside. He rose, planted his boot on the dead chieftain’s chest, and wrenched his sword free. Dark blood spilled out. He lifted his gaze to the Vraaken.

The snakemen stared at their fallen leader, then at the blade in his hand.

Kaelvor stepped forward. They broke and ran.

Behind him came the cheers of his warriors and the rhythmic hacking of an axe into flesh. He watched the enemy retreat until Draega leapt onto his shoulders. She tousled his hair with one hand, raising the severed head of the chieftain high in the other, and loosed an ululating war cry that split the sky.

The Blackfang answered with a roar. The wasteland swallowed their chorus of cheers and returned it as a hollow echo.

* * *

Night fell and grew rich with celebration. Fires burned high, and meat and drink were plentiful. Drumming rose from the settlement’s heart where the central fire burned tallest.

Kaelvor sat at the fire with a drinking horn, feeling the battle’s tension drain from his shoulders with each sip. Beside him, the warrior known as Brek was several drinks deep.

Draega sat across the fire, lounging in a chair of bone and leather, one leg thrown over its arm, her boot swinging softly. A drinking horn rested in one hand. The other lay on the head of a man kneeling before her, his face buried between her thighs, working with fervent dedication. Yet her focus was on those around her, gesturing with the horn as she spoke.

“The hip joint,” she said, jabbing a finger toward the nearest man’s midsection. “That’s your problem. If you want to tan Vraaken hide, you have to work the joints separately or they stiffen and twist the whole thing when it dries. Treat it as one piece and you ruin it.” She drank. “You’re welcome.”

“She’s been arguing about the best way to make Vraaken leather for an hour,” Brek said, grinning. He took a long drink from his horn.

“She’s been right for an hour,” Kaelvor replied.

Brek chuckled. “You really took your time on that big bastard with the axe today.”

Kaelvor guffawed and drank. “Still got the job done.”

“Aye. But he nearly took your head.”

“He didn’t. I ducked.”

“Almost too late.”

Kaelvor looked at him, amusement in his eyes. “And how many did you kill?”

“Enough.”

“I killed more.”

“You’re chieftain. It’s expected.” Brek smiled into his drink. “Besides, I was watching your back. Covering your ass takes time away from killing.”

The two men exchanged mock blows before downing more of their drink.

Brek glanced at Draega, still lecturing on the best way to tan their enemies’ scaled hides, her hand pressing the kneeling man’s head more firmly between her thighs as she spoke, guiding the rhythm of his mouth. Firelight caught the gold in her hair.

“Gods,” he said quietly. “But she is beautiful.”

Kaelvor looked at him. “So you’ve told me every day since we were boys.”

Brek drank again, his eyes never leaving her.

“She’d break you in half,” Kaelvor said.

“I know.” Brek sounded entirely at peace with that. “Worth it.”

Kaelvor shook his head, snorting in playful disgust. His gaze drifted past the fire to the far edge of the celebration, where the Shamanka’s tent stood. An orange-red glow pulsed within, not firelight but something sorcerous. Shadows moved across the inner wall, elongated shapes bending and shifting in eerie patterns.

“What are they doing in there?” Brek muttered. He’d noticed it too.

“Some ritual,” Kaelvor said.

“In the middle of the feast.”

“They care nothing for celebrations.”

Brek watched the shadows a moment longer and pulled a face. “Crazy hags.”

“Crazy hags that saved our hides today,” Kaelvor said. “Without them, those snake warlocks would have torn us apart.”

Brek grunted in reluctant agreement and said nothing more.

From across the fire, Draega gasped sharply. Her grip on the kneeling man’s head tightened, her spine arching against the chair. The horn tilted in her other hand, sloshing wine onto the ground. Her hips rocked, her legs trembling as she let out a long moan.

When her breathing slowed and her body eased, she shoved the man away by the forehead. He toppled onto his back, grinning wildly up at the stars. Draega straightened in her chair and took a long drink from her horn. Then her grey eyes found Brek’s across the fire.

“I’ve seen you watching me all night,” she called, her voice carrying over the drums. “Your turn. Come have a taste.”

Brek’s lips split into a grin so wide it looked painful. He beamed like a man gifted by the gods, hopped from his chair, and sidestepped Kaelvor’s leg as it shot out to trip him. Brek laughed, tossed his empty horn at Kaelvor’s chest, and moved toward Draega. In the last few feet, he dropped to hands and knees like a dog, then crawled the rest of the way, eyes fixed on her beneath a wolfish grin. Those around the fire howled with amusement.

Draega laughed too, grabbing Brek by both ears as he reached her and pulling his face between her legs. Her breath caught sharply as his tongue made contact, her fingers tightening in his hair. Her drunken eyes seemed to notice the horn in her hand for the first time. She drank, then resumed speaking to those around her about optimal curing times for scaled leather, her voice rising and falling with emphasis—one hand gesturing at the fire, the other tangled in Brek’s hair, holding him exactly where she wanted.

Kaelvor laughed. He shook his head and tossed Brek’s abandoned horn onto the chair beside him.

His amusement faded as his gaze drifted back to the Shamanka’s tent. The glow inside had deepened. He watched it a long moment, then took a drink.

The drums played on. Across from him, Draega’s voice rose in heated argument about the merits of clay in the tanning process, punctuated by sharp gasps when Brek evidently did something right.

Kaelvor looked down into his horn. Firelight danced in the dark liquid.

When he glanced back at the Shamanka’s tent, the glow had dimmed. Seven silhouettes stood motionless within. He felt it, sudden and certain. Every one of them was watching him.

Then the interior went dark.

* * *

Two days later, the Shamanka summoned the tribe. The seven women in crimson and black climbed atop a large stone at the center of the encampment. Their faces were freshly painted in ritual bands, their expressions unreadable. The eldest, Maedhara, stood at the fore, her staff crowned in rattling talons. She struck it twice against the stone.

The camp fell silent.

Maedhara swept her pale eyes over the gathered people. “A vision came to all of us,” she said. “Seven nights running. The same vision. We saw a demon.” Her voice rose. “Black-scaled, with a burning green eye. A great blade of ivory in its hand.” She paused. “We saw your bodies at its feet.”

Kaelvor stood at the edge of the gathering. He climbed onto a boulder so all could see him.

“Tell me, Shamanka,” he called. “Where is this demon? I will hunt it down. I will destroy it before it can do us harm.”

Maedhara’s eyes found him. She said nothing.

“Speak,” Kaelvor said. “If you know where it is, tell me. I’ll kill it myself.”

One of the younger Shamanka stepped forward. “You would seek this foe out, chieftain?”

“I would,” Kaelvor said. “And I would crush it beneath my bootheel.”

“Then you are already too late,” the woman said.

A ripple of alarm moved through the tribe.

Kaelvor frowned. “And what does that mean?”

Maedhara spoke. “It means the demon is already here.”

“Here?” Kaelvor demanded. “Where? Speak plainly.”

“The demon is among us,” Maedhara said, “and wears the face of one of our own.”

Kaelvor’s jaw tightened. He looked out over the gathered tribe. “A shapeshifter. One of those trickster devils from the dunes. Tell me whose face it wears, if you know. We will settle this here and now.”

Maedhara held his gaze a long moment. When she answered, her voice was calm.

“Yours.”

The word struck him like a blade to the heart.

Kaelvor stared, then let out a short laugh. “Then your vision was a lie.”

Maedhara did not blink. “Not a lie. It was a prophecy.”

“I am no demon, Maedhara.” The words came quiet. The kind of quiet that precedes violence.

“No,” she said. “Not yet.”

The tribe shifted, uneasy.

Kaelvor stepped down from the boulder and moved toward the Shamanka.

“You have been deceived by sorcery. A false vision has been placed in your minds, and you call it prophecy. I have led this tribe for eight years, since my father died. I have never turned my blade on any of you. I have never failed you in time of need. You know me.”

“We know you as you are,” Maedhara said. “But we do not know you as you will be.”

His face hardened. “I see what this is. A power grab. You would turn my people against me.” His eyes moved from face to face and found only fear staring back at him. Not one held his gaze for long. Their silence had changed. No longer the silence of listening. The silence of deciding.

Then the youngest of the Shamanka lifted her voice. “We do not bring this forward lightly.”

Kaelvor leveled a finger at her. “Then why bring it at all? It is a lie.”

“The vision was repeated,” she said. “Seven nights. The same message.”

“A hallucination,” Kaelvor snapped.

“A warning,” Maedhara countered.

He barked a bitter laugh but felt something shift in the tribe. Those closest to him stepped back.

Pain from the suspicion in their eyes tore through him. “You would believe this?” he said. “You would believe them over me? Believe that I am some demon?”

He searched the ring of faces again, suddenly desperate. “Does no one believe me?”

Only silence.

“Brek,” he shouted. “Stand with me.”

The crowd parted as Brek came into view. His face was tight, eyes clouded with pain and conflict.

“You know me, Brek. We’ve bled together. Fought side by side since we were children. You know who I am.”

Brek swallowed hard. His jaw flexed. “Aye. I do. Better than any man alive.”

Hope flared in Kaelvor’s chest.

“Then stand with me,” Kaelvor said. “Tell them.”

Brek’s eyes moved from Kaelvor to the robed women, then back. “I know you, Kaelvor. But I also know the Shamanka have never been wrong.”

Kaelvor stilled.

Brek shook his head, voice breaking. “Every vision from them has come true. Every warning. Since I was a boy. Every single one.” A murmur of agreement spread through the crowd. “I don’t understand it. Because I know you. I know who you are.” His face twisted. “But they’ve never been wrong either. So why would they be wrong now?” He met Kaelvor’s eyes one last time. “I’m sorry.”

Brek turned and walked back into the tribe, and with his final words, something broke. The people began to shift away from Kaelvor, not just in body, but in spirit. Eyes that had once held loyalty now filled with doubt. With fear.

Turning slowly, Kaelvor looked from face to face. Only cold stares met his.

“If he lives,” Maedhara said, her voice carrying across the camp, “then everything we have seen will come to pass.”

She stepped forward, her pale gaze fixed on him.

“He will destroy you all. Even your children.”

The words sank deep into the tribe.

“A hound is the most loyal creature alive,” Maedhara said. “It will stand with you through fire and famine, faithful to its last breath. But when it is bitten by a tainted creature, a sickness takes root in its blood and creeps into its mind. Then it does not matter how many years it guarded your door. It will turn. And when it does, it will savage the very hands that fed it.” She looked out over the tribe. “There is only one mercy for a hound gone mad. You know what it is. We must put him down.”

Her eyes returned to Kaelvor.

“Do not let this vision come to pass.” She raised her staff and pointed. “Seize him.”

The crowd shifted, slowly encircling him. Their eyes held something new. A rising bloodlust.

Kaelvor lunged, trying to break through. He shoved one man down, then another. His palm cracked against a face. His elbow drove into ribs. The tribe closed in, dragging him to a halt. He reached for his blade, but hands seized his sword arm from behind and held it fast.

They came from every side at once. Arms wrapped his shoulders, his waist. He tore free for a moment, then more hands caught his wrists. His sword was wrenched away. He cursed and kicked. A thrown stone struck his nose, sending sparks across his vision and drawing blood. Then he went down beneath the weight of bodies.

He roared and thrashed like a trapped beast, but it did no good. They pinned his arms. Leather straps bit into his wrists, pulled so tight his flesh burned. His ankles were bound next. He writhed until his strength began to fail. Even as he fought, his mind recoiled at the truth. These were his people. His tribe. Holding him down.

How can this be?

“Draega!” he shouted. “Draega!”

He searched the faces around him but could not find his sister anywhere in the ring of torchlight.

They dragged him toward the skinning tables near the corpse pit, where the Vraaken had been flayed for their hides. The stink of blood and ruptured intestines hung thick in the air.

Dark shapes lay in heaped rows, the Blackfang’s dead. Beside them were the skinned Vraaken, their exposed muscles pale violet and slick in the firelight. The tribe had been working since dawn to clear the field and fill the pit. More bodies lay piled beside it, waiting to be pushed in.

They forced him down onto the table. The Shamanka stepped forward, their faces placid.

“Gutless swine,” he snarled. “Spineless vermin. You disgrace yourselves and our people.”

“The prophecy was clear,” Maedhara said.

A younger Shamanka stepped beside her, an axe in her hands. “We cannot let you become what we saw.”

He looked at the axe, then at the faces of the tribe around him. Some met his gaze. Some did not. Most showed only cold, unfiltered hate.

“You’re wrong,” he said. “And everything that follows will be wrong. My blood will be a curse on your souls.”

Maedhara held his gaze. “First, we will take your arm, so you can raise no weapon against us in this life or the next.”

She nodded.

The leather straps cinched tighter. His arms were dragged out and pinned flat against the blood-dark wood.

The young woman raised the axe and brought it down three times. Blood ran hot down his side. He locked his jaw and stared up at the dark sky, making no sound but the grind of his teeth.

When it was done, his left arm lay beside him like something that had never belonged to him. He stared at it, his mind unable to make sense of what he was seeing.

The pain was vast, overwhelming. It filled him so completely that for a moment there was nothing else. Not even rage.

Maedhara crouched before him, a small curved blade in her hand. She leaned close, her voice dropping to a whisper. “And now we take your eye.”

He stared at her, unable to speak.

Through the torchlight beyond her shoulder, he saw Draega at last.

She stood at the edge of the crowd, struggling to push through, her face white with horror. Her hands lifted as if to stop them, but she could not reach him. Bodies closed the gap. Hands seized her and held her back. The will of the crowd would not break.

Her eyes met his. The grief he saw there broke something in him that bodily pain could never touch.

Maedhara rose and addressed the tribe. “We have taken his arm. He will not raise a weapon against us in the lands of the dead. We will take his eye. He will not find his way back to us.”

The dagger pressed into his socket.

Kaelvor’s body seized. He clenched every muscle and refused to release the scream clawing to break free. The blade turned. Pressure. Cutting. Then a sudden, wet release. Warmth ran down his cheek.

Searing pain tore through his skull. Still he did not scream.

They dragged him from the platform and hauled him toward the corpse pit where the Blackfang dead and skinned Vraaken lay stacked beside it in bloodied heaps.

Then they threw him in.

He struck the bottom on his back, hard enough to drive the last of his breath from him. The pit churned beneath him, blood, entrails, shit, and rotting flesh. He tried to push himself upright with his remaining hand, but his strength was gone. The blood loss was too great.

He could not believe they would leave him like this.

But they were not done.

The first corpse fell on him. Then another. And another.

Wet, brutal thuds. The weight grew. Blackfang dead. Vraaken dead. All crashing onto him. The crush drove him deeper into the mire. He tried to breathe and could not draw enough air.

At the edge of the camp’s torchlight, a shape sat still. A jackal. Two-headed, both faces watching with tongues dangling.

In the dark, under the crushing weight of the dead, Kaelvor understood. This was the end.

His blood seeped into the filth. His fury thinned, and his will to survive went with it. The world narrowed to stench, encroaching darkness, and the dull thump of more bodies falling.

Draega’s face appeared in his mind’s eye one last time. The Blackfang’s Blood-Sister. His sister. Her eyes wet in the torchlight. Her face carved with grief too deep to bear.

How I loved you.

At last, he let go. The darkness closed.

Above, no one in the tribe spoke for him. No last words. No blessing to guide his soul beyond life’s border.

He felt himself sinking, as if his soul were caught in a violent whirlpool dragging him deep into a black ocean.

What followed was not silence. It was something deeper. A darkness without horizon, without depth, without time or meaning.

Then two burning green eyes opened in the dark. A vast maw loomed before him, with fangs each as long as sword blades.

Rise, champion.

The jaws opened.

* * *

Kaelvor came awake with a gasp, his hand already on Godfang’s hilt. Breath came hard, eyes wild as the world snapped back into place. The dream clung to him. His mother’s hands on his face. Draega’s smile. He rubbed his eyes and forced the memories away.

He took in his surroundings, reorienting his mind. The watchtower. The open wall. The wasteland below.

Cold sweat clung to him, his chest heaving, rage burning behind his sternum like a coal that refused to die. He leaned back against the stone and waited for his breathing to slow, staring at his left arm. Once flesh and blood, now the black-scaled arm of a dead god’s champion. His mind still struggled to accept what he had become.

He could not say how long he had slept. Hours. Maybe days.

He pushed himself to his feet, stretched, then stepped to the open edge of the wall and looked out over the dawn. He lowered his trousers and pissed off the side of the tower.

The wasteland stretched in every direction, grey and foreboding. Distant volcanic fires pulsed along the horizon. To the northwest, the highlands lay hidden in ash and shadow. His tribe was somewhere in that darkness.

Movement on the horizon caught his eye.

A lone figure sprinted across the flats, running hard in his direction. Fast, but not fast enough. Behind came mounted pursuers on long, low insectoid creatures built for speed across rough terrain. The riders wore dark leather, hunched forward in high-backed saddles. One turned, and light flashed across his shield, revealing a clenched crimson fist gripping a broken crown. Kaelvor knew the symbol. He had seen it on the banner in the massacred settlement.

One rider had a bow half-drawn, tracking the runner. The arrow loosed and barely missed their head.

The runner had no cover. No chance. The open ground favored the riders, and the gap was closing.

Kaelvor watched, rage building in his chest. Here was something that bled. Something that could die. It was time for an honest fight.

He pulled up his trousers, slung Godfang across his back, and climbed down the watchtower. Dropping the final distance, he hit the ground running.

Kill or be killed.

Who is the figure fleeing across the flats? Who are the pursuing riders bearing the crimson fist? Who is responsible for crucifying and cutting the eyes and tongues from an entire settlement of people? And what left those massive track marks in the earth outside the massacred settlement, dragging its weight northwest toward the same highlands where the Blackfang have migrated?

Find out in Chapter 4 — read it here.