Monarch of the Calamity Beast

Prologue: Meat Bait

The rain in Karst Ridge always tasted like salt and burning metal.

Kaelen Thorne spat into the mud, clearing volcanic grit from between his bleeding gums. An old rusted shovel rested heavily in his hands, cold enough to numb his fingers.

Around him, thirty refugees from Eldermire continued digging trenches in silence.

Their bodies were skeletal.

Ribs protruded through soaked shirts. Hands trembled violently from hunger after going without food since yesterday afternoon.

Far above them, behind the fortress walls of black stone, officers of the Solar Aegis Order stood comfortably beneath a transparent magical barrier shielding them from the acidic rain.

Captain Garrick leaned lazily against the battlements, occasionally checking his silver pocket watch with visible boredom.

“Garrick!”

An old man shouted from inside the trench, voice cracked raw from exhaustion.

“We’ve been digging for hours! Where’s the food ration for our children in the camp?”

Garrick never even turned his head.

He simply raised one hand in a small, disgustingly casual gesture.

Below, two fortress guards pulled the lever controlling the iron gate.

The thunderous clang of metal echoed across the valley like a death sentence.

Not only did the gates close—

The temporary wooden bridge was deliberately pulled back inside the walls.

They were locked out.

Left stranded in open ground where mountain beasts would soon pass through.

“The Order requires bait data,” Garrick’s amplified voice boomed through the fortress speakers.

His tone resembled a man tallying firewood.

“Maintain your positions. Your deaths tonight will be recorded as atonement for the sins of the pariah class.”

Dog.

Kaelen swallowed the curse behind clenched teeth.

His stomach twisted violently with hunger.

Twenty years living in Eldermire had taught him what starvation felt like, but tonight the emptiness inside him burned hotter than ever before.

He stared upward toward the fortress wall.

Toward Garrick’s spotless boots gleaming beneath the magical lights.

If he died in this mud tonight—

He swore he would remember that man’s face.

But the earth gave Kaelen little time for hatred.

From beyond the purple fog rolling over the distant hills, the ground began to tremble.

Then came the howl.

Long.

Piercing.

Wrong.

An Ash Ravager.

The creature launched itself from a black cliffside and crashed into the trenchlands with enough force to hurl gravel through the air. Its body was the size of a wagon, covered in thick armored scales and jagged bone spikes.

Six yellow eyes rotated independently within the darkness before locking onto the starving humans below.

Chaos exploded instantly.

People ran without direction.

Some clawed desperately at the fortress gate, screaming and begging for mercy that would never come.

Above the walls, Aegis officers calmly pulled out notebooks and observed how the monster tore apart its first victim.

Kaelen did not run toward the gate.

He already knew it was useless.

Instead, he reversed his shovel grip and braced himself against the trench wall.

Then the creature turned toward him.

And suddenly—

Something inside his chest changed.

An icy sting erupted beneath his sternum where a black spiral-shaped birthmark rested against his skin.

The mark pulsed once.

Only once.

But it was enough to blur his vision completely.

The hunger vanished from his stomach.

In its place came a strange emptiness spreading through his chest—as though something enormous inside him had awakened starving.

“Not yet, boy…”

The whisper was faint.

Lazy.

Almost drowned out by the screams of dying refugees surrounding him.

Kaelen shook his head violently, assuming starvation had finally shattered his mind.

The pulse vanished.

Only a cold ache remained beneath his ribs.

Then the Ash Ravager struck him.

One massive claw slammed directly across Kaelen’s chest, launching him through the trench like broken debris.

His body flew several meters before crashing violently against jagged volcanic stone.

KRAK.

Kaelen heard his own ribs break before the breath exploded from his lungs entirely.

Pain unlike anything he had ever known paralyzed his entire body instantly.

His vision narrowed slowly.

The distant fortress walls blurred.

The giant silhouette of the approaching monster darkened the remaining light around him.

Blood spilled from the corner of his mouth, soaking the gray ash beneath his cheek.

Garrick…

Kaelen chewed dust and blood between shattered teeth while darkness slowly consumed his vision.

I’ll come back.

His fingers twitched weakly against the stone.

For this hunger…

The cold inside his chest deepened.

I swear I’ll devour every last one of you.

Kaelen lost consciousness completely just as the monster’s enormous shadow swallowed him whole.

That night, the fortress officially recorded all bait subjects as deceased.

The bodies were left to rot beneath the acid rain without burial.

None of them realized—

Inside the corpse of one dying boy, something ancient and monstrously dark had just opened its eyes.