2026-01-04 20:59:26Thorne Kael hovered a few feet away, arms crossed, translucent armor clinking faintly as if stirred by a wind only he felt. The ancient general’s face was all hard lines and old scars, crimson eyes narrowed in assessment.
“On your feet, boy,” Thorne said, voice rough as gravel dragged across steel. “Lesson one: beasts don’t wait for you to finish your existential crisis.”
Elias flexed his fingers. They didn’t shake anymore. The exhaustion that had weighed him down for days was gone, replaced by something hot and restless coiling in his gut. “What are they?”
“Ash wolves. Mana-corrupted pack hunters. Normally they’d tear a bloodless runt like you apart in seconds.” Thorne’s mouth twisted in something that might have been a smirk. “Now? You might last thirty.”
“Comforting.”
“Comfort is for people who live long enough to enjoy it.”
The first wolf burst from the fog a massive thing, shoulders level with Elias’s chest, fur matted with gray ash, eyes glowing sickly yellow. Its jaws dripped viscous saliva that hissed where it touched the ground.
It lunged.
Elias reacted without thinking. He sidestepped, felt time slow just a fraction, and drove his fist into the beast’s ribs. The impact sounded like a hammer striking wet wood. Bones cracked. The wolf yelped, tumbling past him into the altar with a heavy thud.
More shapes emerged six, eight, a dozen. Circling. Snarling.
Thorne floated closer, voice calm as a battlefield commander. “Feel it yet? That burn in your blood? That’s the War God waking up. It wants to fight. Wants to kill. Don’t let it drive you steer, or it’ll turn you into something worse than these mutts.”
Elias breathed through his nose. The air tasted of ozone and old blood. Rage flickered at the edges of his vision, red-tinged, whispering promises: rip them apart, make them pay, start with Harlan, burn it all
He shook it off. Not yet.
The pack attacked as one.
He moved.
It wasn’t graceful. Years of hauling trays and scrubbing floors hadn’t prepared him for this. But something deeper did. Instinct ancient, brutal guided his body. He ducked a snapping jaw, grabbed a wolf by the scruff, and slammed it into another mid-leap. Claws raked his side, tearing cloth and flesh, but the wounds knit almost as fast as they opened, crimson light sealing skin with a hiss.
One wolf clamped onto his forearm. Pain flared white-hot. Elias roared raw, guttural and swung the beast like a club, smashing it against the altar. It released with a whimper, neck bent wrong.
“Better,” Thorne grunted. “But you’re wasting energy. Aim for vitals. Throat, spine, heart. War isn’t a brawl it’s execution.”
Elias spat blood his own or the wolf’s, he wasn’t sure. “Easy for you to say. You’re already dead.”
“Exactly. Means I’ve got nothing to lose watching you die stupid.”
Another wolf leaped for his back. Elias spun, caught it by the throat, and squeezed. Cartilage crumpled. He flung the corpse aside and faced the rest.
The pack hesitated. Their alpha a scarred monster twice the size of the others stepped forward, hackles raised, lips peeling back from fangs like daggers.
Elias met its gaze. Something passed between them: predator recognizing predator.
The alpha charged.
Elias didn’t dodge. He stepped in.
They collided like thunder. The alpha’s jaws snapped for his throat; Elias caught its muzzle with both hands, muscles straining, veins blazing crimson. For a moment they strained, locked beast against man, raw power against awakened legacy.
Then the bloodline surged.
Heat exploded through Elias’s arms. He forced the jaws wider wider until tendons tore and bone cracked. The alpha howled in agony. Elias drove his knee into its chest, felt ribs cave, then slammed the beast to the ground and crushed its skull with a downward punch that cratered the earth.
Silence fell, broken only by his ragged breathing and the drip of blood on stone.
The remaining wolves fled into the fog, whimpering.
Elias stood amid the carnage, chest heaving, hands slick with gore. The rage ebbed slowly, leaving him shaking not from fear, but from how good it had felt. How easy it would be to let it take over.
Thorne regarded him with something close to approval. “Not bad for a first dance. Purity’s climbing ten percent now. You absorbed their essence without even knowing how.”
Elias looked down. Faint crimson mist rose from the corpses, flowing into his skin like smoke into lungs. Warmth spread through him, knitting the last of his wounds.
“What happens when it reaches higher?” he asked quietly.
Thorne’s expression darkened. “You get stronger. Faster. Deadlier. You’ll hear the battlefield call your name in every heartbeat. And if you’re not careful, you’ll answer by painting the world red.”
Elias wiped his hands on his torn tunic. “And you? What’s your stake in this?”
The general’s form flickered, as if the memory of chains still bound him. “I was the last Primordial War God’s right hand. Fought beside him when the divine coalition came to end our line. They couldn’t kill him outright too strong so they sealed him, scattered his bloodline, bound his generals to altars like this one.” He gestured bitterly at the stone. “Your blood broke my seal. Now I’m tethered to you until you die or ascend. My curse is your curse.”
Elias absorbed that. Parents dead in a beast tide or so he’d been told. No bloodline spark at awakening. It fit too neatly.
“They hunted us,” he said. “The gods. My parents…”
Thorne nodded once. “Likely. The seal on you was masterwork deep, old. Someone sacrificed everything to hide you in plain sight. Probably died for it.”
Grief hit Elias like a fresh wound. Not the vague ache of orphaned childhood, but sharp, specific. Someone had loved him enough to die hiding him. And House Voss had thrown him away like garbage.
The rage stirred again, hotter this time.
Thorne noticed. “Control it, boy. First rule of the War God: rage is fuel, not master. Let it rule you once, and you’ll slaughter friends as easy as foes.”
Elias closed his eyes, breathed until the red haze receded. When he opened them, the world looked sharper colors deeper, sounds clearer. The bloodline was changing him already.
“What now?” he asked.
Thorne pointed deeper into the ruins, where faint crimson runes glowed on a half-buried archway. “That altar was just the trigger. There’s a trial chamber below first inheritance of the Primordial line. Survive it, and you’ll claim real power. Fail…” He shrugged. “You die, I go back to sleep for another thousand years. Win-win for me, really.”
Elias almost smiled. “You’re a bastard.”
“Guilty. But I’m your bastard now.”
He stepped toward the archway. The fog parted slightly, revealing stone steps descending into darkness. From below came a low thrumming, like a heartbeat older than the world.
“One more thing,” Thorne said, floating alongside. “The trial will test more than strength. It’ll drag up everything you’ve buried betrayal, loss, the shit that keeps you up at night. War Gods don’t break from blades. We break from within.”
Elias paused at the top step. Mira’s face flashed in his mind her tear-streaked cheeks as they dragged him away. Harlan’s smirk. The fall.
He started down.
“Let it try,” he said.
Behind him, Thorne chuckled darkly. “That’s the spirit. Or the beginning of the end. We’ll see.”
The darkness swallowed them both.
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The Price of Victory
The throne hall air hung heavy with the smell of copper and charred flesh, Seraphine’s body still warm on the marble, blood pooling beneath her in a slow, dark mirror that reflected the guttering torches and Harlan’s roaring flame aura in fractured, mocking shards. Her eyes were closed now my doing and the wound in her chest still leaked in weak, rhythmic pulses, the gurgle of her last breath echoing faintly in the high ceiling like a whisper that refused to die. My hands were slick with her blood, Reaper dripping red onto the stone in fat, wet drops that splattered and spread, the metallic tang thick on my tongue, mixing with the bile rising in my throat. Liora stood frozen beside me, lightning still crackling faintly along her blade, blue white arcs dying in the air like dying stars. Her face was pale, eyes wide, locked on Seraphine’s body, the scar on her cheek stark against skin gone gray. Kora’s wind had stilled, dust settling around her feet in a soft, choking cloud, her hands
The Hall of Broken Promises
The throne hall doors had barely groaned shut behind us when the air turned thick with the smell of old fire and fresh blood, the gold plated walls reflecting the last guttering flames in warped, distorted patterns that made every shadow look like it was bleeding. The floor was cold marble streaked with old scorch marks and newer, darker stains dried blood from older fights, fresh from the loyalists we’d just cut down in the antechamber. The echo of their dying screams still lingered in the high ceiling, bouncing back faint and hollow, like ghosts too tired to scream anymore. Harlan stood at the far end, flame aura roaring around him in a crown of white-hot fire, eyes locked on me with that same smirk he’d worn when he pushed me out of the airship years ago, the one that said he’d already won. Lord Voss sat the throne behind him old, broken, flame dim and flickering like a candle in a draft, but his eyes were still sharp, watching, calculating, the way a dying man watches the vultur
The Slaughter at the Threshold
The throne hall doors loomed ahead like the jaws of a dying beast, gold plating cracked and blackened from failing wards, the faint hum of dying mana vibrating through the stone floor and into my boots, each step sending small tremors up my legs that made the stitches in my side tug with fresh, dull pain. The air in the antechamber was thick, hot, heavy with the stink of scorched metal, old blood, and the sour rot of mana cores that had finally given up the ghost, the smell clinging to my tongue and making every breath feel like swallowing ash and regret. The last loyalists had pulled back deeper inside only a handful remained here, crimson plate gleaming dully under flickering torchlight, flame auras low but steady, eyes hard with the kind of fanaticism that doesn’t flinch at death because it’s already decided the cause is worth it. We burst through the side corridor in a tight wedge me at point, Reaper drawn and low, crimson mist already coiling around the blade like living smoke;
The Whisper’s Origin
The whisper had been growing louder for days, no longer just a faint vibration in the stone but a voice that seemed to speak directly into the marrow, soft and persistent, repeating my name in tones that felt both ancient and intimately familiar, like someone who had known me long before I knew myself was trying to remember how to speak. It came most clearly in the hours when the cavern was still, when the fire had burned down to embers and the only sounds were Rag’s deep, rhythmic breathing and Mira’s small, occasional murmurs in her sleep; it rose then, threading through the quiet like smoke, curling around my thoughts until I could no longer tell where my own mind ended and the voice began. I lay awake that night, Liora curled against my side, her head on my chest, silver hair spilling across my shoulder in loose strands that caught the last red glow from the dying fire. Her breathing was slow and even, one arm draped across my waist, fingers loosely curled against the bandage on
The Last Threshold
The manor had finally stopped pretending it could hold on. It drifted downward in exhausted, uneven lurches now, each drop accompanied by a deep, metallic groan that rolled through the mountain like thunder trapped in stone, the lowest spires no longer scraping but gouging long, jagged scars across the upper platforms, sparks flying in brief, angry bursts that lit the gray dawn like dying fireflies. The air carried the heavy, acrid scent of molten gold cooling too fast, mixed with the faint, wet rot of mana conduits that had given up entirely, leaving only the throne hall’s solitary glow high above a pale, flickering gold that looked less like defiance and more like a lantern someone had forgotten to extinguish before abandoning the house.I stood at the forward ledge in the thin, cold light of pre dawn, cloak pulled tight against the wind that bit harder now, carrying flecks of ash and the sharp tang of exposed wiring that stung my nose and made my eyes water. The ache in my side ha
Still Here, Somehow
The cavern smelled like old smoke and damp stone and the faint copper tang of blood that never quite washed out of the air no matter how many times we tried to scrub the floors. The embers in the fire pit were down to almost nothing, just a dull red line that barely reached the walls, throwing shadows that moved slow and tired, like they were as exhausted as the rest of us. I sat against the crate, back to the rough wood, legs stretched out in front of me, the ache in my side a steady pulse now, not screaming anymore, just reminding me with every breath that I was still leaking a little inside, still not quite whole. Liora was curled beside me, head on my shoulder, silver hair loose and tangled from the wind and the sweat of the last push. One arm draped across my chest, fingers loosely curled in my tunic right over my heart, like she was checking it was still beating even while she slept. Her breathing was slow, even, but every now and then she’d hitch, a small catch in her throat,
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