They ran.
Feet pounding against wet stone, hearts hammering against their ribs, they fled through the suffocating darkness of the tunnel. Behind them, the dying soldier's warning echoed in their minds—*they're coming, it was a trap*—but ahead lay only more blackness, more uncertainty.
"Faster!" Kaelion gasped, his breath coming in ragged bursts. "We have to warn—"
The world exploded.
The earthquake hit like the fist of an angry god, slamming them against the tunnel walls. But this wasn't the trembling they'd felt before—this was something primordial, something that shook the very bones of the earth. Stone dust rained down in choking clouds, and the ground beneath their feet cracked and buckled.
Then came the roar.
It wasn't the scream of agony they'd heard earlier. This was something else entirely—a sound so deep, so impossibly vast that it seemed to come from the mountain itself. It rolled through the tunnel like a living thing, pressing against their eardrums until they thought their skulls might crack. The very air vibrated with its power, thick and oppressive, making each breath a struggle.
"What—what is that?" Kaelion's voice was barely audible over the thunderous noise.
Zane couldn't answer. His omega mark had erupted into searing agony, burning like a brand pressed into his flesh. He clutched his arm, teeth gritted against the pain, as the wind around them went mad. It howled through the tunnel in the wrong direction, pushing against them with desperate force, as if the very air itself was trying to drive them back.
*Run,* the wind seemed to whisper. *Run, run, RUN.*
The roar came again, closer now, and with it came something that made their blood freeze—the sound of stone cracking, of massive weight shifting, of something unimaginably huge stirring to life.
And then the world came down.
"MOVE!" Zane screamed, grabbing Kaelion's arm as the tunnel ceiling began to collapse behind them. Chunks of stone the size of men crashed down, each impact sending shockwaves through the remaining structure. They ran blindly, stumbling over loose rocks, choking on dust, as the mountain tried to bury them alive.
A boulder slammed into the ground inches from Kaelion's head. Another crushed the path they'd been standing on moments before. The tunnel was disintegrating around them, folding in on itself like a dying throat.
They burst from the tunnel mouth just as the last of it caved in with a sound like thunder. Behind them, tons of stone sealed their escape route, trapping them on the wrong side of hell.
Zane spun around, staring at the collapsed entrance in horror. "No... no, no, NO!"
"It's gone," Kaelion whispered, his face ghost-white. "The tunnel's completely blocked. We can't go back."
The marks on both their arms throbbed with synchronized pain, as if responding to some unseen threat. The wind continued to blow against them, carrying scents that made their stomachs turn—decay, sulfur, and something else. Something that smelled like fear itself.
"We have to find another way," Zane said, though his voice shook. "The camp... Arthur will be wondering where we are."
Kaelion pointed through the settling dust toward the distant glow of fires. "The battlefield. We can cross it, reach the Dead Forest, and circle back to camp."
"Through the battlefield?" Zane stared at the hellscape spread before them. "That's suicide. There could be Orcs, patrols—"
"You have a better idea?" Kaelion's voice cracked. "Because I'm open to suggestions!"
Another roar echoed from somewhere behind the collapsed stones, fainter now but no less terrifying. Whatever had caused the earthquake was still out there, still moving.
"The battlefield it is," Zane muttered.
---
Nothing could have prepared them for what they found.
The battlefield stretched before them like a wound in the earth, a vast expanse of churned mud and broken dreams. Bodies lay scattered across the scarred ground—not arranged in neat rows like in the old songs, but twisted and torn, thrown about like discarded toys by some giant child's tantrum.
The stench hit them first. Death had a smell, they discovered—sweet and rotten and coppery all at once, thick enough to taste. Kaelion immediately doubled over and retched, adding his own bile to the cursed soil.
"Gods," Zane whispered, pressing his sleeve over his nose and mouth. "How many died here?"
Everywhere they looked, there were more horrors. A Libran soldier, his mark still visible on his severed arm. An Orc warrior, his tusks broken, his eyes staring sightlessly at the blood-red sky. Horses, their bodies bloated and crawling with flies. Weapons jutting from the mud like metal flowers in a garden of death.
"We have to keep moving," Kaelion said through gritted teeth, wiping vomit from his chin. "Stay low, stay quiet."
They picked their way through the carnage, trying not to step on the fallen, trying not to look too closely at faces they might recognize. The marks on their arms burned steadily now, a constant reminder that this place was wrong, tainted, dangerous.
"There," Zane pointed toward a line of trees in the distance. "The Dead Forest. If we can reach—"
The scream tore through the air.
It was the same inhuman shriek they'd heard in the tunnel, but louder now, more immediate. The sound seemed to claw at their minds, making their vision blur and their knees buckle. Both boys stumbled, and the ground beneath Zane's feet gave way.
They tumbled into a trench that hadn't been visible from above—a mass grave filled with bodies stacked like cordwood. Zane landed hard on something soft and yielding, something that used to be human. The smell was overwhelming, a physical presence that seemed to crawl into their lungs and nest there.
"Don't move," Kaelion breathed, grabbing Zane's arm. "Something's coming."
They pressed themselves flat against the corpse-wall, hardly daring to breathe. Above them, heavy footsteps approached—multiple sets, moving with nervous, uneven steps. Orcish voices muttered in their harsh tongue, punctuated by the clanking of chains and fearful whispers.
Slowly, carefully, Zane lifted his head above the rim of the trench.
What he saw would haunt his nightmares forever.
A full troop of Orc warriors stood in a trembling circle—at least a dozen of them, each gripping thick iron chains with white-knuckled terror. Their faces were masks of barely controlled fear, sweat beading on their tusked features despite the cool air. And at the center of their terrified formation, restrained by their combined desperate efforts, was something that should not exist.
The creature was massive—easily the size of a draft horse, but built like a wolf that had been twisted by a madman's fever dreams. Its body was a patchwork of rotting flesh, black and green and crawling with maggots. But it was the face that made Zane's blood freeze.
Where eyes should have been, there were only bloody sockets pierced through with rusted nails and barbed wire. The metal had been driven deep, creating a crown of agony around its skull. Its muzzle was elongated like a wolf's, but far too large, far too intelligent. When it opened its mouth, rows of dagger-sharp teeth gleamed wetly in the dim light.
"What is that thing?" Kaelion whispered, so quietly Zane almost didn't hear him.
One of the Orcs, his voice shaking with terror, whispered to his companion, "The masters... they gave us this cursed thing. Said to bring it here."
"Why?" another Orc hissed back, sweat dripping from his brow. "What do they want with it?"
"Don't know. Don't want to know. Just... just keep the chains tight."
They thrust a corpse toward the creature's muzzle—the body of a Libran soldier, his mark clearly visible even in death. But their movements were hesitant, terrified, like men forced to feed a dragon.
The beast's reaction was immediate and horrifying. Its entire body convulsed with what could only be described as ecstasy. It licked the dead man's wounds with a tongue like a strip of raw meat, making sounds that were part growl, part moan, part something far worse.
"Elden blood," one of the Orcs grunted in heavily accented Common. "Make it hungry for the mark-bearers."
"Weapon is almost ready," another replied. "Soon we unleash it on the slave camp."
Zane felt Kaelion tense beside him. The creature was being used for something—but the Orcs clearly had no control over it, no understanding of what they'd been given. They were as much prisoners as jailers.
The beast suddenly lunged forward, its jaws snapping toward the closest Orc. The warrior barely jerked back in time, cursing as teeth the size of daggers clicked together inches from his throat.
"Control it!" the lead Orc snarled. "The chains—"
But the creature had tasted freedom in that moment of near-contact. With a roar that shook the very air, it bit down on the chain closest to its muzzle. The links, forged of the strongest iron, snapped like twigs.
One of the Orcs screamed as the broken chain whipped back, taking his hand clean off at the wrist. Blood spurted in crimson arcs as he stumbled backward, clutching the spurting stump.
The other Orcs panicked, screaming in their native tongue as they jabbed at the beast with spears and swords. But their weapons only seemed to enrage it further, and their terror made their strikes wild and ineffective. More chains snapped under the creature's fury.
"The masters didn't tell us it could do this!" one Orc wailed.
"Run!" another bellowed. "Leave it! Save yourselves!"
The creature was free.
What followed was not a battle—it was a massacre. The beast moved with impossible speed for something its size, covering the distance to the nearest Orc in a single bound. Its jaws closed around the warrior's torso, and there was a wet tearing sound as it quite literally ripped him in half.
The second Orc tried to flee, but the creature was on him before he'd taken three steps. A massive paw, tipped with claws like rusted swords, swiped across his back, opening him from shoulder to hip. He fell screaming, his spine visible through the gaping wound.
The third Orc—the one who'd lost his hand—was backing away in terror, clutching his bleeding stump and babbling prayers to whatever dark gods his people worshipped. He saw Zane's face peering over the edge of the trench and pointed with his remaining hand.
"There!" he screamed in Orcish. "More of them! The marked ones—"
The creature's head snapped around with predatory focus. Those ruined eye sockets, weeping blood and pus around the embedded metal, somehow fixed directly on Zane's position. Its nostrils flared, and a sound emerged from its throat that was disturbingly close to a purr.
The pointing Orc never finished his warning. The beast's jaws closed around his head with a crunch that seemed to echo across the entire battlefield. When it lifted its muzzle, only a ragged stump remained where the Orc's neck met his shoulders.
"Don't move," Kaelion breathed against Zane's ear. "Don't even breathe."
But Zane was already trembling, and in his terror, his hand slipped against the edge of the trench. A jagged piece of metal—part of a broken sword—sliced across his finger, opening a thin red line.
A single drop of blood fell into the charnel pit below.
The creature's entire body went rigid. Its nostril's flared again, wider this time, and that obscene purring grew louder. Slowly, with the deliberate care of a predator that has found exactly what it was hunting for, it began to move toward their hiding place.
And then it spoke.
Zane's world tilted sideways. His mind simply refused to process what he was hearing. The voice that emerged from that ruined throat was like grinding stone, like the whispers of the damned—but it was forming words. *Words.* An animal was *speaking.*
Kaelion made a strangled sound beside him, his face white with shock. Neither of them had ever heard of such a thing—beasts that spoke were legends, myths, stories told to frighten children.
The creature's words were in the Ancient Tongue—the formal language Arthur had insisted they learn:
"*Kaleth mor vethis... sul'thara elden neth mortis...*"
Zane's mind reeled as he translated, his voice barely a whisper: "Finally... so long have I waited... for this elden blood..."
"It... it can't be speaking," Kaelion breathed, his voice cracking. "Animals don't... they can't..."
But the creature continued, its voice dropping to something almost conversational, as if it were discussing the weather rather than promising their doom:
"*Come out, little prince... Let me taste what flows in your veins... Let me show you what your royal blood is truly worth...*"
The sheer impossibility of it—a beast, speaking their ancient language, knowing things it couldn't possibly know—sent waves of primal terror through both boys. This violated every law of nature they'd ever known.
The mark on Zane's arm erupted into agony so intense he nearly screamed. Beside him, Kaelion made a strangled sound as his own mark began to burn.
The creature took another step closer, its massive form blotting out what little light filtered down into the trench.
"*I can smell your terror, children of the fallen kingdom... I can taste your despair... It makes the blood so much sweeter...*"