The next day dawned red. The borderlands sky bled with dust, the rising sun a molten wound above the jagged horizon.
The Forsaken gathered on the broken plains, their bodies sore from ruin and battle, but their eyes sharp with a new fire. The Rune of Dominion pulsed faintly on their skin, dark sigils etched like shadows under their flesh. They stood straighter now, breathing in rhythm with the one they had chosen to follow.
Yet when the ground began to tremble beneath a distant march, unease stirred in their ranks.
Drums. Heavy, bone-shaking, like the beating of a giant's heart. The rhythm rolled across the wilderness, announcing the approach of something vast, something merciless.
Then they saw him.
Warlord Krag.
He strode at the head of three hundred warriors, a wall of iron and scars. Krag was enormous—taller than two men, shoulders wide as a fortress gate. His arms were bare, crisscrossed with old wounds that gleamed like trophies. He wore a tusked helm, but his face was bare beneath it, a beast's grin splitting his scarred lips.
His warriors marched in perfect chaos—no banners, no discipline, only raw hunger. Each carried scavenged blades, spiked clubs, or bone-axes dripping with rust. They were raiders, killers, the kind who had lived their whole lives taking from the weak.
And in their eyes was the certainty that today would be no different.
The Forsaken stirred nervously. Many of them had been prey to warlords like this before. The Rune gave them strength, yes—but against three hundred, against Krag? Fear gnawed again at the edges of their hearts.
The Prince stood at their front, silent. His black flame smoldered faintly in the morning wind. The Codex whispered in his chest, urging him to devour, to dominate, to prove himself. But he did not move yet. He waited, eyes locked on the brute who dared march into his shadow.
Krag stopped a few paces away, planting his spiked club in the ground with a crack that echoed like thunder.
"You," Krag rumbled, his voice gravel and laughter twisted together. "So you're the one they whisper about. The exile who crawled out of his grave. The bastard of the empire."
Laughter rippled through his men.
The Prince did not flinch. "And you are Krag—the scavenger who hides behind the bones of his enemies and calls it strength."
That silenced them. Krag's grin widened. "Sharp tongue. But strength is measured in blood, not words. Tell me, half-blood… will you kneel and hand me the ruin's treasures, or will you watch me grind your pack of beggars into the dust?"
He leaned forward, the tusked helm catching the light like fangs. "Choose wisely. Kneeling at least leaves you alive."
The Forsaken stirred. Some looked to their Prince with desperate eyes, silently pleading—don't provoke him, don't risk us. They had only just begun to taste strength. They weren't ready to lose it.
The Prince raised a hand, silencing even their breaths.
"You mistake me," he said, his voice carrying across the plains, quiet yet unyielding. "I did not crawl from the ruin to kneel before another carrion lord. The ruin stripped us bare, tested our bones, devoured the weak. What you see before you, Krag, is what survived."
He let the words settle. His gaze swept his people, meeting their eyes one by one. "You asked for mercy once. You begged for scraps. No more. Today you stand not as beggars, but as Forsaken. And the Forsaken do not kneel."
The Rune of Dominion pulsed, threads binding tighter. Their backs straightened, jaws clenched. Fear burned—but beside it, something harder began to glow.
Krag threw back his head and roared with laughter. "Forsaken? You dare name yourself lord of rats? Good! Then I'll crush you myself and wear your skull as a crown."
He wrenched his club from the ground and swung it onto his shoulder. Behind him, three hundred warriors slammed weapons together, a wall of sound that shook the plains.
The Prince drew his black flame into his hands, bone-armor flaring across his chest. The Codex whispered: Devour him. Claim his horde.
He took a step forward, his shadow stretching long in the red dawn.
"Then come," he said softly, every word sharp as steel. "Test your strength against ruin's fire."
Krag bellowed, surging forward with earth-shaking strides. His horde erupted into a charge, three hundred voices howling.
The Forsaken screamed too—not in fear, but in defiance. They surged behind their Prince, shadows bound to his will, chains transformed into weapons.
The two forces collided in thunder.
And in the center of it all, Krag raised his club to smash the exile prince into the dirt.
The duel of warlords had begun.
Krag's club comes down, and the Prince meets it with his bare, burning hands.
Krag's club descended like a mountain falling. The air itself seemed to tear with the force of it, dust exploding upward as the weapon split the wind. The Forsaken gasped as one—half in awe, half in terror—convinced their fragile hope would be shattered in a single strike.
The Prince did not move.
He planted his feet in the dust and raised his bare hands, black fire wreathing his fingers. When club met palm, the world shook. The ground cratered beneath him, cracks racing outward like veins of lightning.
For a heartbeat, the Prince buckled. His knees sank an inch into the earth. The weight of the blow was monstrous, a living avalanche pressing down on his bones. His arms screamed, flesh tearing, blood running in dark lines down his wrists.
Krag's grin widened. "Too weak!" he roared, pressing harder, the club groaning with pressure. "You dare call yourself lord? You are nothing but a runt who stole power he cannot carry!"
The Rune of Dominion burned against the Prince's skin. Behind him, his Forsaken roared—not in victory, but in desperation, pouring their fear and hope into his back. He felt it all, their breaths, their pounding hearts, the fragile thread that bound them to him.
And something within him answered.
The Codex stirred, whispering in a tongue older than the empire, older than gods. Devour his strength. Prove your dominion.
The Prince exhaled once, steady, and black flame erupted from his palms. The club halted. Krag's eyes narrowed, his grin faltering as the exile pushed back. Inch by inch, the Forsaken Prince straightened, forcing the massive warlord's strike upward until sparks cascaded from the grinding of metal against fire.
"Strength?" the Prince rasped, voice low but carrying. "You think strength is bones and scars? No, Krag. Strength is the will to rise when the world breaks you. Strength is to bleed, to crawl, to burn—and still declare, I will not kneel."
His eyes ignited with Nether flame.
With a roar, he shoved Krag backward. The warlord staggered, boots gouging trenches in the earth. For the first time, Krag's warriors faltered, seeing their invincible giant driven back by the exile they mocked.
Rage twisted Krag's face. He tore his helm away, revealing a head shaved bald, scars carved like ritual brands across his skull. He slammed his club into the dirt, cracking stone. "Then die proving it!"
They clashed again—club against flame, bone armor splintering, muscles straining to their limits. Every strike shook the battlefield, dust and blood raining around them.
The Forsaken and Krag's horde battled in the periphery—steel against steel, screams rising, blood soaking the ground. But every eye, even amidst death, turned again and again to the duel in the center.
Because this was not just two men fighting. This was the law of the borderlands itself on trial.
The Prince, half-blood exile, carried only defiance and a cursed Codex.
Krag, brute warlord, carried the law of the strong—that the weak existed only to be crushed.
Their clash would decide what future the Forsaken could believe in.
Blow after blow landed—bones cracked, armor split, blood sprayed across the earth. Krag's laughter returned, savage and unbroken. "You fight like a beast, boy—but beasts always fall to hunters!"
The Prince spat blood, flames curling from his mouth. He did not answer with words. Instead, he seized the club barehanded, black flame pouring along its shaft, eating the iron itself. Krag's eyes widened as smoke rose from his weapon.
The exile leaned forward, voice a growl.
"Then hunt me, Warlord. Hunt ruin itself."
The Codex pulsed, and deep in his chest something shifted—an urge to devour, to claim, to consume Krag whole.
The battlefield held its breath as both combatants reared back, preparing the strike that would decide the duel.
Cliffhanger
Krag swings with all his might, the Prince answers with his bare burning hands infused with Codex