The air was thick with blood and dust.
Steel rang against steel as the cries of men tore across the ruined plains. The sun bled red behind the smoke, and beneath it—two armies clashed like starving beasts.
But amid the chaos, one duel decided everything.
Krag the Butcher, Warlord of the Iron Fang Tribe, stood towering and bare-chested, muscles rippling like forged iron. His skin was covered in scars that told stories of victories long past. His twin axes dripped crimson, the scent of death clinging to him like a curse.
Before him stood the Exiled Prince—tattered armor scorched by battle, one shoulder torn open, his black hair matted with sweat and blood. His sword, chipped and dull, burned faintly with a sinister ember. The Nether Flame hissed at its edges, as if hungering for flesh.
Around them, their soldiers had stopped fighting. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
Krag grinned, exposing teeth like broken tombstones.
"So the little half-blood thinks he can claim my ruin?" His voice rumbled like thunder. "You wear your mother's curse proudly, boy. Shall I end that lineage today?"
The Prince said nothing. His gaze didn't waver. His heartbeat was steady, his breaths sharp. Beneath the surface of his calm, the Codex pulsed like a living heart, whispering to him.
Feed. Devour. Ascend.
He had felt this before—on the night he lost everything. The night he fled the Empire with chains on his wrists and hatred in his veins.
And now, that same hunger coiled within him once again.
Krag raised his axes. "Then come, little prince. Let's see if your flame burns hotter than blood!"
He charged.
The ground cracked beneath each step. The sheer force of his swing shattered the Prince's guard, sending sparks and blood flying. Pain shot through the Prince's arm, but he didn't fall. He slid backward, boots carving trenches into the dirt.
Another blow came—a whirlwind of raw fury—and the Prince barely ducked in time. The axe grazed his cheek, slicing open flesh. Warm blood ran down his face, stinging his eye.
His army shouted his name, but he didn't hear them. The world narrowed to Krag's grin, his laughter, and the pulse of the Codex inside his chest.
He could end this. He knew he could.
If he just gave in—if he let the Codex take more.
But he remembered Lira's voice from the night before.
"Don't lose yourself trying to win. Monsters never stop devouring—until nothing's left."
He grit his teeth, blocking another blow that nearly shattered his sword.
He needed to control it—not surrender to it.
Krag slammed a boot into his chest, sending him sprawling.
"You talk of ruling the borderlands," Krag sneered, "but you can't even stand!"
The Prince coughed blood, but his eyes gleamed with something darker than pain. He pressed his hand to the ground—and the Nether Flame burst outward, a wave of black fire sweeping the field.
Krag snarled, shielding himself with his axes as the fire roared. The soldiers watching stumbled back, shielding their faces from the unnatural heat.
When the smoke cleared, the Prince was standing again—his wounds still bleeding, but his gaze calm and burning.
He lifted his sword, and his voice rang across the field.
"Do you know why men like you always fall, Krag?"
Krag blinked, caught between anger and confusion.
"Because you fight for fear. For control. For flesh and coin." The Prince stepped forward, fire licking his steps. "But I fight for vengeance. For those who left me to die. For the blood that denied me a name."
The Codex pulsed violently. His veins lit with black light.
The whispers grew louder—Now. Devour him.
He didn't resist this time. He accepted. Not fully. Not mindlessly. But as a weapon to wield.
Dark flames wrapped his body. His eyes turned crimson and gold. The ground trembled as he raised his sword again—now a blade of pure black fire.
Krag roared and charged once more, both axes spinning. "You're no prince—you're a monster!"
"Then let the monster answer you!"
They collided—flame and steel, wrath and will.
Each strike shook the earth. Each parry spilled blood. Krag's axes clashed in a storm of sparks, carving deep into the Prince's armor, but he did not fall. He couldn't. Every cut only fed the flame. Every wound only deepened his resolve.
The Codex whispered louder, until he could feel its voice behind his heartbeat:
Consume him. Take his strength. His lineage. His name.
When Krag swung for his neck, the Prince caught the axe barehanded. Flesh tore. Blood sprayed.
He didn't care.
With his other hand, he plunged his flaming blade through Krag's chest.
The warlord's eyes widened—shock, disbelief, rage.
The black fire began to spread from the wound, crawling up his veins, devouring his very essence.
Krag's scream echoed through the battlefield as his flesh melted into ash.
And the Prince—his eyes burning with that infernal light—devoured.
The flames sank into him, his body trembling as if something vast and wild was being forced inside. The Codex blazed with power, symbols shifting, pages turning within his soul.
When the fire finally dimmed, only the Prince stood—alone in the silence of hundreds of kneeling warriors.
Krag was gone.
Only ashes and the faint echo of his scream remained.
The Prince stood still for a long time, his breaths heavy, his hands shaking.
He could still taste the man's power inside him—the raw, intoxicating strength.
But beneath it, he felt something else.
A shadow crawling deeper into his heart.
Lira approached him slowly, her voice trembling.
"You... devoured him?"
He didn't answer immediately. His eyes, half-shadowed by flame, looked distant—haunted.
"He chose to stand in my way," he said finally, his tone flat but cold. "I warned them all. The Forsaken bow to no one."
Then, louder—turning to the hundreds of warriors watching—he raised his burning sword high.
"Who among you dares defy me now?"
No one moved. No one breathed.
Then, as if on cue, they dropped to their knees—one by one, until the entire field was filled with bowed heads.
The chant rose like thunder:
"Lord of the Forsaken! Lord of the Forsaken!"
The Codex pulsed once more, a dark hum of approval echoing through his chest.
A new rune appeared on its pages—its meaning clear.
Dominion.
The Prince lowered his sword.
The fire dimmed.
And for a fleeting moment, as the wind carried away the ashes of the dead, he felt something close to victory.
But deep inside, a voice whispered again.
Soft. Inevitable.
"Power always demands more."
Silence fell heavy over the battlefield. The wind whistled across the plains, carrying the bitter scent of smoke, sweat, and death.
The Exiled Prince stood at the center of it all—still, motionless—his blade buried in the ground beside him, flames dimming into a faint glow. Around him, hundreds knelt, heads bowed so low their foreheads pressed the blood-soaked dirt.
The chant Lord of the Forsaken faded into ragged breaths.
Only the crackle of dying embers remained.
Lira approached first. Her steps were hesitant, her eyes never leaving him. She had seen him bleed, fight, fall—but never this. Never the thing that had just happened before her eyes.
The man she had followed into exile looked… changed. His presence felt heavier, his shadow longer.
When she finally reached him, she saw his hands were still trembling, faint smoke rising from his skin. "You shouldn't stand," she whispered. "You're hurt. You need—"
"I'm fine."
The words came sharp, almost instinctive, but his voice was rough—like he'd swallowed flame and ash both.
He raised his head. His eyes, once the deep steel of a storm, now flickered faintly gold at the edges.
Lira took a step back before she could stop herself.
For a moment, something—some flicker of pain—crossed his face at her reaction. He turned away, breaking the silence with a dry laugh that carried no joy.
"So that's what victory feels like," he murmured. "Cold."
Behind them, the newly conquered warriors began to rise.
Rough men with scarred faces and wild eyes looked upon the Prince not with hatred now, but with a reverent fear. They had seen their Warlord—their Butcher—consumed whole.
And fear… could be molded into loyalty.
One of Krag's lieutenants, a brute with half a jaw missing, dropped his axe and fell to one knee. "From this day, my blade serves the Forsaken Lord."
Another followed. Then another.
By the time the Prince turned, the entire Iron Fang Tribe knelt in a single wave, voices rising like a storm of oaths.
Lira stared at them—astonished, frightened, and yet unable to deny the truth.
He had done it.
He had won.
But at what cost?
The Codex pulsed inside him again, faintly glowing through his armor—like a heart of molten light beating beneath the surface of his skin.
You have devoured well, it whispered. Your dominion begins. Mark them. Bind them. Their strength is yours now.
He winced, pressing a hand to his chest. For a second, the world spun—he could almost hear the screams of the souls he'd absorbed, echoes trapped within the Codex's endless abyss.
Krag's voice among them.
Raging. Cursing.
Fading.
"Are you listening?" Lira asked softly, stepping closer.
His breathing steadied. He looked at her, eyes clear once more. "Yes," he said, though his voice trembled faintly. "Just the wind."
But both of them knew the wind didn't whisper like that.
He wiped his blade clean on the hem of his torn cloak and sheathed it slowly. "Gather the wounded," he ordered. "We march at dawn. The Iron Fang fortress is ours now."
Lira hesitated, studying his face.
"There's no need to rush. You haven't even rested—"
"Rest is for those with safety," he said quietly. "I have none."
Then he turned, walking away through the field of corpses, his cape dragging streaks of blood across the dirt.
Every soldier—old or new—bowed as he passed.
The legend of the Forsaken Prince was no longer a whisper. It had become a storm.
Night fell.
The campfires burned low, flickering over the ruins of the battlefield. Wounded men groaned in the distance. The smell of smoke hung thick in the air.
Lira sat outside his tent, staring at the flame between her hands. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw it—the way Krag's body had burned away, devoured by that impossible fire.
And worse… the look on the Prince's face when it happened.
He hadn't seemed triumphant. He'd seemed… lost.
Inside the tent, the Prince sat alone, his sword laid across his knees.
The Codex floated above his palm, pages turning without wind, runes shifting like living things.
Every time it glowed, he felt that pull again—the promise of more power, more dominion.
He clenched his fist. "You said you would make me strong," he muttered. "But what are you turning me into?"
The Codex didn't answer in words.
Only whispers.
The strong define what they become.
He closed his eyes. The whispers sank into his bones. His exhaustion threatened to pull him under—but even in the dark, the flame within him refused to die.
A sound stirred outside.
Lira entered, carrying a bowl of water. "You're bleeding again," she said softly. "You should let someone tend to it."
He opened his eyes. They softened, just a little. "If I stop now, I might never start again."
She frowned. "That's not strength. That's torment."
He looked at her for a long time—long enough that she almost believed he'd argue, deflect, command.
But instead, he sighed. "Maybe. But it's all I have left."
She knelt and began cleaning the blood on his arm despite his protests.
For the first time that night, he didn't pull away.
Outside, the fires dimmed.
Inside, the Codex pulsed faintly on the table beside him—its runes rearranging into a single word in the ancient tongue.
Dominion.
He didn't see it.
But as he finally closed his eyes, exhaustion dragging him into uneasy sleep, the rune's glow spread through the tent—casting long shadows that twisted like hungry ghosts.
And in the stillness of night, the whispers came again, curling through his dreams like smoke.
Rule them. Bind them. Become the monster the world fears.