The battlefield was mud and blood — the kind that swallowed sound and hope alike.
Smoke coiled from burning siege carts. The air stank of iron and sweat. Men screamed. Steel rang. And at the center of it all, beneath the shattered banner of Krag's army, two figures faced one another — one vast and scarred, the other lean, young, and burning with something older than hate.
The Exiled Prince stood barefoot, his armor cracked, his blade slick with gore. His chest rose and fell like a beast's. Across from him, Warlord Krag grinned, teeth flashing under a mess of beard and blood. The brute stood nearly twice his height, his arms as thick as tree trunks, scars crisscrossing every inch of him like a map of violence.
"So you're the half-blood they call 'prince,'" Krag sneered. "You don't look royal. You look like meat."
The Prince didn't answer. His eyes, dark and alive with faint firelight, said everything. Around them, their armies had fallen silent. It wasn't war anymore — it was judgment.
When Krag lunged, the ground itself seemed to quake. His axe carved through the air with a sound like thunder tearing the sky apart.
The Prince barely dodged. The blade grazed his shoulder, and blood sprayed. He stumbled back, pain biting deep — and the Codex within him stirred. Pages flipped soundlessly in his mind, the whisper a living hunger:
> Bleed. Feed. Become.
He steadied himself, teeth grinding. His pulse was a drum. His fear was gone — burned away by a fierce, wild calm. Every nerve screamed for survival. Every instinct howled for dominion.
Krag came again, faster than a mountain that size should move. His axe crashed down; the Prince blocked, barely. The shock cracked the ground beneath them, and he felt his bones scream. He was thrown back, rolling through the dirt.
"You're strong, boy," Krag laughed, "but not enough. You don't have the blood for this land."
The Prince spat red onto the mud and stood, slower this time. His hand trembled around the sword hilt. His vision blurred — not from weakness, but from something awakening inside. The Codex pulsed, and for a heartbeat, he saw through the beast before him — saw the bloodline burning in his veins, ancient and wild.
> Devour him, whispered the Codex. You carry the hunger of kings. Prove it.
He raised his blade again, lowering into a stance not taught by men, but born of desperation. A shiver of Nether Flame danced along the blade — black and violet, soft yet consuming.
Krag roared and charged. The ground cracked under his steps.
This time, the Prince didn't dodge.
He met the attack head-on.
Steel met steel — then flame — then darkness.
The blast sent men flying. Dust rose. When it cleared, the two still stood locked, axe against blade. Krag's face twisted in effort. The Prince's teeth bared in a grim smile. Slowly, impossibly, he began to push back.
"You… should've… stayed dead," the Prince hissed.
He let go of restraint. The Codex unfurled inside him, spilling a tide of shadow and heat through his veins. Nether Flame burst from his body — black fire crawling up his arm, devouring the axe's edge, searing Krag's flesh. The brute howled, jerking back.
The battlefield lit with a light that gave no warmth. Soldiers on both sides fell to their knees. Even the wind seemed to retreat.
Krag stumbled, clutching his burning arm. "What—what are you?"
The Prince stepped forward, slowly, deliberately. The flames coiled behind him like living wings.
"I," he said softly, "am hunger."
He drove his sword through Krag's chest.
For a moment, nothing happened — and then the Codex devoured.
Black fire spiraled into the wound, threads of essence twisting like smoke toward the Prince's heart. Krag screamed — not in pain, but in denial, as his strength, his fury, his very lineage was pulled apart and consumed.
> Berserker blood detected.
Integration in progress…
The Codex's voice echoed in his skull. The Prince shuddered as new strength poured into him — raw, primal, savage. His muscles burned. His heartbeat slowed, heavy, powerful. He could feel Krag's fury fusing with his own.
And then — silence.
Krag's body hit the ground, lifeless. His blood steamed under the black sun of Nether Flame.
The Prince stood alone amid the ruin of two armies, his shadow stretching long across the battlefield. His soldiers stared — not in fear, not in awe, but in worship. They had seen death reborn as something worse — and more beautiful.
He turned toward them, eyes glowing faintly crimson. "The weak obey the strong," he said, voice hoarse, low. "But the strong… bow to none."
Silence. Then, one by one, Krag's soldiers knelt. The clatter of weapons hitting mud rolled across the field like thunder.
"Lord of the Forsaken!" someone shouted.
The chant spread, louder, echoing through the valley, the sound of broken men pledging to something even more broken — yet unyielding.
The Prince stood still, chest heaving. Inside him, the Codex whispered again — almost pleased.
> You consumed. You evolved. You are closer to the Monarch.
He looked down at his hands. They trembled, not from weakness, but from knowing. Each victory carved away another piece of what he once was.
And yet… for the first time, he didn't feel lost.
He felt alive.
Above, black clouds gathered. Thunder rolled. It was as if the heavens themselves took note of this new blasphemy — the day a prince became something the gods themselves would come to fear.
He devoured strength and birthed legend. The Nether Fortress awaits its first true lord.
The storm broke above them.
Rain fell — slow at first, then heavy, washing the blood from the field in thin rivers that turned red as they ran. The sky seemed to weep for what had just been born beneath it.
The Exiled Prince stood motionless, sword still buried in the corpse of the warlord. The handle burned in his palm, heat searing through the flesh, but he didn't release it. He couldn't. The Codex pulsed, alive and hungry, refusing to let go.
> Assimilation complete. Berserker's Wrath integrated.
Body durability: increased.
Bloodline corruption: 3%. Warning — excessive fusion destabilizes humanity.
He gasped.
For a fleeting moment, he felt everything—the rage of Krag's last heartbeat, the despair of his countless kills, the blind fury that had driven the brute's life. It all poured into him like molten metal, filling cracks he didn't know existed.
The power was intoxicating.
The pain was divine.
He pulled his sword free, and as Krag's body slumped into the mud, the flames devoured what was left. Not a corpse. Not a grave. Only ash that swirled upward, vanishing into the storm.
Behind him, his army knelt in unison.
"Lord of the Forsaken!" they cried again, their voices breaking the air.
The chant carried through the valley, echoing against cliffs, swallowed by the rain, returning again as if the world itself repeated their prayer.
He should have felt triumphant. Victorious.
But instead, he felt a strange stillness — like standing on the edge of a cliff and realizing there's no ground left to step on.
Lira approached through the chaos, her hair soaked, her face streaked with grime and rain. She stopped a few steps away, bow lowered, eyes searching his face as though looking for the man she knew before the battle began.
"Your Highness," she said softly, "the war is won."
He looked at her — really looked — and for the briefest heartbeat, the hunger dimmed.
The rain clung to his lashes, masking tears he didn't remember shedding.
"Won?" he repeated, his voice barely a whisper. "Or traded?"
Lira frowned. "Traded?"
He turned to the burning field, the fallen soldiers, the smoldering ruin of what had been two armies. "Every victory takes something," he murmured. "A piece of who I was… something I may never reclaim."
Lira stepped closer. "Then perhaps that's the price of being king."
He almost smiled. Almost.
But the Codex pulsed again — a low, rhythmic thrum in his chest that made the rain seem distant.
> Do not mourn the weak self. You ascend by shedding the old.
You are no longer prince of a dying throne. You are the seed of dominion.
He clenched his fist.
The flames along his sword died out, leaving only a faint glow beneath the metal — a reminder, a brand.
The soldiers awaited his command.
The battlefield awaited his claim.
He looked up at the dark fortress in the distance — Krag's fortress, its towers half-broken, its banners tattered and smoking in the wind. Once a symbol of tyranny. Now, it would become the heart of something new.
The Prince lifted his sword, pointing toward it. His voice cut through the storm like a blade.
"Gather the bodies. The dead fought under my shadow now — they will not rot forgotten."
He paused, gaze burning. "And raise new banners. This land belongs to no warlord. It belongs to the Forsaken."
A roar answered him — hundreds of voices, raw and desperate, yet alive.
It wasn't loyalty born of duty. It was worship born of terror and hope in equal measure.
He turned away, stepping through the mud. With every step, the Codex's whisper followed him, threading through his thoughts.
> The strong do not seek peace. They seek purpose.
Yours begins now.
As he walked toward the fortress, the rain began to ease.
The air thickened with the scent of burned blood and new beginnings.
Lira fell into step beside him, quiet. "You've changed," she murmured.
He didn't deny it.
He didn't need to.
His gaze fixed on the fortress gates. "If power demands change," he said, voice steady, "then I'll change until even the gods forget my name."
And as thunder rolled behind him, the Lord of the Forsaken ascended toward his first throne — not as a man reborn, but as a promise fulfilled.
Cliffhanger
The battlefield was his crucible. The fortress awaits his crown.