The tavern was little more than a ruin patched with canvas, its air thick with smoke and fear. Men huddled in clusters, voices low, mugs untouched.
"They said he tore Malvek apart," one scavenger whispered, eyes darting to the doorway as if the shadow might be listening. "Not just killed him. Drank him."
"Lies." The mercenary across the table shook his head, but his hand trembled on his cup. "No man bleeds like that and still stands."
The first leaned forward, voice dropping further. "I saw it. The shadows ate him. Malvek screamed like a furnace was lit in his lungs. When it ended, there was nothing left—just ash."
A silence spread across the table.
In the corner, a robed figure listened, head bowed, fingers moving in quiet prayer. His lips shaped words of the old tongue, the language of chains and fire. When he lifted his gaze, the candlelight gleamed on eyes too steady, too cold.
"The husker is real," the priest murmured. "The Forge births abominations when it is fed wrongly. This 'Soul-Eater'… he is not a man. He is the Forge's curse."
The mercenaries shifted uneasily.
"What do you want us to do?" one finally asked.
The priest smiled thinly. "Bleed him. Burn him. And when he screams, I will draw the curse out and bind it."
Across the camp, in the high scaffolds overlooking the ruins, a woman crouched with her cloak wrapped tight against the ash wind. Her eyes glowed faintly in the dark—sigils etched on her skin flaring when she exhaled.
She had watched the boy fight, watched the storm of shadow consume Malvek's warband.
Most men would run from such a thing. She did not.
Instead, she marked his face in memory, tracing his outline in the ash with her finger.
"A bearer," she whispered to the wind. "And not yet broken."
She smiled, teeth sharp as a blade.
"The game begins."