THE BLOOD DREAM
A Chronicle of the Godscourge
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Prologue: The Blood Dream
Fire.
It was always fire.
Vorthane Krovaxis stood knee-deep in the dead, his sword arm trembling, his armor slick with blood that was not his own. The sky burned crimson above the Shattered Plains, where the bones of thousands of warriors cracked beneath his boots.
Again, whispered the wind—or perhaps the thing that lived inside his skull.
Before him, the Barbarian King Gorvath loomed, a mountain of scarred flesh and rusted iron, his twin axes dripping with the brains of Vorthane's last living comrade.
"Little godling," Gorvath laughed, "your divinity dies here."
Vorthane raised his blade and the world screamed apart.
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Chapter 1: The Butcher's Awakening
He woke with a gasp, iron spikes driven through his palms, pinning him to a stone altar. The air reeked of spoiled meat and burnt hair.
The dungeon was alive.
Walls pulsed like a great beast's throat, veined with black ichor. Hooks dangled with half-flayed prisoners, their lips still moving in silent prayer. A child's hollowed skull sat on a pedestal, its eyes replaced with smoldering coals.
"Ah. The Sleeper stirs," croaked a voice.
A stitched-faced cultist leaned over him, a curved knife sawing at his ribs. "The Dark One promised your flesh would sing when we peeled it."
Vorthane bit through the man's nose before his hands—already healing around the spikes—ripped free.
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Chapter 2: The Feast of Flesh
The escape was not a battle, but a slaughterhouse ballet.
He crushed a butcher's skull against a rendering vat of human fat. Strangled a priest with his own intestines. Tore out a warlock's tongue before the man could finish a curse.
The cultists died laughing, their mouths sewn into permanent grins.
Only one remained—a blind, tongueless wretch chained to the larder door.
Vorthane gripped the man's jaw. "Speak."
The cultist grinned, black tears oozing from his empty sockets.
"East," he gurgled. "Where the sky bleeds silver... the Kingdom of Eclipse waits. The Hollow King... he collects things like you."
Vorthane shattered the man's spine against the wall.
The name meant nothing to him. But his blood burned as if remembering.
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Chapter 3: The March to Ashes
Beyond the dungeon, the Wastes of Mourning stretched—a graveyard of dead kingdoms.
Petrified giants stood frozen mid-scream, their skulls hollowed into nests for carrion birds. The wind carried ghost-chants from the Obsidian Covenant's hidden temples.
The voice slithered through his thoughts:
"You've walked this path before, little god. Will you break this time... or bend?"
On the horizon, lightning split the sky above the Ashen Citadel—its spires twisted like impaled bones, its gates a maw of living iron. The Hollow King's domain. The first fragment of the artifact.
And something worse.
The world was a festering wound, a grotesque mockery of what it could be. Vorthane saw it clearly—the weakness, the decay, the imperfection that clung to every living thing like a disease. And he would cleanse it.
At 6.9 feet tall, his frame was a monument of hardened muscle and unyielding will, his presence alone enough to send lesser men fleeing. His eyes, cold and calculating, held no mercy, only the unshakable conviction of a man who had long since abandoned the shackles of morality. He was perfection wrought in flesh, and the world would either match his vision or be unmade. He was VORTHANE KROVAXIS.
The Artefact of the First Dawn—an ancient relic said to hold the power to reshape reality itself—was his only goal. With it, he would tear down the flawed foundations of this wretched world and rebuild it in his image. No suffering, no weakness, only order. Only perfection.
But the past was not so easily escaped.
A voice slithered through his mind, dark and familiar, whispering in the spaces between his thoughts.
"You think this is your ambition alone?" it murmured, a phantom chuckle echoing in his skull.
"The weak exist to be culled," the voice whispered. "The strong dictate the future. Crush them all, Vorthane. Burn the world to ash, and from the embers, forge something greater."
Vorthane did not resist the voice. He used it. For in the end, it did not matter whether his will was his own or a remnant of a forgotten age. The goal was all that mattered.
And so he walked, a colossus draped in the blood of those foolish enough to stand in his way. Kings, heroes, saints—all fell before him, their ideals shattered like glass against his indomitable will.
The world would be remade. And he would paint its rebirth in crimson.
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Chapter 4: The Silver Wastes
The land beyond the cannibal cult's ruins was a wound that refused to heal. Vorthane Krovaxis walked through fields of glass-sharp grass that sliced at his boots, each step releasing the scent of rust and spoiled honey. The sky hung low here, bloated and purple, like the belly of a corpse left too long in the sun. In the distance, the Ashen Citadel speared the horizon, its spires jagged as broken teeth, its walls the color of a drowned man's skin. The wind carried whispers—not of the dead, but of the dying, voices stretched thin across centuries, begging for a mercy that never came.
The trees were wrong. Their roots clawed at the air instead of the earth, their branches twisting inward like the fingers of a hanged man. Between their trunks, shadows moved without bodies, darting just beyond sight. The river he crossed was thick and slow, its surface shimmering with the rainbow sheen of spilled oil. When he knelt to drink, the water recoiled from his touch, pulling back to reveal the skeletal hands of children buried in the silt, their tiny fingers still clutching rusted coins. Offerings. Or perhaps apologies.
The statues along the road were the worst. They stood in rows, their faces worn smooth by time, their mouths open in silent screams. Black tears streaked their cheeks, fresh and glistening, though no living thing stirred for miles. Some were missing limbs. Others had been split down the middle, their hollow insides stuffed with yellowed bones and tufts of hair. The words carved into their bases were in a language Vorthane shouldn't have known—but he did. "Remember us," they pleaded. "Remember what you did here."
The Figure's laughter curled through his mind like smoke. "They think memory is a kindness," it murmured. "As if forgetting isn't the only gift left for the damned."
The gates of the Ashen Citadel loomed ahead, their iron bars fused into the likeness of interlocked bodies, their mouths stretched wide in agony. The metal was warm to the touch, pulsing faintly, as if the souls trapped within still struggled.
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I. The Gates of Living Iron
Vorthane Krovaxis stood before the Ashen Citadel's gates—a towering maw of interlocked bodies, their silver-coated jaws stretched wide in eternal screams. The air tasted of static and spoiled marrow. Each step forward made his scars twitch in recognition, though he couldn't remember why. Above the archway, words had been carved so deep the stone wept rust: "ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO REMEMBER."
The gates parted with a sound like breaking ribs.
Inside, the citadel breathed.
The halls were lined with mirrors, but they did not reflect. Instead, they showed fragments of lives not his own—a king in silver armor weeping as he drove a dagger into his own son's heart, a woman with Vorthane's eyes burning alive at the stake, a battlefield where the dead rose again and again, only to fall to the same blade. The air stank of clove and rotting parchment, of incense left to smolder over an open grave. Somewhere deep within the fortress, something drummed a slow, uneven rhythm. A heartbeat. Or perhaps a fist against the inside of a coffin.
Walls of compressed skeletons pulsed like a giant's throat, their wired-shut mouths leaking black fluid that formed words on the floor:
WELCOME HOME, YOUR MAJESTY
The Figure's voice coiled around his spine:
"How quaint. He's kept your seat warm."
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II. The Hollow King's Court
The Hollow King awaited him in a throne room of frozen screams.
Malrik the Eclipse was a study in silver and ruin, his skin dipped in liquid metal, his joints stitched with black wire. His mask was a smooth, featureless plate, polished to a mirror's shine, reflecting Vorthane's face back at him—but older, wearier, the eyes hollow with a hunger no flesh could sate. Around him, the walls were adorned with the remains of gods. A storm giant's skull, its hollow eyes still crackling with trapped lightning. A maiden's flayed skin, stretched taut and painted with her own dying visions. A winged figure with its chest split open, its ribs cradling a shard of black stone that pulsed like a living heart.
"Vorthane Krovaxis," the Hollow King said, his voice the sound of coins scattering over a tombstone. "The Cannibal-Slayer. The God-Queller. The man who forgets." He tilted his head, the mask catching the light in unnatural ways. "Tell me, do you dream of Duskfall Ridge? Of the children you left to burn?"
The Figure's voice was a razor dragged along Vorthane's spine. "He's trying to unravel you. How amusing."
Around them, the court watched with hollow eyes:
• The Stillborn Saints: Warriors who died in the womb, resurrected in fetal armor, their umbilical cords writhing like serpents.
• The Mirror Knights: Empty suits of armor filled with screaming reflections of Vorthane's past atrocities.
• The Penitent: Flayed giants wearing their own skin as cloaks, each branded with one of Vorthane's old battle-cries.
Malrik snapped his fingers. A banquet table erupted from the floor—its surface a living mosaic of tortured faces.
"Let us dine," he said, "as civilized monsters."
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III. The Feast of Broken Memories
A banquet table stood between them, its surface carved with the names of the dead. The plates were shards of broken altars, the goblets fashioned from skulls.
First Course: A still-beating heart on a gold plate. The donor hung in a cage above them—a man with Vorthane's face, his chest cavity gaping.
"Taste," Malrik urged. "Memory is the first spice."
When Vorthane refused, the king sighed and crushed the heart himself. The blood formed a vision in the air:
A younger Malrik kneeling before a black-armored figure—Vorthane?—as a silver mask was pressed onto his screaming face.
"You gave me this crown," the Hollow King whispered. "Don't you remember?"
The Figure hissed: "He lies."
Second Course: A thin, crimson soup that steamed despite the chill. When Vorthane dipped a finger into it, the liquid clung to his skin, forming words in a language he had not spoken in lifetimes. "Forgive me," it begged in his own voice.
"A taste of your own regrets," Malrik said. "A specialty of the house."
Third Course: A woman's face, fried crisp, her body dancing on puppet strings at the table's edge.
Vorthane knew those eyes.
"My queen," Malrik sighed, stroking the fried cheek. "She begged for you at the end."
The Figure's warning came too late—Vorthane's fist shattered the table, revealing the horror beneath:
A mural of himself wearing the Hollow King's mask, standing atop a mountain of his own corpses.
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IV. The Garden of Silver Screams
The descent to the Chamber of Echoes was a spiral of fused vertebrae, each step slick with:
• Blood that whispered battle-plans
• Bile that burned with the taste of betrayal
• Liquid silver that wept Malrik's tears
Below sprawled the garden—a nightmare of living art:
• Trees of stretched intestines bearing crystallized scream-fruit
• Fountains pumping mercury through veins of stone
• Statues of past Hollow Kings, their mouths stretched into archways
At the center pulsed the First Fragment, embedded in a twelve-armed colossus with six of Vorthane's faces.
"My masterpiece," Malrik breathed, his mask cracking further. "You recognize yourself?"
The Figure snarled: "Kill him before—"
Too late.
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V. The Eclipse Legion's Onslaught
The Stillborn Saints attacked first, their umbilical cords lashing like barbed whips. One wrapped around Vorthane's wrist and burrowed in, pumping liquid frost up his veins.
"You denied us life," they chorused. "Now we deny you death."
The Mirror Knights came next—their armor reflecting Vorthane's worst moments:
• Drowning children in molten gold
• Ordering a village to eat itself
• Pressing the silver mask onto Malrik's screaming face
When Vorthane shattered one's visor, the fragments reformed into a razor-edged hymn that carved through his thigh.
The Penitent arrived last—flayed giants wielding morningstars made of crystallized confessions. Each impact made Vorthane bleed memories:
A silver-haired boy (Malrik?) reaching for him as flames consumed a palace.
"You let me burn!" the Hollow King screamed through a hundred silver doppelgängers now pouring from the walls.
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VI. The Shattering Revelation
Vorthane did the unthinkable—he stopped fighting.
Letting a doppelgänger's axe bite deep into his shoulder, he grabbed its wrist and pushed the First Fragment's power through the connection.
The effect was catastrophic:
• Stillborn Saints unraveled into thrashing umbilical cords
• Mirror Knights shattered into screaming portraits of their own deaths
• The Penitent's skin fused to their bones mid-scream
Malrik's true form emerged—no longer a king, but a child preserved in liquid shadow, his hands still reaching for help.
"You... remembered," he gasped.
The colossus bowed.
"Master."
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VII. The Throne of Seven
As the citadel collapsed, Vorthane saw the truth:
Six thrones occupied by skeletal versions of himself.
The seventh stood empty.
The Figure's panic was palpable:
"You weren't supposed to see this!"
Vorthane plunged the shard into his own chest.
The explosion left him standing in ruins, the First Fragment now fused to his sternum—and Malrik's voice whispering from his shadow.
Somewhere, the Second Kingdom's bells began to toll.
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Chapter 5: The Wound That Breathes
The corpse of the Ashen Citadel still twitched. Vorthane Krovaxis stood at the edge of the geothermal fissure that had birthed itself where Malrik's throne once stood, watching silver-veined vapors coil like dying serpents. The air tasted of burnt copper and spoiled honey—the stench of a god's unfinished death. Around him, the remnants of the Eclipse Legion crawled through rubble on limbs bent at unnatural angles, their armor fused to weeping flesh. One soldier clutched a shard of Malrik's mirror-mask to his chest, the reflective surface now clouded with something darker than tarnish.
"They're praying," the Figure mused from the cracks in Vorthane's mercury-scarred hands. "To the Hollow King? To you? Or just to the pain itself?"
Ahead, a congregation of survivors knelt before an obsidian spike—the First Fragment's burial shard. Their leader, a woman with eyelids sewn shut and lips parted in permanent scream, pressed her forehead to the stone. When she raised her head, twin trails of liquid metal ran from her empty sockets.
"The Cracked Mask sees all!" she shrieked. Ash fell like snow around her. "The king walks the between-place!"
Vorthane's scars pulsed in time with the fissure's heartbeat.
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Chapter 6: The Silver-Tongued Prophet
Ilvara the Unburnt smelled of clove and rotting parchment. She found Vorthane at the fissure's edge, his boots sinking into memory-saturated ash.
"We remember you, Godscourge," she whispered. Her exhale painted visions in the air—a younger Malrik, still golden-haired, laughing as he parried Vorthane's practice strikes in a courtyard that no longer existed. "We remember how you forged his crown from mercy."
The Figure coiled around Vorthane's spine: "She wants you to kill her. How... predictable."
Ilvara inhaled deeply from the fissure. The smoke twisted into a vision of molten silver descending onto a child's face—Malrik's first coronation.
"Shall I show you how he sounded," she asked, "when the mask kissed his skin?"
Vorthane's sword was halfway through her throat before he realized—this memory wasn't hers.
It was his own.
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Chapter 7: Ghosts of the Eclipse
The fissure erupted. Ilvara's body split like overripe fruit, disgorging a storm of screaming ghosts—each wearing Malrik's face at different ages. The youngest wept silver tears; the oldest laughed with mouths full of broken mirrors. Their weapons weren't steel, but solidified regrets:
• The Spear of Broken Oaths, its shaft carved from their childhood bedpost, still stained with the poison Vorthane had used to kill their shared mentor
• The Shield of Silent Complicity, forged from palace mirrors that had witnessed the mask's first fitting
"You gave me this," the ghosts chorused as the ground liquefied into quicksilver. "Now wear it with me!"
Vorthane shattered the shield with a roar, releasing Ilvara's deepest memory—
A younger Ilvara (eyes still intact) kneels before Malrik's cracked mask. The Hollow King presses a dagger into her trembling fingers with trembling fingers.
"Cut out what you love," he rasps, "before the silver does."
The scene shifted: Ilvara holding down a sobbing child (her daughter?) as she carved out the girl's eyes with a spoon. The child's screams harmonized with Malrik's first shriek when the mask had sealed.
The revelation struck like a physical blow—these weren't attacks. They were distress signals from the past.
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Chapter 8: The Mercy Kill
Vorthane plunged the Hollow King's discarded mask into the mire. The metal shrieked as it drank the poisoned memories, reflecting them back at Ilvara in a searing beam of truth.
For one merciful instant, he saw it—Malrik reaching for him not in anger, but warning. The moment before the mask descended, his brother's lips had formed two words:
"Stop him."
Then the Figure seized his arm.
Ilvara's neck snapped with the sound of a mirror cracking. The ghosts dissolved into silver rain.
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Chapter 9: What the Ash Left Behind
The obsidian shard pulsed like a second heart in Vorthane's palm. Around him, the last cultists carved Malrik's final words into their flesh with shards of his broken throne:
"THE CROWN IS THE WOUND."
The wind carried a whisper from the fissure's corpse—a voice both familiar and impossibly distant:
"Find me where the thrones converge."
When Vorthane looked down, the shard had grown a bloodshot eye. It blinked once, pupil dilating to reveal a reflection not of his face, but of seven shadowed figures seated in a circular chamber.
The eighth throne stood empty.
The Figure's laughter vibrated through his bones:
"Shall we see who's been waiting for us?"
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End of Part One
The story continues in Part Two: The Eightfold Throne.