Korrak Ash-Blood stepped through the gates of Veyra and smelled blood before he saw it.

  The market churned beneath a sky the color of old bruises. Coins clinked. Traders barked. A mule screamed as someone struck it. Chains rasped over stone. Ash drifted in thin veils from the black ridges above the city, settling in hair, in beards, in the creases of men’s eyes. When the wind shifted, it carried the dry sting of far-off fire from the volcanic plains.

  Korrak moved through it without haste.

  He was not the tallest man in the square, nor the broadest. But there was something in the way he walked that parted the crowd. Mothers drew their children aside. Men looked once and then away. He wore no crest. No lord’s colors. Only travel-stained leathers and the sword at his hip, its pommel wrapped in dark cord.

  Few of the Skarnblood remained. Fewer still walked openly in the south.

  Beneath bright awnings, slaves stood upon wooden blocks while buyers prodded arms and teeth. A boy with shackled wrists stared at the ground as men argued over his price like cattle. Korrak’s hand settled on his sword, not drawing it, merely resting there.

  The steel felt warm.

  Not hot. Not burning. Just alive like a coal banked beneath ash.

  He sensed the hand before it brushed him.

  His fingers snapped out and caught a wrist mid-reach.

  The man attached to it was thin and narrow-shouldered. His beard was uneven. His tunic was clean but hung loose, dyed a bold blue meant to draw the eye. Small bells and polished scraps dangled from a leather strap across his chest, glinting against the drifting ash.

  Quick hands. Nervous eyes. Korrak studied him for a long heartbeat before releasing him.

  The man stepped back, straightening, offended more than afraid.

  “You’re built for war,” he said lightly, rubbing his wrist. “You walk like it.”

  Korrak did not answer. His gaze had lifted beyond the man’s shoulder. In the center of the square rose a tall wooden beam. From it hung an iron cage. Inside it, a small girl clutched the bars with both hands. Dust streaked her face. Her dark hair hung in tangled ropes around her shoulders. She did not cry. She only watched.

  “Who is she?” Korrak asked.

  The thin man followed his gaze. His expression did not change.

  “The sacrifice,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “For the Black Skull.” He gestured faintly with his chin toward the far edge of the square.

  Two robed figures stood there, bone charms clacking softly in the wind. Their hoods were pulled low. Carved skulls hung from their belts.

  “Your name,” Korrak said.

  The man hesitated only a breath. “Hollick. And yours, stranger?”

  “Korrak.”

  Recognition flickered there, faint, uncertain. Or perhaps only curiosity.

  Hollick’s eyes drifted to the sword at Korrak’s hip. Then to the scars that mapped his forearms.

  “You don’t belong here,” Hollick said quietly. “Veyra is not kind to men who stare at the sacrifice.”

  “You will serve me,” Korrak said.

  Hollick laughed. It was a practiced sound. Easy. Light. “I serve no one, stranger.”

  Korrak reached into his pouch and drew out gold. He did not flash it broadly. He simply let the coins rest in his palm where the light could catch them.

  Hollick’s gaze sharpened.

  “You walk through the gates at midday and begin issuing commands,” Hollick said, voice low now. Controlled. “This city has ears. It has watchers. The Black Skull does not favor interference.”

  Korrak stepped closer, his shadow swallowing the smaller man. “What will they favor,” he asked quietly, “when I tell them I caught you lifting purses beneath their sacred cage? Do you think they tax thieves, or flay them?”

  Hollick’s mouth tightened. His eyes flicked toward the robed figures and back again.

  Korrak pressed three coins into his hand.

  “You know the alleys,” he said. “You know the watch patterns. The doors left unbarred.”

  Hollick stared down at the gold. His fingers curled around it despite himself. The drums began, slow and distant. A warning of what would come at dusk.

  Hollick swallowed. The laughter had drained from him.

  “For the day only,” he said at last. “At sunrise I am no longer yours.”

  Korrak palmed seven more coins.

  “Three now,” he said. “Seven when the work is finished.”

  Hollick closed his fingers around the three golden coins.

  “And what work is that?” he asked.

  Korrak lifted his eyes to the cage swaying above the square.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “Breaking her free.”

  “Have the gods struck you senseless?” Hollick hissed, his voice barely carrying beneath the slow beat of the drums. He kept his face turned toward Korrak but his eyes slid toward the robed figures at the square’s edge. “Men have tried this before. They have failed.”

  “Weak men,” Korrak said.

  Hollick’s jaw tightened. “Fathers,” he replied. “Brothers of those to be sacrificed. Not all were weak.”

  Korrak’s gaze never left the cage swaying above the square. “Did any succeed?”

  Silence stretched between them. Ash drifted through it like grey snow.

  “No,” Hollick admitted at last.

  “Then they were weak.”

  A muscle twitched in Hollick’s cheek, but he did not argue further.

  At the base of the beam stood a ring of guards. Four in lacquered helms, spears planted. A fifth sat upon a crate, patient as a stone idol, drawing a whetstone down the curve of a temple blade. The scrape of steel on stone carried clear despite the market’s roar.

  “And why?” Hollick pressed, lowering his voice further. “Why risk your neck for a child you do not know?”

  Korrak watched the girl’s hands tighten on the bars.

  “I was paid,” he said.

  “By whom?”

  “An unseen hand. The coin left without seal or name.”

  Hollick gave a short, humorless laugh. “And that does not trouble you?”

  “I have never been troubled by who sets the coin upon the table.”

  “You think it not a trap?”

  “If it is,” Korrak said evenly, “then someone has misjudged me. It’s happened before. The payment. The job. No problems arise.”

  Hollick studied him, searching for doubt. He found none.

  “And if the one who hired you means to see you dead one day?”

  Korrak’s hand rested upon the hilt at his side.

  “Then he will be disappointed.”

  The drums sounded again, slower now, heavier. A murmur rolled through the crowd as more robed figures emerged from the temple steps.

  Korrak’s gaze dropped briefly to the stone around the beam. Strange markings had been carved there—sharp angles and circles filled with blackened resin. They were not wild scrawls of hedge-witch craft. They were deliberate. Maintained. Fed.

  “Ritual work,” he muttered. “Old and tended.”

  Hollick nodded once. “When the rite begins, twelve wardens seal the square. You see only five now. The others come at dusk. Three temple blades stand closest to the cage. They answer only to the High Priest.”

  “The High Priest appears when?”

  “At the last light. He does not show himself before. When the sun touches the ridges, he steps from the inner sanctum. All kneel. Even the wardens.”

  Korrak measured the space between the guards. The angle of the chain. The height of the beam. The press of the crowd and the paths between stalls.

  “Then we wait for dusk,” he said.

  Hollick stared at him as though he had spoken madness into being.

  “You are a stranger in Veyra,” he whispered. “I warned you. The Black Skull does not forgive intrusion. Outsiders vanish here. Even marked warriors.” He swallowed. “I want no part in this.”

  Korrak turned slightly. Just enough for the light to catch along the edge of his blade where it rested in the scabbard. A faint glow stirred deep within the steel—like embers breathing beneath ash.

  “You have taken my gold,” he said.

  “I can return it.”

  “You can try.”

  Hollick hesitated. The drums grew louder. Smoke began to drift from braziers being lit at the square’s corners.

  At last he squared his shoulders.

  “If madness must be done,” he muttered, “better in smoke and chant. When the wardens shift their footing. When eyes turn toward the Priest.”

  Korrak inclined his head.

  “Tell me everything about the Rite.”

  They withdrew into a narrow alley where cooking smoke clung thick to the obsidian walls. Korrak tossed a coin to a woman tending a brazier and took a wooden bowl without looking at its contents. He ate as though it were fuel and nothing more.

  Hollick held his portion but did not touch it.

  “Twelve wardens,” he repeated. “Three temple blades. And when the High Priest comes, the square bows as one.”

  Korrak chewed, swallowed, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Speak,” he said. “Tell me more.”

  Smoke drifted through the alley as the day bled toward evening. Ash settled on shoulders and rooftops alike, dulling the color of everything it touched. Beyond Veyra’s walls, the black plains stretched toward jagged ridges of obsidian that cut the horizon like broken teeth.

  The market’s roar faded to a tense murmur. Men spoke lower now. Eyes turned often toward the square.

  A drunken guard lurched past the alley mouth, helm askew, wine sloshing from a clay jug.

  “They bargain with fire-beasts,” he slurred to no one in particular. “The Black Skull. In the north. Great scaled devils. Dragons. They bend ’em like hounds.”

  He laughed, then coughed.

  Korrak did not look at him. But the word lingered.

  Dragons.

  Creatures of ruin and hunger. He had seen what one could do to a village. Fire that ran like water. Stone split like bread. If the cult truly parleyed with such beasts, then their reach was longer than this square.

  Hollick wiped grease from his beard and leaned closer, lowering his voice.

  “They call themselves the Black Skull,” he said. “Devotees of the Pit Below. They wear helms carved like death’s heads. Horns of iron. Teeth of bone. When they pass through the square, men bow without being told.”

  Korrak finished the last of his food and set the bowl aside. “I know this. What of the guards?”

  “Twelve wardens seal the square when the rite begins,” Hollick continued. “Three temple blades guard the inner ring. They are chosen from boys and hardened into killers. No drink. No wives. No fear.”

  A horn sounded in the distance. Low and hollow.

  “When the High Priest appears,” Hollick said, “the drums answer him. When he lifts his staff, the chanting begins. When he lowers it, blood follows.”

  The drums had found a rhythm now. Slow. Inevitable.

  “The girl in the cage is not the first,” Hollick went on. “Nor will she be the last.”

  Korrak’s jaw tightened.

  “I saw the carvings at the base of the beam,” he said. “Those marks are tended. Fed. This is no hedge-witch frenzy. It is crafted.”

  Hollick studied him. “You know such things?”

  “I know when power is disciplined.”

  Hollick’s gaze drifted to the scars along Korrak’s arms—old blade wounds, old burns.

  “And how many have you disciplined?” Hollick asked quietly. “How many men have you sent to the dust?”

  Korrak met his eyes. There was no pride there. No regret. Only iron.

  “I have slain men who prey upon the helpless,” he said. “Men who thought themselves untouchable. You profit on the spectacle.”

  Hollick shifted. “I steal from those who come to watch,” he muttered. “From buyers. From believers. I do not force them to gather.”

  “You do not stop them,” Korrak said.

  Silence fell between them.

  The drums grew steadier. The sun sagged toward the jagged ridges, red and swollen in the ash-thick sky.

  Hollick broke first.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “No man walks into Veyra and speaks as you do. From what land do you come?”

  Korrak looked beyond the city walls, toward the blackened plain where the wind carried heat from the earth’s hidden fires.

  “From a place long burned,” he said.

  He rose then, and the alley seemed smaller for it.

  “Dusk comes,” he said. “Be ready.”