Flame guttered as Korrak strode through the smoke.
Heat lashed at him, but the breath within the blade answered. A cold light shimmered along the steel, not bright as noon, but fierce as winter beneath a black sky. Where he walked, the fire seemed to recoil, drawn thin by something older than flame.
The wardens saw him then.
“Ash-Blood!” one cried, and fear cracked his voice.
Korrak did not answer.
He moved.
The sword swept in a tight, brutal arc. The edge grazed the man’s throat. There was no fountain of blood. The wound flashed pale and terrible. Flesh blackened in a heartbeat. The guard’s body collapsed inward into a pile of ash. Armor clattered to stone. What remained drifted apart in the light breeze.
A spear lunged for Korrak’s ribs.
He felt the thrust as a ripple in the air before steel bit cloth. He twisted aside and the point scraped leather. He stepped inside the guard’s reach and cut low. The blade sheared through greave and bone. The man fell with a howl, clutching at a leg that had now collapsed itself into a pile of ash.
Korrak ended him without pause.
Another temple blade rushed him, sword raised high.
Iron struck iron.
The impact rang across the square. The temple blade’s steel shrieked as it met the cold-lit edge. Frost raced along its length. Then the metal sagged. It softened, sagging from the hilt like wax too near a flame.
The guard stared at the ruin in his hand.
Korrak seized him by the throat and flung him backward into the pyre.
Fire swallowed him. His screams tore at the screams in the square until they choked into silence.
The blade in Korrak’s hand thrummed.
He felt the cost.
Each stroke drew from it. This was no endless well.
A robed devotee broke from the kneeling ranks and sprinted for the fallen cage, dagger curved and gleaming. The girl struggled amid the twisted bars, iron bent but not broken enough.
Korrak crossed the space between them.
He loomed over the zealot, ash streaking his face, blade humming low.
“You profane the Rite,” the man spat.
“Go,” Korrak said. “Leave this place and live.”
“The Pit demands—”
The sword answered before the words were done.
Cold light pierced cloth and bone. The zealot stiffened, eyes wide. Then he came apart as the wardens had—life stripped clean, body falling into dust that scattered.
Korrak turned to the cage.
The bars were thick and twisted from the fall. He set the edge against the iron and drew it through.
Metal parted as if cut from damp clay.
He wrenched the opening wider with his hands and reached inside.
“Are you harmed?” he asked.
The girl shook her head. Her eyes were wide, but they did not weep.
He lifted her free and set her upon her feet.
Around them the square had become chaos. The faithful fled. The wardens regrouped. Smoke rolled and sparks leapt high into the night.
Korrak tightened his grip on the hilt.
The blade’s glow had dimmed, but it still burned.
There were many yet standing.
And he would carve his way through them.
Korrak dropped to one knee.
“Climb.”
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
The girl did not hesitate. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and clung tight. Her weight was slight, but real enough to remind him that flesh and bone were fragile things.
He rose with her upon his back.
The blade in his hand burned low now. Its cold sheen had dimmed from a fierce glow to a pale, steady glimmer like embers buried deep beneath ash. He felt the strain in his limbs, the cost of what he had already drawn.
There would be no waste.
“Hold fast,” he said. “Do not loose your grip.”
A horn blared from the far side of the square. Shouts answered it. Steel rasped free of sheaths. The city watch, slow until now, began to move.
Korrak drove forward through smoke and scattering bodies. Devotees stumbled out of his path. Some fell to their knees. Others fled.
Two robed men stood frozen before him, daggers raised but hands trembling.
Without the ring of wardens at their back, they were merely men.
Korrak did not slow.
One stroke.
The blade passed through them in a single cold arc. Cloth split. Flesh blackened. They collapsed into drifting ruin before their daggers struck stone.
The steel thrummed weakly in his grip.
He felt it, how near it was to stillness. The breath within it thinned with every blow. Soon it would be only iron again.
Then it would be his strength alone.
He broke into a hard run.
Ahead, the gates stood open.
Hollick had done as promised.
The guards stationed there hovered near the wall, not barring the way, not daring to step forward. They watched Korrak, uncertain whether to attack or flee.
At the threshold he dropped to one knee and eased the girl down.
“Go,” he told her.
Hollick seized her hand at once and pulled her beyond the gate, not pausing, not looking back.
Korrak rose.
Something was wrong.
The heart of the square had emptied. The wardens had drawn back. Even the chanting had faltered into silence.
Smoke curled low over the stones.
And there, framed by dying fire and drifting ash, stood a single figure.
The High Priest of the Black Skull.
His robes were layered in black and deep crimson, stitched through with bone-white sigils that seemed to writhe in the firelight. A mantle of carved vertebrae hung from his shoulders. Upon his brow rested a helm shaped like a horned skull. From its hollow eyes shone a pale, inner glow.
So this was why the others had yielded ground.
The priest raised his staff.
The air cracked like splitting rock.
A spear of searing light tore from its tip and struck Korrak square in the chest.
Pain exploded through him. He was hurled backward and cast hard against the stones, breath ripped from his lungs. The world lurched and blurred.
Smoke swam above him.
He forced air back into his lungs, tasted blood, and pushed himself up on one elbow.
“Mage,” he rasped.
Stone exploded where he had lain.
Korrak rolled as another lance of white fire struck the ground, splintering cobbles and hurling shards through the smoke. The air stank of scorched pitch and burned flesh. His chest throbbed where the first blast had struck. His leather charred, skin blistered beneath.
He pushed himself to his feet.
The High Priest advanced slowly, robes whispering across the stones. Pale light coiled about the staff in his hands, gathering and tightening.
“You profane the Rite,” the priest intoned. His voice carried a weight, echoing beneath the horned skull helm.
Korrak spat blood onto the stones.
The blade in his grip felt heavy now. The cold breath within it guttered faintly. He could not trade blasts with a mage.
He would have to end it with steel.
Another spear of light tore toward him.
He did not try to flee.
He drove forward.
The edge of the radiance caught him along the ribs. Pain ripped through him, hot and savage. Cloth burned. Flesh split. But he did not falter.
He endured.
That was his strength.
He bore down through smoke and crackling light, closing the distance step by grinding step. The priest thrust the staff forward, chanting words that made the air tremble.
Korrak moved first.
He hurled the sword.
Not in panic. Not in rage.
With purpose.
The blade spun end over end, its dim glow flaring once more as though in defiance of its own exhaustion. The priest tried to turn his staff to ward it aside—
Too slow.
Steel bit.
The sword sheared through wood and carved deep into the priest’s side. A cry tore from beneath the skull helm. Dark blood spilled across crimson robes. The gathered light shattered in a burst of sparks that rained across the square.
The sword fell beyond him, its glow dying to nothing.
The breath within it was spent.
Korrak staggered as the cold strength left his limbs. The world grew heavier. Each inhale scraped his lungs raw.
The priest swayed, wounded but not fallen. One hand clutched his side. The other reached toward Korrak, fingers curling as if to draw forth one last working of Cinderbreath.
Korrak did not give him the chance.
He surged forward on failing legs, seized the sword from the stones, and slammed his shoulder into the priest’s chest. They crashed together and fell hard. The horned helm struck the ground and split with a dull crack.
The mage gasped, blood bubbling at his lips.
Korrak wrenched the blade free of the man’s side and drove it down once more—deep and certain.
The body went slack.
No ash. No unraveling.
Only a corpse bleeding into blackened stone.
Shouts rose from the far side of the square. Reinforcements poured in. The watchmen, wardens, zealots who had found their courage again.
Korrak rose unsteadily.
The sword at his side was steel now. Nothing more.
He turned toward the open gate.
Each step felt carved from iron. Arrows hissed past him, clattering against stone or vanishing into the smoke.
He did not look back.
He crossed the threshold into night, breath ragged, blood warm against his ribs, and left the burning square of Veyra behind him.
