Grodak
Grodak rode his mount deep into the desert, hooves thundering across cracked stone and dead earth. The wasteland wind clawed at his face, stinging like sandpaper, but he barely noticed. His mind churned.
Grall shouldn't be this close to the Scar.
The Elders would never allow it. The Scar rejected outsiders—and even those born of the tribe were rarely welcomed back. Grodak had planned to lure Grall into false comfort, ease him into trust until the young fool slipped and revealed why he had risked death to find him.
Death…
The idea snagged his thoughts. For some reason, the thought of Grall dying felt wrong, almost impossible.
"Foolish," Grodak growled aloud. "He is mortal like the rest of us."
Grall could die. His soul could be torn back into the Void. But the sinking in Grodak's chest insisted otherwise, a twisting instinct he refused to name.
He shook his head violently. Enough. More pressing matters awaited in the direction of Elvyna's tower.
As he rode, a glint of reflected light flickered on the horizon—bright, unnatural. No towns lay near this place. Travelers avoided it. Whatever shone out here had no business existing.
Good.
He could use something to bleed his anger onto.
Grodak yanked the reins, redirecting his mount toward the glint. Soon a small cave came into view, the entrance narrow but promising. He dismounted, drew his sword, and stared at it—astonished all over again.
Last night it had been a simple blade, crafted by his own calloused hands. He had spent hours perfecting it, balancing weight and edge until it felt like an extension of his arm. Now faint runes shimmered along its spine—permanent, etched by Imp's magic.
Magic he had asked for.
"How pathetic," he muttered. Powerless compared to spellcasters. Forced to let one scar his favorite weapon so it wouldn't be lost.
His grip tightened, knuckles whitening. He remembered his tribe. Their danger. Their future depending on him.
He forced the boiling thoughts away. He had been inside his own mind too long lately.
The cave's low entrance opened into a vaulted cavern, impossibly huge—large enough for a dragon to stand tall. In its heart, a titanic tower rose like a mountain.
Black-robed figures poured in and out.
Perfect.
Grodak strode from the shadows with a roar that shook dust from the stalactites. His charge hit like a boulder. The first necromancer didn't even scream—Grodak's blade split him cleanly, and the next, and the next. Robes tore, bones cracked, blood splattered the cavern floor in wide arcs.
More necromancers spilled from the tower—dozens, then hundreds. Chanting, hissing, sending jets of sickly green flame and waves of skeletal knives swirling through the air.
Grodak plunged into them.
He swung in wide, devastating arcs, shattering ribs, cleaving through ribcages, crushing skulls beneath his boots. The chanting intensified—shadowy hands clawed from the ground, skeletal wolves took shape, and a tide of undead collapsed upon him.
He roared back, full of fury.
Sword met spell—his blade slicing through summoned limbs as burning chains wrapped around his torso. He ripped them off with raw strength, eyes wild, fury pushing him beyond exhaustion. Necromancers surrounded him in a tightening circle, stabbing, cutting, blasting.
Still he fought.
His breathing ragged. His arms heavy. His vision blurred. The horde closed in—
BOOM.
A thunderous explosion shook the cavern.
All movement stopped. Every hooded head snapped toward the tower as cracks spiderwebbed along its stone surface.
Another BOOM, louder. Chunks of stone crashed down, pulverizing several necromancers.
Grodak didn't even look.
His gaze locked onto two silhouettes at the cavern entrance: Adrian—and Imp, hands raised, face pale, lips chanting violently complex magic.
Stone screamed. The tower groaned like a dying beast.
Grodak walked past the stunned necromancers. Behind him, the tower collapsed in a storm of dust and thunder. He reached Imp, noted the exhaustion carved into his features, and for a brief moment—just a moment—Grodak smiled.
Then he turned away from both of them, deaf to their calls.
He mounted his steed. Rode off. Did not return to Whitewater.
---
Two Days Later
Grodak camped beneath a lone, twisted tree, the desert stretching endlessly around him. He didn't know where he wanted to go. Only that he didn't want to face himself, or Grall, or the truth clawing at his insides.
But the air changed.
Thick. Iron-scented. Filled with the dull thunder of marching.
War.
Whitewater was under attack.
He mounted instantly, spurring his steed toward the rising plumes of smoke. Hours later, Whitewater came into view—under siege by an undead army of ten thousand strong.
Grodak leapt from his mount and charged into the fray.
The first skeleton dissolved beneath the force of his strike. He seized another by the spine, shattered it, then hurled his sword like a spear. It tore through three skulls before impaling a necromancer.
"Come," Grodak growled, raising his hand.
The enchanted blade ripped through flesh and bone on its return, slamming into his palm.
Perfect.
He cut through the tide, searching for the king.
"Evacuate the citizens!" Tyril bellowed.
Grodak spotted him—a lone warrior holding a crumbling wall of undead at bay. Grodak forced his way to Tyril's side.
"What're the odds your orc soldiers arrive now?" Tyril said with a weary grin.
"Slim to none," Grodak barked back, smashing a skeleton with the pommel of his blade.
"Shame," Tyril grunted. "Could've used a miracle."
The two fought back to back—one a king, one an outcast, but in battle they moved like twin storms. Where Tyril parried, Grodak struck. Where Grodak stumbled, Tyril cut a path.
Then the ground trembled.
The undead parted.
A giant man-shape stepped forward—too tall for human, too small for giant, with a horn curling from his skull. Each footstep cracked the stone.
A Casarn.
Tyril trembled. "Run…"
"What?" Grodak snapped. "I can ta—"
He didn't finish. The Casarn backhanded him so hard he flew yards away, skidding across broken bodies.
"You idiot!" Tyril roared. "You can't fight him! He is Casarn!"
Grodak's blood froze. The Casarn were myths—extinct, destroyed with the gods themselves.
But the monster standing before Tyril was painfully real.
"Mmph. Tyril," the creature said with a sneer. "We meet again."
"Unfortunately." Tyril steadied himself. "Milindar."
"The last time," Milindar said, lowering his helm.
"Yes," Tyril whispered. "The last."
Tyril vanished—reappeared behind Milindar with a downward strike.
Milindar caught the blade in one hand.
Then smashed Tyril into the ground. Again. Again.
Grodak shouted, crawling forward—too slow.
A sickening snap echoed through the battlefield.
Tyril went still.
"No…" Grodak whispered.
Milindar laughed and left.
Grodak dragged himself to Tyril's body, gathering it into his arms. Rage. Pain. Helplessness. All crashed through him at once—threatening to tear him apart.
Then—
"GRODAK!"
A familiar voice, impossible and overwhelming.
Grall.
He stood at Grodak's side, carving through undead with a fury Grodak had never seen.
---
Grall
Grall sat at the bar, staring into untouched mead. His voice was gravel-soft.
"Where the hell did you go, Grodak…"
He'd found only ruins where his brother had been. No trail. No answers.
Imp and Adrian approached—like shadows at his back.
"Grodak's brother," Imp said gently.
"Yeah?" Grall muttered, "What do you want, lizard-man?"
Adrian nearly sliced him in half. Imp barely stopped him.
"Be patient. He's drunk."
Drunk. He wished.
No alcohol could reach him—not while the Shadow Realm pulled at him endlessly.
"We're going to investigate a tower," Imp said. "Your brother may be heading that way."
Grall sighed. "Fine."
---
They traveled a day. At camp, Adrian stared at him.
"You and Grodak don't look alike," he said.
"Different mothers," Grall replied. "He takes after our father. I take after mine."
Adrian passed him a wineskin. "Still. I think we'll get along."
Grall smirked, lifted the wineskin—and everything went black.
Not unconsciousness.
Not sleep.
The Shadow World.
Black tendrils pulled at him, whispering, begging him to return to its depths.
He let himself fall.
---
Grall woke with a violent inhale.
The stone beneath him was cold, humming faintly, as if the tower itself were still shaking off a long sleep. Adrian and Imp were standing over him—faces pale, eyes wide—as though they had just watched him die and come back wrong.
"Grall?" Adrian whispered. "What… what did you do?"
He blinked, sitting up, shoulders heavy and muscles twitching. "Nothing. That wasn't me."
But the magic lingering in the room—thick, metallic, buzzing in his teeth—was definitely not his.
Not Adrian's.
Not Imp's.
Something else had touched them.
They asked him to stand guard, and after a long minute of silent calculation, Grall nodded.
It was easier than explaining the pressure building behind his sternum, the phantom pull in his marrow.
Outside, the crimson sky stretched like bruised hide over the desert.
The air started to vibrate—low at first, like a distant drumbeat—until it crawled through his bones.
His senses screamed.
The shadows cast by the tower stretched unnaturally long, shivering as if they feared something approaching.
"Enough," Grall muttered. He moved to a clear patch of sand, drew a deep breath, and split his own shadow.
It rose as a towering chieftain—an orc made of condensed night and old anger—its roar shaking loose stones from the tower walls.
Steel clashed against mirrored steel.
One carried fury, the other desperation.
Sparks stung his cheeks.
Sweat ran down his jaw.
Every blow became a conversation between his past and present—between the orc he ran from, and the one he was becoming again.
Orc pride flooded his limbs.
He pushed harder.
Harder.
Until—
---
The Ground Turned to Blood
The sand liquefied beneath their feet.
A crimson pool spread outward, swallowing the earth, swallowing their stance.
Skeletal hands erupted upward, clawing at anything they could reach.
Gnashing teeth. Hollow jaws.
An army of the half-born dead.
The shadow chieftain roared, stamping down skulls—
—and then the sky bent.
A metal shape descended.
Not flying. Not falling.
Choosing its angle.
A floating mass of polished plates and humming cores, lit from within by sickly blue light. Its presence warped air like heat over a forge.
One pulse of energy.
The shadow chieftain disintegrated—erased in an instant.
Grall's heart stuttered.
Then he moved.
The abomination struck with a storm of spinning limbs and runic claws, each movement perfect and wrong.
Grall met it with cold discipline.
He summoned another shadow double mid-dash—this one smaller, faster—and together they moved like mirrored storms.
Steel bit metal; shadows tangled with arcane threads.
The creature's magical field screamed, collapsing under the synchronous rhythm of their swords.
Shadow feinted left.
Grall cut right.
Together they struck at the same heartbeat—
—and the machine folded inward on itself, collapsing into a heap of glowing, twitching shards.
He didn't celebrate.
He didn't breathe.
He ran for the tower.
---
Inside the Tower
It was worse inside.
Too quiet. Too orderly.
Books lay scattered but not destroyed, as though someone had searched for something in haste but without panic.
No enemies.
No movement.
Only the distant sound of undead pouring from the sands outside.
Grall moved deeper until—
A scream.
Raw. Shrill.
Imp.
Grall sprinted.
He found the imp pinned to a device of spiraled metal and pulsing runes, his small arm already half consumed—flesh turning to stone, stone turning to carved runes, runes sinking into the machinery.
A metal construct floated beside the device, chirping something in a language that tasted like broken glass in the ears.
Grall did not care.
He nearly killed it.
The only reason he didn't was because the thing flashed a projection—schematics, diagrams, warnings—and shrieked something that Adrian interpreted as "necessary calibration."
Even then, Grall considered breaking it in half.
He settled for ripping Imp loose, crushing part of the device, and glaring the floating entity into silence.
Then the tower shook.
Hard.
---
The Tower Takes Flight
Magic surged under their feet.
Gravity warped.
Adrian screamed something about "anti-dimensional lift sequence" but Grall mostly just held onto the nearest column as the entire tower uprooted itself from existence.
Reality folded.
He was dragged through magic like a fish pulled through a net lined with razors.
Screaming light.
Twisting air.
Vomiting impossible angles.
He endured it.
Barely.
Then—
They slammed back into the world.
Undead flooded the streets.
Flames cut through the sky.
The screams of defenders mixed with the hollow laughter of revenants.
Grall hit the ground running, vomiting once before he found his footing.
Steel in hand.
Shadow flowing behind him like a cape of smoke.
He carved a path through undead hordes, bones scattering like dry hail, until he saw him—
Grodak.
Backlit by fire.
Swinging his axe with the slow, dead rhythm of someone who'd lost too much in too little time.
And the moment Grall reached him—
"Brother," he gasped, chest shaking.
Grodak didn't even look fully at him.
"I don't need your help."
But his voice…
Hollow.
Detached.
Wrong.
Behind him, Tyril's body vanished into ash, swallowed by necromantic fire.
Grall saw Grodak's face crumple for half a second—one heartbeat of pure, naked heartbreak.
Then nothing.
A mask. A void.
Grall stepped forward, blade raised—not to fight, but to anchor Grodak to the world.
"Brother," he said quietly, "we need to leave."
The orc didn't move at first.
Then—slowly—his shoulders lowered.
His eyes focused.
A spark returned.
"Yes…" Grodak whispered. "Let's go home."
Grall froze.
"…Home? To the Scar?"
Grodak turned to him—tired, bleeding, but standing.
"I am chieftain now."
He touched Grall's shoulder. Firm. Steady.
"I will protect you. You have my word."
Grall swallowed hard.
Your word means little.
But I have nowhere else to go.
"…Very well, brother," he said softly. "I'll go with you."
And for the first time since waking in the tower, something in Grall's chest loosened.
He was going home.
Even if it killed him.