Darkness.
Not death. Worse.
Warm, wet, suffocating. Not the silence of the grave, but the slow, rhythmic drip of life not his own. Fluid swirled around him, thick and sticky. A heartbeat pulsed above like a drum, constant and indifferent. Limbs twitched in place—soft, pathetic things. A cage of meat.
He couldn't move. Not really.
But he was awake.
And he remembered.
Gods-fucking-dammit.
Not again.
It came like a flood—no dreams, no slow build, just bang—a wall of memory slamming into his skull, ancient and unstoppable. The taste of blood on iron. The moans of conquered women, their skin slick against his. The weight of a blade in his hand. The stench of death and sweat and ash.
And betrayal.
He felt it all. Every breath. Every thrust. Every kill. Every drop of blood spilled on marble floors. Every cunt broken under him and every crown cast aside. It was all there—bright, brutal, living in his bones.
Only now his bones were fucking soft.
His jaw clenched—at least, he imagined it did. His real jaw was still forming, buried in amniotic jelly. But his mind? His mind was sharpened iron. And it raged.
Third fucking time.
First life? Thirty-six. Dead on his own throne. Blood slick on his chest, blades sliding out of cunts like goddamn snakes. Second life? Didn't even make it to thirty. Died choking on smoke and shrapnel, his lungs half-melted by HIMARS fire while Ukrainian boots pounded past his corpse.
Now this.
Womb. Again. Naked. Useless. Trapped inside another bitch's belly.
He didn't know whose it was. Didn't care. Some rich cow humming lullabies and dreaming of a quiet baby, not realizing the monster she was growing between her legs.
Let her sing. Let her rub her belly with soft hands and whisper nonsense to the parasite inside her. She had no idea she was carrying a fucking storm.
Vault.
The name echoed in the wet dark like a curse.
Not a name.
A warning.
He was already seething. Already planning. Already counting time by the flutter of that borrowed heartbeat. If he could've screamed, the womb would've burst.
And still, the memories came.
Not the clean ones. Not the victories. No.
The beginnings.
The first life.
The story the others told him—the mercs, laughing through black teeth while they drank and watched him clean their swords. "You were born screaming," they said. "Slid out of your whore mother while she hung from a tree with her cunt still leaking blood. She was dead before you hit the ground."
Born in a pile of corpses, they said.
First breath full of rot and smoke.
They only kept him because he bit the first man who tried to drown him in a piss bucket.
That was the start.
And from there? He became what they needed. A weapon.
At five, they gave him a knife and told him to finish the dying. He didn't cry. Just walked into the mud and stabbed a man in the throat. And another. And another. Blood splattered his face. One of the men vomited watching it happen. Vault didn't flinch.
Not Vault. Not yet. Just the boy. The dog.
He learned. Fast.
You kill. You eat. You speak only when you're told.
And if you fail—you get the whip. Or worse.
That fucker they called "father"—not real, not by blood—beat him with iron rods, made him fight other children for scraps, fucked whores in front of him and laughed.
Until Vault got bigger.
Stronger.
At ten, he watched the bastard pass out drunk with a sack of gold beside the fire.
And he picked up the nearest mace.
Didn't hesitate.
Didn't whisper.
Just smashed the cunt's fucking skull until his jaw fell off in chunks, and his teeth scattered like pebbles across the floor. Took the coin. Took the knife. Burned the camp. Walked into the night.
And never looked back.
That was the first breath.
The first step.
That was when Vault was born.
Not a boy.
Not a man.
A fucking curse on the world.
And now?
Back here.
Womb.
Floating in heat and silence like a prisoner.
All that rage. All that strength. All that blood.
And still the gods dared to put him back inside a woman like some mewling infant waiting to be shat out into another betrayal.
He wanted to punch. To kick. To scream.
Instead, he curled tighter.
Muscle twitching. Heart thudding.
He had died twice.
He had conquered nations, fucked queens, butchered thousands, and died too young both times.
This time?
He would live.
Long.
He would build something greater.
He would fuck the world and leave it pregnant with war.
Because this time…
He would not die before they begged for it.
And when his new eyes opened—
He would make the earth tremble.
He didn't remember the first breath. They told him about it later—laughing like it was funny.
"You came out screaming, bastard," one of them said, voice slurred, breath thick with boiled cabbage and rotgut. "Slid out of your whore mother like a greased blade while she hung by the neck. Didn't even touch the ground before you started howling."
That was the tale.
A stormy night. A war camp looting the remains of a butchered town. A tree by the roadside hung with corpses—men, women, children. One of the whores, heavy with child, had gone cold before the rope stopped swinging. And beneath her, slick and shuddering in a puddle of mud and blood, there he was.
No midwife. No miracle. Just Vault, born in filth.
The mercs said they should've let the dogs eat him, and they tried, but the first man to lift him got a bite on the hand deep enough to tear a tendon. The man nearly lost his thumb.
And the others laughed, called him cursed. Bad luck. Touched by something dark. But the captain was superstitious—and Vault had lungs like thunder. So they kept him. Named him "Dog." Didn't bother with anything more.
He slept in pigshit and frozen mud. Ate scraps when the older boys didn't beat him to them. At four, he learned to dodge a backhand. At five, they gave him a rusted blade and shoved him toward a pile of groaning bodies in a plague-ridden ditch.
"Go finish 'em," they said. "Clean work earns meat."
He didn't cry. Just walked down into the pit.
Thrust the knife into the nearest throat.
Then again, and again, and again.
It wasn't about anger. It wasn't even about hate. It was obedience. It was life.
His hands shook the first time. The second time, they didn't.
By six, he had killed more men than the drunken fucks who raised him.
By seven, he could gut a man in the dark without waking a dog.
And by eight?
By eight he didn't sleep unless he had a weapon within arm's reach.
They trained him, sure. In the way animals are trained. Beat the hesitation out of him. Forced him into pits with other orphan boys to fight barehanded while the older mercs placed bets and pissed into buckets.
He won more than he lost. The losers stopped breathing.
But the one who taught him pain wasn't the boys.
It was him.
The man who called himself father. A man with arms like butcher's hooks and a mouth full of yellowed teeth. He trained Vault with boots and fists, not words. Said crying was weakness. Said mercy was treason. Said the world didn't care how you felt—it cared what you could take.
He said those things often, usually right before the next beating.
And Vault listened, but he remembered everything.
The kicks. The laughter. The broken ribs. The times he'd wake up face-down in frozen piss and shit, clutching his cracked jaw with swollen fingers, wondering if this time would be the last, but it never was.
Because Vault didn't die, he waited, and when he turned ten, he stopped waiting.
The old bastard had come back from a raid, drunk and rich, dragging two stolen girls behind his horse, maybe fourteen in age, maybe younger. Threw them in the dog pens and told Vault he'd "get the first taste" if he shined his boots.
Vault shined the boots, then, when the bastard passed out by the fire, gold coin spilling from his satchel and mouth open in a snore, Vault found the mace one of the officers left by the tent flap.
It was heavy.
Too heavy.
But he lifted it anyway.
And he brought it down on the fucker's face.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Until there was nothing left but red. Until his fingers were soaked. Until the others in the camp stopped laughing and started backing away.
Vault didn't stop.
Not until the handle cracked.
Then he took the bag of coins.
Took a knife. A cloak. A satchel of dried meat.
And walked out of that camp without looking back.
Not a boy.
Not a slave.
Not Dog.
Vault.
He slept in the woods that night, curled beside a stream with blood still under his fingernails.
He stared at the stars and whispered a name no one had given him.
The one he earned.
And from that night on, the world never again told him what he was.
He would be his own beast.
His own blade.
His own fucking god.
After the camp, he didn't become a hero. He didn't find peace. He didn't kneel to kings or gods or soft-spoken priests preaching about second chances.
He wandered through forests choked with mist and bone, across valleys where the wind carried only the screams of widows and the stink of fire. He hunted bandits not for justice, but for sport. He slit throats in their sleep, took their gold, fucked their whores, and vanished by morning.
They started whispering about him in border towns.
A boy. Pale hair. Eyes like sharpened ice. Moves like a ghost. Leaves bodies like butchered pigs.
No name.
Then, one day, they found a raiding party, thirty men strong, burned to ash and hacked into pieces. In the center of it all, a symbol carved into the dirt with a finger:
A single black wolf's head. Eyes bleeding.
To Vault, it stuck instantly. He didn't choose the name, and he didn't need to.
By the time he turned fourteen, he had a small warband. Men twice his age followed him. Why? Because he killed better than they did. Because he took more gold. Because he fucked more women. Because he didn't flinch when arrows flew, or swords cracked bone.
They called themselves the Black Wolves.
He was their alpha, not through votes, not through titles, but through fear.
Vault didn't talk often. When he did, people shut up and listened.
He trained harder than any of them. Ate less. Slept less. Fought more. He didn't smile. He didn't joke. He fucked, drank, and fought in the same breath, and if someone questioned him, he beat them unconscious and let them wake up piss-soaked in a ditch, or not at all.
He carved his own technique in secret.
He watched how the body moved. The way muscle tensed before a strike. The way blood surged through the neck. And he learned where to strike. Not just to wound. But to destroy.
He called it The Howl of the Inner Fang.
With two fingers, he could puncture a man's ribs and crush his heart from the inside. A knuckle to the gut could make a man vomit blood. A palm to the throat? You wouldn't even scream before your spine folded like wet parchment.
He once made a knight in full plate armour shit himself to death just by pressing four spots on his chest and letting nature do the rest.
And the women…
He didn't chase them.
They came.
Saved villagers. Rescued captives. Liberated barmaids from burned towns.
And once the swords were sheathed and the fire was out, they came crawling, grateful, shaking and wet.
And Vault never said no to them. He took them in fields, in ruined inns, against broken walls and moss-covered alters. Sometimes, they moaned, and sometimes, they wept, but they always came.
He let the world kneel. One cunt at a time.
Then he saw her.
The first time was a drawing.
A hand-painted scroll from a captured elf knight—torn from his coat as he bled out under Vault's boot.
A dark throne. A silver crown. Skin-like obsidian velvet. Eyes that burned with ancient cruelty.
Olga Discordia.
Queen of the Dark Elves. Ruler of Eostia's northern citadel. Untouched. Unbent.
And Vault wanted her.
Not just to fuck.
To breed.
He wanted her as his first wife. The mother of his bloodline. The first bitch in his kingdom's bed.
He said nothing.
He just pointed north.
And the Black Wolves marched.
They stormed her forests, cut down her guardians, burned her towers, and shattered her gates.
When they breached the citadel walls, Vault didn't run. He walked—slow and naked from the waist up, blood still dripping from his fingers—straight into her throne room.
Her guard captain tried to stop him.
Vault snapped his neck with one hand.
He took the queen on the black stone dais, bent her over her own throne, and fucked her as her court screamed.
She clawed. Bit. Cried.
But by the end, she moaned.
And when Vault finished inside her, he whispered, "You're mine now."
Chloe came next.
A knight-commander who'd sworn she'd die before being taken.
She didn't.
She fought. Cursed him. Drew blood.
And then? She broke.
He made her cum on his cock with tears streaming down her face, her sword shattered on the floor.
Then he made her swear loyalty.
Then he made her clean herself on his thighs and kiss Olga's cunt while he watched.
They obeyed.
They all did.
The 7-Shield Alliance?
Gone.
Vault sat on a throne carved from skulls and ash. Naked women at his feet. Gold piled at his back. War-mages bowed. High priests licked his boots. His army tripled.
He was no longer a warlord.
He was a king.
And then…
The knives came.
No warning.
No screams.
Just a shift in the air.
A dozen women, kneeling in pleasure, smiling with tear-smudged mascara—suddenly stood.
And from their slick, spent bodies… they drew blades.
From between their thighs. From beneath their hair. From behind their moans.
They didn't speak.
They didn't shout.
They just stabbed.
Vault bled on the same throne where he once came.
He watched Olga step forward last.
And she didn't cry.
She just looked down at him as he gasped, his cock limp, his blood pooling.
"Et tu… Olga?" he rasped.
Then it went black.
Black again.
No throne. No screams. No warmth of blood beneath his fingers.
Just cold.
And then—air. His first breath back in the world burned like acid. His throat screamed with it. His hands, once strong enough to rip ribcages apart, were now soft, stubby fists. His vision blurry. Everything towering over him.
He was a baby again.
But not broken.
His soul coiled tight inside his chest, whispering through every nerve.
You were a king. A god. A storm of cock and fire.
And now you're this?
It was a new world. Clean on the surface. Rotten underneath.
City lights buzzed. Neon signs blinked like tired whores. Streets smelled of piss, fuel, and broken dreams. Gone were the moans of raped queens and the clash of steel. In their place? Sirens. Paperwork. Trash bins lined with needles and half-dead kids no one would claim.
He was named Markus Lahti.
Born in southern Finland. Raised under gray skies and concrete.
The first few years were quiet. He said little. Watched. Measured. Understood.
The system tried to mold him. Teachers. Therapists. Morons. He knew more at age ten than they'd know in ten lifetimes. While they preached tolerance, he read about Mongol conquest. While they taught him to cry about bullying, he taught himself how to break collarbones with a pencil.
They told him violence wasn't the answer.
He showed them what a real answer looked like.
By thirteen, he was already working out three hours a day. MMA. Boxing. Calisthenics. He never told anyone why.
Because the world was dying. Not from bombs. From softness.
His classmates were masturbating to anime and dyeing their hair green.
Markus?
He was bench-pressing double his weight and watching war documentaries at midnight.
His idols weren't actors or YouTubers. They were warlords. Spartans. Berzerkers. Space Marines. He read the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer like it was gospel. And he agreed with every word.
There is only the Emperor, and he is your shield.
Except Markus had no emperor.
So he became his own.
At eighteen, he joined the police. It was the only legal way to carry a weapon and beat filth without going to prison.
He wore the uniform, said "yes sir," filled out the forms.
But at night? He hunted.
He stalked the alleys where immigrants raped girls behind dumpsters and laughed about it. He followed drug dealers into shadows and didn't bother reading them their rights.
He broke them. One bone at a time.
He left one rapist in a hospital for nine months.
Nobody found the others.
The brass called him "efficient." His partner said he was "cold." His shrink asked about "rage displacement."
He didn't answer.
Because he didn't need to.
He was doing the work.
Until even that wasn't enough.
Because no matter how many teeth he broke, the rot spread. Politicians invited more in. Schools taught boys to be weak. Girls to be bitter. Truth to be hate speech.
Europe bled without a fight.
So he left.
Crossed into Ukraine when the war broke out. Signed up under a fake name. Said he was there to help.
He wasn't.
He was there to kill.
Not for a side.
But for revenge.
Revenge on the world that neutered men. That put weakness on a pedestal and spat on strength. That called his kind monsters and welcomed the invaders who butchered children.
He moved like a ghost through snow-covered cities. Night ops. Solo missions. No survivors.
They whispered of him in the ruins.
The Wolf. The Pale Reaper. The Finn.
Then came the hospital.
He'd pushed too far, moved too deep behind enemy lines. Slaughtered a unit with just his hands and a sidearm. Tore one man's throat out with his teeth when the ammo ran dry.
But someone had seen.
A drone. A scout. Someone.
The order came fast.
HIMARS inbound.
He remembered the flash. The thunder.The scream.
Then darkness.
Then warmth.
Then again.
No sky.
No blood.
No throne beneath his ass or rifle in his hands.
Just… pressure. Fluid. Warmth. A heartbeat pounding above like a muffled war drum.
Vault floated in silence. Coiled like a serpent, soft again. Helpless. And he knew. Not just in instinct, but with terrifying, lucid certainty—
He'd been fucking born again.
His body wasn't real yet. Bones still forming. Skin new and raw, without a single scar. But inside?
Inside, he was already complete.
His soul wasn't clean.
It was old. Hard. Layered in rage and memory so thick it pulsed like molten iron through the blood not yet his.
Again.
Third time.
Third goddamn time.
How many times would the world shove him back into the meat grinder just to watch him crawl out?
First life: thirty-six. King. Conqueror. Died on a throne, dick still wet, chest full of knives.
Second life: twenty-nine. Hunter. Wolf. Died in fire dropped from the sky by a coward who never looked him in the eye.
Now this.
Vault cursed in silence. The sound died before it could escape his tongue-less mouth.
But the hate was there. Alive. Growing.
What kind of joke was this?
What kind of punishment?
Born again into the dark, into a cage of womb and water, limbs like noodles, surrounded by someone else's fucking heartbeat?
He tried to move. Couldn't.
He tried to scream. Couldn't.
But the thoughts ran hot.
This time I make it past forty.
This time no knives in silk. No missiles in the fog.
This time, he'd play the game smart. Quiet. Patient.
He would build his throne, not just conquer it.
He would breed sons who carried steel in their blood and vengeance in their eyes.
He would outlive his enemies. All of them.
And when he burned, it would not be in a flash.
It would be a kingdom going down with him.
But first…
He remembered. Not just the fire. Not just the steel. Not just the endless moans and screaming mouths begging him to stop and not meaning a single fucking word of it.
He remembered the silence. The stillness after the kill. The way the world stopped when he won.
He missed that silence now.
This womb was loud. Not in sound—but in memory.
The sound of Olga moaning into the marble. Chloe screaming as he broke her pride. Celestine begging for mercy between gulps of cock and sermon.
The betrayal.
Blades pulled from wet cunts like flowers of steel. Blood hot on his chest.
No one said a word.
That was what haunted him.
Not the knives.
The silence.
And then the second life—the weak men, the fat women, the flags that meant nothing, the laws written by cowards to protect criminals.
He remembered arresting a man for raping a child.
And being told not to hit him.
He hit him anyway. Broke three ribs and both wrists.
He remembered the stink of refugee ghettos, the grins of men who brought war into quiet suburbs and called it asylum.
And he remembered how nobody stopped them.
How they stopped him.
And still… still he fought.
Until the HIMARS came screaming from the sky, fire ripping through the walls of that forgotten hospital, the blast peeling his skin from bone before he even had time to pray—
Not that he would've.
No gods. No kings. Only Vault.
And now?
Here.
Warm. Wet. Waiting.
Again.
He didn't know whose womb this was. Didn't care. He would claw his way out of her just like he did the last two lives—dripping in blood, teeth bared.
But this time?
This time, he wouldn't roar.
He would smile.
He would wait.
And when the time came?
He would rise like a whisper through the world, like a myth made real.
A child with a stare that made mothers weep and priests flinch.
And by the time they knew his name—
It would already be too late.