The battlefield still steamed with the blood of the dead.
Drex Malven lay half-buried beneath the torn wreckage of a siege ram, his ears filled with the distant crackle of fire and the groaning chorus of the dying. Above him, the sky hung low and gray, bloated with smoke and ash. The sun had not risen that day—nor would it. Not here. Not after this.
He pried his gauntleted hand free from the rubble, fingers stiff and uncooperative. The weight of his armor felt doubled, as if grief and iron had merged into one. Pain crackled down his ribs, fractured from the fall. Blood—his own—slicked his tongue. Still, he rose.
He always rose.
Around him stretched the ruins of the 7th Legion. Broken standards fluttered limply in the wind. Horses lay collapsed in the mud, their armored riders slumped nearby, hollow eyes staring into nothing. The banners of House Haldrim—his house—had been reduced to charred scraps. No horns of retreat had sounded. No orders for fallback. Only silence. Only abandonment.
They had called it a strategic withdrawal.
But Drex knew better.
It was a slaughter. A purge.
He stumbled forward, past the broken haft of a war banner, through a mist that reeked of death and ruin. With every step, memories clawed at his mind—his commander's final glance, the fear in the young squire's eyes, the way the sky had screamed when the king's mages unleashed their forbidden fire.
Drex had led them here, trusting in the crown. He had believed.
Fool.
A cough escaped his lips, wet and sharp. He fell to one knee, breath rasping as he braced himself on the hilt of his shattered sword. The once-proud blade was snapped in two, jagged at the break. It had been his father's. A relic of old wars, passed down through generations. Now, it was as broken as his faith.
A sound pierced the haze.
Clink.
Metal on stone.
He looked up, blinking through blood and grime. A figure emerged from the mist—tall, draped in black robes that billowed unnaturally against the wind. Their feet were bare, skin pale as bone, toes sinking silently into the mud. A mask covered their face, smooth and blank but for a vertical slash of red down its center.
The air around them twisted, bent inward, as if the world itself recoiled from their presence.
"You live still," the figure said, voice distant and dissonant, like many voices layered over one another. "Curious."
Drex rose slowly, every movement a protest. He lifted what remained of his sword and pointed it weakly toward them.
"Another carrion priest?" he rasped. "Come to strip the dead?"
The figure tilted its head, bird-like. "Hardly. I am not here for what has passed, but for what remains. You were not meant to survive this field, Drex Malven. And yet… here you are."
His grip tightened, though his limbs screamed for rest. "Say what you came to say. Or draw steel."
"There is no steel that could wound me. Nor have I come to wound you."
The figure extended a hand.
In its palm rested a stone—small, jagged, pulsing with a faint crimson glow. It seemed wet, slick with something thicker than water. As Drex looked closer, he saw the light inside it move, like blood in a vein.
"Take it," the figure said. "You are already dead. Let this make it official."
Drex didn't move. He stared at the stone, then at the battlefield. His brothers in arms lay in pieces, the king's sigil still seared into their armor. He thought of his oath. Of the cause he bled for. Of how quickly they had been abandoned.
And he laughed.
It was a broken sound, bitter and cold. "You offer me death? I already wear it."
"No," the figure said. "I offer you purpose. You will not find justice in the halls of kings, nor redemption in prayer. But blood remembers. Blood forgives nothing. Take the stone, Drex Malven, and become what you were meant to be."
The wind howled louder. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
And something inside Drex cracked.
He reached out. His fingers closed around the stone. Heat seared through his glove, then into his palm, spreading like wildfire through his veins. His knees buckled, and he collapsed into the mud, screaming.
The world convulsed.
Red light poured from his chest, his eyes, the seams of his armor. The sigils of old—the forgotten language of gods and monsters—burned themselves into his skin. His heart stuttered, then roared, thudding like a war drum. The broken blade in his grip glowed bright, then melted in his hand—only to reform, longer, darker, serrated along its edge.
He felt everything—the pain, the betrayal, the deaths of every soldier under his command. And beneath it all, something ancient moved within him, waking from slumber.
The figure stepped back, watching.
When Drex opened his eyes, they were no longer the blue of a soldier's. They burned crimson, like molten iron.
"Your name," the figure said, voice reverent now, "shall be Bloodwrought."
Drex stood slowly, armor hissing with steam as blood-forged power twisted around him. His breath came steady now. Controlled.
"I am not your weapon," he said.
"No," the figure replied, fading into shadow. "You are your own."
The mist closed around him. The battlefield, once still, now hummed. Somewhere in the distance, the horns of the royal guard called for a return to camp. The victors, unaware of what had risen behind them.
Drex looked at his hands. The red sigils pulsed beneath his gauntlets. His sword whispered hunger.
And he turned toward the kingdom that had buried him.