Chapter 3: The General of Wrath

The sky above Arcadia had not changed. It still bled. The clouds twisted like tortured sinew, pulsing crimson and violet, and from their wounds poured embers instead of rain. Below, in the city’s charred bones, Kael Raikuro strode alone through the grave of an empire.

His Hellsteel armor no longer screamed when he moved. That was progress.

His reflection in a fractured window looked back — obsidian armor veined with red heat, the mask like a war-god’s skull. The fusion had changed him. The soul-bond still burned beneath his ribs, threading its way into every breath, every thought.

The whispers started again.

More souls… Feed the crucible…

He turned sharply. No one. Just ash swirling on windless streets.

But then, a tremor — not from the earth, but from the Veil.

A rift tore open mid-air above the shattered Forum of Kings, and through it spilled a thing of fire and fury — twelve feet of snarling armor, hooved legs crushing marble as though it were wet parchment.

General Varazgoth, Dreadvorr’s Hound of Wrath.

He roared, and the sound shattered windows for a mile.

“You wear Hellsteel, mortal,” Varazgoth spat, voice like grinding blades. “That makes you mine.”

Raikuro raised his right hand. The gauntlet responded — claws igniting with runes. He stepped forward.

“I’m not yours,” he said. “But I’ll take what’s yours when I’m done.”

The battle began.

Varazgoth surged like a bull of flame. Raikuro dodged right, embedding his claws in the demon’s side, but the armor deflected most of the blow. A tail of magma lashed out, slamming Raikuro into a column. Dust exploded outward.

Raikuro’s vision flickered. The armor was damaged — inner conduits exposed. He drew on the furnace at his core, summoned raw infernal energy, and punched it into the ground. Spires of darksteel erupted upward, skewering the General’s leg.

Varazgoth howled.

Raikuro leapt. A blade formed in his left hand, not summoned — forged — from the soul of a lesser demon he had slain days ago. It shimmered with heat and sorrow.

With a war cry, Raikuro drove it into Varazgoth’s chest.

The demon buckled, grabbing him, lifting him high.

“Your fire… is nothing.”

“No,” Raikuro growled. “Yours is.”

And with a twist of the blade — a burst of soul energy exploded outward. Raikuro absorbed it, feeling Varazgoth’s essence scream as it was pulled into the crucible within him.

When it was done, nothing remained but ash and cracked armor.

Raikuro knelt, the burning runes on his body slowly cooling.

Then — he heard it. A hum, faint but unmistakable. He held out his palm, and the first true weapon of his Soul Arsenal took shape: a spear forged from Varazgoth’s wrath — obsidian shaft, hellflame tip, whispering with hunger.

The armor murmured again. This time, not a whisper of torment — but of potential.

One down.

Raikuro stood and turned toward the west, where the Dreadgate pulsed with crimson light on the horizon.

Many more to go.