The Ash Priests’ enclave lay smoldering behind him, its censer-lit halls now gutted by Dreadvorr’s awakening pulse. Raikuro didn’t look back. He couldn't—not while the Hellsteel hissed with unspent fury in his hand, whispering names that no human tongue should remember.

Ogrhul limped beside him, his frame flickering between corporeal flame and skeletal ash. Each step was a grind of bone and regret. The rite had changed them both. Their bond now pulsed deeper, darker, as if the Hellsteel had woven something more than loyalty into their fates.

“Where are we going?” Ogrhul rasped.

“North,” Raikuro replied. “To the Thorned Path. The warlock’s tomb lies beyond it. The blood waits there.”

Ogrhul stopped. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you? In the flame.”

Raikuro turned, eyes dimming. “A vision, yes. But more than that—a calling.”

Ogrhul’s lip curled. “And if it’s a trap?”

Raikuro drew a breath through clenched teeth. “Then we spring it before Dreadvorr does.”

The Thorned Path wasn’t a path at all. It was a wound in the world—an ancient battlefield where reality had split under the warlock’s forging rites. Twisted brambles like veins of rusted iron clawed at the sky. The land bled fog. Trees wept ash. And deeper still, beneath the layers of burnt time, Raikuro felt something breathing.

A memory.

A hunger.

They traveled in silence until the fog thickened into shapes. Figures.

Ghosts of the Warlock’s War.

Translucent warriors clad in shattered plate stood frozen in their death-poses, blades locked mid-thrust, mouths open in silent screams. Raikuro reached out to one. It blinked—and screamed.

The sound knifed through his head. He staggered back, clutching his skull.

“Raikuro!” Ogrhul surged forward.

The world convulsed. The ghosts came alive.

Spectral swords swung. A thousand battles began anew.

Raikuro roared and raised the Hellsteel. It gleamed black and red—drinking the spectral essence like wine. For every cut he made, a name burned into his mind. Names he did not recognize, but wept for all the same.

Ogrhul chanted infernal counter-spells, dispersing phantoms in bursts of scorched air. But the ghosts kept coming—drawn not to Raikuro, but through him. He was a beacon. A crack in the seal. The warlock’s legacy had marked him.

Only when the blade glowed white-hot and his body shook from exhaustion did the path clear, leaving behind silence and a field of half-melted bones.

They reached the altar at twilight.

A stone monolith, taller than any tree, pierced the clouds like a fang. At its base, a pool of black water shimmered, undisturbed by wind. Symbols danced along the surface—sigils of the Maker.

Raikuro approached. The Hellsteel pulsed.

In the pool, he saw a reflection not his own: the warlock, gaunt and resplendent in threads of flame and void. The being smiled.

“You seek my blood,” it whispered. “But you already carry it.”

Raikuro’s breath hitched. “Lies.”

“Your blade knows the truth. Every name it steals, every soul it devours—they feed my return. You are not my heir, Raikuro. You are my vessel.”

Suddenly the pool surged. A tendril of liquid shadow whipped out, striking Raikuro’s chest. The Hellsteel shrieked. Symbols carved into Raikuro’s arms flared, burning away skin and memory.

Ogrhul tried to pull him back—but was flung aside like a dying ember.

Visions exploded in Raikuro’s mind. He saw himself—not as he was, but as the warlock once had been. Eyes ablaze, cities falling, gods kneeling, creation unweaving.

And at the center of it all: Lysia—not a wife, but a soul-forged anchor. The final tether that had torn the warlock into pieces.

Raikuro screamed. He was becoming something else—someone else. The Hellsteel spun in his hand, trying to choose.

A choice. There was always a choice.

With what strength he had left, Raikuro drove the blade into the ground—not into the altar, but himself. The steel plunged through his foot, pinning him to the cursed land.

The warlock’s presence faltered.

“I am not you!” Raikuro roared.

The blade flared. White fire bled from it, pure and searing. The pool hissed, boiled, and burst apart. The altar cracked.

And from within its core, a heart emerged—ancient, still-beating, wrapped in chains of bone and light.

The blood of the Maker.

Ogrhul staggered to Raikuro’s side. “You… you resisted him.”

Raikuro collapsed, one hand clutching the heart, the other gripping the Hellsteel now turned silver at the edge.

“No,” he whispered. “Not resisted. Chose.”

And somewhere in the distance, a scream echoed—a sound that might have been Dreadvorr’s rage… or fear.

End of Chapter 11