CHAPTER 1
KURSK
The flames rise higher than the walls of Gor’zaht tonight, painting the sky in gold and rage. Smoke curls like angry serpents around the spiked battlements, and drums pound like the heartbeat of a dying god. This isn't a ceremony. This is a war-song. Mourning. Oath. The kind of fire you only light when a blood-debt hangs heavy over your people—and tonight, that debt is mine.
I march through the bone gate, armor clinking low like growling chains. The ash smeared across my face itches with heat, but I don’t wipe it away. I want it there. Let the sting remind me. Let it crawl and burn like the hole in my chest where my brother’s laughter used to be.
Chief Rand sits atop the Stone Dais, shoulders bare, the braids of his beard soaked in oils and sweat. His gaze is granite, unmoving. Beside him, the shamanic council whispers like flies over meat. I hate them. All of them. Weak-willed bone-pickers too scared to bleed for something righteous.
“Longstrider,” Rand growls, voice like distant thunder. “You come before your kin in wrath.”
“I come in justice,” I say, loud and clear. “The Vorfaluka took my blood. I mean to take its head.”
The crowd stirs. A few bark approval. One old crone wails a death-keening, low and ugly. Good. Let them feel it.
Rand leans forward, resting thick, scarred arms on his knees. “You know the law, Kursk. The Veil is sealed. What dies beyond it is lost. We do not cross.”
“I will,” I snarl. “With or without your leave.”
One of the council—an ancient worm named Vurgor—stands, robes reeking of dust and dried elk piss. “To step beyond the Veil is to forget the mountain. Your blood will sour. Your name will rot. We will not bring you home again.”
I bare my teeth. “Then I’ll build a new home with the bones of the beast that murdered my kin.”
Rand raises a hand, silencing the whispers. He studies me for a long, cold moment. Then he rises.
The dais groans beneath his weight as he walks down the steps and stops just before me. We’re nearly eye to eye, but I don’t bow.
“Tell me his name,” Rand says.
My voice breaks. I hate that it does.
“Grothak,” I whisper. “My brother.”
Rand places a heavy palm on my shoulder. His eyes glint with something unspoken—pain, maybe. Regret. “He died well.”
“He died screaming,” I snap. “He died alone.”
Rand closes his eyes, exhales through his nose. Then turns toward the altar. With both hands, he lifts the cloth covering the weapon no one’s touched in a hundred years. The Spiritslayer.
It shines like moonlight caught in obsidian—black-metal shaft, blade etched with runes that squirm if you stare too long. I feel it in my guts, in my teeth. It hums with promise. And hunger.
Rand holds it out.
“Take it. And carry the shame, the power, and the burden of the hunt. Bring death to the abomination.”
I grasp it. It bites into my palm. Blood beads on my fingers and sizzles on the metal.
“Thank you,” I say.
He doesn’t nod. Doesn’t smile.
“You will walk in a world without clans. Without honor. Without flame. Their ways are not ours. You will not smell the mountain. You will not hear our drums. You will dream in silence. And the longer you stay, the less you’ll remember who you are.”
“I will not forget.”
“You will,” Rand says. “And still—you go?”
I tighten my grip on the spear. “The Vorfaluka dies by my hand. That’s all that matters.”
