Outside the tent, the Raiders lounged in uneasy silence.
Some gnawed on dried jerky, while others roasted their hunted game over crackling flames.
The slaves, given only scraps and tainted water, shivered in the dark—kept alive just long enough to fuel the march through the cursed Bone Orchard at dawn.
Mad Dog lay in his hammock, his axe resting on his chest like a corpse's folded hands.
His eyes snapped open.
The night was too quiet.
Too still.
And yet… a soft, unnatural hum of birdsong slithered through the air.
No birds sang at this hour.
His Barbarian instincts prickled, but the scout had reported nothing.
He forced himself to relax.
Then it came.
A shriek—high, piercing, impossible for any human throat to produce—ripped through the camp.
The Raiders jolted upright, weapons trembling in their grips.
Fear choked the air.
They were deep in the wastes, mere meters from the Bone Orchard's twisted trees, where beasts prowled in endless hunger.
Mad Dog's eyes burned crimson in the dark.
He barked orders, sending two of his men into the blackness to find the missing scout.
The veterans strode forward, unshaken by death.
But death was waiting for them.
Minutes passed by.
Then—
—movement.
One raider stumbled back into the firelight, his arm torn clean off, blood gushing between his fingers.
His face was a mask of pure terror, his screams raw and broken.
"HUNGERS—!"
An arrow burst through his skull.
Silence.
Then—
—the trees began to move.
Hungers are like Barbarians—demonic in nature.
If the Barbarians are Demons of Neglect, indifferent to the ruin wrought by Wrath, then Hungers are Demons of Desire.
Their relentless craving to survive, consuming anything to sustain themselves, is a surrender to Gluttony.
A man clad in nothing but a loincloth advanced slowly toward the raiders, gripping a crude axe hewn from sharpened stone.
His jagged, yellow teeth glinted as he laughed—a harsh, hyena-like cackle—gnawing lazily on the severed arm of a fallen raider.
"Lucky you haven't passed the Bone Orchard yet," he mused between bites, his voice dripping with dark amusement.
"Otherwise… we'd have gone hungry."
Mad Dog was the only Demon in their raiding party—a decision born of Lady Rose's arrogance.
She had been so confident that subduing a small tribe in the Savage Expanse wouldn't require a stronger force.
Now, that miscalculation had led them to disaster.
Their numbers were barely enough to survive the Bone Orchard.
If they lost even a single warrior tonight, the rest of their journey would be fraught with peril.
For in the Bone Orchard, the rules were cruel and unyielding: if you did not hunt the beasts, the beast hordes would stalk you. But if you slaughtered too many, the Skinless Leopards—the rulers of that cursed land—would turn the hunters into the hunted.
For the first time in years, Mad Dog doubted he would live to see dawn.
Behind the loincloth-clad savage, more figures emerged—dozens of Hungers, their hollow eyes gleaming with insatiable hunger.
No, not dozens.
More.
Were they already surrounded?
The rustling in the shadows suggested they were.
Mad Dog's vision burned crimson.
His teeth ground together as fury surged through his veins—Rage, the primal power of the Barbarians.
His muscles swelled, his skin hardened like iron, but his mind teetered on the edge of control.
A weakness all Barbarians bore: the stronger the Rage, the easier it was for outside wills to seize them.
Then—a horn's blare tore through the night.
The encampment was under attack.
"PREPARE FOR BATTLE!" Mad Dog roared.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than an arrow hissed through the dark, burying itself in the throat of a raider beside him.
The man crumpled, dead before he could even raise his weapon.
Mad Dog's Rage flared hotter.
His veins burned.
With a guttural snarl, he lunged at the jagged-toothed fiend, his axe hungry for vengeance.
His warriors joined the fray, steel clashing against the relentless Hungers.
These abominations knew no fatigue—so long as they fed, their stamina was endless.
Their grotesque gift allowed them to metabolize flesh into raw power, but at a cost: the more strength they unleashed, the more ravenous they became. A vicious cycle of gluttony and slaughter.
Demons were mighty, but they were not invincible.
Even a child's clumsy slash could end one—unless, of course, it possessed the rare gift of regeneration.
Death came as easily for them as it did for mortals, should steel find its mark.
The night roared with the endless clang of blades.
Archers stalked shadows, loosing arrows at unseen foes, while warriors locked in desperate combat, their cries swallowed by the darkness.
The flickering campfire cast a feeble glow over the chaos, its light barely enough to reveal friend from foe.
No one could rally, no one could regroup—the battle had shattered into a tens of scattered duels, each man fighting alone against the encroaching tide of hunger and teeth.
...
The muffled chaos of clashing steel and terrified slave wails pierced through the tent walls.
Lily bolted upright from her bedroll, instantly alert.
She shook the sleeping Hound awake with urgent hands.
"Stay inside," she hissed, her voice tight with warning.
"We're under attack. Could be beasts from the Bone Orchard—you're not stepping out there."
With swift movements, Lily wrapped herself in a flowing black cloak that concealed her curvaceous frame.
She pulled up the hood, tucking strands of golden hair out of sight.
At the tent flap, she paused to throw Hound one last, unreadable glance before vanishing into the night's chaos.
The agonized wails of his enslaved tribesmen sent Hound into a panicked spiral.
His hands trembled—
—should he fight?
—Should he hide?
Lily's command warred with the screams outside, but louder than both was the echoing voice of his father, seared into his mind like a brand:
"Live."
That single word felt less like guidance and more like a chain.
A curse disguised as a blessing, forcing him to measure every breath, every choice, against the cold arithmetic of survival.
The tent walls seemed to close in around him, the air thick with the scent of smoke and blood.
Somewhere beyond the fray, his people were dying.
And here he stood—paralyzed, calculating, breathing—while his father's last command coiled around his heart like a snake.
But despite his confusion…
Hound steeled himself and stepped out of the tent.
He had the ability to control blood—why should he fear anything?
He had already taken a life, fought and defeated a seasoned warrior, and grown stronger than before.
But his power had limits; he was not invincible.
And yet he must try—one final attempt to save them.
They were once his family, his companions from the very beginning.
Even if they cast him out, even if rage consumed him, even if he cursed his leaders for his father's death—he could not deny the truth.
He had been one of them, a tribesman, bound by blood and memory.
Chaos thundered around him—the crackle of burning tents, the gurgling last breaths of Hungers and Raiders, the metallic stink of butchery thick in the air.
Yet he moved like a blade through smoke, unshaken, driven toward the place his tribesmen should have been.
Firelight clawed at the darkness, casting his shadow in jagged, twisting shapes against the tattered canvas.
He reached the post—
—Empty.
Only severed ropes swayed in the heat, their frayed ends whispering of escape… or slaughter.
No bodies.
No trail.
Then—
—A glint.
—A scent.
His pupils split, crimson flooding his vision as his Blood Instinct awoke. The world dissolved into a pulsing map of gore—
—a child's smeared handprint on bark,
—drops splattered like breadcrumbs into the blackened woods,
—the distant, living throb of veins in flight.
His teeth ached with the taste of it.
They were bleeding.
Running.
And the Bone Orchard waited ahead, its branches heavy with beasts that hungered for screaming meat.
Hound moved—muscles coiled, breath sharp—cutting through the choking dark of the forest. Ahead, his tribesmen fled, their frantic footfalls echoing like panicked heartbeats.
But they weren't the only hunters tonight.
Raiders crashed through the undergrowth behind them, weapons glinting.
They needed those slaves—fresh bodies to throw at the Orchard's horrors, fodder to buy their own passage through.
And then there were the Hungers.
They didn't need the tribesmen.
They just wanted to eat.
Hound's pulse hammered—faster, faster—but his steps stayed silent.
The Bone Orchard loomed ahead, its trees whispering.
Worse things than men waited in that tangled dark.
Beasts.
Skinless Leopards.
Things that didn't bother with ropes or chains—
—just teeth.
...
The night air thrummed with violence—screams, the clash of steel, the hungry roar of flames devouring the camp.
Yet Lady Rose, draped in shadows and regal indifference, observed it all with half-lidded eyes.
A Demon Lady of Marzenthia—the Abyssal Demon God of Desire, her power alone could have turned this battlefield to ash in an instant.
But she waited.
Was she lazy?
Or was she searching—watching—for the flicker of a worthy adversary?
Someone who could entertain her before she deigned to intervene?
Behind her,
the darkness itself breathed.
Kalix, her Angel of Darkness, knelt in silent devotion.
He had followed her from the blood-soaked sands of Infernal Divide, where Demon Clans warred like starving beasts.
His loyalty was absolute.
"Kalix," she murmured, her voice a velvet blade.
He did not stir—
—only listened.
"Save Hound if death closes its jaws around him… but only then." Her fingers curled, nails like obsidian.
"Watch him. Test him. Tell me if he is more than his fallen siblings—more than a reckless prince who died pointlessly in some forgotten village."
A pause.
The wind carried the scent of blood to her lips.
"I will not lose another child."
Kalix bowed lower, his black wings folding like a vow.
And the night swallowed them both whole.