KARGUK VORLAK

The gorge still smoked as the remants of the demon gate sat in pieces

Karguk Vorlak stood among the bodies and breathed ash until it tasted like memory. Black sand, cracked stone, the stink of burnt ichor—it was all too familiar. This was how wars had ended in his first life: with silence pretending to be victory.

He had been a prince once, though orcs had no word for it. Blood of the High Fang, heir to the Ironfang line, first to be tested and last to be forgiven. The clans had called him many things—war-born, oath-breaker, ghostmaker—but princewas not among them.

The word itself came from the humans—his allies in the end, the ones he had never thought possible.

He crouched beside the shattered keystone and pressed a hand to its cooling runes. The slab’s pulse had died, but it still twitched beneath the skin of the world like a heart that didn’t know it was gone. The Broken Pulse—the demon magic—was always hungry, always waiting.

He remembered drowning in it.

The last war had been a beautiful lie: orc banners on fire, drums like thunder, the Iron Tide charging through Murai surf for years on end. The Murai—or the Spirit Swords, as they were called by his kind—had fought the orcs of the Iron Tide for generations, killing each other for land and honor.

Neither side had known the truth: that the demons watched from behind human eyes. When the demons attacked, both the Murai and the Tide were already weakened beyond recognition.

The demons came and killed them all.

Karguk Vorlak had been young and proud, roaring for conquest, never seeing the hand behind the glory. When the False Drum of the demons beat, he had tried to resist with those who were left. When the Broken Pulse whispered, he fought against it. Many among his kind fell to the Broken Pulse—the magic of the demons—out of pride, anger, or revenge. There were many reasons. It was all the same in the end. The proud warriors of the Iron Tide fell. He had believed the gods wanted blood—wanted glory, wanted conquest.

He learned in his dying moments that they had only wanted silence.

He had died choking on it—spear in hand, brothers gone, the sea boiling with corruption—and thought that would be enough.

But gods are cruel in their mercy. They gave him another breath, another life, another chance to watch the same mistakes sharpened for the next war.

He rose, breath heavy, tusks flecked with soot. Below, survivors dragged demon carcasses into piles that smoked without burning. Pulse-Singers moved among them, chanting low, their drums soft as a heartbeat. Shira stood near the broken ridge, pale eyes tracking him as if she could still hear the lie he hadn’t told.

He had promised her the mainland. He had promised them all a future.

Instead, he had given them another pyre.

His final memory of that life was of a blackened sky, monstrous creatures, and dead comrades—orc, Murai, and Culivator alike.

In the last life, he had followed orders, given orders, fought with purpose but not righteousness. His people had suffered because of it.

He awoke younger, stronger—and wiser.

He lived again. The gods, or time, or perhaps even the demons, had given him another chance. Another opportunity to fix what was broken.

He tried to change what he knew to be true. The demons would come again. They would kill everything in their path. He would stop it. He assumed it would be the last thing he ever did.

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This life had started much like the last; it was not so different. The council had wanted blood from the Murai again—those perfect swords, those flawless islands—and he had lied to stop them. Told them the sea burned, that stormfire of the Sea People waited to devour their fleets. He’d turned their ambition toward the mainland, where at least there was ground to stand on.

It was a clever lie. Necessary. And still, it tasted of rot. This time had to be different. They could not allow events to unfold as they had before.

He had convinced the Highbloods—his father and the other clan heads—that this was necessary, that this was right. The battles between the Murai and the orcs had been legendary and persistent. They had been the orcs’ greatest enemy.

At least they were—until Karguk watched the remainder of his people die to the demons, not in a war fought with honor and glory, but in a massacre what a mortal would do to an ant colony.

He looked down at his hands—calloused and covered in demon ichor but steady—then to the bodies of his fallen warriors and the demons who had been here. “I told you this would work,” he muttered, not sure if he meant it for his father, his goddess, or the dead.

The Iron Tide was moving on the mainland with intention. The Pulse still beat, but weaker.

The wind shifted, carrying the faint tang of iron from the ruined gate. It smelled like old ghosts. He thought of Drogath—his father, the Voice of Iron—still alive back on the home island, still believing his son was forging glory for the clans. He thought of Varzak, whispering poison in the halls. He thought of the council fire, the duel, the roar of the crowd when he’d broken the old wolf’s knee and told them that the mainland was their destiny.

They called me clever, he thought. They called me visionary. They didn’t hear the fear underneath.

He turned to Shira, his half orc childhood friend and betrothed. (Though he did not talk about that as it made her upset for some reason) Shira had blood on her cheek and the kind of calm that came from having no strength left to shake.

“It’s done,” she said.

“For now.”

“You broke the gate. You were right. The demons of the Crimson Plains—they were here, and you broke them. I supposed I will have to believe that you live again.”

He stared past her, toward the dark horizon where the land curled into mountains. “Is it so hard to believe with how different I am.”

She smiled. “No you were always stupid. This was just a bit less stupid.”

He felt the grin forming on his face now. “The demons are just getting started. This victor isn’t enough. This is just the beginning.”

Her jaw tightened. “You think the humans will help us? The Empire doesn’t even help itself. You’ve seen how they treat each other—all pride and power and blindness to their own. They fight for petty reasons.”

“Are we really so different?” Karguk said. “We fight for honor, for power, for anger and despair and just about anything else. Our whole society is based on dominance. We have special duels like The Cut of Stance—just to fight. It is how we govern ourselves.”

She studied him a long moment. “That has always been our way. Strength is power.”

Karguk shook his head. “Not from what I’ve seen. Strength is important but so is wisdom. Strength without wisdom is like meat without salt. It is good but at the same time wrong.”

“And now through your wisdom, you’ve changed things. Do you really think this time will be different?”

He looked back at the gorge, where the last pulse infused embers of the gate winking out like dying stars,. He watched as his men hunted the wounded demons that still crawled. “It has to be,” he said. “I remember what happens when it’s not.”

Voices came to him sometimes in the quiet—the same one that had cursed him to wake again. It said memory was mercy. He was beginning to think it was punishment.

He had watched his people fight themselves into extinction once. He would not do it again.

“Send runners north,” he said finally. “Tell them the foothold stands. Tell them the sea is open. Tell them the Iron Tide lives. Also send them south. There are those we must find. We must find a way to reach the Stewards of the Empire.”

Shira’s brow furrowed. “Is that the truth?”

Karguk bared his tusks in something that might have been a smile. “Let the truth catch up when it can.”

She shook her head but didn’t argue.

When she was gone, he stood alone on the cliff and looked at what they had built in two short moons—a camp carved from ruin, warriors binding wounds, Pulse-Singers humming the old rhythms under their breath. It wasn’t empire. It wasn’t conquest. But it was something.

He drew a slow breath and spoke to the wind. “I was a prince once. I shouted for war. I died for nothing. I will not die again for pride.”

He looked down at the ruined gate, then beyond it—to where the human lands waited, bright and fragile under the clouds. Somewhere out there, he could almost feel a heartbeat that wasn’t his own—a rhythm steady and strange, like the drum of a machine instead of a man.

Maybe that was her—the Woman of Steel and Storm, the one who had carved a hole in fate and lived through it.

Or maybe it was someone else. Someone building something new.

He didn’t know yet. But he would.

“The next war,” he said softly, “we fight differently.”

And the gorge—broken, smoking, alive—answered him with silence.