KARGUK VORLAK

By the next moon, the gorge no longer looked like a battlefield.

Smoke still clung to the cliffs, but the orcs had made it their own. The ruined gate had become a fortress. Demon bones hardened into barriers; iron spears from fallen brutes now formed palisades. The gorge had been a wound—now it was a scar, and scars hold better than fresh skin.

Karguk Vorlak stood on the ridge above it all, wind tugging at the braids in his hair. Below, the new camp pulsed with life. Fangborn rebuilt fires. Pulse-Singers traced slow spirals of chalk and blood to seal the earth. The air smelled of stone, smoke, and determination.

“They learn fast,” Shira said beside him, eyes narrowing against the morning glare.

“They always did,” he said. “They just never remembered why.”

She snorted. “Memory is your curse, not theirs.”

Karguk didn’t argue.

He’d spent time walking the cliffs and sending scouts north. Fangborn pairs—quick, quiet, chosen for patience instead of bloodlust—slipped through the wastelands to map the Empire’s forgotten edges. He had ordered them to look for what orcs had never sought before: land to live, not land to burn.

And they had found it.

“There are ridges beyond the northern range,” Shira said, reading from the carved report in her hand. “Old human ruins. Streams that still run clean. The scouts say the air there smells like iron and pine.”

Karguk nodded. “Iron’s good. Pine burns slow. We can live there.”

She studied him. “You sound like a farmer.”

“Better a farmer than a ghost,” he said. “I’ve been both.”

She turned to face him fully, pale eyes sharp. “You keep talking about the next war.”

“I do.” He pointed south, to where the clouds darkened on the horizon. “The Broken Pulse won’t stop. It never does. This was only the first claw.”

“You never answered my question.”

“And what was that?”

“Do you really think the humans will stand with us?”

He gave a low sound—half laugh, half sigh. “I think they’ll die if they don’t.”

Shira looked unconvinced. “They won’t trust us. Not after all the Iron Tide has done”

“Then we teach them why they should.”

Her lips twisted. “You’re still lying to them—to everyone.”

“There are times when lies keep people alive long enough to develop and hold up the truth,” Karguk said. “I learned that from humans.”

He looked back over the camp. His people had always been a storm—chaotic, brilliant, impossible to contain. He loved them for it. But storms only destroy. In this life that wasn’t enough, the Iron Tide couldn’t only be a storm. They had to become something more—adaptable, knowing, using wisdom instead of only their axes and spears. The Iron Tide had to evolve, or they would perish.

Again.

“Ferocity wins a battle,” he said quietly. “Discipline wins a war. The demons fight with both extremes—endless lines of soldiers and monsters, things you wouldn’t recognize. If we stay rooted in our own chaos, we’ll die the same way we did before— proud, and useless.”

Shira folded her arms. “And if discipline kills what we are?”

“Then what we are was never enough.”

The words hung there, cold and heavy.

Below, a group of Fangborn children traced circles in the dust, imitating Pulse-Singers with broken sticks and laughter. Shira watched them, expression unreadable. “They’ll hate you for what you’re trying to build.”

“Maybe,” Karguk said. “But they’ll live long enough to decide for themselves.”

She shook her head. “You talk like a man half in love with his own prophecy.”

He looked at her, and for a moment the old warmth flickered through the hard edges of his face. “Maybe I am. But I’ve already seen the ending once. I’d rather at least attempt to write a new one.”

The wind shifted, carrying the faint scent of sea salt even this far inland. Karguk turned his gaze toward the horizon. Somewhere beyond those ridges, the Empire waited—its towers, its cultivators, its scholars—and somewhere among them, her.

This tale has been pilfered from NovelBin. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

He still saw her when he closed his eyes: the Woman of Steel and Storm, cutting through corruption like light through smoke. He had no name for her, only an ache in his chest that memory refused to heal.

“She’s out there,” he murmured.

Shira’s voice softened. “The woman from your past life?”

“Yes. The one who broke the demons before. Or the one who will.”

“And what will you do if she doesn’t exist, or is different, or you can’t find her?”

He smiled faintly. “Then I’ll find the one who can take her place.”

She sighed, long and tired. “You’re chasing shadows. We don’t even know where to start.”

“I returned for a reason. I can’t believe that I’m the only one as I was a small part of our stand against the demons. If the Woman isn’t out there—if she didn’t make similar choices or isn’t the same—then I have to believe there are others who can take her place. Because I know one thing for sure.”

He looked directly at Shira. “We can’t do this alone.”

He turned away from the ridge and started down the slope. The Pulse-Singers below began a new rhythm, low and steady, echoing through the gorge like the heartbeat of a world trying to stay alive.

He felt the pulse of power feed his body and mind.

When he reached the base, Karguk paused beside a half-built drum tower and watched the younger orcs set the hide to frame. They moved with purpose both measured and deliberate. It wasn’t much, but it was a beginning.

He spoke softly, more to himself than to Shira. “The Empire thinks it’s safe behind its walls and doesn’t truly understand the danger—not yet. I remember. I have to assume there are others. Even now the Broken Pulse could be moving toward an accelerated destruction, reaching for all things. We must prepare—and find those who will help.”

She raised an eyebrow. “With an army and potential allies who have no reason to trust you?”

“With a people who will learn to fight beside their enemies,” he said. “And maybe a few humans who remember what survival costs.”

He looked again to the dark horizon. The clouds there glowed faintly, storm-light flickering deep within—white fire through black veins.

Somewhere beyond that light, he could almost feel the answer waiting for him: the Empire, the Woman of Steel and Storm, the rhythm that might finally bind chaos into order.

The Pulse thrummed under his feet, answering his thoughts like an echo.

“The next war,” Karguk said again, “we fight together.”

Shira’s voice drifted beside him, wry and tired and almost gentle. “Then let’s hope the world’s ready for that kind of miracle.”

He smiled without mirth, tusks catching the first light of dawn. “Miracles are just things no one survives to explain.”

The wind rose. The drums followed. Kargurk retreated for the night.

The morning was quiet when the rhythmic pound of the Pulse-singer's drums. There was a certain alarm that spoke of urgency. A different beat that came fast and uneasy.

A runner stumbled up the ridge path, cloak torn, skin streaked with dust. He dropped to one knee before Karguk, chest heaving, his clan-mark still wet with fresh ink.

“High Fang,” the scout gasped. “We have word from the south.”

Karguk turned, tusks catching the low light. “The south?”

The runner nodded, swallowing hard. “Not from our fleets. From the mainland. Orcs, my lord—our own kind.

But not ours.”

Shira’s head snapped toward him. “Impossible. The Tide hasn’t landed that far south. I gave specific instructions. The last transports haven’t even left harbor.”

“I thought the same,” the scout said. “But the runners swear it. Whole war-bands—two contingents, maybe three. They march under no clan banners, and they do not answer the call-signs. They carry the Pulse, but it’s twisted—muted. They don’t act like the Tide.”

Karguk’s expression darkened. “Mercenaries? Or deserters?”

"We think...we think they one who were once seperated from the main body of the Tide,” the scout said. “Their skin is red and their language is off..they are heading to what is believed to have been a Gate--one that holds a goddess..”

Shira’s pale eyes went sharp. “A gate? Alive? I thought all of those were gone.”

The scout nodded. "I have no knolwedge of such things, my Lord. But our Pulse-Singers believe this one is inhabited. They say the air hums with power, that the ground glows underfoot at night. They think there are spoils to be taken—divine metal, relics, something left from the gods themselves. There are those who have left and are marching toward it now.”

Karguk went very still. “How far?”

“Three days from the southern coast. Near the edges of the endless mountain range where the jungle meets the hills. The Humans call it the Cliff of Moher. Too far for us to reach quickly. Close enough that if they stir it, we’ll feel it.”

Shira cursed softly. “The fools. They’ll wake something they can’t kill.”

Karguk stared south, toward the distant haze. He could almost feel it in his bones—the faint hum of a living wound in the world, calling to those stupid enough to answer.

“The Pulse bleeds there,” he said quietly. “And they chase it like dogs to a bone.”

Shira folded her arms. “If there’s truly a gate, it’ll draw more than orcs.”

“There’s always a gate,” Karguk murmured. “The gods seem to leave them like seeds. And the hungry waters them.”

The scout hesitated. “There are others there there, My Lord. Our scouts believe they are other of some importance from the Empire. They are commuting with the Gate.

Karguk froze. The Woman of Steel and Storm? Could it be her? Surely she is important.

"Orders, High Fang?”

Karguk didn’t answer right away. His gaze stayed on the southern horizon—the same direction his instincts had been whispering toward for weeks. A warning disguised as memory. A pull disguised as fate.

Finally, he said, “I will attend to this..”

Shira frowned. “You’re going after them?”

“Yes,” he said. “I do not know of this gate and gates if active are usually powerful and dangerous. We cannot allow important humans to died. There is too much at stake."

The scout looked uneasy. “And if it truly is a gate, High Fang? What then?”

Karguk’s eyes never left the horizon. “Then the south burns again—and this time, I intend to be standing when the smoke clears.”

Shira followed his gaze. “You think this is where the next war starts.”

He exhaled, low and certain. “No,” he said. “It’s already started.”

Below them, the Pulse-Singers changed their rhythm. The drums fell into a long, deliberate beat—the sound of something stirring beneath the soil.

The wind carried the scent of salt and storm. Far away, beyond Karguk’s sight, lightning flickered over the southern coast where Vivian Li and the others were just beginning to feel the same unease.

Karguk’s tusks bared in a thin, grim smile. “The next war,” he whispered, “comes faster than I thought.”

And when the drums began again, the gorge trembled as if the earth itself agreed.