Chương 98: The Forges of Vhur

In Vhur, children learned how to fall before they learned how to speak properly. It was not cruelty. Not officially. In the domain of Drakhar, General of Wrath, falling was considered the body's first language. A child who did not know how to fall became a soldier who died badly. A soldier who died badly wasted everyone else's time. And in the Forges of Vhur, time belonged to war. On the morning after the Black Throne's resonance, a thousand young recruits were lined up on the ash plains. The sky was red.

The ground burned in places. Immense hammers struck in the mountains, far enough away not to be seen, close enough for every vibration to travel through bone. Drakhar walked in front of the ranks. He did not wear full armor. He did not need to. His black skin, cracked with ember-like light, already looked like a living forge. His four arms were bare to the shoulders. His massive horns, broken at the tips, still bore the marks of old duels he had never bothered to polish away.

A demonic child in the third row trembled. Drakhar stopped in front of him. The entire field stopped breathing. The child was perhaps twelve. Or twenty. Among certain demons, age was measured less in years than in useful scars. Drakhar leaned down.

"Are you afraid?" The child clenched his teeth.

"Yes, General." Good answer. Drakhar smiled.

"Of me?"

"Yes." Still a good answer.

"Of the Throne?" This time, the child hesitated. Drakhar struck him. Not to kill. To send his body rolling ten meters through the ash. The child got back up, spitting blood. Not fast enough. Drakhar spoke to the whole plain:"Wrong fear." He lifted one hand toward the east, toward the invisible Black Heart.

"The Throne will not kill you because you tremble. It will kill you if you think trembling is an excuse to stay on your knees." He pointed at the child.

"Again." The child charged. Ridiculous. Too slow. Too weak. But he charged. Drakhar let him strike his chest. The child's fist nearly shattered. Drakhar did not move. Then he burst out laughing.

"There." He placed one immense hand on the young demon's head.

"Bad attack. Good direction." The child collapsed when Drakhar released him. This time, two instructors carried him away alive. The recruits understood the lesson. In Vhur, fear was not forbidden. Only stillness was. The news of Arkhos of the Low Jaws' death arrived during the third exercise. Drakhar listened to the report while watching recruits run beneath flaming projectiles.

"Dead by his own shadow?" he asked. The messenger knelt.

"Yes, General." Drakhar burst out laughing.

"Pathetic." A lieutenant with four arms, leaner than his, stepped forward.

"Seryth?"

"Maybe."

"Morvessa?"

"Too fast."

"Cassiel?"

"Too artistic for him, unless he paid someone."

"Vaelthor?" Drakhar smiled.

"Vaelthor would have made Arkhos fall from something high." The lieutenant waited.

"So?" Drakhar watched one recruit get hit by an iron ball and stand back up with a broken nose.

"So someone wanted to remind the little lords that declaring themselves a candidate without carrying the weight of a General is a form of public suicide."

"Should we claim responsibility?"

"Why?" The lieutenant hesitated.

"To inspire fear." Drakhar slowly turned his ember-bright gaze toward him.

"If you have to tell others they should be afraid of you, then you've already lost something." The lieutenant lowered his head.

"My apologies." Drakhar turned his attention back to the field.

"Let them believe we might have done it. That's more useful." This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. The messenger added:"Three other minor lords are fortifying their holdings in the south. One of them has refused to send Vhur its steel quotas." Drakhar went still. The air changed. Not much. Enough for the closest recruits to miss a step.

"Refused?" The messenger swallowed.

"He claims that during the Succession, every claimant has the right to preserve his resources until official recognition of his rank." Drakhar remained silent. Then he smiled. No one liked that smile.

"Name?"

"Kharvoss of Red Fang." Drakhar raised one hand. The exercises stopped. A thousand recruits froze in the middle of the plain.

"How long to his fortress?" The lieutenant answered immediately:"Three hours with ash cavalry. One hour and a half if you take the breakers." Drakhar looked at his recruits. Some were bleeding. Some were trembling. Some could barely stay standing. Perfect.

"Not the breakers." The lieutenant raised his eyes.

"General?" Drakhar pointed at the recruits.

"Them." A vast silence fell over the plain. The messenger went pale.

"General, they're recruits."

"Yes."

"Red Fang has walls, heavy crossbows, at least two hundred trained soldiers—""Very good." Drakhar turned his enormous smile toward the thousand recruits.

"Today, you will learn the difference between training and memory." Red Fang's fortress was ugly. Drakhar appreciated that. Beautiful fortresses sometimes forgot they were built to be broken. This one, at least, had the honesty of a jaw: low, thick walls, squat towers, ditches filled with slow embers, gates bound in black iron. Kharvoss's banner snapped at the top, a red tooth on an ash-gray field. The recruits arrived in disorder. Exhausted. Some had vomited during the march. Others limped.

The child Drakhar had struck that morning was there too, supported by two comrades, face swollen, eyes bright. Drakhar climbed alone onto a stone in front of the fortress. Enemy crossbows tightened. A voice shouted from the walls:"General Drakhar! Kharvoss of Red Fang acknowledges your power, but during the Succession, he claims his right to preserve—" Drakhar threw his axe. It crossed a hundred meters, rose whistling, and cut the speaker in half against the parapet. The axe returned to his hand.

He shouted:"Bad start." The fortress answered with a volley. Heavy bolts fell on the recruits. The front line was torn open. Young demons screamed. Some stepped back. Drakhar did not strike them. He looked at them. That was worse.

"Advance." They advanced. Badly. Under the bolts. Under flaming stones. Under the insults of Red Fang's soldiers. The lieutenant with four arms looked at Drakhar.

"They'll die by the dozens before they reach the ditches."

"Yes."

"Is that intentional?" Drakhar did not answer immediately. A group of recruits reached the first ditch. One fell into it and screamed as the slow embers caught his legs. Two others tried to pull him out. A stone crushed all three. Drakhar watched.

"The Succession does not begin when the Throne chooses the great. It begins when the small realize their lives have been put back on the table." The lieutenant stayed silent.

"Those who survive this fortress will remember their first wall."

"And those who die?" Drakhar smiled.

"They will become part of the next wall." Then he raised all four arms.

"Now." The war drums of Vhur struck. Not from the rear. From their chests. Each recruit wore beneath their armor a war-disc grafted against the sternum before training. When the master drums resonated, the discs answered. The recruits' eyes turned red. Not mind control. Not a blessing. A reminder. The rhythm of Vhur told the body only one thing: Pain comes after. The recruits charged. This time, they did not avoid the ditches. They filled them. With planks, bodies, shields, screams.

The gates shook under the first improvised rams. Red Fang kept firing. Then Drakhar entered. He walked through his own recruits, in the middle of the bolts, the screams, and the smoke. A bolt struck his shoulder. He snapped it in one hand. A second cut his cheek. He smiled. A third aimed for his eye. He caught it between two fingers. Then he jumped. Red Fang's wall was not high. It was only high enough to give confidence to the weak. Drakhar landed on the parapet. The stone split beneath his feet.

The soldiers of Kharvoss stepped back. He did not use his axe at once. He seized the first soldier by the head and smashed him into the second. He tore the arm off the third and used it to strike the fourth. He opened the fifth's ribcage with his bare hands, then hurled the body into a crossbow. The wall turned red. The recruits saw it. They screamed. Not in fear. This time, in imitation. The gates gave way. The fortress was taken in twenty-three minutes.

Kharvoss of Red Fang was found in the inner hall, surrounded by elite guards. He wore heavy armor, two golden horns, a great sword, and the expression of a man who had just understood that preserving his resources had not helped preserve his life. Drakhar entered alone.

"You refused the steel." Kharvoss raised his sword.

"During the Succession, every claimant has the right to—" Drakhar sighed.

"That phrase again." The fight lasted less time than the assault. Kharvoss was strong. Not enough. Drakhar tore the sword from his hands, shattered his knee, then dragged him outside before the surviving recruits. Six hundred and forty-two recruits remained out of a thousand. Drakhar showed them Kharvoss.

"This one wanted to keep his steel." Kharvoss spat blood.

"I am a candidate for the Throne." Silence fell. Drakhar looked at him. Then he burst out laughing. A laugh so violent that some of the wounded started bleeding again.

"No." He placed a hand on Kharvoss's head.

"You are a lesson with a name." Then he crushed it. The head burst across the paving stones. The recruits watched. Some were trembling. Others were smiling. The ones who smiled might live long enough to become dangerous. Drakhar raised one arm.

"Take the steel. Burn the rank archives. Hang the officers who obeyed a phrase instead of a strength." The lieutenant asked:"And the civilians?" Drakhar looked at the inhabitants cowering in the lower courtyards. Smiths. Porters. Children. Servants.

"Those who know how to work steel march to Vhur. Those who refuse feed the embers."

"Yes, General." Red Fang's fortress was emptied before nightfall. Kharvoss had wanted to preserve his resources. Drakhar had turned them into soldiers, metal, and history. The human report arrived that evening, while the surviving recruits ate around the ditches filled with bodies. Drakhar sat on Kharvoss's broken throne, set outside as a provocation. His axe rested against his shoulder. A captured blacksmith repaired the cuts in his bracer with trembling hands. The four-armed lieutenant approached.

"General."

"Speak."

"Our observers in the human Marches confirm the summoning."

"Heroes?"

"Four publicly recognized subjects. Defensive, support, perception, and line-protection abilities." Drakhar chewed a piece of black meat.

"Boring."

"There is more." Finally. Drakhar raised his eyes.

"A fifth subject was reportedly withheld from proclamation. Information is contradictory. The Ashes are involved. The Grand Archivist as well." Drakhar smiled.

"So Seryth really is hiding something."

"Probably."

"Name?"

"Zayn. No confirmed title." Drakhar repeated:"Zayn." The name triggered nothing. Not yet. No clear resonance. No pressure from the Throne in his blood. Only a note. A small sound in the immense noise of the Succession.

"Strength?"

"Weak, according to the earliest fragments." Drakhar almost lost interest.

"Then why the Ashes?"

"Anomaly of recognition."

"Humans call something an anomaly when they fail to sort it into either a prayer or a cage." The lieutenant went on:"Some think the subject may be contaminated." Drakhar laughed.

"Already? Their heroes rot quickly." He stood. The captured blacksmith stepped back too slowly. Drakhar seized him by the shoulder.

"You know how to work steel?" The blacksmith trembled.

"Yes, General."

"Then live." He let him go. Then returned to the lieutenant.

"Watch him."

"Zayn?"

"No, the other bright human with the line-protection ability." The lieutenant blinked.

"The main hero?"

"The main heroes always draw the blows the others should have taken. I want to know whether this one becomes a banner or a grave."

"And Zayn?" Drakhar looked at the recruits around the ditches. Some were already asleep despite the blood.

"If he is weak, he will die."

"And if he survives?" The smile returned.

"Then he will stop being weak." The lieutenant understood that the order had been given. No intervention. Observation. For now. Drakhar picked up his axe again.

"Send only one message to the eastern patrols: if a contaminated human ever crosses a demonic border, do not kill him from afar."

"Why?" Drakhar climbed down from the broken throne.

"Because I want to see his eyes when he understands that here, no one will call him an error in order to make him disappear." He smiled.

"They will call him an error only if he survives long enough to deserve correction." Later that night, the child Drakhar had struck that morning approached the central fire. His face was bruised. His fist bandaged. His armor too large. He moved with the stiffness of those trying to hide that everything in them hurt. Drakhar saw him.

"You still breathe." The child knelt. Not too low. He had learned.

"Yes, General."

"How many did you kill?"

"Two, General."

"A lie?"

"No, General." Drakhar looked at an instructor. The instructor confirmed with a nod. Two enemies killed. For a half-broken recruit. Acceptable.

"Why are you here?" The child placed something on the ground. A piece of steel torn from Red Fang's gates.

"To forge a weapon." Drakhar tilted his head.

"You think you deserve one?"

"No." Good answer.

"Then why ask for it?" The child raised his eyes.

"Because I want to become someone who will deserve it after carrying it." The silence around the fire changed. Drakhar smiled. Not gently. Never. But with a form of brutal approval.

"Name?"

"Rul'Khar."

"Old name?" The child hesitated.

"Vesh."

"Wrong. Vesh died in the ditch this morning when he feared the Throne." Drakhar picked up the piece of steel.

"Rul'Khar was born when he charged anyway." He tossed the steel to a smith.

"A short blade. Bad. Heavy. Too large for him." The child looked up, surprised. Drakhar smiled.

"Let him suffer while learning it." Rul'Khar bowed. This time, perfectly. Drakhar watched him go. Then his smile disappeared. The Black Throne called monsters, kings, claimants, errors. But before all of that, it called survivors. Drakhar did not respect the weak. He respected those who bled in the right direction. The human name returned to him then. Zayn. Weak, said the report. Hidden by humans. Watched by the Ashes. Protected, perhaps, by Maelor. Contaminated, perhaps.

Drakhar looked at the ditches of Red Fang, filled with corpses that had served as bridges.

"Survive, human," he murmured. His axe vibrated against his shoulder.

"Or disappear quickly." Far off, the Forges of Vhur struck all night. Every blow added a weapon to the war that was coming. Every weapon waited for a hand. Every hand waited for an enemy. And somewhere in the human kingdom, a boy called Zayn had not yet understood that, from the point of view of certain powers, being rejected was not an ending. It was only the first test of worth.