The hall was too bright. Too full of gold and silk and laughter.

  Korrak sat at the high table, his fingers gripping a goblet of spiced wine, his ears ringing from the sound of wealthy men boasting and fat-lipped nobles gorging themselves. This was the kind of place he hated. A place where power was spoken of in words rather than in blood.

  The great banners of House Azhadal hung above, their sigil—a three-headed serpent—woven in deep blue and silver. The wine was fine, the food finer. Roasted boar, butter-drenched potatoes, fresh loaves of golden bread.

  Korrak chewed on a hunk of meat, trying to ignore the filthy sweetness of it. These men did not eat like warriors. They ate like pigs fattened before the slaughter.

  He could smell it before the first sip touched his tongue.

  Poison.

  It was not meant to kill.

  That much, he knew. He had swallowed worse things in the frozen wastes—bile from a dying wolf, bitter herbs meant to dull pain, the black blood of a sea-thing not meant for mortal consumption.

  This was something else.

  Something that itched at the base of his skull.

  The first sign was the shift in the torches.

  They were too bright.

  The second was the ringing in his ears—no longer just the murmur of the feast, but something else.

  Something louder.

  Something fast.

  Something furious.

  It was the loudest godsdamned lute jig he had ever heard.

  It rattled through his skull, a chaotic madness of strings and drums and something that sounded like a horse screaming into the wind. It was a song for drinking, for war, for the kind of violence that left men as heaps of meat on the ground.

  Korrak staggered to his feet, blinking hard.

  The faces in the hall shifted.

  The silk-robed lords, the wine-drunk warriors—they were wrong now.

  Their eyes burned violet. Their teeth stretched too long. Their flesh bubbled, split, reformed.

  Not men.

  Demons.

  Every godsdamned one of them.

  A goblet clattered to the floor. Someone spoke his name.

  Then—everything exploded.

  A different hall.

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  The banners were burning.

  The torches roared like wildfire, the stone walls cracked with heat and shadow.

  The air reeked of sulfur and blood.

  Korrak laughed.

  The first demon lunged.

  A great, horned beast, thick with muscle, its fingers ending in black claws. It swung a blade the size of a man, aiming to split Korrak from shoulder to hip.

  Korrak grabbed a roasted boar from the table and smashed it into the demon’s face.

  It reeled.

  Korrak grabbed the table, flipped it, and sent an entire feast of meats, knives, and goblets crashing into the beast.

  The lute jig intensified.

  More were coming. Crawling from the walls, dropping from the rafters, bursting through the burning banners.

  One had six arms, each carrying a different weapon.

  One had no face, only a great, gaping maw filled with writhing tongues.

  One was on fire.

  Korrak roared and dove into them.

  The first thing he grabbed was a chair.

  He swung it into a demon’s skull, the wood splintering on impact. The thing shrieked, black ichor spraying onto the floor.

  Another leapt onto his back, clawing at his shoulders.

  Korrak reached over his head, grabbed it by the face, and suplexed it onto the feast table so hard the table collapsed.

  A beast with three heads came at him, gnashing its snake-like fangs.

  Korrak grabbed a candelabra, jammed it into the thing’s mouth, and kicked its skull so hard the candle flames shot out the back of its head.

  Still more were coming.

  The lute-playing was deafening now, an unholy mix of war drums, screeching strings, and some bastardized attempt at melody that felt like a battle cry from a god who had never known peace.

  A demon with a whip made of flayed skin lashed at him—he caught the whip in his bare hands, yanked the creature forward, and headbutted it so hard its skull caved inward.

  A brute, towering over him, covered in iron plates and burning runes, raised a massive black axe.

  Korrak grabbed a leg of ham from the fallen feast, jammed it into the demon’s open mouth, and then punched it through the back of its skull.

  More.

  They kept coming.

  They came with claws and fangs, with weapons dripping shadow, with limbs that bent the wrong way.

  They came roaring, hissing, screaming, chittering.

  Korrak laughed.

  His fists were broken.

  His ribs were cracked.

  But he fought like a man who had never known the concept of stopping.

  A demon with a dozen slithering arms tried to strangle him—he grabbed two of them, ripped them clean from its body, and beat it to death with its own limbs.

  Another tried to skewer him with a spear of bone—he caught it mid-thrust, snapped it in half, and impaled the thing with its own weapon.

  A massive beast, fanged and armored, let out a guttural, abyssal growl, stepping toward him like a final, monstrous challenger.

  Korrak grabbed an entire godsdamned dining bench and swung it like a battering ram.

  The beast’s ribs shattered.

  Korrak kept swinging.

  And swinging.

  And swinging.

  The music reached its peak.

  The world spun.

  Then—

  Everything stopped.

  He blinked.

  The fire was gone.

  The demons were gone.

  But the bodies remained.

  The feast hall was ruined, tables smashed, food scattered across the floor. Blood—so much blood—painted the walls in splattered handprints, in streaks of deep red.

  They weren’t demons.

  They were men.

  Fat lords lay with their skulls shattered, their fine robes soaked in wine and viscera. Warriors—**once proud, now broken—**were slumped over chairs, their weapons still sheathed, their bodies ruined by some unknowable violence.

  And Korrak stood alone.

  He exhaled.

  The lute jig was gone.

  Only silence remained.

  He rolled his shoulders, cracked his knuckles.

  Someone had poisoned him.

  Someone had tried to kill him.

  And now, everyone who had been in the room was dead.

  Korrak stepped over the corpse of the lord who had hosted the banquet, grabbed a goblet from the floor, and poured himself another drink.

  He drank deep.

  Then, without a word, he turned and walked out of the hall.

  Korrak sees your admiration.

  And he hates it.

  He is not a hero. Not a legend. Not some specter that walks between myth and reality, meant to be whispered about in awe. He does not care for the songs, the stories, the drunken retellings of his deeds that twist and swell with each passing tongue.

  If you had stood before him, clutching your reverence like a fool clutching a dull blade, he would have only stared. And then he would have walked past you.

  Because to Korrak, it was never about glory.

  It was about the hunt.

  And if he still lives, it is only because there is always another chase.