The dead of Blackreach swayed like mournful chimes in the mountain wind.

  Their bodies—broken, stripped, desecrated—hung from rusted chains fastened to the battered gates that once welcomed wardens and kings. General Casamir Saumont, the Lion of the North, now hung like a forgotten standard, impaled upon a black iron spike above the gate. His lion-headed helm had been crushed inward, fused to the pulp of his skull. His breastplate, once burnished steel chased with gold, had been split open like a butchered boar. Crows pecked at his ribs. Rain had washed his blood into the dirt below, where it mixed with old ash.

  Someone had scrawled in dried blood across the wall behind him:

  Here is the lion of the east.

  Blackreach had fallen. Not merely defeated—but gutted, defiled, made into something new.

  A throne room.

  Its towers had been broken, its high walls cracked by the siege engines of the southern orcs, and its proud banners torn down and pissed upon. The chapel had been turned into a latrine, the library into a firepit. Statues of old saints had been decapitated and replaced with shrines to blood gods, some bearing writhing things still alive. The bodies of noble defenders were stripped of armor, hung like game over the courtyard walls. Even the stones beneath the fortress wept from the sacrilege.

  On a rise above the fortress, the war tent loomed.

  It was a structure of horror—stitched together from flayed hides, the cords lashed tight with sinew and hair, the exterior crowned by the bleached tusks of mammoths and the heads of fallen heroes. At its apex flew no banner—only the flayed pelt of the Imperial Lion, nailed to a pole and dripping with old rain.

  Outside the tent, Shermongrin waited.

  The shaman stood alone, his crimson robes stiff with dried blood and mountain dust, the twisted staff of his order leaning against his shoulder. Three hours had passed since he was summoned. He had not been offered a seat. He had not been addressed. He had not moved. A single carrion fly buzzed endlessly around his ear.

  He made no effort to swat it.

  This was no oversight. It was a test. A leash. Warmonger enjoyed cruelty in all forms—war, hunger, silence.

  Shermongrin endured. He had always endured.

  At long last, the tent flap stirred.

  “You may enter,” came a low, guttural voice—disinterested, as though the one who spoke had already decided his worth.

  The shaman gathered the folds of his robe and stepped inside.

  What greeted him was not a war chamber but a cathedral of the grotesque.

  The braziers burned not with fire, but with ghost flame—blue, violet, and sickly green. The walls dripped with tanned flesh stretched over bone frames. Skeletons hung in ritualistic poses along the beams, some twitching slightly in mockery of life. Skulls lined the altar niches, and blood pooled in carved channels across the floor.

  And at the far end…

  Sat the Throne of Bones.

  Constructed from the fused remains of orcs, men, elves, dwarves, and beasts unspoken of, the throne reared behind the war king like the ribcage of a dead god. Twin orc skulls served as armrests, their sockets stuffed with rubies that pulsed with a dark internal light. The scent of marrow was still fresh. The throne was not furniture—it was a declaration.

  Stolen story; please report.

  And seated upon it, a titan.

  Warmonger.

  A mountain draped in war-plate blackened by soot and scored by battle. His shoulders were wreathed in a cloak made of dwarf beards, torn from the faces of kings and champions. His one tusk gleamed gold, the other jagged and cracked. Runes etched in molten iron glowed faintly across his armor, and across his lap rested Ar’Sul, the demon blade, its dark veins pulsing like the flesh of a thing still alive.

  “It’s a fine throne, isn’t it?” Warmonger rumbled. His voice was the grinding of tectonic plates, the sound of kingdoms dying.

  Shermongrin bowed, careful not to show even a flicker of disdain. “A throne worthy of the God of War. Kurlong’s fine work shall be remembered in song and scar.”

  “Kurlong’s dead,” Warmonger replied flatly. “I slit his throat before the sun rose. Can’t have a smith getting clever and making something finer for another.” He leaned forward. “You understand, don’t you, Shermongrin?”

  The shaman bowed deeper. “Perfectly.”

  A smile split the war king’s face—white teeth against blackened skin.

  Then came the slaves.

  Two humans, barely clothed, trembling with exhaustion, entered bearing silver bowls piled with fruit—grapes, pomegranate seeds, orange segments peeled to glistening perfection. They approached with lowered heads, stepping around dried blood as they approached the throne.

  Shermongrin stiffened.

  He recognized them. They were his. Claimed during the sack of the bastion, marked with his own sigil. Promised by Turtont.

  Warmonger popped grapes between his tusks without breaking eye contact.

  “Lovely little morsels,” he murmured. “Told the slave master they were mine. He dared tell me someone else had dared claim them before me. He swore he didn’t know who had claimed them.”

  He licked juice from his fingers. “So I cut out his tongue. Then I slit his throat.”

  Shermongrin smiled thinly. “Perhaps he sought to hoard them himself.”

  “Mmmm. Oogold is investigating. He always finds the truth.”

  The smile slipped from the shaman’s face.

  Oogold. That idiot would gut his own mother if it won him favor. And if he discovered Shermongrin’s claim…

  Inside, the shaman’s mind raced. A scapegoat would be needed. Or a prophecy. Or a death.

  Inside Warmongers head, Ar’Sul stirred.

  Its voice—oil and fire—slid into Warmonger’s mind.

  “He lies to you.”

  “I know.”

  “Let me taste his marrow. Let me show you, his truth.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Coward.”

  “Silence.”

  The war king stood.

  The tent groaned with his motion.

  “Enough of fruit and liars,” he snarled. “We speak of conquest.”

  Shermongrin followed him into the war chamber beyond.

  There, stretched over a table of carved dragon bone, lay a map of the known world—made not of parchment, but flayed human skin. Mountains were stitched. Rivers inked in blood. Cities marked by obsidian daggers.

  A long horn blew outside, and six war leaders entered.

  Oogold—tall, scarred, a necklace of severed thumbs around his throat.

  Grashnak—armored in black, twin axes resting across his back.

  Throgul—reptilian, his tongue flicking with each breath.

  Bash-Fang—an ogre with iron plates fused into his flesh.

  Skrall the Red-Eyed—his voice said to summon storms.

  Ugmuk the Silent—a killer who spoke with steel alone.

  Warmonger stabbed his dagger into the eastern mountains.

  “Stonewarden Hall.”

  A murmur of approval spread through the room.

  “I want it broken. Its forges drowned. Its halls shattered.”

  He pointed.

  “Grashnak. Ride west. Burn their food. Salt their fields. Slay their sons.”

  “Blood and ash!” Grashnak bellowed.

  “Skrall. Cut off the Riverlands. Sink their barges. Let the cities starve.”

  “To the deeps they go,” Skrall growled.

  “Throgul. Find a breach. I want entry, not siege.”

  Throgul bowed, flicking his tongue in assent.

  “Oogold, Bash-Fang. Remain with me. We prepare the hammer while the knife does its work.”

  Shermongrin stepped forward. “War King. If I may—dividing the horde…”

  Warmonger turned.

  Silence descended like a blade.

  “I do not need to march into the Empire,” the war king said, his voice now low and cold. “I will make the Empire come to me.”

  He circled the table slowly.

  “I will starve them. Bleed them. Burn their crops. Drown their sons. And when they crawl to Blackreach, I will greet them with fire.”

  He stopped before Shermongrin.

  “And if any among you think me weak…” He placed a hand on Ar’Sul’s hilt. “Speak. Let the sword drink.”

  None did.

  Shermongrin bowed low. “As you command.”

  But inside, hatred bloomed like rot.

  ?

  That night, the fortress was alive with flame and screaming.

  Drunken orcs danced in the ash fields. Slaves wept and bled and died. And in the heart of his tent, Warmonger sat alone.

  Ar’Sul pulsed in his lap.

  “Kill him.”

  “Not yet.”

  “He plots against you. You know it.”

  “I will use him. Then feed him to you.”

  “You play with carrion. I hunger for kings.”

  Warmonger’s eyes burned like coals in the dark.

  “Soon,” he whispered.

  Outside, the wind howled through the bones of Blackreach.

  And the throne of bones waited for its next skull.