Book One – Chapter 13

It emerged from the void, a harbinger of chaos.

The avian beast materialised with a fury, its wings thrashing against the storm’s wrath as it swept across the Snowtrail, just above him. Where Nagrak had been paralysed by confusion, he now teetered between shocked out of his senses and sheer terror. Too many events collided at once, utter chaos enveloping him. Moments ago, Balthagar had seemingly entrusted him with leading the orks, or so Nagrak believed after their brief exchange, especially with Gorak gone. Now, he found himself fleeing not only from the avian beast, but from the golem, which had obliterated the last remaining warrior and was now in pursuit.

Scrambling along the trail, clawing and climbing through snow, ice, and jagged rock, Nagrak sought for refuge. He wedged himself into a crevice in the mountainside, a narrow space barely wide enough for his slim frame. It was a fissure too cramped for the golem to follow, a gash where fractured ice and mottled brown rock formed a tenuous shield against the storm. It was less a cave entrance and more a rift between the mountain’s face and a fallen rock fragment dislodged by the voltera’s ascent, which had tumbled down the slope and slammed onto the trail. Frost was already fusing the rock and mountain wall together, sealing Nagrak from danger.

Nagrak exhaled sharply, sucked in his stomach and pressed deeper into the confines of the gap, a meter deep at most, with no room to glance over his shoulder. He did not need to. The tremors in the earth and the ominous noise of grinding rock behind him told Nagrak the golem was right there. As he crouched for cover, his hand closed instinctively around the ember embedded in Balthagar’s skull fragment. A stray thought cut through his fear-drenched mind, a flicker of clarity amidst the maelstrom. Was now the moment to embrace his magic? Could this be the stone – the one among all those he carried, the stone of all stones – that would unlock his potential? Balthagar had bestowed upon him a legacy, a command to rise as the new krag. Was destiny unfolding at this very heartbeat—