Chapter 26 Kragna
KRAGNA
Itaste thunder in the soil long before the horns reach my ears. At the edge of our camp, smoke drifts west, bitter and sharp like betrayal. Riders dart on the ridge’s horizon—flags torn, banners blackened—rumors carried in their stirrups.
Late dusk folds into the tents, sacks filled with bread and illness and hope. I sit across from Rizzo, Skeela, and River in the council tent, crammed into a half-circle of dust-stained rugs and a flame that sifts like sickle light.
Rizzo slams a gauntleted fist on the low table. “They’re forming a siege—Laertiez’s loyalists, rogue nobles, anti-human factions. They mass at the southern pass. Camp waits there. The moment we let them gather strength, we die.”
Skeela holds his gaze, hand pale on map. “We can’t rush. We need intel, infiltration—not just an assault. If we strike too soon, we give them martyrs. And we still don’t know how deep the rot runs.”
River leans forward, voice calm but steel-laced. “I can step in—move under cover to plant spies, weaken supply lines, disarm siege weapons. We strike smarter, not just harder.”
The night hangs tight. On the map, blood holds its breath.
I swallow, tasting something harsher than ale. I feel it in my bones—the buried stir of ancient power coiling tight. My heart picks up beat as silver as mourning. Full moon rises soon.
Veeto, Charen, and Bruce step into the glow at the tent’s edge, backs lit in torch flicker like smelted iron.
Veeto grins, blood-bright. “Count me in.”
Charen descends wings splayed, voice slurred with mirth. “Not because we like you,” she teases, “but because you idiots would die without us.”
Bruce’s sigh rumbles like distant hills. I don’t argue. We need them—all of them.
River sees the chase in my eyes. She walks over. I can smell night pine on her cloak and something deeper—fear, loyalty, love.
I inhale. I don’t say it, but everything shifts. “I might change,” I say, voice low as riverbed gravel. “Next fight… I might not be myself.”
River’s hands settle on my cheek, pale fires in candlelight. “You’re always you,” she says. “Just… occasionally extra.”
We ride east at twilight, moonlight glinting on rifles and the silver tips of stray branches, hooves soft on packed earth. River rides beside me, blade-sheathed at her hip. Her hand brushes mine, grounding me in what's real—and what might be lost.
Our small force moves like shadows: Veeto in the rear, grinning over campfire memories; Charen perched on silent wings above, web glimmering with her usual sardonic humor; Bruce—the living mountain—behind, breathing slow as stone.
The city recedes as whisper and ruin. Ahead lies the raw world: loyalists forming shape like beasts gathering under the moon, ready to pounce on a fragile peace.
When we pause beside a hollow under starbow, I can’t hold it back. I step away from our riders, heart stalking in my bones. River follows.
Inside the cave mouth, torchlight carves us bright and small against stone cold as justice. The smell of damp and moss and flickering flame is sanctuary.
I turn to her, voice cracked like tinder. “I wanted one more moment—just flesh and quiet—before everything else rips open.”
She stands still, eyes burning like moonlit snow.
We close the distance like two survivors who’ve forgotten how to feel safe. I press tongue to her trembling lips, teeth grazing.
This isn’t tenderness—it’s hunger, invitation, confession. The cave floor is cold, pressing against bruised knees.
She’s fierce—blonde neck, dark eyes. I tug her closer and she leans in deeper, and we collapse against stone and shadow.
We shed our fears in breath and sweat. She is fire to my darkness. I am predator to her flame. Slow becomes urgent, urgent becomes raw.
She moans in my mouth. I shift, knees memorized by forest paths and war’s promises, bones flexing with moon-silver blood. The beast inside me coils.
I bury my face in her neck, voice ragged. “If I die… burn me beneath our bridge.”
She twists free, slaps me—hard-handed love that makes stars bloom behind my eyes. “Kragna,” she breathes, voice smoky and fierce. “You’re not dying. You’re going to be the sexiest war god this continent has ever seen.”
I laugh—croaky and real. We fall into grass cold with dew. Our breaths dark against torchlight and scented moss.
Her fingers weave through scars on my chest. She traces the old wounds, the new hopes; our ribs pressed together, beating.
I whisper against her hair: “Come home with me.”
She pulls my face close so our skin is bone-warm. “I already am.”
The moon glances through cave’s high mouth. Outside, war coils, the siege breathing like storm thunder.
But here—right here—we anchor peace in breath and body.
We stay there, happy but unspeaking, while the world tilts toward fury.
The full moon crests the treetops like a silver eye, wide and watching.
I feel it before I see it—this thrumming pressure inside my bones, old as war drums. It starts low in the spine, rippling outward.
My joints ache like they’ve been carved from stone.
My teeth itch. My skin tightens, stretching against something too big for its shell.
“Don’t follow me,” I growl at River. My voice is already shifting, lower than it should be, vibrating through the moss beneath my feet.
She doesn’t move. Just watches me from the rise above the ridge, eyes wide, lips pressed into a hard line. I want to look away. Can’t. Her gaze hooks into my ribs like a barbed spear.
Veeto knows better. He grabs Toad Knight by the scruff and drags him backward. Charen is already scuttling up into the trees, her webbing hissing as it stretches taut.
It’s coming.
Hasn’t happened in a century. Last time I lost three days and woke up buried beneath the bones of a mercenary platoon with a cracked horn and no memory.
Tonight, it doesn’t wait. The moon hits my skin like a hammer strike and I fall to one knee, snarling. My vision doubles, then triples, fractures into hot shards.
I scream. It’s not a scream, not really—more like the forest itself tearing open. My fingers warp first, knuckles bulging, claws curling. My skin splits, gray iron shattering to reveal deeper rock beneath. My spine stretches. Rips. Rebuilds.
My horns twist upward like living spires. My body heaves. My chest balloons outward with the sound of cracking granite.
And then I’m not Kragna anymore.
I’m more.
I rise.
Twenty feet of rage and ruin, carved from nightmare and mountain. My eyes blaze like open furnaces. My breath hits the air and makes it shimmer. The world looks small now—too small. The trees shrink. The rocks seem like gravel. Even the moon itself feels close enough to grab and crush in my fist.
I don’t see friends. I don’t see enemies.
I see motion.
And I want to break it.
There are soldiers down below—dark elves in silver-plated armor, shouting orders. Humans too. Screaming. Firing rifles. I hear the shriek of cold iron and the hiss of spellfire. It means nothing. Sound is a blur, a smear. All I know is blood. All I know is motion.
I stomp forward. Every step craters the ground.
My breath fogs the air. Something explodes near my foot—Charen’s doing, probably—but it’s like a fly biting my heel.
I snarl and swing. A boulder the size of a merchant wagon flies from my hand and flattens a phalanx of archers. The trees groan. The mountain shudders.
I see Veeto waving, trying to yell something. Toad Knight is slashing at an ogre with his stupid little sword.
Then I see her.
River.
Running.
Toward me.
She’s screaming something I can’t hear, boots kicking up mud and blood and shattered armor. She ducks under a burning log, leaps over a corpse, and plants herself right in front of me.
Tiny. Breakable. Human.
I raise my hand. Not to crush her. Just—because that’s what this body does. It moves. It tears.
Then she says it.
“Come back to me.”
The words are soft. Fragile.
But they crash through the beast in me like a bullet through bone.
Come back.
To her.
I blink. And I see her—not as prey, not as noise, but as River. My River.
My chest heaves. The roar dies in my throat. My fingers twitch and loosen. The bloodlust doesn’t vanish—it never does—but it recoils. Retreats. For now.
Then I turn.
And I let it out.
I throw myself into the army lines like a god of vengeance. Elves scream as I stomp through their ranks, sending bodies flying like leaves. I tear a siege engine from the earth and crush it into splinters. A mage hurls fire at my chest—it sizzles but doesn’t burn. I swat him like an insect.
Bruce charges in, bellowing, his feathers puffed, teeth flashing. He bites through a command tent, tossing bodies like a wet dog shaking water.
Harriet slithers through the rear ranks, all six heads spewing clouds of green gas that choke even the necromancers. Tents collapse. Horses rear and bolt.
And Charen? That foul-mouthed bitch is riding the wind, dropping web-bombs that explode in sticky fire, latching onto war machines and shredding supply carts. Her laughter cuts through the smoke.
I don’t stop. I don’t think.
I become war.
I rip. I roar. I crush.
Until the moon starts to slip.
Until the edge wears off.
Until my body cracks again—and I fall.
Not like a tree, but like a cliff collapsing.
I hit the earth on my knees. My breath is fire. My bones grind like millstones. The world tilts.
Then she’s there.
River.
Her hands are on my face. My chest. My skin is mine again—sweat and blood and stone—but her hands don’t flinch.
She presses her forehead to mine, fingers trembling.
Neither of us speaks.
We just breathe.
And bleed.
And I feel her hand settle over my heart like it’s always belonged there.