Prologue 2-Draugr
“Hello, Draugr.”
She doesn’t look up.
She never does.
Professor Kenna sits behind her ancient desk as if the world bends around her will, as if sight is unnecessary when the very bones of the Institute whisper its truths directly into her veins.
But I feel it.
The moment I cross the threshold, the wards stir.
They know me.
The basalt walls hum low and hungry, the runes etched into them flickering like embers disturbed by a dying wind. They recognize my cursed blood.
They always have.
The runes remember what I am.
What I’ve done.
What I cannot stop.
“Indeed, the Institute knows your hunger well,” she says calmly, as though she’s commenting on the weather.
As though my curse is nothing more than a passing inconvenience.
My jaw tightens.
Hunger.
Such a simple word for something so endless. So consuming. So… alive.
“It is time to renew our covenant for the upcoming term,” she said calmly. “Signature required. Ink and blood.”
Of course it is.
It is always blood.
The heavy oak door seals behind me with a deep, resonant thrum, the sound echoing through my bones like a closing tomb.
Not that I could leave even if I wished to. Not really.
I have never truly been free.
I move further into the chamber, boots silent against the stone floor, though silence has never been something I earned.
Not with the way my existence screams beneath the surface.
The tower study stretches wide and high, carved from black stone and ancient magic, overlooking the fjord-lit skyline of Asgarheim.
Beyond the arched windows, the sky burns with ribbons of green and violet—aurora twisting like something alive, something watching.
Something knowing.
The spires rise jagged and sharp against the heavens, rune-carved parapets catching the ghostly light.
Beautiful.
Dead.
Just like me.
My gaze drifts downward.
Far below, barely visible through the mist and magic, the portal shimmers.
A fracture in reality.
A wound between worlds.
Earth.
So close I can feel it sometimes—like a phantom limb, like a memory I was never meant to keep.
To humans, it’s nothing. Just fog curling between trees.
A trick of light.
A story told to scare children.
But I know better.
I’ve seen it open.
Watched it breathe.
Watched their world with more than a passing curiosity.
I have spent countless hours there—unseen, unfelt, unwelcome.
Hiding in the shadows.
Waiting.
Waiting for something I have no right to want.
My chest tightens, something sharp and hollow twisting beneath ribs that remember life but no longer serve it.
Hope is a cruel thing.
Crueler still when it takes root in something already damned.
“You linger again,” Kenna murmurs, finally lifting her gaze to me. Her eyes are ancient. Knowing. Unforgiving. “Earth does not belong to you, Draugr.”
I let out a low breath that almost resembles a laugh.
“Neither does this place,” I reply.
My voice sounds wrong even to my own ears—too deep, too rough, threaded with something that has never been entirely human.
Never will be again.
Her expression does not change.
“It is the only place that will have you.”
Ah.
And there it is.
Truth, delivered without mercy.
I step closer to the desk, the air around me cooling as I move, shadows stretching in quiet obedience.
They cling to me. Always have.
As if they recognize one of their own.
Or perhaps they simply enjoy the company.
The contract lies open before her.
Ancient parchment. Rune-marked. Binding.
I stare at it for a long moment.
This is the price of my continued existence here. Sanctuary in exchange for obedience. Control in exchange for containment.
A leash dressed as mercy.
“You fear what will happen if you leave,” Kenna says softly.
My gaze snaps to hers.
“I don’t fear,” I answer.
But the lie tastes bitter.
Because I do.
Not for myself.
Never for myself.
But for what I might do if the hunger is ever truly unleashed.
If I ever let it win.
My fingers curl slowly into my palm.
There was a time I didn’t care.
A time I reveled in it.
But that was before.
Before I started watching.
Before I saw something in that other world that made the emptiness inside me ache with something dangerously close to longing.
Before I remembered what it felt like to want something I could never have.
My gaze drifts, just for a second, back to the distant shimmer of the portal.
Kenna follows it.
Of course she does.
“No one can save you,” she says quietly.
Something dark rises in my chest at that.
Not anger.
Not quite.
Something sharper.
More dangerous.
“I don’t need saving,” I growl.
No.
I don’t.
Because some things are beyond salvation.
Some creatures are born to be the nightmare—not the man who escapes it.
Still… that doesn’t stop the wanting.
I reach for the dagger resting beside the contract.
Cold steel. Familiar.
Reliable.
Unlike me.
Without hesitation, I drag the blade across my palm.
The pain is brief.
Insignificant.
Blood wells instantly—dark, thick, wrong.
The runes on the parchment flare to life as it falls, drinking it in like a starving thing.
Fitting.
I press my hand to the page and sign my name.
A mark of ruin.
A promise I cannot break.
The magic seals with a pulse that echoes through the room—and through me.
Binding.
Final.
Kenna inclines her head slightly.
“It is done.”
I withdraw my hand, watching as the wound slowly closes, as if even my body refuses to let me forget what I am.
What I always will be.
I turn toward the window one last time.
Toward that distant, unreachable world.
Toward the life that will never be mine.
And yet…
I will still watch.
Still wait.
Still hunger.
Because no matter how many covenants I sign…
No matter how many centuries I endure…
There is one truth I cannot escape.
I am a Monster.
And Monsters don’t get happy endings.
They only get… obsession.
One week later.
“You’ve summoned me, Professor Kenna.”
I approached her desk.
The chamber was a cathedral of scholarship and restraint.
Shelves of vellum-bound dissertations lined the curved walls.
Iron braziers burned with smokeless blue flame.
The air carried the scent of ink, aged parchment, and something faintly metallic that stirred unpleasant instincts in my throat.
Power lived here.
Measured power.
Disciplined power.
Not the wild frenzy of Bloodlust.
Professor Kenna tapped the contract on her desk before sliding it toward me.
The parchment was thick and rune-pressed, veined faintly with silver sigils that pulsed once as I reached for it.
“It has been one moon since the contract has been renewed. The lab reports your stabilization has improved,” she observed.
“I endure,” I replied.
She nodded once.
At Runevald, endurance was expected.
Mastery was demanded.
“Leave your mark and the reports will be recorded,” she instructed as if I did not know the way of it.
I called upon my DeathFace.
The transformation no longer shattered bone or tore muscle as it once had.
Now it unfolded with deliberate control.
My skin darkened to polished obsidian. Horns curved from my skull like a crown forged from night. My fangs descended with silent precision.
I bit into my palm.
Blood welled hot and thick.
The scent struck me immediately—rich, intoxicating, dangerous.
The hunger stirred.
I swallowed it.
I dipped the quill into my own blood and signed.
Draugr.
Not Raven.
Never Raven.
The runes flared briefly as my name sealed itself to the covenant.
I followed with black ink, binding myself once more to the Institute.
To discipline.
To restraint.
“Now, as you know, to remain enrolled at Asgarheim Runevald Institute,” Professor Kenna said smoothly, “you agree to continued monitoring, blood-ration compliance, and participation in advanced arcane regulation seminars.”
“I am aware.”
She leaned back slightly.
“Then let us review. What do you recall of your arrival here? And how have you changed?”
I lowered myself into the velvet-backed settee opposite her desk.
The fabric was deep green, soft beneath claws that had once torn through stone.
“I recall the pain,” I said after a moment.
Her gaze sharpened.
“And the darkness.”
It all started a decade ago.
The North had already begun to reject me.
The Clan whispered.
The donors avoided my eyes.
The warriors watched my hands too closely.
I had always known I would inherit the curse.
Every male in my line had.
But knowing is not the same as enduring.
The transformation began slowly.
Skin paling.
Then darkening.
Then turning the color of a starless sky.
Runes burned into my flesh without blade or chisel, appearing beneath the skin like veins of molten iron.
Horns split through my scalp.
Wings tore from my back in violent arcs of bone and sinew before learning to fold obediently against me.
But none of that was the true horror.
Hunger was.
It was not a craving.
It was an abyss.
A yawning, endless chasm inside my ribs that demanded blood with a voice louder than reason.
Every heartbeat within a hundred yards rang in my ears.
Every pulse of life scraped across my nerves like sand against bone.
“Fuck,” I muttered one night, gripping the edge of a stone basin until it cracked beneath my hands. “I am starving.”
No.
You must not.
The Bloodlust was the curse.
The Draugr bore it so the Clan would not.
One Monster to carry the weight.
One son to suffer.
My uncle entered my chamber without knocking—the years etched into every line of his face.
“You nearly drained your last donor,” he said.
“Nearly,” I repeated, tasting the word like ash.
“You must regain control.”
“Control?” I turned on him, fury rising hot and fast. “Do you know what it is like to hear every living thing as prey?”
He did not flinch.
“You are Draugr.”
“I am cursed.”
“You are chosen.”
The word struck harder than any blade.
Chosen.
To starve.
To tremble.
To pray I would not wake with blood on my hands.
My father had borne the title before me.
His father before him.
Each generation, one male inherited the burden—the insatiable hunger that would otherwise devour the Clan.
“You protect them,” he said.
“I terrify them,” I corrected.
He did not deny it.
That night, the hunger became unbearable.
I left the keep and walked beneath the frozen sky. Snow crunched under my boots. Wind cut against my blackened skin.
Laughter carried across the clearing.
Young males of the Clan Draugen gathered around a fire, ale in hand, hands entwined with chosen mates.
Their blood sang.
It called to me.
The sound pierced my skull.
I staggered.
The hunger roared.
My knees hit the snow as a scream tore from my throat—a sound not entirely mortal.
Warriors descended on me.
Chains.
Cold iron.
My uncle’s voice cutting through the chaos.
“I will get you help.”
When I awoke, I was no longer in the North.
The air was different.
Charged.
Ancient.
Rune-marked stone surrounded me, humming with controlled arcane energy.
I rose slowly and approached the window.
Beyond it—sprawling towers carved from black basalt. Bridges suspended between spires. Auroras bending over the skyline like living veins of light.
And in the distance, faint but visible—a shimmer.
A fracture in the world.
The portal.
Asgarheim.
Accessible only through a hidden threshold in the forest.
To humans, nothing.
To Monsters?
An invitation.
I had been enrolled.
Transferred.
Bound.
Asgarheim Runevald Institute.
Not an academy for children.
Not a sanctuary for the untrained.
A graduate institution for Witches, Revenants, Rune-born heirs, and Monsters who required discipline or would become catastrophe.
Here, power was studied.
Measured.
Mastered.
Here, hunger would not rule me.
Or maybe it would break me entirely.
My memories of the past faded, and I returned to the present slowly.
Professor Kenna had not moved.
“And now?” she asked.
“I am no longer ruled by instinct alone,” I replied.
“And the hunger?”
“It remains.”
“Good,” she said.
I frowned slightly.
“Good?”
“If it ever leaves you,” she said softly, “you will have lost the edge that makes you formidable.”
Silence settled between us.
Below the tower windows, bells tolled once—deep and resonant.
The start of the new term.
Students were arriving.
Witches and Seers from Earth.
Rune heirs from Reykjavik.
Blood-born Monsters from realms that did not exist on any human map.
The portal would be active tonight.
New arrivals would cross the threshold.
And something—something faint and electric—stirred along the edges of my senses.
A scent.
Soft.
Alive.
Impossible.
My throat tightened.
The hunger did not roar.
It sharpened.
Focused.
Professor Kenna watched me carefully.
“Something troubles you?”
“No,” I said, rising slowly.
But my pulse had changed.
Somewhere on campus—someone had just stepped through the portal.
And for the first time in a century, the hunger did not feel like punishment.
It felt like recognition.