Chapter 1-Draugr
Every time I signed the covenant with the Institute, it dragged me back to the beginning.
Not to memory alone—but to truth.
To the life that had been taken from me before I ever understood its worth.
To the moment everything I might have been collapsed into ash and bone and hunger.
Ink and blood sealed more than obligation.
It sealed remembrance.
The parchment drank deeply, the runes flaring with quiet satisfaction as my name bound itself once more to the will of the Institute.
Each signature tethered me tighter—to this place, to this existence, to the curse I carried like a second spine.
I had tried, once, to believe it was temporary.
That there would be an end.
There never was.
There would not be.
I was not chosen for greatness.
I was chosen to endure.
To bear the weight of sins I did not commit. The burden of a people I had never known. Crimes etched into fate long before my first breath—before my heart learned how to beat, and then how to stop.
The Draugen lived.
Their mates lived.
Their children were born clean—untouched by the rot that should have devoured them.
All because one soul was marked to carry it instead.
All because of me.
A cruel design.
A perfect one.
Because what better vessel for suffering than the one who never asked to exist?
I had not gone willingly.
Gods, I had fought.
When the change began—when the darkness crept beneath my skin like spilled ink, turning flesh to something colder, something wrong—I resisted with everything I had left of myself.
I tore at my own body. Tried to burn it out. Tried to outrun the inevitable as if distance could sever destiny.
As if I could become something else.
But the Fates—those cursed Norns—do not yield.
They do not negotiate.
They do not care for defiance or desperation or the cries of those caught in their weaving.
They had carved my fate long before I understood the meaning of the word.
Every struggle only tightened their design.
Every breath I took only dragged me deeper into it.
And in the end—I became exactly what they intended.
A vessel.
A warning.
Monster.
The truth of it settled slowly. Not in one shattering moment, but in a thousand quiet ones.
A glance at my reflection.
The way people recoiled.
The way the hunger never left.
It hollowed me out.
Left something else behind.
Endless.
Unforgiving.
Hungry.
And alone.
“The Institute Academy has the honor of hosting the very last Draugr of the Clan Draugen.”
I remember the first time I spoke those words.
The room had been quiet—too quiet. The kind of silence that listens.
Professor Kenna had regarded me with that same measured calm she wore like armor, her hands folded neatly atop her rune-veined desk.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
She already knew.
“I will not procreate,” I said.
The words tasted like iron and finality.
“I will not ever breed with a female.”
Her expression did not change.
“But how can you say that?”
Because I had already seen the end.
“Because I refuse to pass this curse on to a son,” I replied. My voice had sharpened then—honed by something deeper than anger. “My father before me was a servant to it. His father before him. They called it duty.”
My jaw tightened.
“I call it surrender.”
Silence stretched between us.
“This ends with me.”
She studied me for a long moment, her gaze ancient, weighing, as though measuring the truth of my conviction against the inevitability of fate itself.
“I wonder if you realize the arrogance of such a statement, young Draugr.”
“It is not arrogance,” I said. “It is will.”
“And what of desire?” she asked, almost idly. “Companionship? You are not beyond such things.”
A humorless sound left me.
“What worthy female would willingly bind herself to a Monster like me?”
Because that is what I am.
Not misunderstood.
Not tragic.
A Monster.
“A creature defined by Bloodlust,” I continued, quieter now. “A Revenant forged by a curse older than memory. My touch is ruin.”
She had smiled then.
Faint. Knowing.
“You may find,” she said, “that not all women are as fragile as you believe.”
I stood, unwilling to entertain fantasies that would never belong to me.
“Unlikely.”
She did not argue.
She never did when time would prove her right.
The present returns with the cold bite of night air against my skin.
I walk the grounds of the Institute beneath the cover of darkness, where I belong.
The shadows cling to me as if recognizing their kin. They soften my edges, swallow my presence, make me something less visible—though never less dangerous.
Students have begun to arrive.
I can feel them.
Each heartbeat echoes faintly against my senses, a distant rhythm that grows louder the closer I draw. Warm. Alive. Fragile.
Tempting.
I veer away from the main path, forcing myself deeper into shadow.
Control.
That is why I remain here.
Not for sanctuary.
Not for belonging.
But for discipline.
The others keep their distance.
They always have.
Word spreads quickly within stone walls.
They know what I am.
They have seen the restraints during feeding rotations—chains etched with runes, layered with magic strong enough to choke even something like me.
They have heard the stories.
How I nearly tore through the donors meant to sustain me.
How close I came to losing control.
Fear is a language every creature understands.
It follows me through corridors. Lingers in glances. Presses against my back like a second shadow.
I do not resent them for it.
Fear is appropriate.
I have never sought their acceptance.
Their companionship.
Their touch.
I am not some lovesick fool searching for redemption in another’s arms.
I am Draugr.
A Revenant.
A weapon forged from failure and fate.
And my hunger is not something that can be soothed with soft words or fleeting warmth.
It is a force.
A storm contained within flesh that was never meant to hold it.
I exist to master it.
Or to be consumed by it.
Wind howls as I ascend the spiral staircase to the watchtower I claimed long ago.
I was given chambers overlooking the fjord.
I never used them.
Sleep is a rare mercy—and when it comes, it brings teeth.
The tower suits me better.
Isolated.
Unforgiving.
Honest.
I step onto the narrow balcony, the night opening around me in a violent expanse of storm and sea.
Below, black waves crash against jagged cliffs.
Above, auroras twist across the sky like veins of living light.
I inhale deeply.
Salt.
Rain.
Stone.
And beneath it all—blood.
The hunger rises.
Sudden.
Violent.
I double forward, claws digging into ancient stone as the need claws its way up my throat.
Feed.
Take.
Destroy.
“No.”
The word tears free, raw and guttural.
I will not kneel to it.
I will not surrender.
“I am the Draugr,” I growl into the storm. “I am death.”
The wind devours the sound.
Carries it away.
As it always does.
Because no matter how loudly I declare it…
The truth remains.
There will be no mate.
No hearth.
No future carved from anything but ruin.
No son to inherit this curse.
No legacy beyond the ending I will force into existence.
The line ends with me.
It must.
The hunger surges again—but this time, it changes.
Not rage.
Not mindless need.
Something sharper.
Focused.
Aware.
I freeze.
The wind shifts.
A scent rides it—subtle, distant, carried from the direction of the portal hidden deep within the forests of Earth.
The one that opens in that strange mortal place.
New Jersey.
I have watched it countless times.
Observed from shadow.
Detached.
Unmoved.
Until now.
This is different.
Soft.
Alive.
But layered with something older.
Something… familiar.
Not prey.
Not donor.
Not fear.
My spine locks.
My fangs descend.
The abyss inside me does not roar.
It inhales.
Deep.
Reverent.
Claiming.
And for the first time in a century—the hunger does not demand destruction.
It does not rage against my sanity.
Instead, it whispers.
Mine.