Chapter 4: The First Priest (1)
Fire left a taste.
Krug could still taste it—oily, acrid, like burning fat. But worse than the ash coating his tongue was the memory of the sound. The wet, slapping echoes of webbed feet on mud. The gurgling cries of his kin as the waters of their home turned red.
The Frogmen.
They had poured from the neighboring marsh like a green flood—a sprawling, overpopulated hive bursting its banks. They hadn’t come for trade or war. They had come for space. A thousand slick bodies cresting the dikes in the dead of night, obsidian spears dripping with bog-poison.
The Red-Ridge tribe never stood a chance.
Mothers drowned in their nests. Warriors butchered before they could lift a shield. One hundred and fifty souls reduced to silence in a single hour.
Krug’s eyes snapped open.
The fire was gone. The water was gone. There was only the blue silence of **The Wastes** and the shivering of twenty-three survivors huddled in the lee of a sandstone ridge.
Only thirty had broken the line that night. Thirty terrified refugees fleeing into the badlands avoiding the poison-tips of **The Poison-Fens**. But the desert had taken its own tithe. Starvation. Dehydration. Six fell in the march, their bodies left for the sand-wolves because the living were too weak to carry the dead.
Now, twenty-four remained. No food. No water. Just dust.
Krug shifted, wincing as his tail dragged across gravel. His throat felt like old leather left in the sun. He ran a tongue over his teeth, tasting grit.
Three days. Three days since the fire. Three days since the world ended.
He looked at the tribe.
A pile of scales pressed against scales for warmth. The young in the center, sheltered by the adults. Hiss’rak, the injured elder, breathed in shallow, wet gasps near the edge.
He was a pitiful sight—his scales, once a vibrant green, had faded to the color of old ash. His left leg ended at the knee, wrapped in dirty rags that leaked yellow fluid. He was the memory of their defeat, breathing and broken.
And standing guard—or pretending to—was Grak.
The Red-Ridged Leader sat on a flat rock, staring into the dark. He was a mountain of muscle compared to the others, his hide a deep, aggressive crimson that marked his lineage as a warrior-caste. A jagged white scar ran from his jaw to his collarbone—a trophy from a sand-wolf he had killed with his bare hands. But now, that massive frame was huddled in on itself. His spear lay across his knees, the iron tip dull and chipped. Grak wasn’t watching for enemies. He was watching nothing. His shoulders were slumped, the proud red crest on his spine drooping like a wilted plant.
Krug felt a stir in his belly. Darker than thirst.
He doesn’t know where we’re going.
Grak had led them East because East was away from the fire. That was it. No plan. Just movement. March until the sun rose, hide until it set, march again.
They had passed a dried riverbed yesterday. Grak had forced them to dig for hours. They found nothing but dust and bleeding claws.
He is strong, Krug thought, watching the leader’s silhouette. He can break a rock with his tail. He can kill a sand-wolf with his bare hands. But he cannot see.
Strength was useless against the desert. You couldn’t spear the sun.
Krug pushed himself up. His joints popped in the cold air.
The leader’s head snapped around, slit pupils widening.
"Sleep, Quiet One," Grak rumbled, a sound like grinding gravel. "We march at dawn."
"To where?"
The question hung in the air. Krug wasn’t a challenger. He was the smallest male in the clutch, a fixer of tools, not a breaker of bones. He had never led a hunt.
Grak’s eyes narrowed. "Safety."
"There is no water East," Krug said softly. "The old stories say the East is **The Anvil**. Just stone and heat."
"West is death," Grak growled, hand tightening on the spear. "North is the storms. South is the Wyverns. We go East."
"We go to die."
Grak stood. He was a head taller than Krug, broader, his hide mapped with scars of violence. He took a step forward, the threat clear.
"You speak too much for a Quiet One. Go back to sleep. Or do you want to lead? Do you want to find water for twenty mouths?"
Krug looked at him. He saw the anger, but beneath it, the terror. Grak knew. He knew he was marching them into a grave, but he didn’t know how to stop. To stop was to admit failure. To stop was to lose the tribe.
So he would walk them until they dropped.
Krug lowered his gaze. He couldn’t fight Grak. Not yet.
"I will check the perimeter."
Grak grunted and sat back down, turning his back. dismissed.
Krug walked away from the circle. Past the sleeping bodies, past the wheezing Hiss’rak, out to where the safety of the group ended and the indifferent desert began.
He walked until the only sound was the wind.
The twin moons hung low—one pale white, the other a bruised purple. The stars were cold, unblinking eyes.
Krug fell to his knees. The sand was freezing.
He didn’t know who he was talking to. Lizardmen had no temples. They had superstitions—spirits of the wind, ghosts of the sand—but no gods. Gods were for the soft races, the ones who built stone houses and wore cloth.
But he spoke anyway.
"Is this it?" His voice was a harsh rasp.
He looked at his hands. Clawed, scarred, dusted with grey. Hands that could carve wood, find the grain in stone, weave grass into rope. Hands that wanted to *make*, not just survive.
"Is this the end? To walk until we fall? To be dust?"
He closed his eyes. The memory of the fire surged back—the heat, the loss, the absolute helplessness.
"I need..."
He hesitated. He didn’t know the word.
Not water. Water dried.
Not meat. Meat rotted.
Not a spear. Spears broke.
He needed something that lasted. Something that could stand against the fire. Something that turned a wanderer into a builder.
"Show me," he pleaded, pressing his forehead into the sand. The desperation was a physical claw in his chest. "Show me the way. Not to water. To tomorrow."
The wind hissed over the dunes.
For a long moment, there was only silence.
Then, the sand beneath his hands vibrated. Not a tremor. A hum. Low, rhythmic. Like a heartbeat deep underground.
Or a hammer striking an anvil, miles away.
Krug lifted his head.
The night was still. The moons hadn’t moved.
But the silence felt different. It wasn’t empty.
It was waiting.
***
The silence didn’t break. It thickened.
The air grew heavy, pressing against Krug’s scales like deep water. The cold sand under his knees stopped biting. The wind died.
Then gravity inverted.
Krug gasped, throwing hands out to catch himself, but there was no ground. The desert dissolved. The stars smeared into streaks of silver light, and darkness rushed up to swallow him.
He wasn’t falling. He was being pulled.
He hit the surface hard. It wasn’t sand. Hard. Smooth. Warm.
[LOCATION: DIVINE REALM - THE ETERNAL FORGE]
Krug scrambled up, claws scrabbling on polished obsidian, black as oil. The floor stretched into an infinite, burning twilight. The sky churned with smoke and ash, lit from within by the glow of unseen fires.
"Where—"
His voice died.
Something was rising from the floor.
A spark—a single, blinding point of gold. It expanded, unfolding like a flower of molten metal. Ribbons of fire twisted, hardening into shapes. Gears. Pistons. Armor plates etched with glowing runes.
Not a creature. A construct.
A towering figure of iron and flame, twice the height of a Sand-Giant. It had no face—only a helm of dark steel with a single vertical slit burning white-hot.
Krug fell back, tail thrashing. He covered his head.
Demon. Spirit of the waste.
But the fire didn’t burn.
It was hot—a dry, searing heat like an open oven—but it didn’t hurt. It felt... structured. Controlled.
Zephyr stood before him, clad in the **Avatar of the Iron Sovereign**. It was a form designed to awe primitives—a twenty-foot colossus of dark, rivet-studded plate. The joints hissed with escaping steam, and the chest cavity glowed with the orange light of a contained furnace. A helm of tiered metal sat upon broad shoulders, featureless save for a single, vertical slit of blinding white light.
"LOOK."
The voice didn’t come from the air. It resonated in Krug’s bones. The grinding of tectonic plates. The crash of a hammer on a mountain-sized anvil.
Krug forced his eyes open.
The giant pointed a gauntleted hand toward the horizon.
The obsidian floor rippled, turning transparent. A map formed below them. Not a drawing, but a living landscape of light.
Krug saw the desert. He saw the ridge where his tribe slept—twenty-three fading sparks. He saw Grak’s path—a straight line East, into the deep rocks.
And he saw what lay ahead.
Nothing.
Empty canyons. Dry basins. Bones.
Then the view shifted. The giant’s finger traced a new line. North-East. Following a jagged fault line cutting through the stone.
It flew past the dry riverbed, past the howling crags, until it reached a hidden depression.
Green.
A smudge of life in the endless brown.
Mist rose from the center. Dark water, still and deep. Twisted trees with thick roots. Mud.
A swamp.
Krug watched, mesmerized. Lizards skittering on the banks. Insects buzzing. Shelter.
"DO YOU SEE?" the voice thundered.
"Yes," Krug whispered. "Water. Life."
"IT IS NOT A GIFT." The heat intensified, shimering the air. "IT IS AN EXCHANGE."
"Exchange?"
The figure leaned down. The single burning eye focused on him, stripping him bare. Scanning every scar, every fear.
"IRON BENDS TO HEAT," the voice intoned. "BUT THE SOUL BENDS TO NOTHING."
Krug stared.
The giant raised a hand. A square-headed hammer materialized, glowing with runes.
"I AM THE HAMMER THAT SHAPES. I AM THE FIRE THAT HARDENS. FOLLOW THE SMOKE... OR TURN TO DUST."
The hammer swung down.
Krug screamed.
CLANG.
The sound shattered the world. The obsidian exploded into shards of light. The fire roared, consuming the sky. The heat washed over Krug, burning away the fear, the doubt.
It burned a single image into his mind.
North-East. The fault line. The Swamp.
And a name. A concept. Weight. Structure. Permanence.
The Architect.
***
Krug gasped, jerking awake.
Sand. Cold night. Watching moons.
But he wasn’t cold.
His chest burned. A lingering, radiant heat sat heavy in his core, pulsing with his heartbeat. Thump-thump.
He sat up, clutching his chest.
The tribe slept. Grak sat on his rock, head bowed, asleep at the post.
Krug looked at his hands. They trembled, but not from fear.
He looked North-East.
He couldn’t see the fault line. He couldn’t see the swamp. But he knew it was there. He knew it with the certainty of the sun rising.
He stood. The sand crunched.
The fear of the last three days was gone. Replaced by something harder. Solid.
Iron bends to heat.
He looked at Grak. The leader looked small. Vulnerable. Flesh and bone waiting to die.
Krug tightened his fists.
*Follow the smoke.*
He walked back to the circle. Heavy, deliberate steps.
Time to wake them up.
"Wake up."
The words cut the air like a snapped branch.
Grak’s head jerked up. Sleep vanished, replaced by predator instinct. He gripped the spear.
"What?" Grak hissed. "Who is there?"
"No one," Krug said. "Just us."
Grak blinked, adjusting to the moonlight. "You act like a fool, Quiet One. You shout, you call the wolves."
"The wolves aren’t coming," Krug said. His voice was steady. "But the sun is."
The tribe shifted. Heads lifted. Scales scraped stone. Hiss’rak groaned.
Grak stood, looming. "Go back to sleep. We march at dawn."
"No."
The word hung heavy.
A ripple went through the tribe. Lizards froze. No one said "No" to Grak.
Grak stared, confused. "What did you say?"
"We are not marching East." Krug pointed North-East. "We go there. To the rift."
Grak sneered. "There is nothing there. Only salt."
"There is water. A swamp. Hidden by cliffs."
"A swamp?" Grak laughed, a harsh bark. "Hear this? The Quiet One found water in a dream."
Younger males chuckled nervously. Elders watched, eyes tired.
"Not a dream," Krug said. The heat in his chest flared. "A message."
"A message? From the wind?"
"From the Architect."
The name landed like a stone.
"He showed me the map. He showed me the fire that does not burn. Follow the smoke, we live. Follow you, we turn to dust."
Grak’s scales flared red. "Spirits do not dig wells. Spirits do not fight wolves. Strength does. And you have none."
"Strength without sight is just violence. You are strong, Grak. But you are blind."
Grak went still.
"Blind?"
He looked to the edge of the circle. Vark, Runt, Tor. The Enforcers.
Grak nodded.
"Enforcers."
They rose from the shadows of the rocks.
Vark was first—a brute with scales the color of dried mud. He was wider than he was tall, carrying a club made from a petrified thigh bone that was thicker than Krug’s torso.
Runt was his opposite—small, wired with nervous energy, his eyes darting like a trapped bird. He held two jagged stones, sharpening them against each other. *Skritch. Skritch.*
And Tor. The silent one. Lean and scarred, holding an obsidian knife capable of slicing the wind.
The tribe scrambled back. This wasn’t a fight. It was an execution.
"I gave you mercy," Grak said softly. "And you bite the hand."
"You lead us to the grave," Krug said, not stepping back. "I offer a path."
"You offer madness. Break him. Leave the tongue."
Vark stepped in, swinging the club loosely. Whoosh.
"Little maker," Vark grunted. "Bad day to speak."
Krug looked at the club. Then at the ground.
A stick. Old, dry wood. Kindling.
But Krug didn’t see wood.
He remembered the hammer. The shape of reality.
He picked it up. Light. Weak.
But as his fingers closed, the heat in his chest surged. Down his arm. Into the grain.
Thump-thump.
The thugs laughed.
"Fetch?" Tor sneered.
"End it," Grak ordered.
Vark lunged. No strategy. Just a massive overhead arc meant to crush Krug’s skull.
Krug watched the club fall.
He didn’t see death. He saw geometry. Force. Leverage. The flaw in the swing.
He didn’t dodge.
He stepped in.