The plains had gone quiet since the burning of the coast.
No caravans moved across them, no farmers dared till the blackened soil. Only the wind howled, and even it seemed cautious.
It carried with it a scent that froze Vris midstride.
Not human. Not ogre.
Warg.
He knew it the way a scar knows the blade that made it.
Ravha’s web-song had told him: the blood of Skara still hunts beneath the red moon.
And so, on the third night of its rising, Vris came alone Heartfang sheathed, Ruin at his hip, eyes burning like dying coals.
He would not bring an army to this hunt.
He owed Skara that. The hills ahead were torn by burrows and bone-pits, reeking of meat. He saw shapes moving between them smaller wargs at first, mangy and half-starved, their yellow eyes gleaming in the dark.
They circled, watching, growling low. He felt their intent, the testing of a stranger’s courage.
Then, from the ridge above, came the alpha’s call deep and resonant, like thunder wrapped in fury.
It wasn’t just a howl. It was a challenge.
The others fell silent as Varkha stepped into view.
He was colossal, his fur dark as pitch streaked with faint silver, eyes pale and nearly white — the same pale shade Skara’s had turned when the rage took her. His muzzle was scarred, one fang broken, his mane matted with blood and ash.
For a moment, the sight hurt more than any blade.
Vris whispered her name under his breath.
“Skara… you did leave something behind.”
Varkha’s growl rolled like an earthquake through the hills.
Vris drew Heartfang, and the blade sang.
The warg came down the slope like a storm, claws tearing furrows in the dirt.
Vris sidestepped the first charge, his blade scraping sparks across Varhka’s flank. The beast wheeled, faster than expected, jaws snapping at his throat.
They crashed together in a blur of fangs and steel. Heartfang bit into fur and muscle; Varkha’s teeth clamped around his arm, shaking him like prey.
Blood sprayed. Vris roared and drove his elbow into the warg’s snout, freeing himself, the pain blinding. The world narrowed to breath and heartbeat and Skara’s scent in the air.
“You’re hers!” he snarled. “You remember her, don’t you?”
Varkha lunged again, eyes wild. His roar was not rage but grief.
Their fight became ritual. Each blow mirrored one long past
Skara’s test of him from what felt like a lifetime ago. Only now it was her child’s.
At last, Varkha’s fangs locked around Heartfang’s blade. The steel hissed in his mouth, glowing red from friction.
Vris stared into those pale eyes and saw something there not hate. Recognition.
He stopped fighting.
Instead of driving the blade deeper, he let it fall. His hands found the warg’s head, claws sinking into thick fur, pulling their faces inches apart.
“You have her strength,” he whispered. “But none of her patience.”
Varkha snarled again weaker now. The fight bled out of him in slow, shuddering breaths.
“Look at me,” Vris growled. “Look at what your mother made.”
The great warg blinked once, twice. His ears drooped. The growl softened into a whimper.
Vris could have killed him then — should have — but instead he pressed his forehead against the beast’s muzzle, closing his eyes.
“You are not my enemy,” he said. “You are my inheritance.”
He released the warg and stepped back. Heartfang hissed in the dirt, still smoking.
Varkha stood there trembling, the moonlight catching his fur until he almost glowed. Then he did something no one watching would ever believe:
He bowed his head.
The rest of the pack crept closer, wary and silent. When Varkha backed away, they fell in line behind him. Vris reached out and laid a bloodied hand on the warg’s snout.
“Then follow her memory,” he said softly. “Follow me.”
A single howl split the night deep, resonant, carrying for miles. The others joined in, their voices rising like a choir of ghosts.
Under the red moon, Vris stood among them leader and orphan, surrounded by Skara’s legacy.
For the first time since her death, the wind on the plains did not sound lonely.
It sounded like home.
The burrows had never been this silent.
The first tremor that rolled through the tunnels made the goblins pause at their forges. The second one made them fall to their knees. By the third, they could hear it the rhythmic thunder of paws, the distant chorus of howls echoing through the caves like storm-wind through bones.
The Fanglord was returning.
And he wasn’t alone.
Vris emerged from the tunnel mouth like a shadow pulled from blood and smoke.
His cloak was torn. His arm was wrapped in fresh silk from Ravha’s brood to hold the wound Varkha’s teeth had left. Behind him padded the pack a dozen wargs, each scarred and massive, eyes shining with amber light.
And leading them was Varkha, Skara’s firstborn, his fur streaked with ash, his pale eyes glowing faintly in the gloom. The sight of him sent half the burrow scrambling backward in fear. The other half fell to their faces in awe.
Maggra was the first to step forward. The Ogre Matriarch was caked in soot from the lower pits, her twin-headed staff dripping black ichor. Both her heads spoke at once a tone of reverence and unease.
“You went hunting alone.”
“You came back with ghosts.”
Vris’s voice was rough but calm. “Not ghosts. Blood that still remembers its mother.”
Varkha growled softly beside him, the sound rolling through the cavern. Maggra’s front line of ogres took an instinctive step back, muttering oaths to their dark gods.
The Fanglord’s gaze swept the hall across goblins, ogres, and the brood of Ravha that clung to the walls.
“The Fang that died in Harrowhall lives again in Varkha,” he said. “But not in stone or fire. In flesh. In will. In what cannot be broken.”
The goblins erupted into murmurs fear, reverence, confusion. Somewhere deeper, Ravha’s webs trembled, her hum carrying approval through the dark.
Maz appeared from the forge galleries, bare-armed and gleaming with sweat, bronze plates catching the torchlight.
Her molten eyes locked on him and on the warg behind him.
“You tamed her son,” she said, voice low, almost disbelieving.
“No,” Vris answered. “He chose not to kill me. That is enough.”
Maz’s lips curved admiration flickering behind the hardened exterior. She moved closer, her hand brushing across his shoulder where the silk bandage wrapped tight.
“You bled for him, then.”
“I bleed for everything I mean to keep.”
Her gaze softened, just for a heartbeat. Then she stepped back, the commander once more.
“You’ve given them something new to whisper about,” she said. “They’ll call you more than Fanglord soon. They’ll start using other words ones they once used for gods.”
Vris’s expression was unreadable.
“Let them whisper. Even gods began as beasts who refused to die.”
Maz drew closer her dark red lips lingering close enough to his mouth he felt silly not reciprocating the energy so he kissed her briefly after all the rumors of them being lovers had already been ALL over the territories that the Red Maw claimed. It seemed like a silly notion to hide something so out in the open anyway. Later during a counsel meeting...
Maggra scowled one head glaring, the other muttering.
“The wargs will need meat,” one voice said.
“And the ogres will not share it,” said the other.
“Then they can learn to hunt,” Vris said simply. “The plains will feed them all. And the Red Maw will march again together.”
Ravha’s voice whispered faintly from the shadows above, vibrating through the silk-lined stone.
“Another thread bound, little Fang.”
He inclined his head slightly, acknowledging her unseen presence.
When the council dispersed, and the echoes of shuffling feet died, Vris remained in the great cavern, alone with Varhka. The warg sat silently beside him, scarred muzzle resting on his forepaws.
Vris reached out, brushing the beast’s fur coarse and warm beneath his claws.
“You’ll never be her,” he said softly. “And I won’t ask you to be.”
Varhka’s ear twitched at his voice.
“But if you run with me,” Vris added, “then you’ll know what she died for.”
The warg lifted his head and huffed softly an exhale that sounded almost like understanding.
Above them, the ceiling web shimmered faintly as Ravha’s brood resumed their weaving. The echoes of forges and hammers returned to life, and somewhere deeper, a single goblin began to chant the Fanglord’s name once, twice, then many voices joining in rhythm.
The Red Maw was whole again.
Different. Wilder.
The grief that had hollowed its heart now pulsed with new blood.
And as Vris stood with his hand buried in the fur of Skara’s heir, he whispered something only the warg could hear:
“Run with me, son of Skara. The world isn’t done bleeding yet.”