Krayzor's Arc

Chapter 1 of 16

Krayzor crouched low at the edge of the clearing, dragon skull heavy on his shoulders, red dreadlocks pulled tight against his neck. Two wooden poles rose before him, each crowned with a curved boar tusk. A boundary. He had crossed it without knowing. Behind him, eight sets of feet moved through the brush. He breathed once, set the grief down like he did each morning, and reminded himself why he still walked: scattered tribes, one banner, no more dead villages like his own. He needed to vanish. A clean fight here meant a war later, and war meant tribes he could not unite. So he ran low and quiet, angling east toward the river sound he had marked at dawn. At a split in the trail, Krayzor pulled the gutted hare from his pack. He had killed it that morning. He smeared its blood thick across the southern fork, dragged the carcass twenty paces, then flung it deep into the brambles. A hunter would read the splatter as a wounded animal fleeing. It would buy him minutes. The shouts behind him split — half the war party took the false trail. Half kept coming. Krayzor pushed harder, lungs burning, until he heard what he wanted: the roar of falling water. He shoved through ferns and dropped down a wet rock face into a pool, then waded behind the curtain of the falls. A cave opened in the stone, cold and dark and dry. He pressed his back to the wall and listened. Voices passed above. Then faded. Then gone. Krayzor slid down the stone and let his hands shake. He was alive, and the hostile tribe still did not know his name — but they knew now that something had walked their land, and tomorrow they would be looking. The map of safe paths to the next tribe had just gotten smaller.