Earth, 1100 AD
Fifty years had passed since the Troll War.
Valgard's legend had grown across the northern lands. They called him many names now—Troll-Bane, Winged Wolf, Flame-Haired. Villagers left offerings at crude shrines bearing his mark. Warriors spoke his name as both prayer and warning. Children played at being him, pretending to shift and fly and burn.
But Valgard knew that legends were built on more than past deeds. The world was vast and dangerous, and new threats emerged with every generation. He had spent the decades wandering, fighting, protecting. He had killed bandits and beasts, saved villages from famine, settled disputes between warring clans. He had grown stronger, faster, more skilled.
He had also grown weary.
The loneliness of his existence weighed on him some nights. He had no family here—his branch of the bloodline had scattered across the centuries, and he had not taken a wife. He had no home, no hearth, no place to rest. He was the Winged Wolf, eternal and alone, watching generations of mortals live and die while he endured.
But he pushed the weariness aside. There was work to do.
---
The demon came without warning.
Valgard was hunting in the northern forests when he felt it—a tremor in the air, a wrongness in the world. He looked up and saw the sky tearing open above the mountains, a wound of purple light bleeding darkness into the evening.
His blood stirred. The rage that lived in every barbarian's heart flickered to life.
He took to the air instantly, his wings spreading wide, his flames igniting. He flew toward the tear as fast as he could, but he was fifty miles away. By the time he reached the mountains, three villages were already ash.
The creature that emerged from the rift was like nothing he had ever faced.
It stood thirty feet tall, its body a twisted mass of muscle and shadow. Horns curved from its skull like those of a ram, but jagged and broken. Its skin was the color of dried blood, cracked and oozing with every movement. Its eyes—if they could be called eyes—were pits of absolute darkness, sucking light from the air around them.
And its roar. By the gods, its roar.
The sound was not just noise—it was force. It hit Valgard like a physical blow, staggering him in mid-flight. Trees below him splintered. Rocks cracked. The very air seemed to scream.
The demon turned those dark eyes toward him and smiled.
"Little wolf," it said, its voice like grinding bones. "I have heard of you. The blood of the ancient one, carried through generations. You will taste sweet."
The rage surged in Valgard's chest. His vision tunneled. His muscles tensed.
He didn't speak. He attacked.
---
The first exchange was over in seconds.
Valgard came in fast, claws extended, flames blazing. He aimed for the demon's face, for those terrible eyes, for the throat. His claws raked across its cheek, tearing deep furrows in the cracked flesh.
The demon didn't even flinch.
Its hand moved with impossible speed, catching Valgard mid-strike. Fingers longer than his arm wrapped around his body and squeezed.
Valgard screamed.
The pressure was immense—his ribs creaked, his lungs burned, his vision blurred. He could feel his bones starting to give, feel the demon's grip tightening, feel the darkness seeping into him through that contact.
The rage answered.
It exploded from him like a living thing—the berserk fury of the bloodline, the primal madness that had driven his ancestors through countless battles. His eyes blazed white. His muscles bulged. His flames erupted with new intensity, white-hot and terrible.
The demon roared in pain and released him.
Valgard landed in a crouch, breathing hard, blood dripping from his mouth. But he was grinning now—the savage grin of a barbarian who had found a worthy foe.
"You should have killed me when you had the chance," he growled.
The demon's eyes narrowed. "Interesting. You have the rage of your kind. It will not save you."
"Let's find out."
---
They fought across the mountain valleys for three days.
The demon was stronger than anything Valgard had faced. Its strength was immense, its speed terrifying for something its size, and its darkness could corrupt anything it touched. Grass withered where it stepped. Trees blackened and died. The very stone seemed to groan under its weight.
But Valgard had the rage.
When the demon's fist caught him and sent him crashing through a cliff face, he rose from the rubble with blood streaming down his face and threw himself back into battle. When its claws ripped across his chest, opening wounds down to the bone, he howled in fury and answered with flames that burned through its shadow-flesh. When it caught him in its grip and tried to crush him again, he headbutted it—actually headbutted a thirty-foot demon—and laughed as it staggered back in shock.
The berserk fury made him faster, stronger, more. It let him ignore wounds that would have killed any normal warrior. It let him fight without rest, without food, without sleep, for three full days.
But even the rage had limits.
On the second night, Valgard collapsed on a mountainside, his body screaming, his vision swimming. Below him, the demon continued its rampage, destroying another village. The screams carried on the wind. The fires lit the darkness.
He couldn't win like this. The demon healed faster than he could hurt it. The rage let him keep fighting, but it couldn't give him victory.
He needed another way.
---
He found it on the third morning.
While the demon slept—if such creatures slept—Valgard circled wide around it, approaching the rift from the other side. As he drew closer, he felt it: a pulse, a rhythm, a connection.
The demon wasn't just emerging from the rift. It was anchored to it.
A massive chain of black iron extended from the demon's back into the tear in reality itself. It pulsed with dark energy, feeding the creature power from its home dimension. As long as the chain held, the demon could draw on infinite strength. It would never tire, never weaken, never die.
Valgard understood what he had to do.
He called on the rage one last time—not for battle, but for strength. He let it fill him, flood him, become him. His muscles bulged. His veins stood out like cords. His flames burned so bright they were almost white.
Then he flew straight for the chain.
---
The demon woke as he approached.
It turned those dark eyes toward him and laughed—a horrible, grinding sound. "You think you can sever it, little wolf? That chain is forged from the souls of a thousand worlds. It cannot be broken."
Valgard didn't answer. He drove forward, faster than he had ever flown, the rage burning away all fear, all doubt, all thought.
The demon's hand caught him mid-flight.
Valgard didn't try to dodge. He let the hand close around him, let those massive fingers squeeze, let the darkness try to consume him. And then, with the last of his strength, he pulled.
He pulled himself forward through the demon's grip, letting its own strength draw him closer. His claws dug into its wrist, its forearm, its elbow. He climbed its arm like a mountain, the rage carrying him past the pain, past the crushing pressure, past the darkness that tried to drag him down.
He reached the chain.
His hands closed around it.
The moment he touched it, agony flooded through him. The chain was alive—not metaphorically, but truly alive. It screamed in his mind, a chorus of tormented souls, billions of voices crying out in endless pain. It tried to consume him, to add his spirit to its collection, to drag him down into the darkness from which it came.
Valgard screamed.
But he did not let go.
The rage roared in answer—the primal fury of the bloodline, the indomitable will of generations of barbarians. It fought the chain's darkness, matched it, overwhelmed it. Valgard's flames erupted along the chain's length, burning through the accumulated evil of millennia.
The chain writhed. The souls within it screamed—not in pain anymore, but in relief.
Valgard pulled.
The chain snapped.
---
The demon dissolved into ash. The rift sealed itself with a sound like thunder. And Valgard fell.
He hit the mountainside hard, tumbling down the slope, too exhausted even to slow himself. Rocks tore at his flesh. Trees broke his fall and then broke him. He came to rest at the bottom of a ravine, broken and bleeding, barely conscious.
The rage faded, leaving only emptiness.
He lay there in the darkness, unable to move, barely able to breathe. His leg was shattered. His arms were torn. His ribs were cracked in a dozen places. The chain's corruption still lingered in his veins, fighting his bloodline's fire.
But he was alive.
---
He woke in darkness.
For a long moment, he didn't know where he was—didn't know anything except pain. His body screamed with every breath. His leg was wrapped in splints. His chest was bound tight with bandages. His arms felt like they had been ripped apart and put back together wrong.
But he was alive.
Slowly, painfully, he became aware of his surroundings. He was lying on something soft—furs, he realized. Furs and blankets. The air smelled of smoke and herbs and something else. Bread, maybe. Broth.
Voices murmured nearby. He couldn't make out the words, but the tone was gentle. Caring.
He tried to move. Pain lanced through him, and he groaned.
"Easy, easy." A woman's voice, soft and warm. "You're safe. You're healing."
Valgard opened his eyes.
An old woman sat beside him, her face lined with age but her eyes bright with kindness. She was bathing his wounds with something that smelled of herbs, humming softly as she worked.
"Where...?" His voice came out as a croak.
"A village in the foothills. The one you saved." She smiled. "They found you at the base of the mountain, broken and burned. They carried you here. That was three days ago."
Three days. He had been unconscious for three days.
"The demon—"
"Gone. The rift is sealed. The mountains are quiet for the first time in months." She dipped her cloth in water and continued her work. "They're calling you a hero, you know. The villages are already telling stories. The Winged Wolf who fought a demon for three days and won."
Valgard closed his eyes. It didn't feel like winning. It felt like surviving.
---
He stayed in that village for a month, healing.
His leg took longest—the demon's grip had crushed bone and torn muscle. Even his accelerated healing needed time. He spent the days resting, eating, regaining his strength. The villagers brought him food, gifts, stories of their own. Children peeked through his door, too shy to approach but too curious to stay away.
On the last day, they gathered to see him off.
"Will you come back?" a little girl asked, tugging at his cloak.
Valgard looked at her—at all of them. These mortals who had cared for him, who had asked nothing in return, who had given him shelter and healing simply because he had saved them.
"Someday," he said. "If you need me."
He spread his wings and took to the sky.
---
The chain went with him.
It lay coiled in his pack, cold now, silent. The demonic essence had been burned away by his rage and fire, leaving only the raw material behind. It was heavy, dense, humming with potential.
Valgard knew what it could become.
He flew south, toward the place his ancestors had spoken of. The World Tree. Where Kaelan had first learned the truth of his bloodline. Where the Norn still waited, if the stories were true.
He had a weapon to forge.
---
END OF CHAPTER 35
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