Grion lived among the Voodooists, hidden deep in the world’s shadows.

  They were a people of whispers and curses, shunned by all, feared even by those who dabbled in the darkest of magics.

  Yet even among them, one man stood apart—Tores.

  A figure wrapped in silence.

  A man whose voice had been stolen by cruelty.

  At first, Grion thought Tores was simply quiet.

  But then he noticed—

  The way Tores struggled to form words, the guttural sounds that barely resembled speech.

  The way his lips moved as if grasping at lost syllables, at a voice that had been taken from him.

  And yet, somehow—

  Grion could understand him.

  It was in the way his eyes burned with hatred.

  The way his hands trembled when recalling his past.

  So Grion listened.

  And slowly, he pieced together the truth.

  Tores was a half-breed.

  Born between a human father and a Voodooist mother.

  But he never knew her.

  She had died in childbirth, leaving behind a boy cursed by his bloodline.

  His father, a kind-hearted man, raised him alone.

  He did not want Tores to become a Voodooist.

  He wanted him to live as a normal child.

  To be accepted by the village.

  But the villagers— they never saw him as one of them.

  To them, he was always a curse.

  A blight.

  A child of forbidden blood.

  And so, whenever misfortune struck—

  They always had someone to blame.

  ---

  The village’s harvests failed.

  Crops withered.

  Hunger loomed like a vulture, circling overhead.

  And when a traveling priest arrived, he spoke the words the villagers had been waiting to hear.

  A sacrifice is needed.

  And just like that—

  They chose him.

  Tores.

  A child.

  They came for him at night.

  A mob of men and women, holding torches, eyes filled with righteous hatred.

  But his father—he refused to let them take his son.

  He fought them.

  He begged them.

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  And in return—

  They burned his house to the ground.

  Tores watched as the flames consumed everything.

  Watched as his father screamed, trapped in the inferno.

  The villagers held him down.

  Made him watch.

  Until the screams stopped.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  They turned to Tores next.

  Dragged him through the village.

  Held him down.

  And with a heated knife—

  They cut his tongue.

  Not completely.

  Just enough so he could never speak properly again.

  So he would never be able to curse them with words.

  Then, they set him on fire.

  The flames licked his flesh, melting his skin.

  The agony was unbearable.

  He screamed, but no one listened.

  No one cared.

  Then—

  Rain fell.

  A sudden downpour, saving him from certain death.

  The villagers, thinking he was already dead, left him there.

  Left him to rot in the mud.

  But he did not die.

  With skin charred, body broken, and his father’s ashes scattered to the wind—

  He crawled.

  And crawled.

  Until he reached the forest.

  He should have died there.

  Would have died there.

  But fate had other plans.

  The Voodooist chief, Morris found him.

  And so, Tores became one of them.

  ---

  Grion listened to the story in silence.

  Every word—etched into his mind.

  Tores’ pain—so similar to his own.

  The flames.

  The loss.

  The hatred that could never fade.

  For the first time in years, Grion felt something besides rage.

  He felt understood.

  So he told Tores his own story.

  The experiments.

  The slaughter of his people.

  The reason for his unending fury.

  And when he was done—

  He placed a hand on Tores’ shoulder.

  His voice was calm.

  Cold.

  Deadly.

  One day, I will burn that village to the ground.

  I will make them suffer—just as they made you suffer.

  And I will make sure their screams last longer than your father’s did.

  Tores did not cry.

  He did not thank him.

  But in his scarred, broken face—

  For the first time in years—

  A small, twisted smile appeared.

  ----

  Tores led Grion through the dense, mist-laden forest, to outer area.

  They moved in silence, their breath barely audible against the whispering wind.

  Then, Tores stopped.

  His body tensed, his breath shuddering as he slowly raised a trembling, scarred hand and pointed forward.

  His eyes, dark pools of hatred and grief, glistened with an emotion Grion could not name.

  “There,” he rasped, his voice broken, rough as stone scraping against stone.

  Grion narrowed his eyes.

  In the distance, nestled between gnarled, blackened trees, was a village.

  It stood eerily still, untouched by time, as if frozen in a past that should have crumbled long ago.

  The faint glow of torches flickered in the cold night air, illuminating a place that should not exist.

  The village that had forsaken Tores.

  Grion’s fists clenched.

  A slow, smoldering hunger for vengeance burned deep within him, clawing at his chest, urging him forward.

  He imagined the screams, the crackling flames devouring their homes, their pleas for mercy that would never come.

  But before he could take a single step—

  Tores grabbed his arm.

  His grip was iron, his fingers digging into Grion’s flesh.

  His head shook slightly, eyes locked onto something beyond rage.

  There was something else.

  Something more important than simple revenge.

  And in a voice barely above a whisper, he spoke of it.

  Tores told him about a ritual.

  A secret whispered in the darkest corners of Voodooist lore, passed through generations with hushed reverence.

  It was no simple spell, no common necromancy.

  This was something greater.

  Something blasphemous.

  A ritual that could bring back the dead.

  But not as puppets of rotting flesh, bound by cursed magic.

  No, this was different.

  This was true resurrection.

  Tores had spent years searching, clinging to the fragments of lost knowledge, desperate to complete what had been fractured over time.

  He had scoured forbidden texts, listening to the murmurs of spirits, piecing together what others had long abandoned.

  He had wanted to see his father again.

  To undo the cruelty, the suffering, the fire that had swallowed everything he loved.

  But there was a problem.

  The ritual was incomplete.

  And worse—it demanded an unfathomable price.

  Blood.

  Lives.

  Sacrifices beyond counting.

  A moment of silence stretched between them, heavy as the weight of the dead.

  Then—

  Something stirred in Grion’s chest. Something cold. Something dangerous.

  Hope.

  For the first time since his world had been torn apart, he saw a way forward.

  He could bring back his family.

  His people. Everything that had been taken from him.

  And so, without hesitation, he turned to Tores.

  “Then let’s use the humans as sacrifices.”

  Tores did not need convincing.

  He did not hesitate, did not blink. He simply nodded.

  But power alone would not be enough.

  If they wanted to hunt humans, if they wanted to bring their ritual to completion, they needed something more.

  Something beyond blood magic.

  They needed something even more forbidden.

  Tores had an idea.

  There was one way to gain immeasurable power.

  Calling upon the Abyss God.

  A being of endless darkness, its name erased from history, feared even by the most wicked of sorcerers.

  It was not a deity of mercy, nor of bargains.

  It was hunger incarnate, a force that consumed everything it touched.

  Grion’s eyes gleamed.

  “Then let’s do it.”

  But there was one problem—

  Only one man knew the spell.

  The Voodooist chief.

  Grion and Tores approached him, laying their plan bare.

  The chief listened in silence, his aged, weary eyes darkening with something between horror and grief.

  When they finished, he shook his head.

  “You do not understand what you are asking for.” His voice was thin, almost pleading.

  “The Abyss God does not grant power. It devours. Once called, you will never be free.”

  But Grion didn’t care.

  Freedom was meaningless without his family.

  Yet the chief refused.

  And for now, Grion did not force him.

  Instead, he and Tores left the village, determined to find another path to power.

  They searched for weeks, venturing into the unknown, grasping at every dark corner of magic they could find.

  And when they finally returned—

  Their world was gone.

  Smoke.

  The thick, suffocating scent of burned flesh.

  The once-living village was nothing but ruin.

  Houses reduced to embers, their skeletal remains reaching toward the sky.

  Bodies scattered like broken dolls, limbs twisted in unnatural angles.

  The elders, the children, the warriors—

  All gone.

  Grion stood still, his hands shaking with rage. Something inside him cracked, a piece of his soul shattering beyond repair.

  Tores fell to his knees, his body wracked with silent screams.

  His hands clawed at the dirt, at the remains of a home that no longer existed.

  His breath came in ragged, uneven gasps.

  Then—

  He did what only a Voodooist could do.

  With a single, trembling hand, he drew runes into the scorched earth.

  Dark energy pulsed through the air, thick and suffocating.

  The shadows trembled, the very fabric of reality bending under the weight of what was being summoned.

  The dead spoke.

  From the smoke, spirits emerged—flickering, half-formed, their faces twisted in agony.

  The Voodooist chief.

  The elders.

  Their souls, bound to this world by the cruelty of their deaths.

  Tores’ eyes filled with something beyond rage. Beyond sorrow.

  He asked them one question.

  “Tell me the spell.”

  For a moment, the spirits hesitated.

  But they knew—there was no one else left.

  And so, the Voodooist chief revealed the knowledge he had once forbidden.

  The spell to call upon the Abyss God.

  Tores did not let them go.

  Instead, he held on their spirits to help in looking over places.

  Grion stared at the ruins one last time. He had lost another home. Another people.

  But he would not grieve.

  There was no time for grief.

  Not anymore.

  Because now—

  He had everything he needed.

  Power.

  Hatred.

  A path to vengeance.

  And when the time came—

  He would burn the world for it.