The stench of wood smoke and charred flesh sat heavy in the valley. Pienter, cloaked in the shadows of a crumbling stone wall, watched the fire eat its way across the thatched roofs. The orange glow cast shadows that grasped at the fleeing villagers' heels. Screams echoed through the streets, high-pitched and wet, but they barely registered to Pienter. Another hunt. Another meal. Just another night in a war that had been raging for longer than he cared to remember.
He shifted his weight, the rough leather of his jerkin scraping against the stone. His hand, calloused and scarred, instinctively tightened around the smooth metal of his shard. He wasn't a warrior, not like the boisterous demons in his tribe. He preferred the quiet efficiency of the hunt: no glory, just the satisfaction of a full belly.
The last of the thatched roofs collapsed in on itself, a shower of weary embers rising into the sky. Another village. Another meal procured through fire and screaming. What was the point? The humans built their flimsy stick-huts, his kind tore them down. They screamed, he fed. The next moon cycle, it would happen again, just over a different hill. It wasn't a war, but more of a... weather. A predictable, tiresome pattern of blood and hunger that had been the background noise to his entire existence. One doesn't hate the rain for falling, or the prey for bleeding. They were simply necessary. A source of mana. The thought had no weight to it. It was a fact, like stone being hard or fire being hot. Everything else was just useless noise distracting from the hunt.
A small, whimpering sound broke through his thoughts. A child, no older than ten, huddled beneath a broken cart. He hugged his knees, fingers digging into the grime of his skin to the blood, rocking back and forth in a silent, rhythmic spasm. Annoyance twitched in Pienter's gut. The pathetic noise was ruining the rhythm of the silence.
He could kill it quickly, silently. One twitch of the wrist. One clean line across the throat, and all would be over. The child's mana, though meager, would sustain him for a few days. He raised the shard. It drank the faint moonlight, a dull, hungry gray against the dark.
Then, he hesitated. The boy was a sack of bones. His mana was meager, a snack, barely worth the effort of wiping the blade. Besides, the smell of fresh blood might draw the younger demons, and Pienter had no patience for their squabbling tonight. He exhaled, the killing impulse dying as quickly as it had risen.
He stepped back, letting the darkness swallow his silhouette. The child's whimpers faded into the background, another insignificant sound in the rumble of a dying village.
The remnants of Pienter's tribe, the Ashen Claw, were already dragging the fresh human corpses back towards the temporary encampment. He watched a few of the younger ones, drunk on the copper scent of the kill, begin the old, tired Naming of the Nameless. They snickered and shoved one another, arguing over whether a specific human skull should be called "Pisser" or "Weeper", their jokes a tedious, boastful performance for an audience of ghosts.
Nearby, a grim-faced elder was directing others to haul the best-looking corpse towards the Blood Echo stone, a flat slab of obsidian still stained from a hundred previous, equally pointless divinations. They would spill its life force, squint at the patterns, and then pronounce some vague, self-important prophecy about "hardship and renewed struggle", as if they needed a ritual to tell them what was screamingly obvious. He could already hear the hollow thump-thump of the single drum beginning to beat, a call for the old warriors to gather for the Dance of the Crimson Moon if this hunt was deemed significant enough – another pathetic pantomime of faded glory.
He felt no connection to their crude theatrics, their desperate mysticism. These weren't rituals of strength, they were the terrified twitchings of a dying animal. He obeyed the tribe elders mostly because arguing was more effort than it was worth, and a lone hunter was an easy target, even for other demons. He moved with the pack only because a lone wolf starved, but he never joined their howling. A shadow clinging to the edge of the firelight, watching them go through these pointless motions. It was simply the most logical path from one meal to the next.
Pienter found the tribe elder, a withered old demon named Hallus, perched on a jagged rock overlooking the devastation. Hallus's eyes, dull and clouded with age, were lit with grim satisfaction.
"Their walls grow higher every season," Hallus rasped, his voice a wind blowing through the mountain crack. He finally turned his gaze from the horizon, not to Pienter, but to the freshly slain corpses his tribe was gathering. "And that damned flame of theirs ever brighter." He watched the last embers die down. "Look at this," he murmured. "All this effort… for a few days' sustenance. There was a time, Pienter, when a single word from an Elder of the Claw could make a human city tremble. Now… now we just make them scream a little before they die".
Pienter listened, his expression impassive. He had heard these stories countless times, Hallus's rambling pronouncements about a glorious past, a bygone era of demonic dominance, the old demon's words thick with the ash of broken pride.
"There's a patrol of guards," Hallus continued, his clouded eyes snapping back to the present. "Near the Obsidian Pass. The Sunstone Outpost patrol, if my memory serves me correctly. They've grown lax and arrogant. Their Azure Flame burns brightly in their cities, but here, on the fringes… They believe us to be broken. Forgetful." He let out a dry, wheezing chuckle. "Slaughter them. Make it messy. A distraction, yes, but more importantly, Pienter, a reminder. A reminder that the Crimson still has claws, however blunted they may seem. Remind them why they built the walls. Fear is the only thing that keeps them behind the stone".
Pienter nodded, accepting the order without comment. Pointless bloodshed. Another empty gesture to soothe an old demon's wounded ego. But defiance was more trouble than it was worth. He turned to leave, already planning the most efficient route to the Obsidian Pass, his mind focused on the cold practicality of the kill, not the faded glories or empty symbolism.
"Pienter," Hallus called after him, his voice suddenly softer, almost frail. "Be wary. Not of their steel, but of their conviction. They cling to their Order, their pretty 'Flame', with a zeal that makes them unpredictable. More dangerous than they appear". He paused for an uncomfortable moment. "And watch for those carrying the star-marked hilts, the Empyrean dogs. They fight with a discipline most of our scattered whelps have forgotten. Even one, if skilled, can be problematic". Another dry cough. "And, Pienter… do try not to get yourself needlessly butchered. We have precious few with your… potential… left". The last part was said with a hint of disappointment, perhaps, or a subtle challenge to a young demon.
Pienter didn't reply. He simply turned and slipped past the firelight, letting the valley's darkness take him, the hunt beginning anew. Hallus and his pronouncements were remnants of a dying age. Pienter just wanted to survive the night.