She stood over Thrax's corpse, the blade still dripping, the blood still warm, the silence still stretched taut like a garrote. Her chest rose and fell in ragged bursts, each breath thick with iron and smoke. But it wasn't exhaustion that gripped her—it was something deeper, older. A black hunger curling in her gut, whispering through her bones.
More.
It spoke without words. A gnawing ache, a craving that pulsed with every heartbeat. She had spilled blood. She had carved her name into the underbelly of the kingdom. But it wasn't enough. Not nearly enough.
And worse—the others could feel it.
Not fear. Not reverence. No. The creatures watching her, the goblins with too many teeth and too few morals, the twisted alchemists in the crowd with flasks of mutating sludge at their hips, the assassins in priest robes—they looked at her like wolves eyeing another wolf.
A threat. A meal. A rival.
They saw her rise. And they waited to drag her down.
Her hands still trembled—not from weakness, but from the aftershock of holding back. She could have torn Thrax apart limb by limb. Could have mutilated him into a warning. But she hadn't. She'd been measured. Efficient.
A mistake.
Respect was not enough. It wasn't even real. Respect was just another kind of hunger. The kind that starved for your downfall. You were respected so they could feel better about devouring you.
No one in this kingdom feared her yet. Not truly.
She had to change that.
She stepped away from the body. The wet, dragging sound of blood pulling at her boots echoed like a whisper through the corridor. Her shadow stretched behind her like a stain. No one moved to stop her. But none looked away.
They were waiting for her next step.
Eliana could feel the change. Not in her body—though that too was happening, slowly, horrifically—but in her mind. Her thoughts moved like knives now. Every passing second spun out into possibilities. Who would betray her next? Who needed to die first? Whose loyalty could be bought with flesh, and whose only with terror?
She passed a Hobgoblin priest. His eyes flicked up. He smiled.
His tongue was forked. His smile was false.
She didn't blink. She didn't smile back.
She just imagined what his blood would look like spilled across the temple floor.
She hadn't noticed how the hunger had grown. It had become part of her. Not just the hunger to eat, or kill—but something worse. The need to dominate. To take. Not just lives. Identities. Power. Souls.
She remembered the whisper from weeks ago—when she'd first begun to transform.
"Every step you take brings you closer to becoming a monster."
Too late. She was already there.
Her fingers twitched at her side. The killing instinct didn't fade after the fight—it lingered. Like a parasite. Like a lover. Every face she passed lit a small flame in her mind: how would I kill you? How fast? How many bones would I break?
She hated it.
She loved it.
That was the horror of it. That was the truth of this world.
There was no evolution without sacrifice.
And she had already sacrificed too much to go back.
Her past? Dead. Her memories? Blurred by blood and fury. Her future? Twisting into something sharp and terrible.
She would never be the girl she was.
The hunger had taken root. And it was never full.
She reached her chambers—a cramped stone den lit by flickering green torches, its walls scrawled with old goblin runes—just as the shaking started. Not fear. No, never that again.
Change.
It came in waves now. Her skin cracked—just slightly. Her teeth itched in her jaw. Her spine ached with pressure. Evolution clawed its way through her muscles like a sickness made of ambition.
The stronger she grew, the less human she remained.
The mirror on the far wall—salvaged from a dead noble—showed her reflection in pieces. The red eyes. The jagged scars. The twisted grin that curled when she wasn't looking.
Not a girl.
Not even an orc.
A becoming.
The kingdom would learn to fear her. Not through speeches. Not through alliances.
Through screams.
Through executions in the mud.
Through the sound of her name whispered like a curse.
She would not rest. She would not pause. She would feed the hunger, feed it with enemies, rivals, lords, gods if she had to.
Let them watch.
Let them hunt.
Because Eliana wasn't prey anymore.
She was the relentless hunger.
And she had only just begun to feed.
Eliana's rise had been a storm of blood and ambition, a steady climb up a mountain made of corpses and betrayal. But for all the enemies she'd carved through, all the fear she'd cultivated, she had never felt the kind of silence that fell when the name Balmoth was spoken aloud.
It wasn't a name. It was a death sentence. A curse. A word soaked in myth and marrow.
They called him The Beast of the Depths.
She thought she knew power. She had seen hobgoblins rip ogres apart with their bare hands. She had watched mutations gone wrong twist warriors into walking nightmares. She had stood over the bodies of champions and drank in their silence.
But Balmoth? Balmoth was something else. Something… wrong.
She first heard the name after a raid. Her blade was still warm from slicing through a rival chieftain's neck. The victory had been clean, brutal, satisfying. But when the last survivor had coughed out his final warning—"He's coming. Balmoth is coming."—even the goblins loyal to her had taken a step back, eyes wide, mouths shut.
That silence clung to them like mold.
No one celebrated the raid. No one spoke of spoils or power.
They just waited.
Eliana asked for details. The answers came in broken whispers.
"He doesn't kill. He erases."
"You won't scream. Your throat won't have time to remember how."
"He's not goblin anymore. He's not anything anymore."
She dismissed the fear at first. Paranoia. Folklore. Another boogeyman story told by the weak to scare each other into obedience.
Until she saw the aftermath.
Entire warrens emptied. No blood. No bodies. Just drag marks, the scent of rot, and claw marks etched too deep into stone to be natural. Mutated warriors left gibbering in the corners, their eyes burned out, their minds eaten by something they couldn't explain.
And always… always… that name, spoken like a prayer choked halfway through.
Balmoth.
They said he was once a goblin, long ago, before the arena. Before the kingdom had a name. Before there were rules. Before evolution had boundaries.
Now?
He had no eyes. No mouth. No voice.
Just a presence.
When he came into view, the earth itself recoiled.
It was on the edge of Eliana's territory—a ravine that served as a natural wall, jagged and deep, where corpses were dumped and forgotten. She had stationed her elite there. Survivors. Killers.
But when she arrived… no one remained.
The barricades were torn apart like parchment. The ground was littered with bones—clean, too clean, like something had sucked the marrow out. A thick fog clung to the earth, heavy with the scent of copper and something worse: a reek like spoiled evolution, like nature itself had vomited.
And then she saw him.
No fanfare. No war cry.
Just a shape.
Huge. Towering. Humanoid in outline but wrong in every other way. His limbs bent where they shouldn't. His skin was like molten flesh, always shifting, always bleeding into itself. Horns grew and receded. Spines split and healed. And his face—if it could be called that—was a smooth, featureless void that seemed to stare through her.
Not a beast.
Not a man.
A becoming.
He moved like silence. Each step bent the air, distorted sound, warped the world. Eliana couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Every instinct she'd honed—every lesson in power, every drop of rage she'd fed on—screamed one thing:
Run.
But she didn't.
She stood there, weapon clenched, heart thundering like a drumbeat in a burial rite.
He stopped a dozen paces from her.
And he spoke.
No words. No voice.
Just a pressure in her skull. A thought that didn't belong. A language too ancient, too primal, to be understood—only felt.
"You are not ready."
The pain was instant. Like her mind had been ripped open. Her memories turned to ash. Her name felt like a joke. Her past? Irrelevant. Her victories? Pathetic.
She dropped to one knee, vomiting blood, clawing at her own face to keep it from melting. Her skin bubbled. Her bones itched—like they wanted to crawl out of her.
Then it stopped.
Just like that.
He turned and walked away.
And the fog followed him, swallowing the path behind him like a maw closing shut.
Eliana lay there for hours. She didn't remember getting back. She just remembered the silence of her chamber, the flickering torchlight, and the slow realization that she had seen something beyond.
Balmoth wasn't a warrior.
He wasn't a predator.
He was evolution unchained. The hunger given form. A future none were ready for.
And he had looked at her—and decided she wasn't worth killing.
That was the part that hurt the most.