CHAPTER 1

 Cassie

My name is Cassie, and I am a slave. Near as I can tell I’m being dragged to my death in a case of mistaken identity…

...which is honestly just my luck.

I shuffle forward, boots sucking at the mud like it’s trying to keep me here. Chains rattle in rhythm with each miserable step, biting into the tender spots at my wrists. The iron is cold—Prothekan make, rough-forged and malicious. It chafes raw grooves into my skin. I try not to wince. That would just amuse the bastards.

The terrain we’re crossing is a stew of gray clay and broken stone, the earth scarred with scorch marks and the stench of burnt meat. Overhead, storm clouds roil like a slow boil. I catch the faint metallic tang of lightning riding the wind and hope it doesn’t strike me first—though that’d still be a better death than what’s waiting ahead.

To my left, a hulking orc stumbles, dragging the rest of us off-balance. I snap at the chain and steady myself with a grunt. “Watch it, Big Ugly,” I hiss. He shoots me a look, then huffs and faces forward again. That’s fine. I don’t need new friends right now.

We’re a line of twenty orcs and one pissed-off human woman, bound at the ankles and wrists, linked like beads on a cursed necklace. The guards—Dragonkin, taller and leaner than their brutish kin—don’t speak much. Their armor is blackened steel and bone, their helms shaped like snarling beasts. Most carry pikes. A few wear ritual blades strapped across their backs, gleaming with dried blood and something darker.

I don’t know how long we’ve been marching. Hours? Days? My sense of time is garbage in this place. The Prothekan sun never stays still. It lingers too long or bolts across the sky like it’s got somewhere better to be. All I know is my legs are screaming, my lips are cracked, and my bladder’s staging a protest rally.

“This is bullshit,” I mutter under my breath.

“Something to say, pinkskin?” comes a gravelly voice from behind me.

I glance back over my shoulder. The orc speaking is broad-shouldered, red-skinned, and wearing shackles like they’re ornamental. His jaw is square, tusks chipped but proud, and his golden eyes scan me like I’m a curiosity, not a comrade in chains. He’s got a braided mane of copper-threaded dreadlocks and a regal bearing that doesn’t match his current predicament.

“You don’t look like one of us,” he says after a moment. “Too small. Too... delicate.”

I snort. “Careful. Call me that again and I’ll delicately break your kneecaps.”

He laughs—a deep, rich sound, unexpected in this pit of despair. “Hanri,” he offers, like we’re exchanging business cards and not death row credentials. “Hanri the Red. King of the Blackhills. Or... was.”

“Cassie,” I reply. “Nobody important. Also, not actually an orc. Just in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I had,” Hanri says with a wry tilt of his brow. “But the Dragonkin didn’t. They lumped you in with us. Which makes you one of mine now.”

“Oh great,” I mutter. “Royalty. Just what I needed. If I get a tiara out of this, I’m using it to shiv someone.”

The orc chained two down from Hanri grunts. “What’s a shiv?”

“Human blade,” Hanri supplies. “Used in prisons.”

“Sounds weak,” the other orc snorts.

“Try me,” I snap, twisting my wrists just enough to rattle the chain. “I’ll show you weak right after I introduce you to my left hook.”

Hanri smirks again. “She’s got fire. That might help.”

“Help with what?”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. The way the other orcs around us start muttering, grim voices barely above the wind, tells me plenty. They're talking about the Pit. The way one of the guards mentioned it yesterday, laughing like a jackal, still echoes in my ears.

“Takes them whole, the Pit does,” says a gray-skinned orc with one eye. “No screaming after the first ten heartbeats.”

“Only blood comes back up,” adds another. “Blood and bits.”

Hanri turns to me. “You picked a bad day to wander into our civil war.”

“Trust me,” I say dryly, “if I’d had a map, I’d have taken the scenic route. Maybe stopped off at ‘Not Gonna Die Screaming’ instead of ‘Middle of Orc Clan Turf War.’”

He chuckles again, but there’s steel in his eyes now. “The Dragonkin don’t take prisoners often. You’re here because they think you’re with us. A spy, maybe. Or a sympathizer.”

“They tried asking. I told them I wasn’t. They hit me anyway.”

“That’s how they ask,” Hanri says. “And how they answer.”

I fall quiet for a minute, trudging along, letting the dull pain in my legs fill the space where anger used to be. I keep thinking about the skirmish—how I’d stumbled in while hunting for shelter, heard the roar of war cries, then everything went sideways. Next thing I knew, I was getting clubbed in the head and waking up in cuffs.

“Back on Earth, we had due process,” I murmur.

“Earth?” Hanri asks.

I wave it off. “Don’t worry about it.”

The wind shifts again, bringing with it a new scent. Stone. Ash. Oil. And something worse—like rotted meat baked in the sun too long. The orcs start murmuring, straightening slightly, some instinct kicking in. Up ahead, the guards call to one another in sharp, barking tones.

Then I see it.

The stronghold.

It rises over the next ridge like a mountain of cruelty—walls blackened by old fire, crenellations spiked like a crown of nails, banners snapping in the wind, all blood-red and bearing the sigil of a flame-wreathed skull. Smoke curls from the high towers. The main gate yawns open in the distance, a beast ready to swallow.

“Well,” I mutter, jaw tightening. “That looks welcoming.”

Hanri exhales, slow and deep. “Welcome to Dragon’s Throat.”

The chains tighten. The guards bark orders. We descend the ridge, the stronghold looming closer with each dragged footstep. I square my shoulders, raise my chin, and prepare to meet whatever’s inside that monstrous fortress.

Even if it kills me.

The stench hits before we reach the gates. Blood and rot and scorched iron, thick in the air like soup gone bad. It clings to my skin, curls in my nose, settles behind my eyes. I gag once—quietly, because weakness here feels like a fast-track to a shallow grave.

The Dragonkin stronghold towers above us, jagged and brutal. Fifty-foot walls streaked with soot and old gore block out half the sky. The towers jut up like broken teeth. Smoke belches from chimneys higher than most trees I’ve ever seen. Somewhere inside, something screams. Not human. Not orc. Not anything with a soul.

“This place gives me the creeps,” mutters one of the orcs near me, his voice tight with nerves.

“No shit,” I say.

Hanri the Red doesn’t flinch. He walks proud, even in chains. His head’s held high, eyes forward like he’s not being marched to a meat grinder. A few of the others try to match his poise. Most can’t. They shuffle like the broken, half-starved captives we are, dragged through foreign lands toward what’s clearly not a family reunion.

We approach a narrow bridge over a moat that’s not filled with water but spikes. Rows and rows of rusted spears jutting up from a chasm, some tipped with old bones still speckled in meat. There’s a carcass half-impaled on one, bloated and buzzing with flies, probably a week dead.

“Oh good,” I mutter. “A warm welcome.”

The guards bark a word I don’t know, and the line lurches forward. The portcullis groans as it rises, each metal tooth longer than my arm and carved with something I don’t want to look at too closely. The clink of our chains echoes through the courtyard as we’re pushed inside.

And then I hear the roar.

Not of rage. Of applause.

The courtyard’s filled with dragonkin orcs, hulking bastards draped in war paint and armor made of bone and bronze. Intermixed are humans, probably mercs or sympathizers. They cheer like they’re at a damn football game. At the center of the courtyard is a pit—wide, black, and sealed with a thick iron grate. It's rimmed with scorch marks and etched symbols that glow faintly, like they’re still digesting something.

Or someone.

“Line ‘em up!” a voice calls in that guttural dragonkin dialect.

We’re herded into two rows facing the pit. I get shoved hard by a spear haft and stagger into place, catching myself on the shoulder of the orc in front of me. He growls. I snarl back.

The crowd jeers. I catch words like “meat,” “entertainment,” and “the next one.” Some of the orcs around me stiffen, jaws clenched, tusks bared. The air feels like pre-lightning—thick, charged, waiting to blow.

A drum sounds once. Loud and deep.

Another orc—massive, tusks broken and eyes glazed—gets dragged to the edge of the pit. He fights, roaring something in his tongue. Two guards jab him with spears, driving him to his knees. He spits blood and defiance as the grate groans open beneath him.

“No,” Hanri growls softly. “Not like this.”

The orc screams as he's thrown in. I look away, but the sound still hits. His howl is primal—fear and rage wrapped together, ending in a horrible crunch that reverberates up through the stone. Something shrieks back from the pit, deep and hungry. A moment later, blood geysers up in a foul, wet spray.

The crowd goes wild.

My stomach flips.

“Jesus,” I whisper. “They’re feeding people to that thing?”

“Worse,” Hanri says, jaw tight. “They’re watching.”

Another orc is dragged forward. I swallow hard and step back. A mistake. The guard behind me jabs his spear forward, cracking into my ribs.

“Back in line!”

I bite down on a scream, stars bursting in my vision. “Son of a bitch!”

The human next to the guard—slim, scarred, face like a dried-up boot heel—squints at me. “That one talks funny,” he says.

“She’s a mutt,” the dragonkin grunts. “From the northern pass.”

“She doesn’t look right. Small. Weird hair.”

“Maybe she’s a runt,” the dragonkin shrugs.

“Hey, I can clear this up real quick,” I snap. “I’m not one of them. I’m not with them. I don’t even like them. Especially the one with the unibrow.”

Hanri doesn’t even blink.

The guards glance at each other.

“Don’t understand her tongue,” one says.

“Doesn’t matter,” the other replies. “King said throw ‘em all in.”

I throw my head back and groan. “Unbelievable. I get isekai’d across the cosmos, survive bandits, elves, and whatever passed for dinner last night, and I’m gonna get tossed into a murder hole because nobody here has seen a brunette before?”

Another jab, this one lower, nearly knocks the wind out of me.

“Shut your mouth.”

“You first, Lizard-face.”

That earns me a boot in the back of the knee. I go down hard, grit grinding into my cheek. The crowd laughs. I taste blood again. I’m getting real familiar with that taste lately.

Hanri glances over his shoulder. “You should stop talking.”

“And you should start,” I hiss. “Why aren’t you doing something? You’re supposed to be a king.”

“I am. But even kings don’t rule here.”

“Hell of a motivational speech.”

He smirks, just barely. “You’ll live longer if you stop being clever.”

I glare at him as I push back to my feet, groaning. My arms feel like lead, my side is screaming, and my mouth tastes like iron and ash.

But I’m not crying. Not begging. Not breaking.

They think I’m weak. They think I’ll go easy.

Let them.

Because when the moment comes—if it comes—I’ll show them just how wrong they were.

They line us up like meat waiting for the cleaver.

I’m shoved into place with a grunt, chains clinking, my knees aching from the hard-packed stone beneath us. The pit sits just ahead, a gaping, dark mouth that seems to suck in light, sound, hope—anything foolish enough to linger too close. It breathes, almost. The air around it is cold and wrong, tinged with sulfur and rot. The blood-stained grate still glistens, faintly wet. I swear I hear it slurp.

To my right, King Hanri the Red is trying to look stately despite the grime and the shackles. His chin’s tilted up like he’s awaiting coronation instead of public execution. A breeze catches his tattered cloak, what’s left of it, and he actually adjusts the collar like it still matters.

“Are you seriously doing posture checks right now?” I hiss out of the side of my mouth.

He doesn’t look at me. “A king must keep his dignity, even unto death.”

“Oh, your majesty,” I croon, tossing in a half-bow that almost pulls my shoulder out of its socket thanks to the chains. “Forgive me, I didn’t realize I was in the presence of royalty. Shall I kiss your shackles?”

Hanri side-eyes me. “Sarcasm is unbecoming.”

“Buddy, you’re the King of two things right now. Jack and shit. And look—” I gesture theatrically with my chin toward the pit, “—there goes Jack. Off to greener pastures.”

That earns a short bark of laughter from the orc behind us. Hanri rolls his eyes like he’s above this, but I can tell it stung. Good.

The crowd cheers again. Somewhere behind me, a gong sounds, a deep metallic thrum that vibrates in my sternum. A new line of prisoners is being dragged toward the pit. One orc sobs, tries to plead—gets a spear haft to the mouth for his trouble. The others don’t struggle. Maybe they’ve made peace. Maybe they’re just done.

Hanri sighs. “You mock me now, but I have stood on mountains, led armies, made the dark elves flee in terror.”

I lean in. “Now you’re just a guy who’s about to get eaten by a dungeon anus. Adjust your expectations.”

Before he can reply, the guards start shouting again. I’m yanked forward. The chain connecting us slithers like a snake, drawing all of us one step closer to the edge. The pit yawns wide ahead, the grate grinding open with a shriek that sets my teeth on edge.

My throat goes dry. I glance down into the darkness—can’t see anything. Not the bottom. Not what waits. Just shadows. Just death.

“You there!” a voice cuts through the courtyard like a whip. “Hold!”

Everything freezes. The crowd murmurs. 

“It’s Lamian, the Wizard!” someone gasps theatrically. My savior has a first name but don’t ask me to spell it.

One of the guards halts mid-shove, confused. The orcs stiffen. I half expect someone to have a heart attack.

A figure steps forward from the edge of the crowd. Hooded, robed, leaning on a gnarled staff. His robes are patchwork—midnight blue and moss green, flecked with sigils I don’t recognize. His eyes glow faintly beneath the cowl, and his voice has the weight of old stone and older secrets.

“Do not throw her in,” he says. “The stars name her. The runes confirm it. That human—she is the Prophesied One.”

I blink. “I’m the what now?”

The guards hesitate. One looks to the other. Someone whistles low.

Then comes the real voice of doom.

King Kartok.

He steps forward, slow and deliberate, his armored boots cracking against the stone. The crowd parts like water. He’s massive—head and shoulders above even the biggest orcs here. His skin is the color of dried blood, his tusks curved like scythes, and his armor is blackened dragonbone trimmed in molten gold. His eyes burn red. Not metaphorically. Literally. Like embers behind his brow.

He surveys me with the disdain of a man who’s been told his prized war axe is actually a mop. His voice is gravel ground against steel.

“That?” he says, voice curling with contempt. “She is not the One. She is not even orc. She is female.”

Laiman—the robed one—takes a bold step forward. “My king, the omens—”

Kartok raises a hand. Laiman falls silent.

“She’s nothing,” the king growls. “A stray. A mouthy human.”

I straighten, rage flaring through the fear. “Hey! I don’t even know these assholes! I was trying to get out of the goddamn rain!”

Kartok’s gaze never leaves mine. He stalks closer, slow, like a predator enjoying the anticipation. His lip curls. His voice drops.

“Then die with them.”

And he kicks me.

Right in the chest.

Air whooshes out of my lungs. The world tilts. My chains snap tight, then loose, then gone. My feet leave the ground. I hear Hanri shout something. Laiman calls out. The crowd gasps.

I fall.

The light vanishes.

“I’ve never even seen these assholes before!” I scream, and the pit swallows me whole.