“Man always dies before he is fully born.”
— Erich Fromm
Denmark roared his world awake. A thunderclap bellowed from his chest. Mountains shuddered into being, and skies splintered like cracked glass. He was a titan, a colossus forged of storm and stone. He strode a battlefield ablaze with chaos. Each step was a quake that split the Hearthland’s parched crust. Dust swirled in gritty shrouds that choked the air with ash and blood’s iron tang. The Skyforge loomed north, a molten wall of red-gold fury. Its roar was a hammer in his skull, pulsing through the ember lodged in his left eye. That gold coal sizzled and whispered: See me. His foes were faceless wretches in bone-stitched hides. They scattered like chaff before a gale, and their shrieks were a shrill hymn swallowed by the wind’s howl. In his grip, a monstrous axe blazed. It was silver and gold, with its edge like molten starlight. He swung it in reaping arcs that cleaved flesh and bone, painting the cracked earth in crimson swathes. Limbs flew, bloodied and broken. A trail of ruin followed in his wake. His voice was a blast that toppled men like straw dolls, and their cries were lost to the Skyforge’s bellows.
He surged, grinning wolf-wide. A war-song erupted raw and reckless. It shook the heavens, and the air grew thick with the musk of caver hide and the sour rot of death. His sinew stretched, and his bones groaned. He swelled, towering monstrous. His boots crushed foes to pulp, and their screams became a wet crunch underfoot. On he marched. Enemies shrank to ants, and his head brushed clouds like cobwebs. The wind was a serpent’s hiss across his chest, laced with the tang of sweat and gore. Laughter sang, wild and untamed. It was a hymn to the slaughter. The Skyforge’s emberlight bathed him in a hellish glow that pulsed through his eye, gold and fierce.
The mist coiled. Laudanum’s bitter kiss flooded his throat. Sweet rot clogged his nose, a syrup that dulled the titan’s stride to a stagger. Pain gnawed. His left leg screamed, a phantom claw raking flesh, wet and throbbing, pulsing beneath the haze.
“Forgefather’s arse,” he croaked. A sardonic grin twisted his face. Cut me clean or kill me quick. His breath rasped, a wheeze through a throat parched as steppe dust. The air was heavy with blood’s copper reek and the sour stink of his own ruin. The Skyforge roared, a distant god’s growl threading through his skull. Gold light flared in his eye: See beyond.
The haze parted. Ash stung his nostrils, and the steppe’s cracked sprawl bloomed. Thorn-scrub clawed upward. Spine-weasels snarled, and their bone spurs clicked like death’s dice. A laugh rang out, sharp and wild. It was his twin’s voice: “Faster, ox!” Boots sank into dust. His sword flashed as a boar charged. Tusks slashed, and blood sprayed hot and copper-sweet. His arm was gashed. They’d roared over the kill, with sweat mingling.
A scent curled, floral beneath ash. A woman’s whisper was soft as clay, and her touch shaped him by the firepit. It faded before her face took form. Mother? It was lost to the wind’s howl.
Pain snapped. His leg’s ghost wailed, a white-hot lash where flesh once hung. The stump was a pulsing furnace beneath the mist. “Fuck this,” he rasped. Defiance curled in his voice. Death can choke on me. The laudanum’s sweet rot thickened, a cloying tide that pulsed with his heartbeat. Each thud was a drum, and the Skyforge’s roar synchronised: See us.
Sight blurred, darkness rimmed with red. But sound swelled: canvas creaked, a beast growled low, and metal clanked like a forge’s bellows.
A jolt came. Hands gripped, oil-sharp. The sting pierced the haze.
“Stay down,” a voice snapped, whip-quick. Her scent drowned the floral ghost, sharp with sweat and steel. His right eye fluttered. Her shadow loomed, circuits glinting. A steel beast snorted nearby.
"An Ironwraith," he thought, sardonic. A childhood fairy-tale come to ferry me to the forge. The mist tugged, but pain clawed. His leg’s phantom shrieked, and his chest heaved. Ribs ground with each wet breath.
Awareness prickled. The haze shivered, and hordes were gone. He stood alone, a giant on a dwindling speck. His head pierced the cloud-veil. A chill wind lashed his torso, twisting serpent-like across his skin. The air was crisp with star-dust, free of the Skyforge’s shadow-light. The pale blue deepened into marine abyss, then twinkling black studded with stars. It was a vastness unseen by generations bred under the Skyforge's emberlight. He spread his arms, drinking the cosmic sprawl. Feet lost to void, laughter wild as he revelled in the savage joy.
But a cough rasped. Panic struck, and lungs clawed for air that the void denied. He thrashed. Eyes bulged, face purpling, hands clawing his throat. Shadows crept as consciousness guttered like a spent torch. He toppled, falling into endless dark.
Denmark jolted, gasping as icy air flooded his lungs. It was a balm slowing his galloping heart. He gulped it, each breath a lifeline. Terror ebbed as his pulse steadied. The mist swirled, thick and choking, pale as death. Its tendrils curled around his battered frame. The air was heavy with blood’s iron tang. He knew this poppy mist from tavern nights, chasing whores and dragons through smoke. But this path blurred. Pain throbbed in his thigh, a dull fire licking memory: blood, a beast, the bitter kiss.
A pulse shivered. A high-pitched thrum that he felt in his teeth. It ululated into a prickling sound. Shadows stirred. Dark forms circled, fluid and menacing, like monsters in a dream-sea. One loomed, its bulk pulsing with the sound. He recoiled, limbs pinned by unseen weight. Panic spiked. The beast’s mate, come to finish me. The pulsing swelled, a tidal roar crashing over his flesh. The shape sharpened. A horse and rider charged through mist. Its flanks were molten iron, and hooves pounded a drumbeat from beyond the haze.
“Dead,” he thought. A wry grin tugged at him. Forge smith’s steed, my hall-pass. Relief warmed his veins, mead-sweet.
“Take me!” he roared. Arms flung wide, voice cracking in triumph. Then mist surged, and darkness claimed him.
“The Edge, there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
The Hearthland steppe unfurled beneath her, a cracked sprawl of dust and thorn where the wind keened sharp as a flayed man’s cry. Antigua perched atop Argentum, her steel steed’s hooves pounding the parched earth, kicking up gritty clouds that stung her throat with the tang of ash and bone. The Firewall loomed north, a molten wall of red-gold fury, its roar a distant pulse that thrummed through her suit’s sensors, a beast caged yet ever-wakeful. Seven days since the Gateway spat her here, seven days of Southland wilds, a world raw and teeming where the Northland’s sterile husk felt a lifetime away. Her visor hummed, HUD flickering with data, air thick with heat haze, spiked with the sour rot of carrion and the faint musk of predators prowling the scrub.
She’d left a Northland of rats and crows, cockroaches skittering through crumbling spires, cities gasping under a jaundiced sky, their steel ribs choked with dust and the reek of rusting circuits. There, life was a scavenger’s game, gnawing at scraps of a dead age; here, it roared, a cacophony of fang and claw beneath a god-wall of fire. Antigua snorted, mystics and their tales, spinning divinity from a relic her people dissected with cold precision. Yet its glow gnawed at her, a riddle wrapped in fire, whispering secrets she couldn’t shake.
Argentum’s servos whirred, a rhythmic growl under her thighs, his sleek frame gleamed alien against the steppe’s rust-red sprawl, circuits etched like veins beneath his silver hide.
“Such bright and fresh air out here, Mistress,” he quipped, voice a dry baritone crackling her comms. “A veritable garden breeze; I’m positively envious of your organic filters handling this delightful bouquet.”
“Keep your sass to yourself, Argee,” she shot back, practical edge honed sharp. “You’re not the one breathing this swill.”
The scrub bristled, gnarled thorns jutted like bone spurs, their tips glistening with sap that reeked of rot and venom. She’d seen a weasel-thing, spine ridged with ivory protrusions, impale a bird mid-flight yesterday, its squawk cut to a gurgle as blood sprayed the dust. The Southland didn’t coddle; it devoured.
Her father’s voice flickered through, Barbuda, overseer of the Gateway, his gruff timbre a shadow in her skull: “You’re chasing ghosts out there, girl, stick to the data.” She’d smirked then, visor hiding the glint in her hazel eyes, data was her leash, but the wild called her blood. A scout’s life was her rebellion, out from under his iron thumb, mapping a world the Northland had forgotten, its pulse a thrill no citadel could match. Eight days ago, she’d stood at the Gateway’s maw, operational for a scant week, its hum a gamble against the Firewall’s wrath, watching engineers sweat over flickering glyphs, their suits patched with rust and desperation. She’d crossed with Argentum in a transport pod, her lifeline, driven by a hunger to see what lay beyond the ash-choked North.
“Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.” -Hunter S. Thompson
The Hearthland sprawled beneath the Skyforge’s relentless glare, a cracked anvil of dust and ash where the wind keened like a flayed beast, dry and bitter. Denmark crouched atop a jagged rise, sweat carving trails through the grime on his sun-darkened face, his thick mane plastered to his brow by the heat’s cruel grip. The air shimmered, heavy with the acrid bite of scorched stone and the faint, iron tang of blood, a land baked barren, its breath a furnace stoked by the firelight above.
His longsword rested steady in his grip. Forged by Poan smiths, its blade notched from years of slaughter. Leather hilt stained black with sweat and gore. The hide armour hugging his frame, tanned leather stitched with bone shards, creaked as he shifted, patched where claws had torn it seasons past. Below, the canyon gaped, a shadowed gash in the earth where dust swirled like a restless ghost, stirred by the tread of foes he’d tracked for too long.
Three days he’d roamed alone, a scout split from his band of twenty Poan riders sent to probe the Wreghan army’s edge, whittled to eight by ambush, then scattered by a dawn clash of steel and screams. He’d peeled off, blood hot with the need for vengeance.
The old man’s voice growled in his skull, “No mercy for thieves and murderers, boy, spill their guts or ours rot”, a distant memory of firelight and a fist like iron, the night he’d first bloodied his blade under that stern gaze. Another shadow of memory flickered, his twin’s grin, sharp as a whetted edge, sparring by the camp’s edge, a laugh cut short by a barked order:
“You're stronger together, don’t stray.”
The Skyforge loomed north, a wall of fire cleaving the sky, its red-gold glow a ceaseless hymn over the steppe. To the Poan, it was the Forgefather’s breath, divine wrath that forged their iron, birthed their blood. Elders sang of its dawn, when the sky rained chaos and flame and the world split, sparks and fire falling like god-seed to mark the worthy. Denmark’s lip curled; he’d seen fools chase its veil, venturing as close as they could before returning blinded, flesh sloughing like wax, their screams a mercy to end.
The swarming season neared, beasts known as cavers roused by the increased heat, a tide of fang and claw soon to flood the plains. He’d smelled it in the wind, a sour rot beneath the dust, and felt it in the earth’s faint tremor. Time was short.
The steppe stretched, a sea of cracked earth, dust swirling in eddies that caught the Firewall’s glow, painting the air in hues of blood and gold. Predators lurked, hulking shapes with bone-plated hides, their roars a low rumble that shook her ribs even through the suit’s dampeners. She’d flicked on the ultrasonic repellent yesterday, a faint whine only Argentum’s sensors caught, watching a pack of spine-weasels scatter, hissing as they retreated into the thorn-thickets.
“Soft lot,” he’d muttered. “I’d have stomped ‘em flat.”
“Keep dreaming, tin-can,” she’d grinned, patting his flank, his sass was her anchor, a shield against the wild’s teeth. Now, the repellent hummed low, a silent ward as they cut south, the canyon’s shadowed gash looming ahead, a wound in the earth where the air grew thick with the stench of death.
She reined Argentum at the canyon’s lip, visor sweeping the sprawl below, bones gleamed white amid scrub, vultures circling tight, their cries threading through the wind’s howl like a butcher’s chorus. The Firewall pulsed, its light a hellish sheen over the dust, warping the horizon into mirages of flame and shadow.
A memory jabbed, Barbuda’s growl over a flickering console: “You’ll find nothing but dust and ghosts, waste of a good suit.” She’d laughed then, sharp and quick, “Ghosts don’t bleed, old man.”
Now, the canyon’s rot proved her right, something had bled here, and plenty.
“Picking up carrion vibes, Mistress,” Argentum said, sensors pinging her HUD. “Fresh kill, two days, maybe three. Smells like a brawl gone sour.”
“Eyes sharp, then,” she replied, guiding him down the slope, hooves crunching bone shards underfoot. The canyon walls towered, jagged stone pocked with claw-marks, shadows pooling where thorn-scrub clawed upward, its barbs glistening wet with sap. The air thickened, humid, sharp with the musk of beasts and the iron tang of blood, a predator’s breath that clung to her suit like damp rot. She’d seen the Northland’s crows pick at refuse, here, immense vultures gorged, their beaks tearing sinew from a wild corpse, its hide split wide, entrails steaming in the heat.
A flicker caught her eye, a glint in the dust, half-buried. She swung down, boots sinking into the parched earth, dust puffing rust-red around her knees.
Argentum snorted, “Mind the muck, don’t fancy scraping you clean.”
She ignored him, crouching, her gauntlet brushed aside grit, revealing a notched blade, its leather hilt stained black with sweat and gore.
“Southland iron-work,” she muttered, scientific curiosity sparking, crude, non-industrial, forged by hand in a blacksmith fire’s gut. No circuits, no alloys, just raw iron, a tool of survival in a world that chewed and spat.
“Primitive buggers,” Argentum quipped. “Bet they’d trade their teeth for a servo.”
“Bet they’d gut you for scrap,” she fired back, pocketing the blade, data for Barbuda, proof the South wasn’t just ghosts. Her visor pinged, bio-signs faint, fading. “Something’s alive down here.”
“Or half-dead,” he grumbled, sensors whirring as he scanned. “Left flank, fifty yards. Smells like blood and bad luck.”
She remounted, guiding him through the canyon’s gut, thorn-scrub snagged her suit, barbs scraping like claws, the air a stew of rot and heat that fogged her visor’s edge. A shadow loomed, a caver corpse, a mountain of sinewed grey meat, its hide gashed, ichor pooling black and rancid, jaws slack with jagged fangs. Two corpses sprawled nearby, axes limp, hide armour torn, one’s chest caved in, ribs jutting like broken spears. “Fresh,” she said, voice low. “Looks like humans have managed to survive here.”
“Predators’ll be thick soon,” Argentum warned, tone sharp. “Let’s not be dinner.”
Her HUD flared, bio-sign, weak, pulsing. She swung left, Argentum’s stride kicking dust, there, sprawled against a rock roughly fifty yards away, a warrior lay, tall, sinewy, sun-darkened, his hide armour soaked red at the left leg, a shredded ruin of flesh and bone, blood pooling dark beneath. His thick mane matted with dust, a scarred face twisted in a faint, sardonic grin, teeth bared, moaning in delirium.
Below, six caver juveniles prowled. At five foot they were small by the standard of their kind, lean shadows, faces smeared with ash, their talons glinting. They’d claimed the canyon spring, a muddy thread in the cracked gut, and now three Poan survivors of the ambush, ragged, blood-streaked, faced them down, axes low. Denmark’s tongue clicked against his teeth; he’d not let kin bleed alone. He slid down the rise, boots kicking dust in a haze, and charged, a roar tearing from his throat like a war horn across the wastes.
His sword met flesh, a caver’s limb parted, blood spraying the parched earth in a crimson arc, splattering his hide like war-paint. The beast shrieked, stumbling as Denmark pivoted, blade arcing to cleave another’s neck; bone crunched, a wet gurgle fading as it dropped, eyes staring blankly at the emberlit sky. His kin rallied, axes hacked through ash and sinew, a guttural chant rising, but the cavers fought like cornered dogs. A third lunged, claws aimed for Denmark’s gut; he parried, iron sparking like flint on stone, and smashed his fist into the creature's jaw, snapping it crooked. The caver reeled, spitting teeth; Denmark’s sword plunged, gutting it, navel to chest; entrails spilled, a steaming coil on the dust, the stench of bile sharp in the heat.
Three down, three to go. His breath rasped, chest heaving beneath the armour's creak, the air thick with blood’s copper reek and the sour rot of the canyon’s carrion breath. His men pressed one caver, axes sinking deep, flesh parted, a scream cut to gargles, but two circled Denmark, eyes glinting feral beneath ash-streaked brows. He grinned, teeth bared like a wolf’s, let them come. One darted, claws flashing low; Denmark sidestepped, slashing its thigh; blood jetted, a hot spurt painting his boots as the beast collapsed, howling. The last screamed a guttural cry, leaping, claws aimed at his heart; Denmark twisted, the tips grazing his side, a stinging kiss of talon. His blade drove up through ribs, a wet shunk piercing lung; the young caver gurgled, crumpling, its last breath a hiss swallowed by the wind.
Victory pulsed a savage hymn in his veins, but then the earth shuddered. A roar split the air, deep and guttural, shaking dust from the canyon’s walls like a god’s bellow. Denmark spun, sword raised, as an adult caver burst from a crevice, ten feet of sinewed grey fury, hide rippling over muscle, jaws gaping with jagged fangs that gleamed wet in the emberlight. Its eyes burned yellow, slits of hunger drawn by the slaughter’s reek, a swarming scout, bold with the season’s call.
Denmark's Poan kin froze, axes trembling; the last juvee caver bolted; claws snagged it mid-flight, rending it apart in a spray of gore, limbs scattering like broken twigs, the stench of ripped guts flooding the air. Cavers, it seemed, did not care for their young.
“Move!” Denmark bellowed, shoving a man aside as the beast lunged, its bulk a storm of claw and fang.
He swung, blade biting its flank; black ichor oozed, a rancid flood that stung his nose, but it barely flinched, maw snapping inches from his arm. A claw raked his left leg; leather tore, flesh split from thigh to shin, a white-hot blaze searing through sinew. He roared, staggering as blood soaked the dust in dark rivulets, his footing slick; his sword thrust again, aiming for its throat. The blade sank deep, crunching bone; the caver thrashed, hurling him back like a rag in a gale. He crashed hard, skull cracking stone, vision swimming as its bulk loomed, fangs bared, a drooling maw of death.
A memory slashed through the haze, his twin’s laugh, sharp and wild, the night they’d hunted a boar far too big for their years.
“Back me, fool,” his brother grinned, blade flashing. Denmark had, taking the tusks to his arm, blood hot as they’d laughed over the kill. The old man’s bellow had followed: “Reckless shits, stick together or die!”
Now, separate, that bond gnawed, a void where his twin should’ve stood, blade at his side.
His men charged, axes and swords hacked the beast’s hide, a desperate chorus of grunts and iron. It snarled, swatting one aside; ribs snapped, a scream cut short as he crumpled, a broken heap in the dust. Seeing this, the two remaining Poan rangers dropped their weapons and fled. They would not get far.
Denmark clawed upright, leg a ruin of torn meat and pulsing red, blood pooling beneath; the canyon’s parched earth drank it deep, a greedy slurping beneath the Skyforge’s glow. His sword lay yards off, glinting mockingly in the emberlight; he lunged, fingers scraping dirt, but the beast turned, surging forward, claws raking; Denmark rolled, agony a red haze as dust ground into his wound. He snatched his dagger from his belt, rusted, curved, slick with gore, and as fangs descended, drove it up, piercing through its open jaw straight into what passed for a brain. A howl shattered the canyon, ichor gushing hot over his hands, thick and vile; the beast slumped over him and stilled, a twitching mound of meat and malice, its last snarl fading to a gurgle.
Denmark gasped, his breath a ragged wheeze through gritted teeth; crushed under the weight of the caver's massive corpse. With some difficulty he extracted himself. His leg was a shredded wreck; flesh hung in flaps, blood seeping steadily, the bone beneath a splintered gleam.
“That bastard’d laugh,” he rasped, forcing a grin, sardonic and raw. “Me, gutted by a beast, where’s he at?”
The twin pang hit, sharp as a dagger; his brother’s absence a howl in his chest, louder than the Skyforge’s distant roar. A brief flash of vision overcame him. His brother's hands raised to fight, poised to strike. The vision faded. The canyon’s dust swirled, a gritty shroud under the emberlight’s hellish cast; vultures circled high, their cries a thin wail over the steppe’s hum, predators lurking in the scrub, drawn by the screams of the dying and the stench of battle.
Out here on the sun-scorched plains, survival was a cruel gamble, even without a shredded leg painting the ground red. The Southland scavengers, vultures and other heartless fiends, didn’t care if their supper still twitched. They’d feast all the same.
Denmark sucked in a shuddering breath, forcing his mind to focus. His knapsack lay crumpled twenty yards off, flung free when the beast had rag dolled him like a straw-stuffed puppet. Inside it, a vial of opium tincture gleamed in his memory, a bittersweet promise to dull the fire licking up his thigh.
He squinted at his leg. The leather britches hung in tatters, a shredded banner of defeat. Three jagged gashes raked from groin to knee, raw and glistening. Blood pulsed in sync with his hammering heart, a relentless drumbeat counting down his time. He’d patched up worse on others, comrades screaming under his blade as he cauterized their wounds, but staring at his own ruin, dread clawed at his chest. Two deep breaths shoved the panic back into its cage.
The knapsack taunted him from its dusty throne. Crawling it was, then. With a snarl, he yanked his sword free from the beast’s corpse, its tip scraping bone, and began his agonizing pilgrimage. The ground bucked beneath him, a cruel mirage borne of blood loss and vertigo. Nausea coiled in his gut like a serpent. His arms trembled, sinew screaming, as shock sank its icy fangs deeper.
Twenty yards. Twenty endless, cursed yards.
At last, he reached the bag, collapsing beside it in a heap of bloody sweat and dust. His skin gleamed clammy and pale, tinged blue as life ebbed away. Fumbling fingers tore open the knapsack, seizing the stoppered vial of poppies milk. He rolled onto his back, chest heaving, and wrestled the cork free with a grunt. The bitter liquid slid down his throat, a dark mercy.
Relief unfurled with a sigh. His pulse slowed, the pain, a shrieking banshee moments ago, drifting off into a hazy twilight. He pictured it slinking away, a skeletal wraith with ember eyes, its grip on him unravelling.
Then, a cackle sliced through the stillness, high and jagged, carried on the wind. The scavengers were closing in. Denmark’s lips curled into a wolfish smirk. “You’ll find my flesh tough as old leather,” he muttered. “Choke on my bones, you bastards.”
Something grazed his cheek, a fleeting sting. He swatted it, and a tiny ember flared before his eyes, a fleeting star that melted into the dusk. Blinking, he tilted his gaze skyward. The heavens were ablaze with a cascade of sparks, a shimmering rain of fire tumbling earthward. His breath caught. The Firefall. From cradle to battlefield, he’d devoured the old tales: the Skyforge aflame, the Gods pounding out blades and breastplates on the Scorched Earth’s anvil, their sparks a baptism of destiny. To be touched by them was to be marked, crowned with wisdom, marked for greatness.
A searing pain lanced his left eye as an ember struck true, burrowing into the soft orb with a hiss. He gasped, vision erupting in white-hot brilliance.
“Forgefather’s piss,” he muttered, defiant; then agony blazed as it flared suddenly, scorching, a brand melting into his skull.
He screamed, clawing his face, the spark’s heat a live coal burrowing deep; his body bucked, dust choking his throat as the world spun red. A vision slashed through; flames parted, a steel horse thundered, its rider a shadow cloaked in lightning, her voice a whip: “You’re mine now.”
Beyond, a vast hall gleamed, machines humming under a sky of ash, his twin’s grin flashing, alive yet distant, a thread stretched taut across a wall of fire. The Hearthland faded, the vision snapped; his eye burned gold, whispering alien, as a shadow loomed on the cliff’s edge: metal gleamed, a steed’s bulk, a rider’s gaze piercing the haze.
Denmark’s grin bared teeth, sardonic to the last; his leg bled rivers and as his eye pulsed fire the world teetered to black.
The Firewall Saga
The Firewall Saga is an epic, character-driven science-fantasy series set twenty-five millennia after a cataclysmic event called The Purge shattered Earth and reshaped civilization. At the heart of the series is the Firewall—a permanent ring of nuclear fire encircling the equator, dividing North from South and spawning wildly divergent societies on either side. Told through the perspectives of deft, flawed survivors, fearless explorers, and brutal leaders, The Firewall Saga weaves raw action, rich worldbuilding, and philosophical undertones into a sweeping tale of division and convergence. The story grapples with legacy, power, myth, and the question: can a fractured humanity ever heal, or will the scars of the past ignite a final apocalypse? Enter a world sundered by fire and time. Walk the Emberlight. Discover what lies beyond the wall.
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