The ground trembled before the screams reached them.
Thomas felt it through his claws first—a vibration crawling up from the obsidian beneath his feet, subtle at first, then growing heavier, like the heartbeat of something vast and awakening. The molten rivers nearby rippled unnaturally, splashing against their banks as if recoiling from what approached.
Liora stiffened, her coils tightening. "Do you feel that?" she hissed.
Eddric rose to his full height, elongated limbs stretching as his many eyes scanned the horizon. "Yes," he said quietly. "Not a single entity. Many. Hundreds, perhaps thousands."
The canyon beyond the Trial of Fire darkened as ash began to fall from the sky, drifting like black snow. The Circle of Runes pulsed brighter in the distance, its symbols rotating slowly, deliberately—summoning.
Thomas's molten veins flared in response. Hunger surged, sharper than before, but beneath it lay something colder: recognition. He had felt this sensation once before, during the Fall.
"They're coming," Thomas said. "Newly turned."
The first of them emerged from the smoke.
They stumbled from the fissures in the earth, clawing their way up from molten cracks and collapsed runic circles. Their forms were unstable—flesh half-melted, bone exposed, sin-sculpted bodies twitching as hell reshaped them mid-step. Some screamed. Some wept. Others laughed madly, voices cracking as their humanity burned away.
The Ashen Horde.
These were not predators yet. Not refined demons like Liora or Eddric. These were freshly damned—humans torn from the sky, shattered upon impact, reforged by the Circle into mockeries of their former selves.
Thomas watched a man—no, a thing—crawl forward on hands fused into blades, his face stretched in perpetual terror. Green fire burned from his eyes.
"I didn't mean to," it sobbed. "I didn't know."
Another erupted from the ground screaming curses, molten chains fused into his spine, each link engraved with symbols of betrayal. A woman followed, wings of ash tearing themselves apart as she tried to flee, collapsing in a heap of smoke and bone.
Most did not survive the summoning intact.
Thomas could see it clearly now: the descent. Humans pulled screaming from the world above, cast through the empty sky of Hell, their bodies breaking long before they struck the ground. Those who shattered too completely dissolved into fuel—raw essence absorbed by the Circle. Only the strongest, or the most burdened by sin, survived long enough to be remade.
And now they stood before him.
"They don't know how to hunt," Thomas murmured. "They don't know how to survive."
"No," Liora said softly. "But they will learn. Or they will be consumed."
The Horde surged forward.
It was not a coordinated charge—more like a flood. Bodies crashed against each other, some trampled beneath clawed feet, others lunging blindly at anything that moved. The smell of burning flesh and panic filled the air.
Thomas moved on instinct.
He leapt forward, claws tearing through the first demon that reached him. It burst apart in a spray of molten ash, screaming even as it died. Hunger flared—violent, intoxicating—but Thomas forced it down, remembering the Trial.
Control.
He pivoted, dodging a wild swing from a creature whose arms had fused into a massive hammer of bone. Eddric struck from behind, precise and efficient, shattering its spine before it could recover. Liora wove through the chaos, coils snapping and constricting, disabling rather than killing when she could.
"Fall back!" Thomas shouted. "Form a line!"
The words surprised him as much as anyone else.
He was leading.
Some of the newly turned heard him—those with enough mind left to understand language. They hesitated, eyes flickering with confusion and terror.
One demon—a young boy, no older than sixteen in life—collapsed at Thomas's feet, his body warped into a crouched, horned form, ribs glowing with green fire. "Help me," he pleaded. "I don't want this."
Thomas froze.
For a heartbeat, Hell went silent.
Then the Horde pressed in again, and Thomas was forced to act. He grabbed the boy, dragging him behind a jagged obsidian outcrop, shielding him from the oncoming swarm.
"Stay down," Thomas said harshly. "If you want to live, you listen."
The boy nodded frantically, curling into himself.
Liora hissed sharply as a wave of demons broke through the left flank. "They're too many!"
"That's the point," Eddric said. "The Circle is testing more than strength now. It tests leadership."
The realisation struck Thomas like a blade.
The Circle was watching to see who would rise.
He climbed onto the obsidian ridge, molten veins blazing bright, and roared—a sound that echoed through the canyon, shaking ash from the sky.
"Enough!" he bellowed.
The Horde faltered.
Thomas stood tall, claws dripping fire, eyes blazing. "You're not prey," he shouted. "Not yet. But if you charge blindly, you will die again and again until there's nothing left of you. Form up. Watch. Learn."
Some ignored him and died moments later.
But others listened.
They gathered behind him—dozens at first, then more—those who still clung to fragments of reason, fear, or regret. Thomas directed them instinctively, positioning them along defensible ground, showing them how to strike together, how to retreat without panic.
The Horde fractured.
What had been chaos became slaughter—for those who refused to adapt.
Thomas fought at the front, not as a mindless predator, but as a commander. Each kill was measured. Each movement calculated. Hunger howled within him, but he refused to drown in it.
When the last of the Ashen Horde fell—or learned—the ground was carpeted in smoldering remains.
Silence returned.
The Circle of Runes pulsed once, brightly.
Then it dimmed.
Liora slithered to Thomas's side, eyes wide. "You weren't supposed to do that," she said.
"Do what?"
"Lead them."
Eddric approached slowly. "Few choose restraint over consumption. Fewer still teach others how to survive."
Thomas looked at the demons who remained—the broken, the fearful, the newly reborn. They looked back at him with something dangerously close to hope.
"I didn't do it for them," Thomas said quietly. "I did it so I wouldn't forget who I was."
The Circle watched.
And somewhere deeper in Hell, something ancient stirred, aware at last of Thomas Hale—not merely as a survivor, but as a force capable of changing the balance.
The Ashen Horde had been forged.
And Thomas had become more than prey.