The world wasn't covered in lush green and rocks, but rather in scorched earth shimmering with flames.

  Knez stood at the base of a vast, ancient mountain, its peak towering into the clouds. The air was heavy with smoke, and a sense of purpose hung over him; he knew instinctively that he had to get to the mountain-top, not out of fear, but rather because of something deeper—a calling, a desire, or perhaps a longing for the unknown.

  He prepped himself mentally, taking deep breaths before embracing the challenge. The rock offered little grip, crumbling under his fingers, but his powerful limbs propelled him upward as sweat stung his eyes, his muscles burned, yet he relentlessly pressed on. At last, he hauled his battered body over the edge, gasping for breath as he slowly surveyed the summit.

  At the center of the peak stood a small altar carved out of stone. On it sat a wooden bowl with black contents. Knez felt an irresistible pull toward it. He tried to fight and resist, but it was pointless; he had already picked the bowl up, sticking his thumb into it. The liquid reacted to his touch, shooting into his dark green skin. His tusks quivered in pain as the liquid traveled on the surface of his skin, consolidating into a huge, black tattoo of an open eye on his back.

  The space around him folded onto itself, as if responding to the events, and expanded again outwards in a rush of air, cooling the flames below. He felt multiple things in that instant: pride, pleasure, then pain, anger, and futility.

  Knez stirred in a makeshift bed of fur and opened his eyes. He was not on a mountain, but in a low, smoke-filled tent he shared with his kin. His body ached. The dull, persistent throb in his head was a constant reminder of his injury.

  It had been one week since an arrow stuck through his head, during a raid by the Vardian soldiers on his tribe’s temporary settlement in their kingdom; human raids against orc tribes are not uncommon.

  Orcs were a nomadic race, moving frequently from one kingdom to another in an effort to eke out a means of living, in a world that sought to hunt them to extinction. Nevertheless, the last raid was particularly disastrous for his tribe as they had lost their chief, his father, and all the adult males of the tribe, only the women and children were able to escape during the commotion, even then just barely, as some soldiers gave pursuit, raining down arrows on them as they ran for their lives, nearly eradicating them, but few of them still managed to escape, too few, one couldn’t even refer to their current number as a tribe, no, an extended family would be a better description, nonetheless they were now safe, at least from the Vardian soldiers in the outskirts of the neighboring Kingdom of Skarven.

  "Get up, runts."

  The heavy voice of Herg, the eldest survivor among the young orcs echoed in the tent. But there was no response.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  He grunted and swung his leg at the five young orcs, casually piled together soaking up the last bit of peace morning sleep offered.

  "Sun's up," Herg bellowed, his voice crude like a gravel slide. "Hunting group leaves in ten breaths.” He turns to Knez, “Unless your head is still broken, you should come too."

  Knez sat up slowly, the world tilting slightly as he did. The past few days had been a torment; he had lost his family, and memories of them haunted him still. But as was the way in orc culture, the living had a duty to carry on fanning the flames of the dead. His injury had healed a bit, but it was its bizarre side effect that was eroding his remaining sanity: sounds assaulted him with unnatural clarity; textures screamed details he couldn't ignore; patterns appeared wherever he looked like hidden threats. It was as if the arrow had broken something in his mind—a floodgate of perception that drowned him in tiny details.

  He stepped outside the tent, Champa, his childhood friend was already out before him, he stood on the ground sharpening an axe on a whetstone.

  Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

  Knez winced. The sound was ragged. He could hear the stone biting into the metal too hard, tearing the edge off instead of smoothing it. It sounded like a violent cough.

  "Stop," Knez whispered. The word felt strange, too sharp for his heavy tongue.

  Champa paused, blinking his beady eyes. "Eh?"

  "The sound," Knez said, rubbing his temple. "It’s, It's jagged. You’re pushing too hard on the downstroke. Listen to it. It cries."

  Champa stared at him for a moment, then burst into a wet, hacking laugh. "Did you hear that, Herg? The Runt thinks the axe is crying. Did the arrow pierce too deep into your head?"

  Herg sneered, spitting a mixture of chewed leafs into the dust. "Ignore him. He now sees spirits in the rocks. Grab your spear, Knez. Try not to trip over your own shadow this time."

  Knez took his spear. It felt drunk in his hands. The wood was warped, pulling the weight to the left. He knew from feeling the weight on his hands, that if he threw it, it would fly wide. It wanted to fly wide.

  He put the thought aside and followed the hunting party out of the camp into the forest—he felt compelled for no obvious reason to count his steps as they walked into the forest, 142 by the time they reached the treeline. The day before, he'd fixated on counting the pebbles in the sand near their tent, observing their texture and how they were different; becoming a puzzle to himself and others overnight, as his mind constantly carried out a bunch of involuntary analyses.

  The orc hunters, if they could even be called that, barely sixteen seasons old, were tracking the trails of a bluebuck. But Knez was overwhelmed by a disproportionate influx of data from their surroundings: the layered scents of damp earth, the fractal patterns in the bark of ancient oak trees, the leaves on the forest floor with their veined structures mapping out decay. His head pounded as he pulled his gaze away from the environment, retreating into his mind in a bid to stop himself from subconsciously analyzing everything they came across.

  However, something else drew his attention: a faint trail of blood on the ground. He paused as he also caught the scent of a subtle metallic tang in the air, his mind snapped into gear, he groaned anticipating the mental fatigue that would follow as more detailed information poured in, the spacing between the bloodied prints were too wide apart for a four legged creature, and the right print was visibly more pronounced than the left, straightening up his head, he narrowed his attention as he scanned the path ahead—and then gasped.