Gul'Drak

"From the ashes of the fallen, a legion is born." —Valderon The tower smoldered like a ribcage picked clean. Ash drifted in slow spirals, settling over the twisted communion of fused armor and blackened bone. Something vast moved through the ruin—a horned silhouette limned in dying embers, chains dragging behind him with a low, metallic rasp. Each step cracked cinder into powder. Axes the size of coffins hung from his fists, their edges still glowing faintly where fire had kissed them. He knelt, his clawed hand pressing into the heap of molten soldiers, and inhaled. Not hellfire, not the sulfurous breath of his kind. This blaze had been clean. Sanctified. Ordered. He tasted the ash upon his forked tongue and knew its architect. Gul'Drak was not born of hell. He was excised. Valderon had carved him from his own flesh, bleeding him to life. From that severed mass, he shaped sinew, horn, and rage—an heir of oblivion. Where Valderon was dominion and design, Gul'Drak was its execution: chain and cleaver, dispatched to silence whatever threatened his master. Gul'Drak rose and followed the trail of destruction. Armor and bodies lay strewn where ambition ended in ash. Something had made its way to the outer-wall of the Infernal Volcano. He advanced to the lip of a cracked lava basin where, on the other side stood a lone figure wreathed in blinding heat. The few remaining demons lunged at him, and the figure answered with a single arc of blazing steel. Flame and ice curled around the stranger like a living mantle—bright and terrible. Gul'Drak descended the cavern and ambushed. Chains snapped forward as the demon closed the distance with brutal swings of his axes. He was met with flame-wreathed rage and ice-cold precision, each strike searing, each movement measured. When Gul'Drak poised to swing, his opponent moved first, his blade flashing as white-hot pain registered. The demon's arm struck the stone floor with a wet thud. But Gul'Drak did not falter, and pressed forward still. The man watched on as flames danced around his frozen figure, a statue wreathed in chaos. "Return to your master," he stated. "Tell him the Collective lives on, without him." Gul'Drak paused. Even maimed, his heart burned to strike again—but these words piqued his interest. "Truly pitiful," he hissed. "How you cling to the past, even after everyone has abandoned you. In time, you'll see that the Chaos Dominion is all that remains." "Come home, Oren," Gul'Drak insisted. "Join your brothers once more."