The Age of Martial Enlightenment.

Chapter Eight – Fangs in the Moonlight

Flashback - 95 years ago

The moon hung full and heavy over the ruins of Delvane's eastern outpost—a ghostly sentinel watching over shattered stone and strangled vines. Wind whistled through broken archways, carrying the scent of ash and death. Emrys stood still in the center of the courtyard, travel worn boots on cracked marble. His ironwood scabbard gleamed faintly at his hip.

The ground shifted.

Then hissed.

The Assassin Lord of Serpents emerged from the shadows like oil poured into moonlight—long robes of scaly silk, iridescent in the dark, and eyes narrow and luminous like a serpent's. Coiled around his shoulders were two of his monstrosities: ten-foot vipers with onyx scales and fangs long as daggers. Their breath steamed with a venom that had dissolved steel.

"I've long wondered what the sword of the old world looked like in battle," the Lord of Serpents whispered. His voice was a slither. "Tonight, I shall know."

Emrys didn't respond. His eyes, black as storm-soaked stone, watched the grass bend near his feet. Movement.

Three more serpents struck from below.

He drew his blade.

The air split with a sound like a shattering spine as Emrys moved. In one breath, his sword carved a spinning arc, severing the first serpent in mid-strike. The second wrapped around his left arm, scales like armor, but his marrow-tempered bones did not crack. Emrys spun, planting his foot, and snapped the beast against a crumbled column with a single twist of his torso.

The third struck for his throat.

The ironwood scabbard blocked the fang by a whisper. Emrys kneed the serpent under its jaw with force that cracked stone and sent it sailing.

"Your technique is crude," the Assassin Lord said, stepping forward. "Brutish."

"And your pets are slow," Emrys replied.

The Lord of Serpents raised a hand.

A chorus of hissing rose all around.

From the ruined well and shattered walls, the true brood emerged: not three or four, but dozens—venomous vipers, green, black, and gold, each the size of a man's torso. They slithered with unnatural coordination, forming a living circle.

Emrys exhaled slowly. He let go of thought. The Marrow Pulse awakened. His sword blurred.

He became movement. A whirlwind of strikes, precise and devastating. Fang met steel and shattered. Venom sizzled on his bare chest but could not penetrate the reinforced tissue. He ducked, rolled, struck low, bisected a cobra's skull with a reverse grip.

But they were endless.

One wrapped around his leg—he tore it off and used its body as a whip. Another lunged at his face—he impaled it through the eye mid-spin. But the tide closed around him.

And then the Lord of Serpents joined the dance.

His strikes were unlike a man's. He moved like something slithered, every limb fluid, every attack coiling, binding, crushing. Emrys parried high, but a serpent-wrapped fist struck his ribs with a force that dented the air. He rolled back and countered, blade flashing for the neck.

Missed.

The Lord moved around the strike like water around stone, and a hidden dagger flicked from his sleeve—needle-thin, dipped in ancient venom.

It scraped Emrys' collarbone.

Pain burned instantly. His left side went cold.

Venom.

But Emrys only gritted his teeth. He adjusted. Adapted. Endured. The marrow within him had been refined not only with strength, but suffering.

With a roar, he dropped low and surged forward.

They traded blows, serpent master and swordsman. The courtyard cracked and cratered under their feet. Venom struck steel. Steel struck scale. The serpents closed in again, but Emrys no longer danced.

He cleaved.

In one final burst of marrow-wrought speed, Emrys entered Stillness—the calm within his bones. The storm beneath his skin. One breath. One perfect cut.

He passed through the Assassin Lord.

Silence.

Behind him, the Lord of Serpents fell, split from hip to shoulder. The serpents screamed as if their minds were broken, and fled into the night.

Emrys stood bleeding, his left arm dead, his vision flickering—but he did not fall.

He had survived the fangs of the abyss.

And he would remember their bite.

.....

Defeated and dying, the Assassin Lord whispered to his last serpent. The only one that hadn't fled.

It swallowed him whole—and slithered away into the marsh.

Some Days Later…

Deep within a hidden chamber, a grotesque scene unfolded.

The massive serpent regurgitated its master—broken, dying, and stinking of bile.

His breath came in shallow gasps. His skin had turned an ashen grey, veins bulging, blood thick with failing toxins. But the pain gave him clarity. And rage gave him purpose.

"You think this is death, Emrys?" he rasped. "No… this is evolution."

Drawing upon decades of serpent alchemy, he summoned his remaining snakes.

One by one, they bit into him, injecting tailored venoms into his blood—adrenaline-rich, regenerative, stimulant cocktails of pain and life. His body writhed, cracked, and bled.

He felt his blood heat. Then hiss. Then pulse with something more than martial essence.

"I see it… the path… the fangs of life…"

He had never truly followed Death.

His blood didn't crave rot.

It craved Life. Wild, primal, serpentine life.

In that pit of agony, something changed. His marrow-fed blood began responding—evolving. He wasn't just surviving.

He was becoming.

The BloodVenom Martial King was born.