Page 13 of Marked By His Hunger
I rose slowly and approached the window.
Beyond it—sprawling towers carved from black basalt. Bridges suspended between spires. Auroras bending over the skyline like living veins of light.
And in the distance, faint but visible—a shimmer.
A fracture in the world.
The portal.
Asgarheim.
Accessible only through a hidden threshold in the forest.
To humans, nothing.
To Monsters?
An invitation.
I had been enrolled.
Transferred.
Bound.
Asgarheim Runevald Institute.
Not an academy for children.
Not a sanctuary for the untrained.
A graduate institution for Witches, Revenants, Rune-born heirs, and Monsters who required discipline or would become catastrophe.
Here, power was studied.
Measured.
Mastered.
Here, hunger would not rule me.
Or maybe it would break me entirely.
My memories of the past faded, and I returned to the present slowly.
Professor Kenna had not moved.
“And now?” she asked.
“I am no longer ruled by instinct alone,” I replied.
“And the hunger?”
“It remains.”
“Good,” she said.
I frowned slightly.
