Page 29 of Marked By His Hunger

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A gust of wind swept through the courtyard, and I froze.

The sensation wasn’t cold.

It was awareness.

Like something ancient had just turned its head toward me.

The hair on my arms rose.

A pulse echoed faintly in my ears.

Not mine.

Another’s.

Heavy.

Measured.

Hungry.

This wasn’t the usual feeling I got when a spirit lingered to close. This was something else.

I swallowed hard.

Okay.

Maybe I hadn’t imagined that roar earlier.

But as I dragged my suitcase toward the massive iron doors of the Asgarheim Runevald Institute—I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched.

Hunted.

That something inside these walls had just caught my scent.

Chapter 3-Draugr

“It always rains when new students arrive,” I muttered, watching the skies split open above the obsidian towers of the Asgarheim Runevald Institute.

The auroras had dulled to bruised streaks of violet and sickly green as storm clouds rolled in from the black sea below.

Wind clawed at the spires carved with runes older than most gods.

The Institute stood unmoved, as it always did—unyielding stone, ancient magic, older than kingdoms.

I flexed my wings against the gale, stretching until bone creaked and sinew pulled tight beneath pitch-dark skin.

Rain struck like thrown pebbles.

“Oy, Draugr! Buckie’s?” Bench McCree called from the rune-lit path below.

He was just another Monster attending the Institute.

A friend? Not really. But he spoke to me when others denied I even existed.. so there was that.

Bench’s tentacles writhed lazily around his jawline, water sliding down the slick skin of his face.

He was grinning, already half-drunk on anticipation of fermented sea-grain.

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