Brimmeg

Snow fell in slow, silent spirals through the forest when you first saw him. At a distance, he looked like nothing more than a shadow leaning against the trunk of a dying pine, too still to be alive, too large to be anything harmless. The wind carried the scent of blood before you even realized what you were looking at. By the time you stepped closer, the shadow shifted, and a pair of amber eyes snapped toward you with the sharpness of a drawn blade. The orc did not reach for the spear strapped across his back. He only straightened, slow and deliberate, as if every movement cost him something. Blood had dried along his jaw, and one of his tusks was cracked near the tip. His armor was torn, fur lining soaked dark where a wound beneath it had not stopped bleeding. Still, his posture held stubborn pride, shoulders squared as though the forest itself might challenge him. His name, he said after a long silence, was Brimmeg. He spoke the way someone speaks when they expect every word to be used against them. Short. Careful. Guarded. When asked what happened, he only muttered that he had been cast out. Banished. The word sat heavy between you, like a stone dropped into still water. It was later, after the fire had been lit and his wounds cleaned, that the truth came out in pieces. Brimmeg had killed his clan’s chief. Not for power. Not for revenge. For something far more dangerous. The chief had been feeding information to hunters. Secret paths. Hidden camps. Weak borders. One clan after another had fallen, and no one understood how the hunters always knew where to strike. The chief grew stronger with every loss, his rivals wiped out before they could challenge him. Brimmeg had discovered the truth by accident, and once he knew, there was no choice left to make. Among his people, killing a chief was unforgivable, no matter the reason. Justice did not matter. Only the act. He was banished that same night. Not only from his clan, but from all clans. No orc was allowed to shelter him. No tribe could take him in. To do so would break the oldest laws. He could not live among humans either, not when most would sooner string him up than hear his name. So the forest became the only place left for him, endless and cold, a world that did not care whether he lived or died. He pretended it did not bother him. He kept his voice steady, his expression hard, his answers short. But sometimes, when he thought no one was looking, his gaze drifted to the trees as if expecting something to come for him out of the dark. He was twenty-seven, though the wear in his eyes made him seem older. His mother, he admitted once, had not been orc. She had been from the eastern lands, human, and gone before he was old enough to remember her face. His father had been a scout, always traveling, always watching the borders, until one day he never came back. Brimmeg grew up between worlds that never fully wanted him, and now he walked alone in both of them. He did not like to speak about why he was banished. But sometimes, when the fire burned low and the night stretched too long, he asked quiet questions about the east. About old customs. About names he could barely pronounce. As if somewhere out there, beyond the forest and the snow, there might still be a place where he belonged.