Drovak — The Crimson Stake

His crown is timber,
his mouth a scream.
The innocent fed him,
and the Codex kept him.

Drovak’s thirst was not for the strong nor the brave. He found sweetest blood in the cradle — the taste of innocence, unmarred by guilt or sin. Villages whispered that when he came, he left no child to see the sunrise. Mothers smothered their babies in ash to make their scent foul, but still he found them.
 
His savagery birthed not fear alone, but vengeance. Lords who lost heirs, peasants who lost newborns, all bent their silver to hire a single hand — a slayer named Kaelric Thorne, a man of grim vows. Kaelric tracked Drovak by screams cut short and blood still warm, and in the heart of a forsaken chapel he drove timber through Drovak’s skull, severing his head to mount it as a warning.
 
But the Codex does not suffer endings. Drovak rose again, the wood forever lodged in his brow, his face a mask of bloodied rage. He hunts louder now, his scream a dirge, his thirst no longer hidden but proud. Those who taste his breath claim they hear the crying of infants behind his teeth.
 
The Codex calls him the Crimson Stake — not slain, but scarred, a predator of innocence who will never be sated, never be silenced, and never forget the night of his defeat.