Page 6 of Grimdark Magazine Issue 48

Peter Orullian is an American fantasy author, composer, and performer. As an author, Orullian has published several epic fantasy novels (Tor Books), and has also novelized chart-topping concept albums for Grammy Award-winning metal giant Dream Theater. In 2012, he was shortlisted for the David Gemmell Morningstar Award. And he has written numerous short stories and novels across various genres. Most recently, he has been collaborating with Brandon Sanderson on developing and writing The Strata Wars series, with book one, Songs of the Dead, releasing in June, 2026.

As a musician, he has toured internationally—fronting various rock and metal bands—written and released multiple albums, and recently founded his own symphonic rock group, Symphony North, which focuses on building trans-media properties to combine music and narrative. The first of these, entitled The Bell Ringer, was recently released as a full concept album, and will embark on a U.S. tour in holiday of 2026. The novelization of The Bell Ringer will release in tandem with the tour.

You can visit Peter at: www.orullian.com

A Beautiful Accident

By Peter Orullian

The thin tip of the branding iron glowed a mellow orange, two gentle swoops intersecting near the top. I knew the symbol, just as I knew why it was being used. It was the Mal numeral three, and marked the number of cycles I’d been enduring Talenfoier—a very old word interpreted by modern linguists to mean torture of the captive. But I’d studied its Mal lingual root, so I knew better. Refinement through pain was its truer meaning. My skin would be written on to mark the duration of my suffering and tolerance to the seven cruciations of Talenfoier.

“Be still, Sheason,” the refiner said.

“I’ve outlasted your knives. I think I’ve earned the right to hear my name when you place your first brand.” I showed a weak smile. “I’m Vendanj.”

The Mal man gave me the same impassive look he’d worn these hundred days while plying my flesh with his razor-thin cutters. Leaning close, he rested the heel of his palm on my chest to steady his hand. He then gracefully rotated the finely-tipped brand with his fingers. The smell of hot iron wafted up around my face.

“Jaimen,” he replied, speaking his own name for the first time in our many torturous sessions together. He was a member of the Aerin Loh, those trained to deliver Talenfoier. “Now set yourself. Hot iron unnerves a man in a way knives never do.”

He meant for me to take firm hold of the rods set into the armrests of the chair in which I sat. The rods reminded me of warping pegs on a loom. Pegs used by rugmakers to maintain thread tension. The reminder had proven useful. I’d learned from my grandfather that the key to a strong weave was moderate thread tension. Too tight and the rug would possess no give. Too loose and it wouldn’t knit together well. Forcing my body to relax under the artful application of blades parting my skin had helped me endure the first cruciation worthily.

I’d only flinched once, and that had resulted from a rare mistake by my refiner, his blade cutting into muscle when he’d only meant to part the skin. As to worthily, I knew this because I was receiving my first brand, marking the end of knifework, and signaling a hundred days of slow, deliberate hot-iron branding to come.

But it wasn’t just the weaver’s lesson that helped me relax as this first brand neared my flesh. Three cycles of Talenfoier knives carefully opening my skin had left me bone-tired. Exhausted mentally and emotionally, too. Which was, after all, its real purpose. The immediate pain of Talenfoier was a bridge to the real breakage: that of spirit. Only a broken spirit leads to refinement. Or so the Mal believed.

Still ... a brand.

My muscles were tightening reflexively even before I gripped the rods. I forced myself to relax, like a viola string tuned down a pitch. I’d found that doing so also made these sessions pass more quickly. Not because my refiner worked any faster. Relaxing into the pain just seemed to change my perception of time. And a man lives by his perceptions, dangerous as they can be. So I let my body sink back into the chair, my hands wrapped loosely around the pegs. I held myself steady, but not rigid.

Jaimen waited patiently for me to prepare myself. I let out a deep breath, then nodded. As his sharp eyes focused on my chest, I fixed my own attention near the neckline of his shirt. Brands rose from his chest in a careful column, twisting up the side of his neck and cheek.

Before coming into the lands of Mal Valut, I’d seen others with such chronologies burned into their skin. Not many, but a few. And only a few because even modern linguists were generally accurate in one way about Talenfoier: Its intent, if you weren’t Mal, was death—the ultimate refinement, went the old jest. Since coming into Mal Valut, I’d seen a thousand branded necks. Every natural-born Mal seemed to have a column of numerals seared into their skin, each column unique. Some were short, some reached high on the face. And the symbols themselves varied in subtle ways. Talenfoier’s meanings, I realized, were several.

During my first cruciation, I’d learned that a short stack of numbers was known as a brief counting. That’s what was expected of me, since I hadn’t been taught Valutara, the Mal technique for enduring Talenfoier’s pains. I’d studied the concentration methods of many paths—the Chae of the Nallan advance brigades, the Soma known of the Wynstout nomads, and even the Pliny Tu taught by Dimnian temple nuns. Most of them involved separating the mind from the body.

Valutara was different. When the pain began, you went inside it. You inhabited it completely. Embraced it as readily as another man reclines in the shade at the end of a day’s labor.

But I wasn’t Mal. I hadn’t spent a lifetime preparing for Talenfoier, as they did. And the cruciations weren’t practiced outside the Mal lands.

So I’d had to rely on my Sheason skills to survive, rendering the energy of the Will in subtle, healing ways after each knife session. But now I would become familiar with the feel of a brand. I wasn’t sure if the techniques I’d developed would work as well with the second cruciation.

And if I meant to win the honor I’d need to walk free, to complete my real purpose in coming here, my chest and neck and face would have to read like Jaimen’s. Like a long calendar.

The brand finally touched my skin—a small, focused fire.

It wasn’t the first time I’d smelled the sour stench of my own charred flesh. But those memories were far away and blurred now beneath the pain blooming across my chest.

The sound of searing skin ended before Jaimen pulled his brand away. The burning went on, though, deepening into my body with each passing moment. Jaimen’s eyes locked on my own, assessing the effects. Enduring Talenfoier was only the first part, and not the most important. Enduring well was the thing. I was already weak, and this pushed me to my limit. It felt like I’d been shoved toward some kind of edge. An edge inside me. My grip on who I was.

Each of the past hundred days I’d waited until they’d returned me to my little room to invoke the Will and heal the lacerations on my back. Lacerations made by careful, successively deeper cuts to the same patterns, reopening tissue that had just started to mend. Jaimen was reaching for a fresh brand. He’d place it precisely where he’d placed the first, to deepen the burn. The thought of it overwhelmed me.

Today, I couldn’t wait.

Without any outward sign, I called a portion of my Will, quietly rendered healing inside my body. Beneath the skin, the damaged tissue mended. It was a tricky bit of rendering, like diverting irrigation water from its regular path to a suddenly dry field. There’s only so much of the necessary element. A delicate balance had to be maintained to avoid compromising one for the sake of the other. I took great care not to damage part of my body while healing another.

More difficult still was sustaining the effort. Like a Lieholan singer whose Song of Suffering lasts a full seven hours, I maintained a constant invigoration of the flesh beneath the brand, as Jaimen continued to work.

A Sheason doesn’t usually self-heal. It’s not advisable. Still, the careful art of it was one I’d become rather good at. The reasons for that have their own stories. Stories of battle. Even other stories of torture.