Disclaimer: All countries, people, places, and the storyline are fictional.
Chapter 1
In the mists of antiquity, within the heart of the ancient Kush Empire, lived a Guardian. He was a paragon of righteousness, his honor unblemished, his heart tethered to a profound reverence for the divine. Unknown to the wider world, this Guardian had fought countless battles, from skirmishes with nascent neighboring states to sprawling, intercontinental conflicts waged in the name of faith. Through his tireless efforts, the Kush Empire had achieved an era of unprecedented stability.
But peace bred complacency, and stability, forgetting. The hero who had secured their prosperity was slowly erased from their narratives. The royal family, their eyes clouded by avarice, and the nobles, their minds fevered with paranoia for their precarious positions, began to see him not as a savior, but a threat. None among them were clean from sin; many nobles, for petty profit, had bartered national secrets to foreign powers. They knew the Guardian, with his unwavering moral compass, would eventually uncover their treachery. To bury their dirty secrets and secure their ill-gotten gains, they conspired, proposing to the royal family a banishment, an exile, for the man who had saved them all. The royals, ever fearful for their throne against a figure of such power and popularity, readily agreed. The ultimatum was clear: exile, or he and his entire lineage would face execution.
The Guardian refused. To be exiled was to admit a guilt he did not possess, to abandon the people he had sworn to protect. He chose to fight.
Thus began the Great War – one man against the elite of the Kush Empire, an army two million strong, composed of superhuman soldiers. As the Guardian faced them, a bitter understanding dawned. Among the enemy ranks were faces he knew: his friends, his brothers-in-arms, even his own disciples. They had betrayed their morals, his teachings, seduced by the nobles' promises of wealth and women. He knew then that if he pulled his punches, if he hesitated, he would not survive. It was he who had taught them the devastating arts of destruction.
A moment froze time. Through the press of bodies, he saw him: General Kaelen, once his most trusted commander, his shield-brother. Kaelen dragged forth a figure that made the Guardian's heart shatter – Lyra, his wife. Without a word, without a flicker of hesitation, Kaelen's blade drew a crimson line across her throat.
The Guardian froze, the world turning to ash around him even before the flames. Now he understood. His lineage was no more.
The dam of his control shattered. Revenge, loss, and an agony that consumed his soul flooded his mind. He activated the forbidden technique, the ultimate expression of the Art of Destruction. His sword, a faithful companion for forty-seven years, hummed in his grip. With a final, guttural roar that was more prayer than curse, he invoked its ultimate power, pouring his very life force into the blade: the Punishment Sword.
Without a second thought, without any thought but oblivion, he hurled it towards the amassed legions.
The explosion was cataclysmic, a conflagration that dwarfed five hundred nuclear blasts. The destruction didn't confine itself to the battlefield. The shockwave, followed by a wall of residual fire, swallowed the entire capital, then the surrounding kingdoms of the Kush Empire. Even distant sea creatures, unlucky enough to be near the coast, were boiled in their own waters.
Amidst the charred, lifeless earth, the Guardian stood, a solitary figure in a self-made hell. Then, he knelt. His strength, his very essence, was leaving him. He remembered this feeling of utter powerlessness, a sensation he hadn't felt since he was a boy of ten, before the vast power had awakened within him.
His last words whispered on the searing wind: "I wish… I could have lived for myself."
With that, he crumbled, turning to ash, then to nothingness.
Ezekiel jolted awake, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"Oh, shit," he gasped, wiping sweat from his brow. "Another one of those crazy dreams."
He glanced at the alarm clock. "Oh, god, I'm late for work! I'm gonna get fired!"