My footsteps echoed hollow in the empty hangar, now repurposed into an execution ground. The scent of old metal and dried blood mixed with the cold bite of iron crawling up from the floor into my marrow. One by one, armed figures stepped out from the darkness, clad in nameless black uniforms—the underlings of The Emperor. Their faces were hidden behind steel masks. Their number? Fifty, maybe more.
Still, I walked.
No hesitation, no pause.
Above, on a rusted balcony, he appeared. Sitting with ease, his right hand—made of metal and tangled wires—held a half-smoked cigar, unlit. His eyes glowed faintly beneath the dim light, and the scar across his face looked like a relic from a war that had never truly ended.
He gave no command. He merely… watched.
Then, a movement.
The first wave charged from the right—eight men in perfect unison. They thought I was human. That was their first mistake.
My first step drove into the temple of the nearest one—his steel mask cracked, his retina burst. The second I slammed into the wall with an elbow. Two others tried to flank me from behind, but their bodies flailed midair like shattered puppets as I turned their own momentum against their allies.
Thuds. Short screams. Guttural gasps torn from throats. No bullets, no gunfire—only flesh and blood hitting the ground like a violent storm.
I didn't speak.
I danced between the dying.
"Wait… he's… alone?" one of them gasped, breath caught in fear.
One tried to run. He died quicker than the rest. My short blade—untouched for ten years—tasted blood once more.
Above, the massive man still sat unmoving. Only after the forty-third body collapsed to the floor with a snapped neck did he rise.
Tall. Broad. Silent.
The air went still, as if even the wind was afraid to breathe.
I stood at the center of the circle of death. My breathing calm. Clothes soaked in blood, yet my body moved to a steady rhythm.
He descended the stairs. Slowly. Each step groaning with the weight of steel.
Then the voice came—deep, heavy, and cold like a sunken grave:
"So... this is your performance? You move like a shadow with a grudge. Brutal, yet beautiful."
I gave no answer.
He smiled faintly. The scar on his face seemed to grin with him.
"So tell me… what is the meaning of your arrival, Legend?"