The hound lunged at me again.
I raised my katana just in time, barely deflecting its claws.
I'm running out of time.
My body is wrecked—bleeding, bruised, broken.
Every breath burns. Every movement hurts.
I'm exhausted. Spent. Barely standing.
But I can't afford to fall now.
If I want to live...
I have to end this.
Now.
I slash my sword at the hound—
But it dodges to the side again, fast and precise.
Tch.
Without pausing, I conjure a fireball in my hand and hurl it forward.
It explodes right in front of his face.
Boom!
Smoke bursts outward, thick and blinding.
For a second, everything is quiet—
Until I hear it.
"Grrrr…"
His growl rips through the haze.
Before he can leap out of the smoke, I sidestep—
Then slash again.
But it barely leaves a scratch.
He's not slowing down.
He's getting angrier. Wilder.
His eyes lose their focus.
Foam gathers at his mouth.
His movements become erratic—less calculated, more vicious.
He's losing control.
Losing whatever sliver of intelligence he had left.
And that… works in my favor.
A beast without reason is easier to bait. Easier to fool.
I just need to survive a bit longer.
So I stop trying to overpower him.
I dodge. Evade. Wait.
Only strike when an opening appears.
It drives him mad.
With every missed attack, his fury deepens.
And soon…
He starts making mistakes.
Five minutes.
That's how long I've been dancing with death.
Dodging.
Weaving.
Barely breathing.
The hound grows wilder with every second. It's no longer fighting with instinct — it's fighting like it wants me dead. There's no defense in its movements now. Only relentless, reckless offense.
And it's working.
My katana can't cut through its skin. My flames? They sear the fur but never dig deep enough to matter.
Shit.
"If I had aura…" I mutter under my breath. My voice is a hoarse rasp, barely audible beneath the monster's guttural growls.
"If I knew how to use that damned aura, I would've ended this already."
But I can't.
Not with this broken, half-trained, piece-of-trash body.
The beast lunges again, and I stumble sideways, the world spinning. Blood runs freely down my arm. My ribs feel like shattered glass with every breath. My legs are trembling. My skin is cut, torn, bruised.
I shouldn't even be standing.
And when the adrenaline finally runs dry—
When this last surge of desperation fades—
I'll collapse.
I'll fall.
And I'll be devoured by this beast.
The hound lunges at me.
I try to move—dodge, weave, anything—but my body fails me.
Too slow. Too broken.
He crashes into me, and I stumble backward. Before I can react, he's already on top of me, jaws wide open. I throw my left arm up out of instinct—crunch—his fangs clamp down.
Pain erupts.
A scream tears from my throat as his teeth sink deeper, shredding flesh and cracking bone. I can hear it. The snap. He's trying to rip my arm off. Thrashing, jerking, tearing.
My vision blurs.
I should be dead already.
But I'm not.
My right hand still grips the katana—trembling, slick with blood.
"Fuck…!" I growl through clenched teeth.
I rear the blade back and slash—once, twice—carving into his face. Blood splashes, but he doesn't stop. His jaws tighten. The pain becomes blinding.
He wants my arm. Wants to rip it clean off.
My body's going numb.
I can't let this be the end.
With a roar, I twist the blade back again and drive it straight into the eye socket—the same one I tore out earlier.
A sickening squelch. A screech.
He recoils, jerking wildly, but the blade is buried deep now—wedged in his skull.
I don't stop.
I push harder.
"I'm not dying here," I whisper, voice shaking. "Not yet…"
Whimpers escaped his throat as pain lanced through him.
The hound thrashed violently, trying to shake off the katana buried deep in its skull. Its eye socket was pierced clean through, the blade stuck at an angle that refused to budge. With blood streaming down its face, it rammed into trees, tore through bushes, desperate to rid itself of the torment lodged in its brain.
But it was no use.
I didn't wait. I conjured a flame in my palm and hurled it straight at the exposed blade.
Boom!
The fire exploded at the point of impact. The creature howled—its scream mangled and guttural, more beast than sound. Its legs faltered.
I charged forward.
"Die," I whispered.
I slammed the sheath of my blade against the hilt, driving it deeper into its skull. It shrieked again, stumbling backward—but I didn't let it retreat. I kicked its leg out from under it, and the hound collapsed to the ground with a heavy thud.
I leapt on top of it, knees pinning its chest. My hands wrapped around the hilt, and with everything I had left—
I pushed.
Bone cracked. Brain matter tore. The hound whimpered like a dying animal.
"Yeah, you motherfucker," I growled. My voice trembled, not with fear—but fury. Pure, bitter rage.
The agony it gave me—
The pain I endured—
The nights I screamed—
The days I bled—
All of it ends here.
I began to punch.
Thwack.
Crack.
Thud.
Again. And again. And again.
I conjured another fireball in one hand. With the other, I pried its jaw open and shoved the flame down its throat.
Boom!
Fire exploded inside its skull. Blood gushed from its mouth, boiling red and thick. It tried to scream, but its throat was already charred, its voice silenced forever.
It writhed weakly beneath me. Every limb twitched, but it had no strength left to fight.
I stared into its glazed, fading eyes.
"This," I said coldly, "is for everything you did to me."
And with a final thrust, I drove the katana deep into its skull.
Something popped. Something gave way.
The light in its eyes flickered—
Then died.
The body jerked once—
And went still.
I stood up from the hound's corpse, my legs barely holding me. His body lay twisted, broken—a bloodied mess.
Dead.
I threw my head back and laughed.
"Hahahaha! I did it! I fucking did it!"
I laughed like a madman—my voice raw, lungs screaming, body shaking. I should be terrified. I should be crying.
But instead?
I was high.
High on adrenaline. On the fight. On the thrill of surviving when everything screamed that I shouldn't. My ribs were shattered. Breathing hurt like hell. Blood dripped from every inch of me. My left arm hung limp, completely ruined.
And yet I laughed.
"I killed a monster… A whole damn rank above me...!"
I couldn't stop. The pain, the exhaustion—it all blurred behind the manic joy of victory. This feeling—this madness—it was intoxicating. The rush of pushing past my limits, of dancing on the edge of death...
I think I'm getting addicted to it.
Still laughing, I collapsed backward onto the ground. The cold earth welcomed me like a grave. My limbs refused to move. My breath rattled in my throat.
My left arm… It wouldn't survive. One tug and it would probably fall off.
"I'm going to die…" I whispered to the sky. The truth tasted bitter.
"Sorry, Liana… I guess I couldn't keep my promise…"
Her name burned through my chest worse than any wound. My voice broke as I said it.
She'd be sad. She always cried too easily.
As the black curtain of unconsciousness crept closer, something shimmered in the air above me. A figure emerged.
Noctharion.
Or rather, a small, spectral version of him—hovering, radiant and curious, like a shard of ancient power wrapped in a child's form.
He looked down at me with mild amusement.
"That was quite a fight," he said calmly.
I managed a weak smirk. "Yeah, I know."
"But you're going to die."
"Yeah," I breathed. "No medical help, and I'm done for."
He tilted his head. "Then… if you die, I'm free?"
"Wouldn't that make you happy?" I rasped.
He shrugged. "I don't know."
I frowned. "Aren't you supposed to be the most knowledgeable being in this world?"
"I am," he said, smiling.
"Then how the hell don't you know?"
"Because," he said, his voice quiet now, "anything connected to you... is a mystery. And mysteries interest me. But looking at your condition…" He glanced at my wounds with narrowed eyes. "You're going to die. That much is certain."
"Yeah," I muttered. "Maybe that's my fate. Try my hardest… and still die at the end."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Fate," he murmured.
There was something strange in his voice—something… ancient.
I turned my head toward him, barely able to keep my eyes open. "What? Don't believe in fate?"
"I do," he said. "Unlike you mortals who think you can change fate or toy with it… I know better."
He stood straighter. For the first time, his voice carried weight—reverence.
"Fate is far beyond your comprehension. Even I—the mightiest dragon ever to exist—was bound by it. I never even dreamed of changing my fate."
That struck me.
"So fate is that powerful…?"
"Fate is not power. It is law," he said. "It is the origin and the end. It is not something you fight. It is not something you understand. It simply is."
He looked up at the sky.
"No one escapes it."
"Fate is not a road—it's a trap," Noctharion said, his voice deep and ancient, echoing like the whisper of time itself.
"And those who believe they walk freely are merely following the path laid out by a god who no longer watches."
I spat blood and smiled bitterly.
"Fuck fate," I muttered.
My vision blurred. The world around me lost color, shape, sound. My thoughts grew heavy, sinking into a sea of nothingness.
Darkness crawled in from the edges. My limbs felt weightless. Numb.
So this is it...
All those hellish drills.
All those grueling nights.
And I'm dying like a dog in the dirt.
Alone. Broken. Forgotten.
I chuckled weakly, the sound wet with blood.
"What a joke..."
As my eyes fluttered shut, distant sounds clawed at the edge of my fading awareness.
Footsteps.
Soft. Slow. Uneven.
I couldn't tell what they were—human, beast... or something else.
Maybe the monsters had come.
Drawn by the scent of blood.
A feast laid out before them—
Me.
A fitting end, I thought.
Not a warrior's death. Not redemption.
Just meat for the wild.
With that final thought, my mind slipped away.
And the darkness swallowed me whole.
Author here: Drop your thoughts in the comments.