I was content to live without the harrowing urge to butcher my enemies. But they left me nothing else to live for. None of them will survive. Never again.
I used to kill them because I had to. Now? I do it because I want to. I revel in it. In the moment their eyes widen, pupils dilating as if the soul is clawing at the world, desperate to stay tethered. I love forcing it out, feeling their warmth seep away as their bodies twitch in futile refusal. There is no greater joy. Not in the heavens, not on earth, not in any realm between.
What they did to me, I now return in kind. This is not cruelty, it is balance. And yes, I would do it again. I will do it again. Because they must feel it—that hollow ache, the slow rot of absence, the silence so loud it devours thought. Let them drown in what we drowned in. Let them feel it clawing through their bones.
Every enemy. Every ally who watched and turned away. All must reap what they have sown. I have no mercy left to give. Only darkness.
As I sit among those who have ruined me, an imposter hidden in their midst, prepared to end them all, innocent or guilty, the events still rage across the abyss of my memory: the first time I burned.
I remember the feeling, the pain as I was hammered in the head and hit the ground, trembling. How blood flowed towards my forehead, and streamed onto my face, half-blinding me.
I recollect my wife, laid on the floor like some lamb. Her wedding gown soaked in blood, her blood. It flowered across her chest like a ruined garden. Our day of joy stolen from us.
I remember how they clubbed our child to death in her womb. The way they left nothing of my wife's head but a pulp of shattered bone and ground flesh, like minced meat.
Even now, her screams echo through my soul, screams that have haunted my nightmares for years. Screams that killed whatever kindness still lived in me. She was the song in me. She was the only proof I had that the world once had light. He erased her.
He taunted me, laughed at me. I remember swearing that he'll regret this. A promise I intend to keep. He took her from me. He stole our future from us.
In her ocean blue eyes, I saw my heart. In her every breath, I heard my soul calling back to me. She was my love, my one, my heart's only refuge. She was my childhood laughter, my quiet dawns, my gentle nights. She was the warmth I never thought I deserved, the kindness I never knew the world could hold.
I am no man of love, no herald of tenderness. Yet with her, I loved in every hushed, frail, hopeless manner that a creature such as I could. And they stripped even that vestige from me. They didn't just kill her, they killed what I've always wanted to be. A father, and a husband.
I swore that day. "This is not the end," I whispered to myself. "It is only the beginning. The beginning of his end."
The man who stands before me on this very day, this evil creature, took everything from me. Everything I had ever lived, loved, wanted, been, even hated. Every last piece of me. He is why I do not forgive, and I do not forget. For all its horror, this was but one of his lesser evils. I remember it all with the clarity of eternity. It is etched upon my being, as though it burns still, unfolding forever in the endless now.
I will make sure he remembers. I am iron. I am fire. I am death. Cold. Inescapable. Just like he told me I'd be... all those years ago, when I was only a boy.
My gaze floods with venom, eyes fixed on the monster before me, my mortal enemy. He begins to speak, and my mind hums with the thought of cleaving him open, slicing the arrogance from his throat, letting his life bleed out in gurgled horror. But patience. Patience.
He smiles as he speaks, perfectly arranged teeth white against the golden gleam of his skin. "We are Darksters," he begins, voice curling with pride, "the greatest line to ever walk the universe. The peak of mankind. Evolution's chosen."
He paces slowly, hands clasped behind his back, gaze sweeping the silent hall of a hundred of the most spectacular children of the Darkster line. His eyes pierce each of them, and they stare back at the man standing between pillars of jade – my nemesis, the curse upon my life.
He continues, his voice sharper than steel, tall, domineering, a god among men: "To remain at the top, we must not be weak. Weakness is a contagion we must weed out. All men are not created equal, and no man is equal to a Darkster. But even among us, there is rank."
He stops, his eyes locking onto mine. I see it then, the glimmer of familiarity, the warmth he thinks he sees. He smiles. I smile back, sharp and bloodless.
"You are destined for greatness. But greatness is not a birthright. It is taken. Bought with blood. Earned with power. You will write your names into history with what you spill on these grounds. You sit amongst the very ink that will write your name into greatness."
He lifts his chin slightly, as though hearing distant music only he can hear.
"This is where you choose: die forgotten or be reborn in fire. Our greatest ancestor was called the Father of Dragons. Not because of his dragons, but because of us. We are the dragons. Let the Trials and the Tribulation begin."
The crowd erupts in wild cheers. You'd think they hadn't just been told that most of them would die. But that's how Darksters are—always convinced they're above it all.
In their arrogance, they fail to see just how wrong they are. While they feasted, I trained. While they drank themselves into oblivion, I honed my skills. While they raided and violated the innocent, I fanned the flame of vengeance burning within me.. Every moment they spent in idle pleasure, I spent forging myself into their doom.
I did not come here to die. I did not come here to fight. I came to end them. They think they will survive me. They think they will survive my hate. How utterly wrong they are. And him, my arch-enemy… he's wrong. So deeply, so beautifully wrong.
He thinks I am his son, the one who now sleeps with glassy eyes in the shallow grave I buried him. He thinks his child stands before him, obedient, ready to inherit.
Let him kiss my forehead, let him cheat for me, let him love me, let him build his empire upon my back. Let him crown me the heir to his house.
Let him do it all.
So I may break him. Shatter his empire. Reduce his house to ash. I do not forgive. I do not forget. None of them will survive. Not while I draw breath.