My Keeper

"To not fear death, would that not be desirable?"

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Music Playlist:

Main song: You're in love with a villain | Dark Romance Piano to Relax, Study, Read and Write | Dark Academia

Dead Kings- Hauntingly Majestic Dark Fantasy Music

Dead Gods- Hauntingly Beautiful Vocal Fantasy Music

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Steep isn't quite the word for this mountainside. It was jagged and sharp. It looked cold, but there was a heat radiating. There were spots of flames, flames close to the ground, hugging the earth like lava. The fire didn’t grow, but the flames wouldn’t be put out.

The sky above felt so close, from the thick shroud of black and dark grey clouds. There was not a hint of sunlight. Just a choking presence of something close to an eternal night. A never-ending storm waiting to take charge.

Shouts broke out, angry cruel voices. Somewhere behind me, somewhere close. So I climbed this mountainside. Where a skull or two would show face. The rock was like ashes. Crunching beneath my bare feet. But it didn’t hurt. It was what it was. Weak stones. Was this mountain weak?

I threw myself behind boulders. Stumbling towards a crack within the walls of a cliff. A steep drop cutting off any form of escape. This was it.

“Show yourself!” A voice sliced through the thick air towards me. I heard metal and muttering, and I wondered what my foes even looked like, “we know where you are, there is no way out.”

His voice lowered to a commanding tone. He knew. He wasn’t luring me from my hiding spot worried I’d escape. He knew there was nowhere for me to go.

As I gazed over the drop of cliff I questioned if death would be merciful though a fall as violent as this didn’t seem worth it. The sword may be the most inviting door to death. Before I could make the decision something lit up inside my head, projecting into my eyes.

A stone. A small perfectly round black stone. The center has cracks within it. Broken but not. I felt its frigid surface. Biting at the skin. But then I felt its warmth like hot liquid. Spreading over my palm. Making its cracks become golden with light. My eyes opened and I was still greeted by the harrowing drop off.

“There is no point,” he mentioned deeply, “we can stay here longer than you can survive without water.”

I clenched my teeth as that realisation dawned over me, “I can light it,” my dried cracked voice left my throat.

He didn’t respond, no one made a sound, “you can’t kill me,” I stated bluntly. I slowly stood up and stepped into the opening. He was tall, slim, his skin cold as ice. White as snow. A harsh contrast against the ashen realm.

His hair shined like the night, sleek and long to his elbows. His armour, silver. His cloak black and dark crimson. His black gloves were fingerless and his knuckles silver from armour. His presence, haunting.

The rest of them were nearly the same but scarred. Rough, rocky with Rigidness. The way they held themselves, proud but stubborn. Impatient to process with the action to slay me.

He took a step towards me, his black armoured boots clinking as he approached. His sword clenched in his fist, lowered to his side. His dark blue eyes, midnight and a never-ending void of space.

I didn’t back down even though any moment this could all end. His stone rests upon his silver breastplate. Dead and lifeless. Nothing but a stone, was it as weak as the mountain?

“What would you know of it?” He spat bitterly, “who are you,” he demanded coldly, “why would someone as weak as you approach this peak? Are you itching for death?” His words shuddered through me. My chest heaving with frustration.

“I don’t want to be here. I never asked for this,” I answered just as sharp. I glanced down at his stone, “but let me hold it, maybe we can both have our questions answered.”

He raised his hand to hit me across the face but he held it beside my cheek. The people behind him were disappointed when the hit didn’t land, “I should kill you.”

“But you won’t,” I whispered darkly, “because you need answers.”

He grasped my arm, throwing me in front of him. The march was long and steep, crawling up the side of the mountain until a fortress rose in front of us. Like a black tower. It shone, it was daunting. Unwelcoming. He shoved me forward as my feet went slower. The sound of his metal armor digging into my very soul. His sword was placed into his sheath over his back.

I started to shiver as we stood outside the gates. Someone leaned over a wall and called out.

“Vaerandor!” he answered the man on the wall. His grip tightened around my wrists as he brought them behind my back, tying them steadily.

The gates made of stone shuddered and roared, pulling into the walls of the mountain. They needed only pull them open a crack.

We marched in. There were faces, dishevelled and pale from lack of sun and nutrition. Hollow eyes, skin stretched tight over bones, their faces barely more than shadows. What did they eat here?

“Upstairs,” he growled as we entered his castle. His men held back, reluctant to let me leave their sight.

“They all look ill,” I muttered, knowing it was a dangerous comment.

“We are what we are,” he replied sharply, “but we are not ill.”

The staircase led to a tall grand-looking dark wood door. He pushed me inside. The room swallowed me with its bleakness, a suffocating void, as if light and warmth were things it had long rejected. The walls were rough and cold, made of dark, bare stone with deep cracks snaking through, as if even the structure itself wanted to break free from this place. Shadows clung to every corner, deepening the emptiness that seemed to pulse with a quiet, unsettling malice.

The bed stood in the center, circular and harsh, with no softness or comfort to offer. It was nothing more than a slab, layered with a thin, faded blanket that held the chill of the stone beneath. It was as if the bed was designed to deny any notion of rest or escape, a place where nightmares would fester rather than fade.

A tall window loomed on the far side, a gaping wound in the wall that opened to a narrow, iron-railed balcony. The air that seeped through was biting, laced with the scent of ash and decay. I shuddered as I looked out; the drop beyond the balcony was a vast emptiness, a chasm waiting to swallow anything that dared approach its edge. Distant flames dotted the cliffs below like ghostly remnants, flickering faintly, clinging to the lifeless peaks as though desperately resisting the darkness threatening to consume them.

“You best stay in this room,” he growled, “they want you dead by nightfall.”

“How can anyone tell what time of day it is, when all I see is ash and smoke.”

He took a few moments to respond, keeping his eyes away from me, “It’s a feeling.”

I looked away from him as well, down at my tingling fingertips. This castle—if you could even call it that—was like a tomb, a place where warmth had never existed, and where hope had long since died. The air felt stagnant, thick with a cold that seeped into my skin, wrapping around my bones like icy chains. My hands grew more numb by the second. I clenched them together, staring dead at my feet, feeling as if even my own breath was slowly being strangled by the oppressive weight of this place.

“If it’s nearly nightfall, why not kill me now?”

“I’ve never heard of you, but you know of the stone. I hear everything. I see everything that knows of this that I wear. But no one knows its capability of giving out light.”

“You seem to shy away from light, why treasure something that can bring it?”

He immediately threw his eyes up and into mine, a flash of something painful, furious, flickering like a wound he couldn’t hide. His gaze was cold, but beneath it, I sensed an agony that was as boundless as the darkness around us.

“I’ve said enough.”

“You won’t kill me.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“Why must I feel as if I know you-” my words slipped. I regretted them the moment my lips formed the letters.

“Because you don’t want to die.”