Heroes of Darkness

Time is an illusion of sequence, something the mind clings to. It is vast beyond measure, carved into tiny fragments that we can just barely follow – and that is the only part of it we can control. There is no “before” or “after,” only an endless present in which the fates of mortals and immortals, of decline and dawn, are measured.

The weather is beyond our control, too, though we can feel its influence on the world and turn it to our advantage.The darkest day comes when it chooses to be. The sun, which gives life and fills everything around it, can keep the world warm for a long time, then give way to darkness in a single cold evening. Those accustomed to the light, who know its worth, would never wish it harm. To lose the light is always to lose something more.

Night, however, knows how to take what is hers. She leaves not a single corner untouched, spreading a black blanket over the world. However long she may seem – troubled or frightening – she always comes to an end. Meetings and partings, chance encounters and daily affairs, weariness and worry blur the boundaries between day and night. Sometimes a cycle of time passes in a single breath; sometimes it stretches on for an eternity.

And this night was different.

Darker, longer, and gloomier than any before it.

Moonlight struggled in vain to pierce the tree branches. Two heavenly bodies hung in the sky – two moons playing a game with just one rule: reach the ground. Their slender rays stretched downward, becoming crushed hands with pale fingers. The light thinned to translucent nails and dissolved into the air, only to meet the same obstacles again and again.

Dense woods, their trees draped in ferns, stretched on without beginning or end, greedily catching the few stray rays. But the clouds were a greater hindrance still, looming over the moons and keeping their light from breaking through.

A deathly silence reigned. All life had fallen quiet. The beasts lay low, afraid to give themselves away with so much as a rustle. In the middle of a broad trail lay the corpse of a lone she-wolf. Her thick white fur would have seemed brighter if any light had found its way here. A large muzzle, an intelligent gaze frozen in death, heavy paws with smooth black claws. And just one deep wound beneath her heart.

Scavengers should already have gathered around her body – there were plenty in this forest. It had an efficient recycling system: no meat went unclaimed. Skrens usually caught the scent of blood first – small, nimble creatures with primate bodies, long, broad jaws, and sharp teeth that curved inward. Their kin could be found all over the world. Even when faced with a weaker opponent, skrens rarely attacked first. Their lot was to finish what others left behind: fresh flesh, and some varieties didn’t even turn up their noses at meat that had begun to rot. Plenty of other creatures in the forest would have relished a dead wolf, too. Yet the trail remained empty.

A strong wind kept the world from settling into stillness. Its faint howls sounded like a plea for help, an attempt to break the silence.

The steady tramp of footsteps did not disturb the peace. It seemed to exist alongside it: a dull, measured sound and the forest’s unanswered silence. A stranger forged straight ahead, firm and resolute. He paid no attention to what was happening around him. He didn’t even spare a thought for the dead wolf. His sparkling eyes looked only forward. Nothing could stop him.

“Heat... pain... darkness,” he muttered grimly.

Hot vapor escaped through the slits in his armored helmet, only to be swept away by the wind.

“It wasn’t just a dream. She told me to come to her. But who is she? What does she want?”

Perhaps he had once been human. Now his body was covered in a dense, seamless layer that had formed a sturdy armor. At first glance, it looked like crude plate, devoid of grace, as if shaped by a careless hand. But it was no armor. The plating was a direct extension of his skin, and its very presence filled every living thing with dread.

Beneath it there was no flesh or blood, only fire and magma. A boiling substance flowed through his body in place of blood. In a calm state, it circulated evenly, though even his ordinary state – without rage – could hardly be called calm. The yellow-orange liquid moved smoothly, glowing with a poisonous inner fire. Whenever he was injured, his fiery blood rushed to the wound, sealing it within moments and restoring the tissue.

His eyes glowed a dim yellow beneath the helmet. An ashen trail followed behind Deathflame. He hated it, not because he pitied the grass smoldering beneath his feet, but because it gave away his presence. Many farmers knew that when their fields suddenly caught fire, he had passed somewhere nearby.

“Could this finally end today?!” His voice boomed through the silent forest. “I’ve forgotten what faith is. What can you believe in when you don’t know who you are? And what if it doesn’t work? How unbearable... I swear, I’ll find a way to kill myself and put an end to this madness.”

With a heavy crunch, his fist smashed through the bark of a mighty tree.

“No army, no matter how strong or cruel, has ever been able to defeat me.” Bitterness crept into his voice. “I tried to stop this alone. All for nothing. And the waiting... How I hate waiting. It’s worse than eternity! It never ends!”

With that, he quickened his pace.

It was the people who had dubbed him Deathflame. He disliked the nickname, and of course he hadn’t chosen it himself. Unfortunately, he had no other. The name he’d been given at birth had long since vanished from his memory, and he had no desire to invent a new one. Besides, who would he share it with?

Memories of the past had sunk too deep, buried beneath trauma and pain. Pain had turned to cruelty, driving out any desire to delve into his shattered mind. His life had long since narrowed to one thing: the blood of his enemies, their cries and groans.

The journey he had made was beyond compare. His entire conscious life had been spent moving forward, without pause. It was like an unfinished book whose author had long since lost the thread of the story but kept writing about the next mad escapade of its sole protagonist.

“How many ridiculous things have I said today... I want to believe it wasn’t for nothing. This forest should end soon. I couldn’t have been wrong.”

He fell silent, swallowed, then raised his voice:

“My legs don’t tire, but my strength is nearly spent. The road through the Winged Valley led into this wretched forest. From there, I kept heading east. All that’s left is to find Doomcliff. After that, the search should be easy.”

He swung his arm. A whip of fire snapped from his palm. The thicket before him burst into flame and burned away at once, crumbling into black ash.

“I’ll burn this whole place down if that cliff doesn’t show itself right now!”

He pressed on, muttering curses. At last, even the final stretch to the cliff passed in silence.

Moonlight pressed ever more insistently through the thinning forest until it drove the darkness away. Deathflame emerged onto a bare patch of ground at the edge of a high, rocky shore. He didn’t stop, though in recent years he had begun to notice that, sometimes, he needed a reprieve. Not for his body – for his emotions. Long journeys exhausted something deeper than his fiery flesh.

There was no doubt about the direction now: he had to keep going straight ahead. To his gloomy relief, the Altar of Tormented Fates was already visible in the distance. He was almost there.

Waves battered the cliffs, and the roar of the ocean drowned out his troubled thoughts. His inner voice dissolved into the sound of the water. Reaching his destination, Deathflame looked away. Doubt flickered across his face, then vanished. Fear followed, and it lingered. It made Deathflame tense and, for the first time, doubt his own choice. Fear was foreign to him. He frowned, trying to understand where it had come from.

“No... this is nonsense,” he thought, feeling something new for the first time.

He pushed the thought away once more, stepped out from the shadow of the altar’s tall columns, and into the light.

Judging by its name, this was a place where the wretched were strangled, tortured, and killed by the countless. But the Altar of Tormented Fates had not been built for that. It had stood here for centuries, outlasting dozens of kings, and under their rule its true purpose had long been forgotten. Across the entire east, as far as the northern lands, altars like this had been built not to inflict pain, but to save broken bodies.

Columns of dazzling white stone rose in a semicircle around the altar. The dust of centuries could not hide their former grandeur. Simple in shape and devoid of ornament, they stood with astonishing precision and symmetry, each at an equal distance from the next, like sentries keeping eternal watch.

At the center lay a broad slab of solid stone, sunk into the ground. It was at least three spear-lengths long. Carved lines ran across its surface, converging on a perfectly measured circle.

Deathflame froze.

A naked girl stood inside the circle, right at its center.

Even closed, her eyes seemed unusually large. She had a thin, elongated nose, narrow cheekbones, and slightly hollow cheeks. Her graceful body looked almost perfect, except for her burned palms, still marked by fresh wounds. Slender and tall, she was unlike the familiar human form: sharp shoulders, elbows, and knees lent her an unnaturally angular shape. Her pale skin, touched with a faint blue cast, seemed untouched by the filth of this world. Her snow-white hair gleamed with a purity like snow atop the highest mountains.

“How will she do it...?” he thought, taking the first and hardest step onto the stone slab. With that step, gusts of wind swept away the voice in his head.

He was ready in his mind, but his body wouldn’t obey. His legs grew heavy, turning to stone; inside him, a boiling cauldron of fire churned. His thoughts scattered, leaving only dull, plaintive thuds in the fiery depths of his mind. There was no turning back. He could feel that his decision had already been made.

Deathflame approached the naked girl and crossed the boundary of the circle.

Cold crashed over him, piercing him with thousands of icy bolts from his fingertips to his very core, to the place where a human heart beats. But Deathflame had no heart. He had a core: a mass of heat no less dangerous than the sun itself.

A new, unknown pain began to tear him apart. His right pauldron broke off like a piece of old, desiccated bark and struck the cold stone with a crack. He could barely move, but for a moment he managed to look at the pieces.

Her eyes were still closed.

Each step came no easier than the last. The heat in his chest fought back fiercely; his core yearned to stop the madness and keep from going dark. Under the weight of his body, his greaves crashed to the stone all at once. Deathflame ripped off his other pauldron himself, then, as his bracers crumbled, seized his breastplate and tore it from his body with a crack.

He reached the girl. Only the helmet remained. Deathflame slowly pulled it off, straining with the effort. As his face emerged from beneath it, the girl opened her eyes.

A flash of light blinded him. Before him appeared a whirlpool of wondrous, unimaginable colors, shimmering with every facet of the material and spiritual worlds. Deathflame could never have described what he saw. If his harsh life could even be called existence, then in that moment he did not exist at all.

Titanic beings emerged from the light. They clashed against the bowl of creation, and every blow sent waves of energy rippling outward, changing the very fabric of existence. Mountains rose, then the next wave turned them to sand and oceans. The dance of the elements continued until crystal-white light filled everything once more. Then it narrowed, condensed into two oval mirrors. In them, Deathflame saw himself and his life: fire – the flames devouring hundreds of lives; death – the charred bodies settling gently onto black earth; terror – the final feeling they carried with them.

The mirrors melted into white mist. Through it, the girl’s eyes appeared – open, unblinking, fixed on him. At the very center of the Altar of Tormented Fates, invisible chains bound them both.

Her cold, captivating gaze wrapped Deathflame in its spell. Her eyes seemed the work of the most skillful artisan, far too perfect for a living being.

He had no doubt about her intentions. His mind reached beyond its familiar limits, dissolving into the single energy of all things.

Magma began to peel away from his body like an old snakeskin: first in heavy drops, then in whole chunks. Living human skin appeared beneath it. Dry, defined muscles took shape beneath his skin. There wasn’t a single hair on his body, only a mass of deep scars running from his neck to his feet. Four curved welts across his chest caught the eye first, the marks of a desperate attempt to tear him in two. Lower down, a round scar beneath his liver and another like it on his back; long, thin lines stretching from his elbows to his shoulders; and dozens more, less noticeable scars.

A breath.

He drew in air greedily and didn’t want to let it go. Coolness spread through him, the very thing he had dreamed of for so long. In that instant, the few happy moments of his life intertwined with those that had existed only in his dreams.

The cooling magma slowly gave way to flesh. His lungs unfolded, taking in their first mouthful of air, rich with sweet oxygen. He exhaled slowly and easily, unwilling to release more air than he had to. He closed his eyes, then opened them. He blinked – and felt them fill with tears.

He looked at his hands: soft, alive. He froze, not knowing what to do next. His lips parted; he wanted to say something, but no words came. He simply kept looking into her eyes.

The girl reached out her burned palm and touched his cheek. Without looking away, without clothes or words, they stood facing each other.

She parted her lips and spoke in an almost inaudible whisper:

“Anora, kelhasi, umen...”

She never finished the spell. On the third word, blood poured from her mouth.

A crimson-blue stream spread across her chest, branching into thin, dark lines. A black sword point emerged from her chest.

Exhausted, the girl collapsed against him. The blade had pierced her through, and blood spattered across Deathflame’s scarred body. He watched the life fade from her face, and with each passing moment his heart beat harder. She took one last breath – and went still.

His veins bulged, his face contorted. A roar burst from Deathflame’s throat and rolled through the dark forest like the rumble of a volcano waking from a thousand-year slumber. Burning with a furious thirst for revenge, he looked up at her killer.

A tall, black silhouette stood before him. His vision seemed to deceive him: the figure had not a single recognizable human feature. The stranger was blacker than darkness from head to toe. Behind him swirled not a cloak but a vortex of black mist.

The Shadow held a double-ended glaive, long, deadly blades extending from both ends of its shaft.

Deathflame’s pupils, barely alive again, flooded with a dazzling light that filled his entire eye socket. Then fire burst from his eyes with hundreds of tiny sparks.

Gently lowering the girl’s body to the stone, Deathflame had barely managed to rise to one knee before he launched into an attack. His first blow struck the black silhouette’s shin. Then Deathflame landed two swift, powerful strikes to its chest, followed by a final blow to the head.

Certain of his own superiority, the Shadow didn’t even flinch. One straight blow sent Deathflame flying backward. He struck his head against a stone altar column and flew beyond its bounds. Dry bushes snapped beneath his weight, burying him in branches.

Before Deathflame could get up, the Shadow glided toward him. The dark mist made it seem as if he were floating above the ground. Black fingers closed around Deathflame’s throat and lifted him into the air, bringing a thin blade to his chest. Deathflame clutched the blade in his palm. Blood welled between his fingers and boiled at once from the heat. He stared heavily at the Shadow’s barely discernible face. A crack rang out, like shattering glass: the black blade burst into tiny fragments. Deathflame tore free and leapt backward.

The Shadow turned the glaive’s other blade toward him and charged again. Dozens of swift strikes carved through Deathflame’s body. With one final swing, the Shadow severed his hand.

Deathflame only smirked. A new hand was already forming at the stump, made of yellow-orange magma. He drove it through the Shadow’s chest and grabbed hold of something inside. The black substance writhed, changing shape. The Shadow screamed, his voice breaking into a shrill squeal.

After throwing Deathflame aside, the Shadow began hurling long daggers at him. The blades melted in the flames, doing no serious harm. Deathflame’s charred flesh quickly regrew beneath the lava, which hardened at once into armor.

The Shadow attacked with increasing fury, but his movements grew erratic and imprecise. Enveloped in animal rage, they charged at each other with a howl.

Now each tried to tear the other to pieces. Fiery hands ripped away shreds of darkness; dark blades sheared off petrified armor and tore into charred flesh. Black, red, gray, and yellow fragments flew across the altar’s white stone.

Deathflame hurled the Shadow beyond the altar’s edge, sending him flying toward the rocky shore. In Deathflame’s hands, fire stretched into a long, two-handed sword. He stepped forward, squared his shoulders, and took a fighting stance.

A moment of silence – and then a bestial roar shattered it.

A black monster crawled out of the darkness. It rapidly grew in size: its limbs swelled, its neck stretched, until its body took the shape of an enormous bear.

A new duel between fire and darkness was about to begin.

The fight was brief, but savagely primal. Deathflame hacked at the beast with his sword while it sank its fangs into him.

The bear bore down on Deathflame. The fiery blade flew from his hands and shattered into light against the white stone. Pinned beneath the beast’s clawed paws, Deathflame held back its snarling jaws. A thick dagger of flame sprouted from his fist, and he plunged it into the bear’s eye. He wrenched the beast’s muzzle aside, then shoved it off with a sharp movement.

Rising to his feet, Deathflame drove the bear toward the edge of the rocky shore. At the very brink, its body took the shape of a human shadow once more.

Unable to understand why he had been attacked, Deathflame shook his head, waiting for an answer.

“Why?!” The word burst from his burning mouth.

“You’re still needed, Deathflame,” the Shadow replied softly.

Without waiting for another attack, the black silhouette stepped into the sea below and disappeared. Deathflame was left alone at the edge of the cliff. His arms slowly fell to his sides. The world that had just been tearing itself apart and burning suddenly felt empty.

Turning his gaze away from the dead girl, Deathflame wandered off from the altar, dazed.

He walked deeper into the forest until he collapsed beside a tall, ancient oak.