The earth trembled.
Far beneath the blood-soaked battlefields of the present, where war banners clashed and armies howled for dominance, a single, forgotten chamber groaned with age. Dust fell in lazy spirals, disturbed for the first time in a thousand years. Cracks spiderwebbed along the ancient stone walls. The air, thick with the scent of old death and cold metal, seemed to shudder.
At the heart of this lightless vault, a totem lay.
It was a simple thing, unremarkable in shape — a crude carving of obsidian and bone, the shape of a man without a face, one hand holding a broken crown. It had rested undisturbed for an age, buried beneath the ruins of a mansion long razed, beneath soil salted by fear and blood.
Until now.
A quake, born from the clash of two great armies above, rippled through the land. The ancient seal around the totem shivered, then cracked with a brittle, hollow sound. For a moment, the world held its breath.
Then it shattered.
The jar surrounding the totem burst apart, releasing a single, dried crimson smear — the blood of a dead man, absorbed into the stone ages ago.
That blood pulsed.
A heartbeat in a dead world.
And then came the whisper.
"Awaken."
A figure stirred within the dark.
The totem's surface bled smoke. Shapes formed in the haze — a tall figure cloaked in deep black, pale skin like polished ivory, eyes the color of smoldering coals. The air twisted, a thousand hushed voices shrieking in tones older than language itself.
Flesh knitted from shadow and stolen blood. Memories flickered behind half-lidded eyes — battles, betrayal, fire, a crown of thorns. A name long buried clawed its way to the surface.
Not Arthur.
Not the hero.
Something else.
"Lancelot." the figure murmured, voice low, jagged as broken glass. The good was gone. What remained was hunger. Cold, patient vengeance.
His gaze fell upon the dusty remnants nearby. A note, brittle with age, half-buried in the rubble.
He knelt and read.
If you awaken, it means the world betrayed us. I told him… I told Arthur this would happen. I made this totem so that even death could not chain our kind forever. Know this, you are my final work — stripped of mercy, cleansed of compassion. You are the weapon they feared.
Wear the mask.
Drown the world in its lies.
— Elias Varn, Royal Scholar
A slow, cruel smile tugged at his lips.
Beside the note rested a mask — porcelain white, marked with a cruel, leering Joker's grin, the crimson of its painted smile faded but intact. A black cloak, thick and tattered by time, lay neatly folded beneath it.
Lancelot stood, donned the cloak, and lifted the mask.
As it touched his skin, a pulse of something ancient and hateful surged through him. The world dimmed. Shadows writhed. A sensation of terrible clarity took hold. Not madness — never madness — but ruthless, perfect lucidity.
The man who had been Arthur was long dead.
What rose in his place was the echo of his wrath.
"They think it's over." Lancelot spoke to the silence. "They think their sins forgotten."
He strode from the chamber, the weight of centuries groaning above him. As he moved through the cracked ruin of the old mansion, dust and bones alike crumbled beneath his feet. No light touched this place, but he saw clearly in the dark.
And when at last he reached the surface, the world assaulted him.
The sky was different — no longer the blue of his memories but a pale, sickly gray. Towers of alien stone loomed in the distance, and flags bearing emblems he did not know flapped from bloodied ramparts. The scent of charred flesh hung thick in the air. War raged on, endlessly, between the kingdoms of his former companions' bloodlines.
The kingdoms of beasts, elves, demons, and dragons — all still hungry for power, all still driven by the fear of a human return.
He chuckled. A sound without humor.
"How quaint."
From his vantage point atop the ruins, he spotted a city in the distance, nestled at the edge of a fractured salt basin. Smoke rose from its chimneys, and war banners hung limp in the wan light.
A name reached him on the wind, whispered by some dying soldier's tongue.
"L-City."
Perfect. he thought.
His first step was clear: information. Knowledge was power. The world had changed, but its flaws remained. Greed. Fear. Hunger. All things he could bend to his will.
He would need a name.
The Joker.
The figure in the porcelain mask. A monster in the dark. It would be whispered in taverns, cursed in war councils, feared in dreams.
And one by one, he would remind the descendants of his former allies what true terror was.
A new world.
And it belonged to him.
Lancelot moved.
The wind howled.
And the earth, for the first time in a thousand years, remembered the taste of human vengeance
The wind carried the scent of scorched earth and blood. A sky of deep ash-gray hung low over the world, and though no sun pierced the clouds, the horizon shimmered with a dull, dying light. The war had left scars on this land — craters, shattered keeps, and old bones bleached in salt and sand.
Lancelot moved through it all like a phantom reborn.
The cloak — dark as a starless night — billowed around him, and the Joker's mask clung to his face, its cracked, mocking grin daring the world to test its wearer. Every step he took was a rejection of death's decree.
"A thousand years," he murmured beneath his breath, voice cold, sharp, deliberate. "And they thought time would bury me."
The world had changed.
Where once rolling plains stretched beneath towers of polished stone and human banners flew proudly, now alien spires of bone and black iron rose like teeth from the earth. The marks of ancient empires long dead. Roads had crumbled. Rivers ran black. The trees spoke only in hollow groans.
And yet… life persisted.
He spotted it as he crested a broken ridge — the sprawling mass of L City.
A bastion of arrogance.
Stone walls rimmed in metal sigils. Smoke rising from chimneys. Merchants hawking wares. Guards clad in patchwork armor of mismatched origins — hints of orcish make here, elven-forged blades there. This was no unified kingdom, but a scavenger's nest.
Perfect.
Lancelot's lips curled behind the mask.
Information first. Weak points second. Targets last.
He would pick the bones of this world clean.
The gates loomed ahead, crowded with travelers, mercenaries, and traders. An argument had broken out — a dwarf cursing a towering lizardman over stolen coin, a pair of elves whispering contempt as they passed, and a ratfolk vendor peddling counterfeit relics to the desperate.
No one noticed the figure in the black cloak.
No one ever did — until it was too late.
Lancelot stepped forward, his voice a silk-draped dagger. "Name?"
A bored guard waved a ledger.
Lancelot paused, then let his words slip out, low, dangerous, like a coil of smoke. "Joker."
The guard snorted, scribbled it down, and motioned him through. No questions. No inspection. Fear of the mask did what force never could.
Inside, the city pulsed with the stench of desperation. Brothels, gambling dens, fighting pits. The Adventurers' Guild loomed near the center — a coliseum-shaped structure surrounded by iron pillars, its entrance flanked by twin statues of war beasts.
He'd heard of it even before death.
A place where mongrels and glory-seekers gathered, desperate to etch their names into a world that had no place for them.
A fitting den for a predator.
Meanwhile, unseen beneath the city…
Deep below L City, in a chamber long abandoned, an ancient device ticked to life. A broken fragment of the totem — buried for centuries — pulsed once with blood-colored light. Somewhere, a vision flickered in the mind of a distant seer.
"The dead king walks."
Back above, Lancelot entered the Adventurers' Guild.
The room was loud, alive, thick with the stink of sweat, ale, and ambition. Notices plastered on walls. Names scrawled on ranking boards. SSS-ranked champions and gutter-rat novices alike packed the halls.
The rankings caught his eye.
SSS, SS, S, A, B, C, D.
Meaningless labels.
He would unravel them all.
A young receptionist, her features an odd mix of feline grace and human features — a halfbreed, perhaps — greeted him. Her smile faltered as she met the gaze behind the Joker's mask.
"N-name, sir?"
"Joker."
She hesitated, then tapped the ledger, her hand trembling.
He leaned in, voice barely a whisper. "Send word to your strongest. Tell them… death has arrived."
And then he turned away, cloak billowing, leaving the girl white-faced and breathless.
Let them chase ghosts.
Let them guess at the face beneath the mask.
For now… Lancelot would learn.
He would listen.
And when the moment came, when the world had shown him its weaknesses, he would strike.
And this time… there would be no one left to lie about it.
To be continued…