"The shadows only exist to run from the light—that's what they always said. But in truth... it's always the darkness that consumes the light, swallowing it whole, until the world becomes a pond of endless despair."
> — Leornars
>
The Mayor's office was a sanctuary of mahogany and gold, now painted in the frantic brushstrokes of arterial spray. Leornars stood over the man, his silhouette flickering against the dying embers in the fireplace.
"You can't do this and expect people to accept you!" the Mayor shrieked, his voice cracking like dry glass. "You're a monster! A stain!"
Leornars didn't flinch. The insult didn't register; he had been called worse by better men. He knelt slowly, placing a steady, blood-slicked palm over the Mayor's face. For a heartbeat, it almost looked like a gesture of comfort.
Then, he slammed the man's head against the stone wall. THUD.
The sound was heavy, wet. The Mayor's eyes rolled back, white showing through the crimson mask of his face.
"This world rejected me. You treated my very existence like a curse," Leornars muttered, his voice dropping into a dark, melodic register. "I only ever wanted a normal life... with my mother. But you and your dogs took everything from me."
His voice cracked—not with the fragility of a child, but with the tectonic shift of a soul giving way to pure wrath. He grabbed a handful of the Mayor's graying hair, yanked him upward, and hurled him across the room. The man crashed into his own ornate desk, the wood splintering with a sickening crunch.
"I promised I'd send you to the depths of hell," Leornars said, his fingers closing around a jagged shard of glass from a broken window. "I always keep my word."
The next few hours were a study in anatomical cruelty. Leornars worked with the precision of a sculptor. He began with the face—thin, shallow cuts that peeled back the Mayor's dignity until his features were a raw, unrecognizable map of agony.
The screams were deafening at first, then they became wet, desperate gurgles. With brutal patience, Leornars moved to the legs. He used the glass shard to saw through muscle and tendon until the Mayor's feet were separated from his ankles.
"Don't worry. It's just you and me," Leornars whispered into the man's ear, his breath smelling of copper. "All your precious guards... they aren't coming. They're somewhere far more peaceful than this."
Outside, the torches of the town guard flickered. Shadowy figures moved past the frosted windows. Leornars frowned, glancing at the door.
"Tch. I can't even catch a break... filthy dogs."
He decided to end the "test." He discarded his ruined coat, seized the blunt, notched sword, and drove it through the Mayor's chest, pinning him to the floor. With a sick, wide-eyed grin, Leornars reached into the open wound. His bare hands pried the ribs apart, the bone snapping like dry kindling.
The Mayor's final scream was no longer human; it was the sound of a dying animal.
Leornars found another shard of glass. He pried the man's mouth open, caught his tongue, and sliced it out with a single, clean motion.
"Finally," Leornars exhaled. "Some peace and quiet."
He spent the next hour in a trance of gore, arranging the Mayor's internal organs in a macabre, circular ritual around the body. Finally, he turned to the barely-conscious husk and drove the sword through both of the man's eyes.
"...That's for my mother."
He sat in the silence for a long time, staring into the void. Then, with a sudden jerk of motion, he carved out the Mayor's heart and tossed it into the corner like a piece of refuse.
The night air was cold, but Leornars didn't feel it. He walked through the village, a red wraith. He stepped into a small, warm-lit cottage—the bakery.
Inside, the baker—the man who had watched silently as the knights dragged Leornars' mother to her death—froze.
Leornars didn't waste words. He lunged, driving a glass shard into the man's eye. As the baker stumbled, Leornars snatched a dinner fork from the table and buried it in his throat. The man collapsed, choking on his own lifeblood. Leornars finished him with a kitchen knife, burying it deep into his heart.
A gasp shattered the silence.
A young boy stood in the doorway, his mother behind him. The child's face twisted into a mask of grief-stricken rage. He grabbed a small skinning knife and charged.
Leornars sidestepped with effortless grace. He disarmed the boy with a flick of his wrist and delivered a sharp kick to his jaw, sending him flying back into his mother's arms.
"Stay out of this," Leornars warned, his voice a flat, terrifying monotone. "Or I'll cut you down too."
"You killed my father!" the boy screamed, clutching his bruised face. "You expect me to let you go?!"
Leornars didn't look back as he stepped toward the door. "Then grow stronger. Stronger than your pathetic dog of a father. And come find me."
He vanished into the treeline just as the mob arrived.
The villagers chased him with torches and pitchforks, howling for the "demon child's" head. But as Leornars reached the heart of the forest, the sky didn't just open—it shattered.
A pillar of blinding, celestial light descended, incinerating the leaves and swallowing Leornars whole. In the blink of an eye, the light retracted, leaving nothing but scorched earth and a deafening silence.
The villagers skidded to a halt at the edge of the crater.
"...What just happened?" one whispered, trembling.
"The gods..." another gasped, dropping his torch and falling to his knees. "The gods descended... and killed the demon child. He's been purged from this world."
They turned back, relieved, unaware that the "demon" hadn't been destroyed—he had simply been invited elsewhere