The confrontation began with a brutality I never expected. It was not a duel of honor or a test of a newcomer's skill — it was a public humiliation. Those fractured things did not face me as equal foes; they approached with wrinkled smiles, their voices tightening with mockery as if handling a tattered toy.
The first came, massive, waving his hand like he was shooing a fly. A stab here, a kick there, short laughs — but the blows were not the point; the humiliation was. They tried to break something in me before killing me. I fell to the ground, weak, my breath collapsing like a severed rope. My ears filled with their shouts, their headlines: "You refused? If you'd accepted, you'd be one of us," one of them said as he gripped my neck.
Words were the final blade. He spat it with foul coldness: "Had you gone with us, you'd be one of us. Now you refused… you're useless."
They all laughed, and I was struck again until the scene blurred. I felt my soul contract, as if the whole world had sentenced me to a slow execution.
Suddenly — something in my chest exploded. It wasn't a cold mental power, but an ancient fire that consumed all my falsehoods. In one instant, fear became a blade, weakness a rage heated to the point of red. The shift wasn't a choice; it was an awakening. My hands trembled, but the tremor was not fear; it was the birth of a weapon.
The shadows answered. They poured from my palm like a beast, stretching, coiling, strangling the air among the gathered. I could no longer see their faces clearly — I saw only movements closing in to find a weakness. I smiled, and the smile was not human.
The first tried to flee, but my shadow seized him like the sea seizes a small boat. I did not cut him to kill, but to shred his being: a shadow like an iron hand gripped him and rewove him into ruins that resembled silence. Their screams turned into music unlike any living tune. I did not expect to hear the birth of this blackness like that. I watched them collapse like an old house — not the tale of falling walls, but the erasure of memory itself.
The second lunged with a knife; a loop of my shadow wrapped around his arm and helped tear his strength rather than his flesh — their sense of helplessness became the greatest punishment. Their faces shifted from mockery to raw terror, then to void. I did not spill blood or list gore, yet they vanished: their bodies swallowed by the shadows, leaving only a trace of ash fading on the ground.
The third threw weary words, trying to make me double my mistake and laugh at me, but my shadow held up a mirror of fear; he grabbed it and shattered into silence. A faint smell of burning rose — not blood, but the burning of a false promise.
In a few compressed minutes, none of them remained standing. They fell one after another: no graphic catalog of wounds, no grotesque depiction of violence — only a convincing collapse of their existence before me. The earth swallowed their footprints, and the lanterns drew back their light as if closing a page. I remained amid their ruins, my breaths rising and falling slowly, as one who listens to the changed beat of a heart.
Quiet returned with terrifying swiftness. It was not peace, but an extended silence with a black glow. I did not look at their faces after they fell; I denied myself the luxury of gloating. There was a short moment in which I felt a deep tightness — not regret, but an understanding: the power that awoke within me was not a gift without a price.
I rose, picking up a shard of ash clinging to me. The black fire in my chest touched everything, and it no longer promised mere protection — it spoke in a new voice: "Avenge. Burn. Leave no trace."
I looked at the dead city around me, then whispered in a low, striking voice: "I will make this world groan my name."
I was no longer the man the Resurrection had exiled. I was something else now — a cry on the tongue of night, a hidden vow in the heart of ash. As I walked out of the slaughterground, I left behind a single mark: words not easily erased in this world:
"Remember my name. And remember that I am the King of Hell."