THE FIGURE IN BLACK POV
It felt as though death had finally caught up to me, yet I refused to surrender not now, not yet. I had not won the war, nor had I fought the battle. The light ahead was blinding, but warm and inviting. Should I stop fighting? Should I give up?
I longed for sleep. I questioned myself, hoping for an answer, but there was none. No one was here. I was finally alone. Every path I saw seemed to lead to death.
As I moved closer to the light, a gate of gold appeared before me a heavenly sight, towering like fifty temples stacked high. A woman stood at the gate. Her black hair contrasted sharply against her white gown, and her pitch-black eyes stretched into an eternity, piercing straight into my soul and unraveling every emotion I carried. In her hand was a book bound in black leather.
I hesitated, but pressed forward. Her voice rang out, calm yet commanding: "Stop. Do not take another step." The air itself trembled at her words, sparks of power drifting in the empty space between us. I froze, speechless. For the first time in my life, I was no longer a warrior of steel I was simply human.
The woman opened the book and spoke: "It is not your time to die."
I was shaken. I had seen possible futures, and in none of them did I find my revenge. I was tired, worn down to my very bones. Yet the woman only smiled, her voice soft and steady: "Your future has just begun, and your past has been rewritten. The path ahead holds much for you."
The golden gates faded from view, and I awoke consumed by unimaginable pain.
My mind was reeling from what I had just heard. I was shaken to my very core, with no idea what had happened to me. How was I still awake? I looked down to see my arm expertly bandaged, and my leg not only wrapped but secured in a splint. I was perplexed I was certain I had just died.
I looked up and took in my surroundings.The cottage breathed with a strange, uneasy warmth. Books were stacked in precarious towers, their spines cracked and pages yellowed, as though they had been read and reread for centuries. Between them, suspicious liquids simmered in glass beakers, sending up faint trails of vapor that curled like ghostly fingers toward the rafters. The bubbling was constant, a low, rhythmic pulse that filled the silence like a heartbeat.
Tables and chairs, carved from heavy wood, bore the marks of long use scratches, burns, and stains that hinted at experiments gone wrong. The surfaces were cluttered with parchment scrawled in ink, quills left to dry, and tools whose purpose was unclear but whose edges gleamed with menace.
Light filtered through stained-glass windows, fractured into shards of color that danced across the walls. Reds, blues, and greens shimmered like living flames, painting the cottage in hues that shifted with every flicker of the bubbling concoctions. The effect was both beautiful and unnerving, as though the room itself was alive and watching.
The air smelled of smoke, herbs, and something metallic sharp enough to sting the nose. Shadows clung to the corners, thick and unmoving, while the center of the room glowed with the strange alchemy at work. It was cozy in appearance, yet every detail whispered danger.
This was no ordinary cottage. It was a place of secrets, of experiments, of power barely contained. A sanctuary and a prison all at once.
I searched for my knife in case danger came, but found neither blade nor my familiar black clothes.
The pitter-patter of footsteps outside made me tense. I glanced left and right, desperate for something to defend myself. My eyes fell on a thick piece of wood, sturdy enough to serve as a walking stick. It looked as though an old man lived here, but I took the stick anyway.
The door creaked open, and it was not an old man who stepped inside. Instinct surged through me like fire I swung the stick with all the strength I had left. The crack of wood against bone echoed in the cottage as it smashed into the boy's face. His head snapped back violently, and he crumpled to the floor with a sickening thud, firewood scattering across the ground like broken teeth. Blood trickled from his nose, staining the wooden boards beneath him, and his groan of pain cut through the silence like a jagged blade.
The boy staggered back, clutching his nose, his voice sharp with offense as he spat, "Did no one teach you manners? I save your life, and this is how you repay me?" His words froze me mid-strike, and I barked, "You did what?" Calmly, almost smug, he replied, "I saved you after you stabbed me in the throat." My grip tightened on the stick, disbelief flooding me. "Then why aren't you dead?" I demanded. He only shrugged, rising with unnerving ease. "Do you really think I'd drag you back from death just to harm you again? What kind of logic is that?" My leg trembled beneath me as I lowered the stick, leaning on it for support. "I don't even remember stabbing you," I muttered. His dark hair fell across his eyes as he snapped, "You don't remember killing me? Brilliant." The silence between us thickened until I asked, "Then why save me?" He turned, gaze piercing, and answered with irritation, "Because you owe me." My anger flared. "I don't owe you anything." His voice dropped cold as steel: "You killed me. That debt isn't paid in coin. It's paid in labor six months of it." Indignation surged through me. "I never agreed to that." He met my eyes without hesitation. "You agreed the moment you took my life."
Suddenly, a vision seized me my head snapped back with a sickening crack, as though some unseen force had wrenched me out of reality. My eyes burned, flooding with a blinding light that carved its way into my skull. The world around me dissolved, replaced by a battlefield drenched in carnage. Screams echoed like jagged glass, and the taste of iron filled my mouth as if I had bitten into blood itself.
The ground trembled beneath my feet, every heartbeat pounding like a war drum. Shadows twisted into grotesque forms, clawing at the edges of my vision, dragging me deeper into the nightmare. My body convulsed, caught between the present and the vision, every nerve alight with pain.
And then clarity. I stood amidst the slaughter, steel in my hands, the air thick with smoke and death. The vision pulsed with such savage intensity that I could feel my bones ache, as if the violence itself had seeped into me.
I saw myself beside a curly-haired stranger, our blades plunging into Commander Crusader's chest. His scream ripped through the battlefield, raw and jagged, as blood erupted in torrents, splattering across our faces. His body convulsed violently, bones cracking beneath the steel, until we tore the cloak from his spasming frame and raised it high, a ragged banner dripping with gore.
The ground was a grotesque tapestry of mangled corpses limbs twisted at unnatural angles, eyes staring lifelessly from shattered skulls. We stepped over the pulverized remains of his lackey, the man's severed head jammed onto a spike, tongue lolling grotesquely as streams of crimson cascaded down to soak the earth. The air reeked of rot and iron, thick enough to choke, and the vision throbbed with a savage clarity that made bile rise in my throat.
When I snapped back, the boy was watching me, his gaze sharp, unsettled. "What happened to your eyes?" he asked, his eerie aura pressing in like a suffocating fog.
A chill crawled down my spine. Who was this boy and why did his presence feel more terrifying than the vision itself?