(Kingdom of Skarholde)
Black petals rained slowly out of the grey sky, turning and wandering through the air as if the heavens had burned down a tree. They gathered across rooftops, along the edges of destroyed streets, across broken stone statues that once watched the capital with proud, painted faces; Every petal touched the ground without sound and yet the city beneath them screamed loudly, in terror.
Rot had taken the kingdom long before this day, it lived in the gutters where dark fluid seeped between cobblestones, in the broken arches of churches where altar candles had melted into stained lumps, in the fields outside the walls where wheat stalks had twisted into brittle, and diseased stalks that bent under their own decay.
But today the rot had teeth and hit hard as hell, the gates of the capital lay torn open, weird looking creatures of rot moved through the streets in numbers no soldier or commander could count, it was like a parade of bastards.
Some dragged themselves with crooked limbs, others shambled forward with their own bones stabbing through skin the color of spoiled meat, The air carried the smell of blood and burned pitch, because black fire crawled across buildings and market stalls alike, rapidly pacing through everything with a dark glow that painted the entire kingdom in shades of ruin.
"AGHHH!"
"It's the end"
People ran around screamed to the top of their lungs, some stumbled through alleyways with children clutched to their chests, some crawled across the ground with half their bodies trailing uselessly behind them, and some never made it farther than a few chaotic steps before some gross creature found them.
Horses came, they arrived as a horde of thunder that devoured every other sound in the city; Hundreds of them poured through the open gates in a terrifying rush of diseased muscle and the desire to worship chaos. Their bodies had once been strong warhorses or farm animals, but now their flesh hung in torn sheets that revealed bone slick with dark fluid. Their eyes burned red inside hollow sockets that never blinked.
They didn't run like normal horses usually galloped, they ran like starving things, hungry lions or something far worse, their teeth were larger than normal horses too, and every time they came across an innocent person trying to run away, they would catch up to them and eat them.
A man tripped in the street while trying to carry his daughter, the first horse crashed into him with enough weight to break bone beneath its hooves. The next animal lowered its head and tore a mouthful from the man's shoulder while the girl screamed beneath him, and another horse jumped forward and dragged the child away by the arm before her voice even finished leaving her throat.
The beasts devoured whatever they reached first, even one another.
Two of the rotten animals collided in the center of the street, snapping at each other's necks like starving wolves until one ripped open the other's stomach and began tearing into the spilled organs while the rest of the herd galloped around them, trampling bodies beneath an array of hooves.
Everywhere in the kingdom people died screaming beneath that red eyed tide, and yet the fighting had not ended.
At the heart of the capital, where the palace courtyard had once held festivals and music beneath banners of celebration, a mound of corpses rose high enough to rival the marble statues that surrounded the plaza.
The bodies were not human at all, most if not many of them belonged to creatures that had clawed their way into the city during the invasion, and at the top of that mound stood a young king.
Kalintill.
Twenty-five years old, his short black hair was messy, soaked with sweat and blood that had dried up into dark patches all over his head. His light grey eyes stared forward with that usual exhausted stare of someone who had spent far too long watching people die. A fissure of black veins crossed the skin beside his left eye, dark as ink beneath his flesh.
His royal clothing had once been beautiful before all this crap happened, his long coat still carried gold embroidery across the sleeves and chest, though most of it had been buried beneath blood and torn cloth where claws and teeth had found him earlier in the battle.
What a mess…
The king stood on that hill of dead monsters with a sword in his hand, and like his robe, that weapon had once been elegant; now the blade carried broken chips along its edge, and blood ran down the steel to drip from the broken point at the top.
Kalintill pulled in a breath that rattled in his chest and spoke toward the thing hovering in the air before him, a creature he was familiar with, a creature that stood out more than the other beasts and creatures tearing shit up, and a creature that was definitely stronger than everything there, perhaps even the world at that.
"You may have screwed up the rest of the world…" Kalintill said between breaths that didn't come easily. "…but I won't let you take this one…not this kingdom."
The creature facing him floated several feet above the ground. Seventeen feet of towering death wrapped in black sackcloth that hung in tattered strips around a skeletal frame. The cloth moved even though the air had no wind, while revealing glimpses of bones beneath its rotten and dirty folds. And it had black tattered wings on its back, wings that looked rough, and never saw better days.
The beings face held no skin at all either, which made him look even more corrupt, his head was only a skull that stared back at the young king, empty eye sockets staring into the world like holes dug into the shape of a man's head.
Seven skeletal arms extended from beneath the tattered cloth, and each arm carried a black lantern. Inside every lantern burned a red flame that did not settle or falter at all, it was strange, shadows moved within those flames, shapes flying around like they were trapped spirits.
Above the skull hovered a halo shaped like a rusted wheel. Jagged metal spikes jutted from its rim, bent and twisted as if the thing had been found on a battlefield.
When the Angel of Death spoke, the sound carried through the ruined courtyard with a feel echo, "The world knew this was coming," it said. "Yet you were not prepared. Your land of humans gathered power with Memoir, but still wasn't strong enough…." The wheel above his head turned twice. "Who among the mortals can defy the acts of a divine being…?" The grey sky above the capital continued crying those black petals. "Who among the mortals can stop the wheels of fate in the land of wickedness?"
One skeletal finger extended toward the king standing atop the corpses. "The plague has consumed the world. And you… the final human alive."
Kalintill's chest rose and fell as he tried his hardest to pull more air into lungs that felt torn apart from hours of battle.
"…I can…" he said. His voice sounded fragile, even to his own ears. "…I can…"
The king raised his sword, and blood ran down the cracked steel as he forced the point toward the floating angel. "Fuck fate…" he muttered, exhaustion dragging every word from his throat. "Whenever I get something good, it comes to take it from me. I'll survive this…"
The strength holding him up finally abandoned him, and Kalintill collapsed forward.
His body slid down the mound of corpses, flipping down the deceased mountain under him until he came to rest among the dead creatures he had killed.
He was dead, and the last human in this world had fallen, which was him.
The broken sword slipped from his hand, and silence returned to the ruined courtyard.
…
…
FWOOSH!
Kalintill's eyes opened., that grey sky had vanished, the raining black petals were gone, and the destroyed kingdom was nowhere in sight; and he was no longer lying among corpses.
Kalintill sucked in air and jerked up, as he noticed he was just laying down.
For a few seconds his thoughts refused to line up with what his eyes were seeing. The world had changed too completely—one moment he had collapsed among corpses beneath a ruined sky of his own kingdom, and now he sat on a cold stone floating platform that looked older than any building he had seen in the capital during his reign.
Then he looked down, black sackcloth draped over his torso. The material scratched against his skin like it had never once been washed, his legs were covered in rough rusty-colored wool pants that hung loose around his knees. His feet rested bare against the cracked surface beneath him.
No boots or no socks. This was way too familiar.
"What the hell…?" he muttered under his breath.
His eyes moved across the clothing again, taking in the rough stitching and the plainness of the cloth.
'Prison clothes…?'
The thought slipped through his mind before he could stop it.
A memory forced its way forward, stone corridors: Cold ass iron bars, a guard laughing while dragging someone across the floor by their collar; Kalintill remembered it as clearly as if it still stood around him. Six armored knights had surrounded him that day outside a roadside tavern. They had claimed the king's road belonged to them. They had demanded coin he did not possess, and also demanded his horse, and demanded the few supplies he carried, authority had been the only weapon they needed.
Or so they believed.
Kalintill had left that road alone, the knights had not, two of them lay dead before the others even understood what had happened.
The judge of the kingdom had not cared about the details, Knights served the crown, and peasants did not kill knights, but Kalintill did anyway, all the age of 18. Killing those knights who tried to rob him and abuse their own power. "Serve and protect…what bullshit." Kalintill would spout.
The judges and magistrates had barely looked at him before delivering the sentence: "Six years."
Kalintill's breath caught in his throat.
'Wait.'
'Prison clothes?'
His head looked up fast as the realization struck him all at once, so he shot to his feet.
The world around him made no sense, above him stretched a sky that held no clouds, no sun, no stars. Just endless white, a blank and empty realm, but floating ruins floated through that sky.
Broken towers rotated slowly in the air, messed up archways hung suspended with nothing supporting them at all, entire staircases twisted through open space before ending abruptly where the rest of the structure had long since vanished.
Kalintill stood on a shattered platform that might once have belonged to some enormous building. Then he saw the canvas.
It floated far above the ruins like a piece of sky that had been torn loose….A literal canvas. A massive canvas that was larger than any city gate he'd ever see at least.
Prison clothes and a canvas, this was getting too familiar now.
Black ink covered most of the canvas' surface, heavy strokes smeared across the material like a painter had tried to drown the entire thing in darkness; Strange currents moved across it as if the ink had a mind of its own.
Shapes reached out from that painted surface, shapes like hands; Enormous hands formed from the black ink itself reached through the canvas as though something behind it struggled to enter the world beyond the painting, and no one could make out the words, but it seemed the hands were whispering, whispering at a fast pace at that.
And then there were the tentacles coming out of the canvas; Huge limbs like those of an enormous octopus pushed from the canvas as well, their dark forms twisting through the empty sky.
And surrounding the canvas, bodies hovered everywhere around the floating ruins.
Hundreds of them, maybe even more.
Black ink streamed from their eyes and mouths like banners, spilling up as they defied gravity, they never reached any ground.
Kalintill stared at the scene for a long moment, then he looked down at his own hands.
Rough black wraps circled both palms and wrists. The cloth had been wound tight, though grime had worked its way through every layer.
His fingers flexed, and dirt lined the creases of his skin.
"I'm back…?" he muttered.
The words tasted bitter in his mouth, he didn't know how to react.
"To this shit dump?"
His head turned as he scanned the floating ruins again.
"Impossible… how?"
A voice nearby cleared its throat, and Kalintill turned.
Four figures stood across the broken platform several paces away.
They wore the same crappy prison sackcloth clothing he had awakened in.
'Other prisoners…'.