In the silent stretches between stars and cosmic dust, a nameless, forgotten planet drifted alone, usually quiet, lifeless, and untouched.
But not today.
For on this day, amid its jagged peaks and clouds ashen with ancient snow, the very air convulsed with battle. Explosions—fiery, thunderous, unnatural—rent the skies, and through them tore a lone figure, flying as if hurled from the hand of defiance itself.
That figure—a man—flitted between bolts of lightning thick as ancient oaks and fireballs large enough to burn villages from memory. His silhouette cut a dark line through the burning heavens, a single defiant stroke of humanity against the chaos that pursued him.
"Wretched human! Relinquish the artifact!" came a voice—a howl, a snarl, a shriek—thrown from lips not made for mercy. The cry rose from a host not born of Earth, a dreadful gathering of inhuman pursuers, glimmering with unnatural power and hunger.
The human did not answer. Perhaps he had no breath to waste—dodging a relentless storm of spells left little time for conversation.
Or perhaps—just perhaps—he remained silent because pain had made speech an indulgence he could ill afford.
With trembling hands, he retaliated—his own spells arcing like dying stars against his foes. Some struck true. Bodies, grotesque and many-eyed, tumbled from the sky like dolls loosed from cruel hands. They fell, these monsters, smoking and broken, to be swallowed by the snows below.
But heroism has a price. And he had long since paid it in flesh.
One blow too many landed—a fireball the size of a cottage struck him head-on, and with a force that might have crumbled cities, hurled his body through the heavens. He crashed into a mountaintop, carving a crater into the stone and melting snow to steam, as though the mountain itself wept in sorrow.
Smoke hissed. Water vanished. Around him, steam rose from his battered form. The scent of hot stone and something strangely familiar—brewed leaves, perhaps, steeped in death. But he had no time for tea.
He emerged—staggering, bleeding, burning—from the crater. He looked up through dimming vision and saw his hunters descending, their forms vast and terrible against the sky.
"You shall never have it," he rasped, his voice frayed by fire and defiance alike. "I'll tear it apart before I let you get your filthy claws on it, you twisted fucks!"
He stood, though his legs begged for rest. He breathed, though his ribs protested each wheezing gasp.
His rage burned, but his trembling limbs betrayed the truth. He was dying.
One of the creatures—their leader—floated forward. Tall, armored, its face a mask of rage and mockery.
"You are dying," it observed. "Surrender the artifact, and we won't desecrate your corpse. We'll leave it to rot—untouched—on this grave of a world."
The human laughed hoarsely, blood staining his teeth.
"You lot have a real knack for salesmanship," he said, hoarse but sardonic. "But no thanks. I'm not done killing you yet."
The leader's many eyes narrowed. His voice, when it came, was not shouted, no, his voice bore no haste, no heat—only the measured cruelty of inevitability.
"End him. Bring me what he carries. If his body is ruined, we shall feed it to the black suns."
At this, the sky was split anew—beams of light, shrieks of force, a hurricane of magic slammed against the man's last conjured barrier. His fingers curled; his teeth clenched.
It held.
But only for a heartbeat.
And that heartbeat was all he needed.
He reached within his tattered coat—summoned not glory, but a knife. A plain, ugly, rust-pocked thing. And with a gasp swallowed by snow and wind, he drove it into his chest.
"No!" roared the commander, his voice a thunderclap across the heavens.
But too late.
From the wound did not flow blood, but something stranger—molten and furious, a luminous stream that hovered in the air, coalescing. It swirled, hissed, and shaped itself into the dagger he'd carried for years, hidden in the only vault no one could breach: his own soul.
Ancient and rusted, yet humming with a presence that predated kings.
It quivered—alive, almost. It sought freedom. But the man seized it, his fingers blackened but firm.
His body ignited in a celestial glow—the color of a summer sky.
"He's going to destroy it! End him now!" screamed the creature, rage eclipsing reason.
And so they did.
The barrier shattered. A barrage of magic tore through him. His legs and part of his torso were obliterated.
The hand that held the dagger was vaporized.
Yet—the dagger did not fall.
The commander lunged forward, reaching with clawed fingers——but the dagger vanished in a swirl of blue light, spirited away by the man's last breath, his final act, his undying defiance.
"You!" he thundered, his voice shaking the sky. "What have you done?!"
The man, broken, dying, drowning in his own blood—laughed.
A ghastly, gurgling laugh. Triumphant. Spiteful. Free.
He tried to speak.
"None… of you… will ha—" But the words died with him.
His eyes dimmed. His chest stilled.
Thunder cracked like a whip in mourning. The heavens themselves seemed to wail.
The creature stood above the corpse—fuming, seething, impotent. All their efforts. All their fury. All undone.
The man had not destroyed the dagger.
He had hidden it.
Somewhere.
But where?
Where indeed?
In the silence that followed, broken only by the groaning wind and the distant echoes of battle now stilled, the commander stood still—breathing heavily, if such things could breathe. The gathered host of horrors lingered behind him, uncertain now, flickering with restrained chaos.
He stared at the spot where the dagger had vanished, his claws twitching with fury. He sniffed the air—reaching for a trace of magic, a ripple in the fabric of existence.
Nothing.
The artifact, older than stars, forged in the forgotten furnaces of gods long dead, was gone.
Not destroyed—he would have felt it. No, its presence would not have simply ceased. It had been displaced. Moved.
Hidden.
"Spread out," the commander hissed to his legion, the command sharp as razors. "Scour the mountains. The valleys. Every shadow, every breath of this cursed world. Find it."
His minions hissed in reply, dispersing in all directions, like shards of a shattered nightmare.
But even as they began their search, a deeper fear settled in the commander's many-eyed gaze.
He understood the man's final act wasn't just a defiant death—it was a delay. A gamble. A message.
Someone else would find the dagger.Someone it was meant for.
He looked down at the man's corpse, now cooling in the snow, and with a hiss of disgust, lashed out—sending the body tumbling off the edge of the cliff, into the mists below.
Let the mountain keep its hero.