SOMEWHERE, NOWHERE

Before, there had only been darkness. Not the deep, comforting dark of night, nor the quiet obscurity of sleep. This darkness was without form, without meaning, without anything. It was the absence of all things—of thought, of light, of time itself. It was a void in which the mind could not rest and could not move. A state where even the echoes of a forgotten past were swallowed by the endless, pressing nothingness.

In that void, there was no awareness, no sensation. There was only the faintest stirring, like the memory of a long-forgotten dream on the edge of waking. But it was not peace. It was not oblivion, for oblivion would have been an escape. No. It was the suspension of being. A state worse than death. Worse than nonexistence. It was as though he had ceased to be, yet still endured. It was maddening, and he did not know how long he had drifted in that endless nothing. It could have been minutes, days, or years, and it would all have been the same. Time had no meaning. There was no passage of hours, no moments to slip away. Only a cold so deep it curled around the soul itself, squeezing, suffocating, erasing. And then—nothing more. No thoughts. No memories. Nothing to tether him to the world he had once known.

And yet, within that nothingness, something had reached for him. It had tugged at the edges of that black abyss, whispering promises. It had called to him—not with warmth, not with light, but with the bitter taste of a second chance. It was not a salvation. It was not life. It was simple purpose. It was redemption. He had chosen to take it. Or perhaps he had no choice at all. The memory of that decision felt distant, clouded, lost in the mire of his long, cold sleep. But he had taken it. Anything was better than this godless afterlife, this endless existence.

All at once he awoke. Not with a gasp, or the greedy sucking of air that stung the lungs, but with a dull awareness of his surroundings.

The first thing he felt—or perhaps remembered feeling—was cold. A cold that seeped deep into him, down to something far older than bone, deeper than marrow. It was the cold of something long buried, something that no longer had the right to feel warmth. There was no breath in his lungs, no blood in his veins—but there was this relentless, inescapable chill, settling in the corners of his awareness, leaching the remnants of his humanity from his mind. And yet it did not kill him. It only reminded him of what was lost. The cloak around his shoulders tightened, as if remembering the corpse it once warmed.

The second thing he felt was silence. The world stretched out around him, vast and empty, but it was more than mere quiet. It was the absence of sound—of life, of movement, of the hum of things living, breathing, hoping. The void pressed in, wrapping itself around him like a shroud, muffling everything, leaving him in a space where even his thoughts seemed distant, fragmented, like voices lost in the wind. The silence was not peaceful, but absolute and smothering. This was not the mortal realm, he knew.

There was no light, only a pallid glow, sickly and gray, leaking from some unseen source above, and illuminating a mist that seemed sloppily smeared over his surroundings. It gave no warmth, only the faintest illumination to reveal the world in sharp, miserable edges. A land of forgotten things, of ruins, half-buried in dust and worn away by time and neglect. Crumbled remnants of bas-reliefs and statues once resplendent stood cold and lifeless, yet they stirred something in him—a memory of stone that had once been carved with meaning, once sculpted into shapes to honor and remember. Now they lay forgotten, their purpose lost, their meaning stripped. Like him.

He did not remember the journey here. He did not remember the last breath he drew, or the weight of the blade that had severed it. Only flashes remained—fragments of a life he could no longer claim. A home. A banner burning in the night. The sound of his steel crashing upon steel. The faces of comrades before him, their eyes wide with horror. A kingdom reduced to ash. A child’s laughter, and a lullaby. And a choice—made in the flickering moments before his heart ceased. He wished for nothing but to beg to forgiveness—but to who?

“Why,” he asked, voice all at once desperate and resigned to his fate. “Why have I been chosen? Who am I, who was I?”

He felt as though there was something in his throat—a silence thick and final, like his last words had been caught there and fossilized. He reached for his face, and pale too-long fingers scraped against cold steel. He grasped at it like a blind man, and found there was no warmth. No skin. Only the suggestion of a face, and the absence of all that face had once meant, with great wretched wings of metal, like a bat. He did not remember who he had been. A name trembled on the edge of thought, trailing smoke behind it. Calisto, his name was Calisto. He was a man, once. A knight, perhaps. A king? No. No—he had served. The images came in pieces: A firelit hall filled with screaming. Blood on marble. Steel sliding between ribs. His hand on the blade.

He felt no heart beat within him, but he felt something. The thrum of will. The cold, undeniable pull of purpose. It pressed against the hollow of his chest, an echo of the man he had been, of the general he had once been, of the knight he had once been, his mind tethered to that long-dead name.

He reached for this purpose, desperate to anchor himself to something, anything, but his hand found a sword hung at his side, long and lean, forged of something darker than steel. Its runes glowed faintly, shifting like oil on water. It sang to him, sang of violence, judgment, betrayal. It had tasted demon and kin alike, and it still hungered, tugging at him like a hound at feeding time.

He moved, gliding across the floor as though carried by the wind. His purpose had been found, for now.

==

THE ASTRAL, THE MATERIAL

His wandering did well to center him. It gave him much needed time to center himself, to collect his thoughts, and take greater note of his condition. He was leaking energy—necromantic energy, a half-forgotten memory supplied—like an open wound, and it suffused the world around him. He had seen, as he wandered the mist-laden landscape, figures dancing in the middle distance, obscured but growing ever closer. His hand had found itself on his blade, but it had been unnecessary. The figures were spirits; lost and damned souls wandering this plane, following in his wake like starving scavengers. They numbered now in the dozens, and though they did not approach, their lidded eyes and slack jaws did little to comfort him.

He could wield the necromantic energies, shaping them to his will. He had torn a spirit in twain and absorbed it, drinking greedily in its power. His memory came in bursts, but he could recall swordwork and spellcraft alike. And as he regained these memories, darker images flashed in his mind. Blood, war, struggle, death. And demons. He had no blood to boil, no heart to thrum in rage, but his cold purpose felt pointed, sharp.

He did not know when he had slipped into the material world, the fog of the astral flitting away as the sun began to set. He felt all at once very heavy and very small, and he may have fallen to his knees, if he still had them. He stood on a hill, and he could feel souls in the far distance, a bastion of them nestled in the mountains. And all around him he could feel souled life, in the swaying trees and the stubborn grasses and the colonies of insects and families of woodland creatures. He could have cried, if he had tears to shed.

And yet, all at once, the moment came crumbling down. All around him he could feel himself reaping the beautiful life. Trees withered, grass wilted, and in the trees a nestful of birds peeping for their mother fell silent. Deep beneath the earth, the long dead and forgotten were wrenched from an eternal slumber, and he could feel the strings of their souls placed into his hands.

He descended the barren hill in silence, his chest hollow. The land around him bore no name that he could remember, and he saw no mortal life to speak of. The air had grown fouler, tinged with the scent of rot and old iron and something worse—something sour and fetid, like meat and fruit and honey left too long in the sun.

He slowed.

Something wrong pressed at the edges of his perception. Not the presence of his own kind, those wretched echoes and shambling bones who followed his path, bound by his will. No. This was something alien, something that had no memory of being human. No regrets. No weight. No sorrow. Their souls tasted wretched, to him, and diffuse, as if body and soul were one and the same in the creatures, and as he felt at the edges of their essence he could feel them sneer back at him, as if they would bite his reaching hand off, if they could.

They were malice, pure and unshaped. Hunger given form.

And then he saw them.

They slithered from the fractures in the earth and from deep within the trees like vermin from rotted wood. Shapes half-shrouded in smoke and flame, their bodies twisted, wrong, eyes gleaming with amusement that had nothing to do with simple, mortal joy. They crawled and skittered and loped on too many limbs, some wielding crude weapons, others laughing in voices too shrill, too eager. Mouths full of jagged teeth gnashed as they came into view creatures of hate born of chaos. The horde did not march. They spilled across the earth like infection.

He knew what they were. Demons.

They saw him, too. A figure of drifting shadow, standing alone on the hill’s slope, his cloak trailing like smoke, his blade a promise of final death. The braying throng froze. Even among such ravenous things, something in him gave them pause.

And then, they charged.

They were met by a line of spirits, sent to aid him almost instinctively even as the dead rose from beneath their feet. Those who were not dragged to the ground had ghostly hands reach into their bodies, twisting whatever arcane anatomy they possessed. Of those who passed the corpses and spirits, the first to reach him was a goblin-faced, doglike thing that lunged on all fours, jaw distending with a shriek that rattled the dead trees nearby. He did not flinch. With a motion born not of instinct, but cold, practiced memory, he drew his blade—not fast, not dramatic. He simply acted. The sword wailed as it tore through the air. Its edge caught the creature mid-pounce, carving through its torso as if it were paper. The demon howled, fell twitching, and shrieked, louder now than before, as the Blade of Hours shone in the moonlight, pale energy ripping violently from the demon and into the mirrored surface of the blade, drinking its very soul.

More came.

They surged around him in a tide of claw and steel and fury. But he did not break. He did not falter. His movements were measured and violent. Each swing of his blade was a sentence, punctuated with destruction. He fought not as a man, driven by rage or adrenaline, but as a relic—a weapon honed long ago and repurposed by grim death.

Their claws tore at his cloak, but found no flesh beneath. Their demonflames scorched the earth, but he did not feel the heat. One leapt onto his shoulders, screaming curses in a tongue never spoken by mortalkind, but he reached back with a gaunt hand and crushed its skull with mechanical finality, even as it was skewered from behind by some raised corpse that had managed to find a weapon.

And still more came.

They laughed as they died. Not from courage, but from madness. These were creatures unburdened by mortality. They had no fear of death, for they enjoyed every second of the destruction they wrought. And yet… something in him disturbed them. His silence. His steadiness. The judgment in his strikes, the fact that those his sword had slain has stopped moving faster than the others, the fact that they had not been laughing. He found himself quickly growing drunk on the slaughter, the death saturating his thoughts as much as the battlefield around him.

He spoke, voice dry as grave dust, every word punctuated by a butchering swing of his blade. “I am Calisto, demons. Rejoice, for grim death spreads its wings upon you!”

The killing was a rote thing, after that, as the unyielding dead killed demon after demon. The last of them tried to flee. It limped into the forest, mewling, its body half-severed, smoke pouring from its wounds. He watched it go. Then he raised a finger, pointing,

The demon fell to the ground, not even writhing, and by the time it struck the dirt it was little more than withered bone. Calisto relished the feeling of its energies being absorbed into his being, his form swelling with power.

When all was still again, the field lay in ruin. The stones were slick with ichor, the air foul with burnt essence. Around him, the dead watched in silence. It was a simple exertion of will to raise the demons who had fallen to his undead, and add them to his ranks, replenishing. He saw a trail of sizzling demonblood leading into the forest, and felt nothing but a cold self-reproach, at a job ill accomplished.

He looked down at the nearest corpse, or what remained of it. There was no triumph. No satisfaction. No rage quelled. He felt only the ache of remembrance. Once, he had fought with fury. Now he fought with obligation. Not because he chose to. Because he must.

He did not know why they were here. Perhaps they sought the same city he had felt. Perhaps they had come only to spoil, to taint, to burn. It did not matter.

What mattered was that they had not belonged.

And he had judged them.

He turned away from the corpses and continued down the path, his sword still in hand. Behind him, the dead followed.