The Broken Blade tavern had seen better days, if it ever had any to begin with.
Its walls sagged under the weight of years, wood swollen with age and smoke-stained from countless fires. Windowpanes were cracked and streaked with grime. The flickering hearth, nestled in a crooked stone hearth at the far wall, barely kept the cold at bay. It exhaled a thin, reluctant flame—more for show than warmth. Shadows lingered in the corners, thick and unmoving, like the regrets of the men who haunted the place.
The air was heavy with the scent of old ale, unwashed bodies, and the bitter staleness of failure. Voices, when they came, were low and tired. There was no laughter here, only the dull clink of mugs, the occasional cough, and the quiet sound of men slowly unraveling.
Caspin sat in the farthest corner, half-swallowed by the dark. His shoulders slouched forward, thick fingers wrapped around a battered mug, eyes locked on the flat, amber liquid inside.
Where did I go wrong?
The thought was a familiar companion, worn smooth from overuse. He took a slow sip. The drink was warm and bitter cheap tavern ale thinned down with water—but it didn't matter. He barely tasted it.
His clothes hung awkwardly on his broad frame, cheap, frayed at the seams, stretched too tight at the belly and too loose at the shoulders. The trousers were threadbare at the knees. His boots had been patched more times than he could count. He owned nothing of value. Not a coin in his pocket. Not even pride.
And for twenty years, he had carried a curse the world had once dared to call a gift.
His most recent failure gnawed at him like a wound that refused to close. Earlier that morning, he had been dismissed from an escort job—a simple task, one that even a rookie adventurer could've handled. Walk alongside a merchant caravan. Keep pace. Watch for danger. That was all.
But he couldn't keep up.
His body, heavy and slow, had dragged behind the others. Two miles out, the caravan leader turned and gave him a hard look. No shouts. No insults. Just a sneer and a silver coin tossed into the dirt.
"Go home," the man said. "We don't need bait."
Caspin had used the silver coin to pay for his drink—a pathetic trade, really, for something that tasted like regret and smelled worse. He'd handed it to the barkeep with a quiet grunt, fully aware it was likely the last coin he'd see in days. The words stayed heavier.
He hadn't gone home. He didn't have one. Just four walls he rented above a shuttered shop, where rats scurried louder than his thoughts. So instead, he came here—to the one place in town where no one looked twice at a man falling apart.
The town itself was crumbling, too. Once a trading post, now little more than a husk of boarded windows and abandoned homes. The real reason people were leaving wasn't poverty—it was fear.
The Death Cross.
A border that wasn't a line but a slow, creeping rot. The monsters didn't swarm like in the old stories. They hunted with purpose. Silent. Calculated. Every week, the line pushed closer. A village here, a farm there gone, like they never existed.
Caspin had come here for work—not out of bravery, but out of desperation. In the inner cities, people had the luxury of appearances. They looked at him—overweight, exhausted, cursed—and turned him away without a second thought. But here, on the edge of nowhere, people were desperate. They needed hands. Even clumsy ones.
And for a little while, that desperation had been enough.
Now it wasn't.
He shifted in his seat. The wood beneath him creaked under his weight. He scratched absently at his neck, and his fingers brushed the pendant under his tunic.
It was small, round, set in a dull silver frame. A cloudy crystal nestled at its center, wrapped in fine cracks like veins beneath the surface. He'd worn it every day since his mother gave it to him.
"It's been in our family for generations," she had said. "Your ancestor was a brave knight—this pendant belonged to him. It's always protected us. Keep it close." she had said.
He never really believed it meant anything. But it was all he had left of her.
He held it between two fingers now, absently, as his mind drifted to a memory that still burned like fire.
The Ceremony of Gifts.
At fifteen, every child in the kingdom came of age through the ceremony. They knelt beside a sacred fire, and if they were lucky, the world—or the gods, or the universe, depending who you asked—would whisper to them. Just once. A single word. A gift.
Caspin remembered the flame. The silence. The way the world seemed to hold its breath. And then, a voice.
Warm. Gentle. Feminine. A mother's voice, if he had to name it.
Gorge.
That was all it said.
And from that day forward, he was never full.
The hunger started small. An extra serving here. A midnight snack there. But it grew. And it grew. Until he was devouring entire meals meant for three, and still feeling empty. His parents tried to hide their concern. His friends laughed it off. But the weight came, and with it came silence. Distance. Rejection.
He became a punchline. Then a cautionary tale. Then nothing at all.
His thoughts, as they often did, circled back to Seraphina.
His childhood friend. His first love. They'd made promises once—of adventuring together, of glory.
They entered the academy side by side. But the moment he began to change, so did she. She moved faster. Spoke less. Laughed more—just not with him.
He remembered pleading.
One day, Seraphina turned to him with eyes that had long stopped being kind and said, "Stop talking to me. Better yet... just forget about me altogether." Her voice was sharp, not cruel, but final—like a sword being sheathed for the last time. The words had hit harder than any blade ever could, and he hadn't known what to say, only that something inside him cracked open and never quite closed again.
"Please... don't do this. Don't leave me too."
He cringed now just thinking about it. His grip tightened on the mug.
Yeah... I shouldn't have done that.
He took another slow drink, letting the stale ale burn down his throat.
Around him, the tavern murmured with life in low tones. Old soldiers. Failed adventurers. Drunks who'd stopped pretending. All of them waiting—not for redemption, but for the end.
And none of them saw it coming when the door burst open.
The door crashed against the tavern wall, slamming open with enough force to shake dust from the rafters. Every head turned. Conversations stopped mid-sentence. A few men reached for weapons they hadn't touched in weeks.
A soldier stood in the doorway, barely upright. His armor was dented and smeared with ash and blood matted one side of his face, and his right arm hung limp. He stumbled forward, coughing, eyes wild with exhaustion and fear.
"They've breached the line," he rasped. "The Death Cross is moving—fast. East outpost is gone. We barely made it out. We need blades. We need bodies. We need anyone."
Silence followed. And reality checked in.
No one moved.
The hearth crackled behind them, the only sound in the room. The soldier's breathing grew ragged. His legs gave out, and he dropped to one knee, catching himself on a table.
"Please," he said more softly. "If we can't stop them, then please help evacuate the last of the civilians."
Caspin didn't stand. Not yet. But something stirred behind his ribs. Not courage. Not duty. Something older—like a bone remembering how to bear weight.
He looked around the room. No one met his eyes. No one expected anything from him. Maybe that's why he stood.
His joints cracked. The chair let out a final groan as he pushed himself upright. He felt the weight of the pendant shift beneath his tunic. The crystal inside pulsed once against his chest, faint but unmistakable.
He walked forward slowly, passing men who didn't believe what they were seeing.
The barkeep said nothing as Caspin stepped into the open air.
Outside, the wind howled like it knew what was coming.
Smoke curled in the distance, thin and dark against the dusk sky.
The Death Cross had arrived.
Caspin didn't remember how long he stood at the edge of the barricade—only the cold in his lungs, the trembling in his legs, and the taste of iron in his mouth. He had joined the line with the others, sword in hand, heart somewhere between numb and pounding.
The creatures came just after the last light bled from the sky. Shadows moved first. Then shapes. Then screams.
They weren't beasts they were worse. Eyes too many. Limbs too long. They moved like they had studied men, learned how to hunt them, how to break them. Caspin swung his blade like a man possessed. Not graceful, not skilled, but desperate.
He killed one. Maybe two. Lost count after that. His muscles burned. His breath came in ragged bursts. The line broke around him.
Someone cried for help. Someone else ran. Caspin held.
Then came the demon.
It wasn't the largest. But it was different. Eyes that didn't blink. A grin that didn't fit its face. And it walked straight toward him—slow, certain.
Caspin raised his sword. Took a step forward.
I just got here... and I'm already dead, he thought bitterly. His lips curled into something between a grimace and a smile. Of course. I would have that kind of luck.
There was no fear, not really. Just a strange, cold acceptance—as if the world was playing its final joke on him, and he had no choice but to laugh along with it.
The demon struck.
Steel shattered. Pain exploded in his ribs. He hit the ground, vision dimming, the breath knocked from his lungs. Around him, the world dissolved into chaos.
He reached for something. Anything.
His fingers closed around the pendant at his chest.
It pulsed, then cracked.
A high, crystalline note rang out, and the world… changed.
Time stopped.
A flood of emotion slammed into him. Visions—of the man he could've been. The life he should've lived. He saw himself standing proud, laughing, holding Seraphine's hand under the academy trees. He saw himself saving people. Living with purpose. Dying with dignity.
But it was all gone. All of it.
He saw his family. His father's calloused hands at the forge, working late into the night. His mother's soft voice calling him in for dinner, her worry always masked behind tired smiles. He saw his younger brother, grinning up at him, wanting to be just like him before Caspin stopped visiting, stopped writing, stopped answering altogether.
He had told himself it was to protect them from his failures, from the shame—but the truth was uglier. He couldn't face their disappointment. He had walked away from the only people who had still believed in him.
Tears welled in his eyes, not from pain but from the crushing weight of regret. Not the academy. Not Seraphina. Not the monsters. His family. He had abandoned them.
And then
Light. Blinding.
And silence.
Followed by a female voice—soft, familiar, and impossibly calm.
"We meet again, child."