Lastlight's Revenant #23

Edric moved like a storm given flesh.

His sword carved through the vermin-touched in arcs of black ichor and splintered bone, his steps leaving smears of his own corrupted blood across the cobblestones.

The faceless demon danced backward, always just out of reach, its lipless maw stretched in a grin that never wavered. Every time Edric lunged, more of the twisted creatures swarmed between them—not attacking, not tearing at him with their usual mindless hunger, but herding.

Blocking his path.

Edric’s breath came in ragged gasps, his vision swimming with the poison coursing through his veins. Around him, the horde pressed closer, their milky eyes fixed on him with unnatural focus.

Only a handful broke away to harass Garran’s retreating group—the rest were here for him.

Why?

The corpse dragon’s shriek split the air again, closer this time, edged with something almost like urgency. Edric ignored it. His world had narrowed to the faceless demon and the sea of claws between them.

He didn’t understand why this ancient horror cared about a dead man walking. But it didn’t matter.

He’d wanted to die fighting.

This was better than he’d dared hope.

A vermin-touched lunged. Edric’s blade took its head clean off, the motion sending a lance of fire through his rotting muscles. He grinned through the pain.

Let them come.

His mind drifted, unbidden, to two nights ago—to the moment Kaelvar had loomed over his sickbed in the dark, the Varekai’s tattoos writhing in the candlelight.

Two Nights Earlier

"You’re dying," Kaelvar had said, blunt as a hammerstroke.

Edric had coughed, the taste of copper thick on his tongue. "I think... I think we've already established that..."

"There’s a way." The warrior’s voice dropped, low and rough. "Not to live. But to choose how you go."

He’d held out a vial—small, unassuming, filled with liquid darker than midnight.

"Demon-venom," Kaelvar murmured. "Refined. Concentrated. Drink it when the time comes, and it’ll burn through what’s left of you like wildfire. You’ll fight like a demon. Die like one too."

Edric had stared at the vial, his fingers trembling. "Why offer this to me?"

Kaelvar’s grin was all teeth. "Because you’re too proud to rot quietly. And I respect that."

Present

The memory faded as another wave of vermin-touched surged forward. Edric laughed, the sound raw and broken.

'You were right, Kaelvar.'

He raised his sword, the black veins in his arm pulsing like living things.

'Let’s see how many I can take with me.'

...

The alleyways of Vaeldrith had never felt so narrow.

Garran led the survivors through the twisting paths, their footsteps echoing like the frantic beats of a hunted animal’s heart. The distant sounds of Edric’s last stand had faded, replaced by an eerie silence—the kind that settles over a battlefield when death has taken its fill.

Then—

THUD.

The air itself trembled. A sound like the cracking of the world’s bones reverberated through the streets, followed by the rhythmic, thunderous flap of enormous wings.

Everyone froze.

A pressure descended—not on their bodies, but on their souls. It was as if some primordial hand had reached into their chests and clenched, squeezing the breath from their lungs, the warmth from their blood.

Kaelvar and Sylrithiel flinched in unison, their heads snapping toward the direction they’d left Edric. The Varekai’s tattoos writhed like serpents beneath his skin, his face paling.

Garran gritted his teeth, his sword hand trembling against his will. "What is this...?"

Sylrithiel’s voice was a whisper, yet it carried the weight of a tomb sealing shut. "The corpse dragon."

Kaelvar’s eyes glazed over, his gaze turning inward. "The ancestors whisper of great rage—" He stiffened, his breath hitching. "We must—"

He never finished.

Sylrithiel’s head jerked up, her silver eyes widening. "Everyone, come closer. Now. If you value your lives!"

Her hands moved before the words had fully left her lips, fingers weaving through the air as she began to chant. The syllables were sharp, alien, each one dripping with power.

The survivors hesitated, their faces blank with terror.

Garran didn’t. "MOVE!" he roared. "GET TO HER!"

They scrambled—soldiers dragging the wounded, mothers clutching children, all pressing toward Sylrithiel as her voice rose to a crescendo.

Just as the last straggler crossed the threshold, she slammed her palms together.

A transparent red dome erupted around them, its surface shimmering like blood under moonlight.

For a heartbeat, silence.

Then—

The scream came first.

A sound beyond sound, beyond language, beyond reason. It was rage given voice, anguish made tangible, hate distilled into a single, shattering cry. It tore through the streets, through flesh, through mind, and in its wake—

Fire.

Not the orange-gold of natural flames, but a spectral inferno—pale, ghostly, hungry. It rolled over the buildings, the stones, the very air, incinerating everything it touched.

The walls of nearby houses blackened and crumbled to ash in an instant.

The cobblestones melted like wax.

The fire crashed against Sylrithiel’s dome.

The impact sent cracks spiderwebbing across the barrier.

Sylrithiel gasped, her knees buckling, blood trickling from her nose. But she held.

Barely.

Inside the dome, the survivors huddled together, their screams swallowed by the roar of the unnatural flames.

Garran’s hand found Sylrithiel’s shoulder, his grip iron.

"Hold," he growled.

Outside, the world burned.

...

The world had narrowed to the rhythm of steel and the wet crunch of splitting chitin.

Edric’s blade moved without thought, carving through the vermin-touched in practiced arcs. Thirty? Forty? More? The numbers blurred together, meaningless. All that mattered was the dwindling space between him and the faceless demon—the way it watched him, unblinking, its borrowed grin never wavering even as its own kin died at his feet.

The sound of wings grew louder, the air trembling with each thunderous beat. The corpse dragon was coming.

Edric didn’t care.

For… Vaeldrith.

He meant to roar it, to send his defiance ringing through the streets like a war bell. But the words left him as a whisper, his voice stolen by the black venom searing through his veins.

No matter.

He charged.

The first vermin-touched died mid-leap, its head tumbling from its shoulders before its claws could find purchase. The second met his backhand—a brutal, black-veined strike that sent it hurtling into a wall with a wet crunch.

The last one never reached him.

The faceless demon moved faster than decay, its spindled fingers closing around the creature’s skull and hurling it at Edric like a grisly projectile.

Edric didn’t slow.

His sword flashed upward, splitting the airborne corpse clean in two from crown to groin. Rotting viscera rained around him as he stepped through the shower of gore—

Five steps.

Three.

One.

The demon was within reach.

Edric swung.

And the faceless demon stood still.

His blade froze mid-air, a hair’s breadth from its featureless face.

A heartbeat passed.

Then the demon’s grin split—its stolen mouth peeling open to reveal rows upon rows of needle-teeth, each one glistening with something that wasn’t saliva.

Edric’s knees buckled.

The blackness seeped from his eyes like ink draining from a shattered vial, his vision swimming, his body convulsing as the venom’s grip on him slackened—no, not slackened. Retreated. The corruption writhed beneath his skin, not consuming him now, but… withdrawing.

His sword slipped from numb fingers.

The cobblestones rushed up to meet him.

Darkness swallowed the world, then returned in fractured glimpses.

Edric's vision swam into focus—blurred, distorted, as if seen through warped glass. His body convulsed, dark blood bubbling from his lips, his nose, the corners of his eyes.

The pain was a distant thing, muffled beneath the numbness creeping through his limbs. His senses were no longer his own, but he could still make out shapes, still hear the faintest whispers of sound.

The faceless demon loomed over him, its foot planted firmly on his chest. Its grin stretched impossibly wide, the rows of needle-teeth glistening with something that wasn’t quite saliva. It wasn’t looking at him.

It was looking up.

Edric forced his gaze to follow.

A dragon.

Not the skeletal horror that had haunted Vaeldrith’s skies, not the rotting abomination of sinew and bone he’d glimpsed from his sickbed. In his dying eyes, this was a true dragon—majestic, towering, its scales gleaming like burnished emerald in the dying light.

Power radiated from it, an aura so potent it made the air itself tremble.

But something was wrong.

The dragon’s eyes burned with fury, yes—but beneath that rage, there was something else. Weariness. A grim resignation, as if it were fighting against an inevitability it had long foreseen.

The demon’s foot pressed down.

Edric felt his ribs groan, the corrupted flesh beneath giving way like rotten fruit. His insides—already ravaged by venom—collapsed, a wet, sickening crunch echoing through his failing body.

The faceless demon let out a hideous chuckle.

Then it stomped.

Blood erupted from Edric’s chest, a final, violent spray.

The dragon roared.

The sound was more than thunder, more than fury—it was anguish given form, a cry of loss so profound it shook the very stones beneath them. Then, with a shudder that sent dust cascading from nearby ruins, the great beast fell. 

Its massive body crashed to the ground, the impact trembling through the earth like a dying heartbeat.

Darkness swallowed Edric's world once more, and this time it didn't return it. The dragon’s roar was the last thing he ever heard, its fall the last he'd seen.

The dragon's presence, its anguish, the demon's fixation - none of it made sense in his final moments. Yet as the darkness took him, he felt neither fear nor regret. Only fulfillment.

The pain was gone now. The weight of his failures, the shame of his weakness, all burned away in the purity of this last act. He'd wanted a warrior's death, and the gods had granted him one worthy of song. His city would endure.

His people would survive.

That oathbreaker Dornblade - a man he'd known barely a fortnight yet trusted more than any court sycophant - would see to that.

The last living lord of Vaeldrith departed this world at peace with a smile.

The faceless demon's grin stretched wider, its lipless maw trembling with silent laughter as it watched the great dragon writhe upon the ground. The majestic beast turned its massive head, emerald eyes burning with primordial hate as spectral flames gathered in its throat.

The demon didn't flinch.

"For...the Hollow...King..." it rasped, its voice like dead leaves scraping across stone.

The dragon's fury erupted in a column of ghostly fire that turned the air to ash. The demon's flesh sloughed away, its bones blackening to powder, yet that hideous grin remained intact even as the rest of it disintegrated, a final mockery burned into reality itself before vanishing forever.

The flames died.

Silence fell over the corpse-strewn street.

Somewhere in the ruins, the Hollow King laughed joyfully with the glee of a child watching puppets dance.