So I stood on the hill; wounded, armed, insufficiently prepared.
The ground around me was littered with bodies. They lay where they fell, slack and ordinary now, as if whatever fury had animated them had burned out and left. I didn’t step over them. I didn’t honor them. I just let them be.
There was a big rock near the edge, half-buried, dark with old weather. I sat on it and, for a moment, let the world stop demanding from me. I unlatched my visor and lifted it away. No one could’ve seen my face up here anyway, no one worth performing for. Just the open air and the quiet that comes after violence.
I pulled out a cigarette and lit it with hands that didn’t feel like they belonged to me. I should’ve sharpened my sword instead. I knew that. The blade rested across my knees, dull enough to insult me, dulled by use and neglect and whatever passes for mercy when you’re too tired to be precise. My vision swam; the horizon blurred and smeared like wet ink.
The cut on my chest throbbed under the plate. It was still bleeding, warm and stubborn, but not fast enough to be a clean ending. The other wounds had closed before, eventually, as if my body had learned the trick of staying in one piece out of spite. This one felt different. Even though it's not.
I could feel eyes on me.
patient, measuring, satisfied to wait. in the places the light didn’t quite reach, something watched. More than one something. They didn’t rush. They didn’t need to.
If I stripped the armor to bandage myself, they’d come. The moment I exposed softness, they would drop on me. So I stayed sealed inside steel, letting the wound argue with my heartbeat.
The cigarette drew down. I watched the ember glow, and then, somewhere between one breath and the next, I stopped watching. Time slipped. The smoke kept moving even when my mind didn’t. When I noticed again, the it had burned nearly to the filter, ash falling in silent little collapses. I hadn’t felt it. I hadn’t tasted it.
I checked my pack.
One more left.
Just one.
I turned the sword in my hands and ran a cloth along the edge, not really cleaning it, not really fixing anything. just doing something small and deliberate so I didn’t dissolve into the waiting. The metal caught a faint smear of red. My red. It wasn’t the first time. There was a honesty in that: no matter what monsters circled the hill, no matter what came at me with teeth to teeth, it was still my hand that carried me here.
My fingers found a notch in the blade where it had chipped earlier. I rubbed it like a worry stone.
And then I thought of the monk.
he’d already accepted the worst and decided to live anyway.
I thought of his prophecy.
Four years.
I breathed out blood and stared at the east.
In a few hours, the sun should’ve risen. But the horizon stayed empty,no pale line, no softening of black into blue, Just that long, cold band where light was supposed to appear and didn’t. It felt like being told "eventually" for so long that the word turned into a weapon.
The last demon had nearly taken me; I survived it only because I’d expected it, because I heard its footsteps before it reached the door and braced myself before it swung, yet I was overconfident, reckless, and I got exactly what I deserved, a fresh mark carved into me like a lesson written in blood; and even now, though I struck it down and it won’t be long until it dies, but I can still hear it breathing slowly.
Now there were others.
Not one. Not a single dramatic duel. A whole pack of them, patient and fed by time: the thin, constant dread of not knowing if I’d make it.
They didn’t have to roar. They only had to look.
I kept my visor off a little longer, letting the cold air touch my face.
The armor creaked when I shifted. My body wanted to fold. My mind wanted to drift. But I forced myself upright anyway, spine straight, shoulders set, hands steady around a blade that wasn’t ready.
If they were going to come all at once, then I would meet them the only way I knew.
I looked east again.
So I stood on the hill, wounded, armed, insufficiently prepared, and waited for the dark to test its hunger against what remained of me.