The dragonborn

The wind howls like a wounded beast across the barren stretch of what used to be Verdane Plains. Once, this land sang with wheat and life—now it chokes on ash. Cracked bones and rusted steel lie half-buried beneath dust storms that whisper the names of the dead. I tighten the frayed scarf around my face. Not for the cold, but for the stench of rot that still clings to these cursed lands. They say war ends when silence returns. They lied. I walk alone now. A demon hunter with no order left to serve, no flag to bear. Just steel, grit, and vengeance burning behind my eyes. The sigils inked across my arms glow faintly, reacting to something—perhaps another of their kind lurking nearby, watching. Hunting. Like I do. We didn’t start this war. But we ended up in it the moment the Demon King tore open the Veil. No warning. No mercy. Cities crumbled. Sky burned violet. The ground split and bled. And amid the chaos, his generals marched—each a living calamity, each drawn from some infernal well of cruelty. I remember their names like curses carved on my bones. Vharun, the Shatterhand. Broke my father’s blade and then his spine. Lady Syrene, the Pale Fire. She laughed when my sister screamed, painting the walls of our home with her flames. And Ezakel, the Hollow Maw—he didn’t speak. Just consumed. My mother. The rest of the village. Gone in a heartbeat. I was ten. They left me for dead. They shouldn't have. The hunter’s path is not one of glory. It’s not heroism that drives us. It’s what’s left when grief calcifies and turns into something harder than steel. I didn’t ask for the sigils. The Order found me years later, crawling through ruined catacombs for scraps. They taught me to fight, to bind demons with chains of light, to etch runes into my own flesh until I bled purpose. But the Order is gone now too. Burned at the altar of peace talks that never stood a chance. Another false hope crushed under the Demon King's boot. So now I walk. Across deserts that used to be kingdoms. Through forests twisted into living nightmares. Over mountains stripped of snow, where demons nest like vultures on the bones of the gods. Each step is a memory. Each scar, a name. I hunt because I must. Because the world forgot what it means to resist. Because someone has to remember that before the fall, we were more than prey. And because one day, I will find the Demon King’s throne. I will carve my family’s story into the stone with my blade. And I will remind the world that even in the ashes, vengeance still walks. And it remembers. They say demons have no fear. They haven’t met me. My name is Riego El Bathory—last of the House Bathory, though names mean little now. My bloodline once carried weight in the northern provinces, back when the provinces still stood. We were scholars, alchemists, and warriors—keepers of forbidden knowledge, wardens of the old wards that kept the Veil sealed. My ancestors warned the kings and councils of its thinning. No one listened. Now, I speak only with my blades. I carry three: Velmire, forged from blacksteel pulled from the corpse of a fallen archdemon; Whisperfang, etched with the death-words of a thousand silent monks; and the third… I do not name. That one is for him alone. For the Demon King. A red sun hangs low as I crest the next dune. Below me sprawls the corpse of what was once Drel’s Hollow—a minor trade town known for salt and spices. Now, it’s a wound in the sand, picked clean by scavengers and worse. I spot charred bones piled like driftwood, some still smoking despite the wind. Fresh work. Demon work. Good. I descend slowly, cloak pulled tight, boots crunching over shards of obsidian glass—a byproduct of Syrene’s fire, no doubt. The Pale Witch always did like to leave her signature. I feel the tug in my chest again—sigils reacting to nearby infernal presence. Three, maybe four. Not strong. Not generals. But demons, nonetheless. They will do. I crouch beside a half-buried skull, fingers tracing the c***k where something blunt split it clean. A child’s. My jaw clenches. “You see this?” I whisper to no one, to the wind. To the ghosts. “This is why I don’t rest.” Behind me, movement. Fast. Quiet. Almost clever. I draw Whisperfang. The first demon leaps, fangs wide, shadow stretching unnaturally long behind it. I spin, drive the blade through its throat mid-air. It gurgles—a sound like laughter turned inside out—before dissolving into black mist. The second charges from the left. A feral screamer, limbs too long for its frame. I let it come close, then flick Velmire upward in a rising arc. The demon splits in half before it understands it’s dying. The others hesitate. Smart. Too late. The battle ends as quickly as it began. Four demons dead. Blood steaming on the sand. My breathing steady. No wounds. Only the silence again. Heavier this time. I wipe the blades clean and sheath them. My heart still pounds—not from fear, but from the whisper of purpose. Another step forward. Another thread in the great red web I’m weaving, string by string, toward the throne of the King of Ruin. I look to the blood-dark horizon, eyes narrowed against the wind. “I’m coming for you,” I say aloud. Riego El Bathory is not done. Not while the Demon King still draws breath. And the world will remember my name not as a prince, nor a relic of a fallen house— —but as the end. It was near dusk when I found it—an oasis blooming like a mirage from the throat of the wasteland. A crescent of cool, still water cradled between jagged blackstone cliffs, ringed with ghost-pale reeds and the gnarled skeletons of date palms. I almost didn’t trust it. In these lands, nothing grows unless something feeds it. But I was tired. Dust coated my tongue like old blood. My limbs ached from the last fight, and the sun—always watching, always judging—had baked my armor until my shoulders smoked. Even vengeance must drink. Still, I didn’t approach directly. I circled it, slow and deliberate, tracing sigils into the sand with the toe of my boot. Detection runes. Old glyphs I learned from the monks of Ashend Hollow, long before demons swallowed their monastery whole. No flicker. No warning. Just silence. That was my first clue. In this world, nature breathes—wind moves, insects chirp, branches creak. Even in cursed lands, something always makes noise. But this place? Not even the water rippled. Too still. I stepped closer, knelt at the edge. My reflection stared back: gaunt, pale, eyes like burnt coal—Riego El Bathory, hunter of the damned, worn by the road and the ghosts that cling to it. And then my reflection blinked. I hadn’t. “Clever,” I muttered, already drawing Velmire. The surface of the water shivered, then burst upward like a geyser. It twisted midair into a figure—a woman made entirely of water, her form fluid and shifting, skin rippling with currents beneath a translucent veil of algae-dark hair. Her eyes were empty pools, and when she opened her mouth, I heard no voice—just the rush of drowning. A mizu-wraith. Old breed. Rare. Strong. “You smell of fire and sorrow,” she whispered, though her lips never moved. The voice echoed inside my skull, like a dream you can’t quite wake from. “Why do you seek death, mortal man?” “I don’t,” I said, circling. “But I won’t deny it if it finds me.” The wraith glided over the water, not walking, floating. With each movement, the oasis pulsed slightly—like she was its beating heart. I felt the sigils on my arms tingle, warning me of ancient enchantments at play. She wasn’t just living in the oasis. She was it. “I’ve killed demons older than the stones,” I warned, voice steady. “You’ll be no different.” But the wraith didn’t attack. She hovered, studying me with pity—or perhaps amusement. “You reek of vengeance,” she said. “It poisons you worse than any hellspawn could. You think when you find him—your Demon King—your soul will be free.” She leaned close. Her breath was mist. “It won’t.” I didn’t answer. Instead, I lunged. She shattered into a wave, reformed behind me, lashes of water lashing at my legs. I twisted, letting the sigils flare bright, burning away the liquid tendrils with pure radiant energy. Her screech was not of pain, but rage—a sound like a tsunami crashing through bone. We danced. Steel met water. Light met shadow. She fought with elegance, her form ever-shifting, blades of ice forming in her hands before melting into steam against my strikes. But I’d fought worse. I’d buried worse. Finally, I plunged Whisperfang into the oasis itself, activating its soul-bind. The wraith screamed. Her body collapsed in on itself, drawn into the blade like water through a sieve. The oasis thrashed, boiled, then calmed—still again, but this time... truly still. Real. I stood there, dripping, breath heaving. Then I knelt and drank. Cool. Clear. Untainted. For the first time in weeks, I felt the tension in my chest loosen. Just a little. The wraith was right about one thing—I do reek of vengeance. It clings to me like a second skin. But what she didn’t understand was that vengeance isn’t a curse. It’s a purpose. And it keeps me alive. I rose, wiping blood and water from my brow. “Rest now,” I whispered to the oasis, to the wraith’s fading presence. “You fought well.” Then I turned, and walked back into the wasteland. The road to the Demon King was long still. But he was running out of places to hide.