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Ivan’s face was ground into the dirt as Imperial soldiers hurled torches through the windows of his and his neighbors’ homes. The blaze ignited the night with a furious, hellish glow, turning the tranquil village into a canvas of flame and despair. Rage was the only thing left to embrace his soul as he lay restrained, forced to witness the horror: soldiers holding doors shut, trapping screaming families inside while the fire consumed them alive.
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Behind him, on a creaking wagon, a small black dragon lay curled in a cage, shivering beneath its wings, its body trembling with helpless terror. The reflected inferno danced across its scales like molten gold on obsidian.
“Should’ve thought twice before hiding a dragon from the Empire, son,” growled the soldier pinning Ivan down. His breath reeked of tobacco and bile. “Your reputation don’t excuse you from followin’ the law.”
He spat in the dirt beside Ivan’s cheek.
Ivan was tall, broad-shouldered, with dark eyes and unkempt hair that fell to his brows. His leather-plated armor—once proud and polished—was caked in mud and slick with blood from the beating they’d given him.
As the last homes in the immediate vicinity crumbled into collapsing pyres, the soldier eased the weight from the back of Ivan’s skull. But before Ivan could even draw a breath of relief, cold steel slid between his ribs—low and cruel.
“You’ve no one to blame but yourself,” the man sneered, twisting the blade. “These peasants? Their fates were sealed the moment you chose silence.”
With a boot to Ivan’s side, he rolled him onto his back and plunged the knife again—this time into his lower abdomen. Ivan cried out in agony, the sound torn from him like a soul from a corpse. His tears mixed with blood and earth, soaking into the soil beneath his broken form.
“I’ll kill you,” he rasped, coughing as fire and smoke stole the air from his lungs. “I’ll find you—”
Suddenly, his chest convulsed. A jolt of pain raced down his spine. His heartbeat lurched, erratic, seizing. He vomited a torrent of blood, choking on the copper-tasting foam. He rolled onto his side, struggling to lift his head.
In the distance, the soldiers boarded their carriages and began to ride away. Standing atop the last wagon was a man clad in a hooded robe, the black cloth of it whipped by the wind. He raised a staff crowned with a dull, jagged crystal that shimmered with a faint purple glow.
A beam of amethyst light burst forth, arcing through the night like a curse made flesh. It lanced into the ashes of the razed homes, sinking deep into the rubble—and then, the dead began to scream.
Ivan froze, trembling as guttural moans spilled from the embers. One by one, burning corpses staggered from the ruins, their flesh smoldering and sloughing off bone. From the blackened doorway of his own home, a charred figure emerged, head twisted unnaturally, eyes glowing faintly from scorched sockets.
“No… no, no—” Ivan whispered, his voice cracking with horror.
Another shape followed it. And another.
His wife. His daughter.
Their features were barely recognizable through the burns, their clothes aflame, but he knew them. Even through the fire, the rot, and the death—he knew them.
They stepped forward, slowly, mindlessly, the fire crackling in their hair and on their skin. They didn’t scream. They just stared.
And Ivan, unable to rise, unable to run, could only watch as the nightmare walked toward him on blistered feet.
He had failed. Not just himself. But them.
And now, the Empire had taken everything.
Even death.
The other homes of the village were slowly catching fire, one by one, as the townsfolk—roused from their sleep—awoke to hell made manifest in the streets. Ivan, barely clinging to consciousness, watched as another flaming corpse stumbled into a nearby house not yet engulfed in flame. Moments later, the screams of the living pierced the night air—high, terrified, and fleeting—as the dead descended upon them.
The dead had no mercy.
Ivan’s fingers twitched as he noticed the glint of steel at his feet. The knife. His own blade—the one the soldier had taken when they’d detained him. Now blood-slicked and abandoned. He reached for it with trembling hands, pain lancing through his abdomen like a jagged brand. He gritted his teeth and staggered upright, swaying on half-dead legs.
Ahead, his wife and daughter continued their slow, shambling advance. The flames that had once consumed their bodies now smoldered like dying coals, burning deep into their flesh, revealing bone and ruin beneath.
He wept, openly and without shame, as he limped toward them.
He had no magic. No blessings. No last words.
Only a single, horrific mercy.
His wife lunged first. Ivan sidestepped, barely, the motion nearly toppling him over. He hooked her foot and sent her sprawling, then collapsed atop her with the full weight of his ruined body. With both hands clutching the hilt, he drove the blade down into the back of her neck. It slid in with a sickening grind of cartilage and bone.
Her body fell still beneath him.
Vision swimming, Ivan rolled off her. The world tilted and blurred. And then something collided with him—a small, broken thing. His daughter. She fell atop him, snarling, her teeth snapping inches from his face.
He tried to hold her off, arms straining with what little strength he had left, but she sank her teeth into his hand—tearing free his pinky and ring finger in a burst of blood and white-hot agony. Ivan screamed, but didn’t let go.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed as he embraced her—his daughter, his little girl—and drove the knife into the base of her skull. Her body seized, then collapsed beside her mother’s, the last embers of unlife flickering away.
But Ivan wasn’t done.
His hand. He had to stop the spread.
In a blind panic, he raised the knife and began hacking at his wrist. Each blow sent bolts of agony up his arm and through his chest. His heartbeat thundered like a war drum, his teeth grinding so tightly he could feel cracks forming in the enamel. Blood sprayed across the stones.
He didn’t scream. He roared.
With a final, furious cry, he brought the blade down, severing the mangled hand completely. It hit the ground with a wet slap.
He crawled, gasping and shuddering, to the smoldering wreck of his home and shoved the bloody stump into the embers. The flesh hissed and blackened. The pain was a godless thing—pure and primal—but it was his. It meant he was still alive.
Still human.
When he pulled his charred limb free, the flesh smoked and oozed, but the bleeding had stopped. He turned—and another corpse was reaching for him. A neighbor, his face half-melted, moaning through lipless gums.
Ivan surged up with a snarl, seized a handful of burning embers from the ruins, and hurled them into the creature’s face. It reeled back, howling as flame licked at its exposed nerves. Ivan stepped forward and brought his boot down—once, twice, thrice—until its skull cracked beneath his heel like a rotten gourd.
All around him, the town was lost.
The fires had claimed what the dead hadn’t. The moans of the risen echoed through the alleys and burning fields, their shadows twisting like ghosts beneath the infernal glow of the flames.
Ivan stood amidst the chaos, covered in ash and blood, breathing like a cornered beast.
There was nothing left to save.
But vengeance… vengeance still lived.
Next to the smoldering ruin that had once been his home stood Ivan’s workshop—untouched by the inferno. Built from granite stone and dragonwood, it had been constructed to withstand heat and hammer blows alike. The fire hadn’t reached it… not yet.
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Stumbling across what remained of his lawn, Ivan shoved open the workshop door and collapsed inside, his boot dragging a smear of mud and blood across the floorboards. The heavy scent of metal, oil, and leather filled the air, familiar and grounding. It was the only part of his life that hadn’t yet turned to ash.
He staggered to a wall-mounted cabinet and flung it open. Rows of vials shimmered in the torchlight—strange elixirs and tinctures gifted by traveling clients over the years. He scanned the labels with blood-smeared fingers. No miracle potion would regrow a severed hand, but among the collection were several anti-curse brews, each more volatile than the last.
He popped the stoppers and drank them one after another—burning his throat, his stomach, his soul—followed by stamina and healing potions to hold his body together. The haze lifted slightly. The pain, however, remained—a constant throb that pulsed in time with his fury.
The laughter of the soldiers echoed in his skull.
His hands—well, hand—moved before his mind had caught up. Rage tempered with purpose guided him now. He began forging the first of many tools for vengeance.
A leather harness, strapped tight around his ruined forearm, locked into place with a metal shield he affixed using a dwarven locking mechanism. Where his hand had once been, he engineered a concealed retractable short blade—a hidden dagger that slid free from under the shield with a flick of his wrist.
On the shelf behind his workbench rested a blade meant for royalty. Forged in dwarven fire, etched with filigree meant for kings—the ceremonial sword he had been preparing for the first prince’s ascension. Ivan picked it up, stared into its gleaming edge, and snarled.
“Not anymore.”
He uncorked a vial of cursed ichor—thick, tar-black, and hissing—and poured it down the center groove of the blade. The metal shimmered, hissed, and darkened. Then, from his remaining hand, he bit his thumb and let droplets of his blood mingle with the curse, searing the bond between blade and wielder. Lastly, he retrieved a small, chalk-white gem from a drawer and pressed it into the socket at the sword’s hilt. It clicked, locked into place, and the blade pulsed once with pale light, hungry and awake.
He turned toward the armor stand near the door—a suit of fine, lightweight combat armor, reinforced with enchanted dragonscale mail and burnished plates. It had never been worn.
Until now.
Piece by piece, he donned the armor, wincing as each buckle closed over bruises and blood. The pain became part of the ritual—proof that he was still alive.
And then it hit him.
A jolt of searing heat tore through his chest, knocking the breath from his lungs. His mind went blank for a moment, overtaken by a psychic scream.
Smala.
His dragon.
Frantic, he whipped around the workshop, ears straining for another sound. But the cry had ceased. Silence loomed. The only thing louder than his heartbeat was the scream frozen in his memory.
Anxiety clenched like a vice around his lungs. Panic ignited in his gut and churned into something uglier. A laugh began to bubble from his throat—raw, unholy, and rising like bile.
He began to cackle, loud and deranged, his eyes wide and wild as the trauma overtook him. It felt like something inside him had broken free. Snapped. The world had taken everything.
But it hadn’t taken his revenge.
Still laughing, Ivan staggered to a wooden box near the hearth. He flung open the lid and pulled out a stack of scrolls. Teleportation seals. Faintly glowing. Marked with the sigils of nearby towns.
He stuffed several into his bag, along with every potion, blade, and tool he could carry. He had one chance—one shot—to catch them before they reached the protection of the Capital. If they’d stopped in the neighboring village to rest, he could reach them. And they would die.
Just as his hysteria reached its peak, a loud bang echoed through the walls of the workshop.
Someone—or something—was outside.
Ivan froze, the laughter dying in his throat, replaced with cold fire behind his eyes.
The door to Ivan’s workshop burst from its hinges with a thunderous crash as he kicked it open, stepping into the frigid night like a shadow cast from the inferno that lay before him. His laugh, twisted and raw, echoed into the night—a ragged howl of vengeance born from grief. The flame-lit haze danced across his blackened armor and scorched flesh, painting him as something half-man, half-nightmare.
That laugh—laced with rage and madness—summoned them.
Groans rose in response. From every alley, every home, every corpse-littered yard they came—drawn by the sound, drawn by the scent of living blood. Dozens of undead staggered forward, some still partially aflame, their charred flesh peeling and dripping from bones like melted wax. Some crawled, others ran, all shrieking in a symphony of hunger and damnation.
Ivan stood tall in the moonlight’s cold gaze, blood still dripping from the bandaged stump of his severed partially healed hand. With a guttural yell, he surged forward. His shield crashed into the nearest corpse, caving its skull inward with a splatter of brains and bone. Spinning on his heel, he brought his short sword down in a savage arc, cleaving through another's rotted spine.
“COME ON THEN!” he roared. “Let’s dance in the fucking ashes!”
One by one, he cut them down. Rage lent strength to his limbs, adrenaline numbed the pain. Each strike was fueled by the screams of his wife and daughter, by the vision of his home burning, by the soldier’s voice in his ears—“Shoulda thought twice before hiding a dragon.”
But rage can’t last forever.
He stumbled after dispatching the last of them, his blade slick with blood, knees buckling as the toll of blood loss began to creep in again. The world tilted slightly—until the sky itself seemed to whisper.
A howl unlike any he’d heard rang through the night. A shrill, echoing cackle that seemed to twist the air with its malice. Ivan turned.
Atop a crumbled rooftop across the street stood a figure cloaked in ragged robes of bleached bone. Its face was a skull, elongated and inhuman, eyes aglow with violet flame. A foul mockery of man, hunch backed and slouched over, chattering its teeth as if it were keeping a specific rhythm. The skeletal necromancer raised a hand, and from the ashes of the slain, something… shifted.
Slain bodies began to twitch violently. Their heads twisted and snapped upward, and from the gaping maws of half-burnt corpses emerged floating, flaming skulls—bat-like wings of blackened bone sprouting from the sides of their fractured craniums. They shrieked like banshees as they lifted off, orbiting the necromancer like demonic wasps.
“Oh gods…” Ivan whispered, but there was no time for fear.
The skeletal necromancer pointed at him with a jagged, ivory wand. “The bloodied one,” it said in a voice like broken glass. “The cursed blacksmith... You belong to me now.”
Flaming skulls dove toward him.
Ivan raised his shield instinctively, and the first skull smashed into it with explosive force, rocking him backward as fire scorched the edge of his cloak. Another came from behind—he ducked, the flaming maw missing his head by inches. The air reeked of sulfur and ash.
Thinking fast, he slammed his shoulder into the doorframe of his workshop, flipping a switch built into his belt harness. The mechanism on his severed arm locked, the shield rotating down to reveal the retractable short sword underneath. It hissed free with a click of steel on steel.
“Let’s see how you like fire,” he growled, jabbing the blade upward into a swooping skull. The enchanted steel pierced the magical flame, swallowing it, then caused it to erupt like a firecracker in the air.
But for every one he downed, more replaced it.
The necromancer had stepped down from its perch, approaching through the ash-covered street with a slow, deliberate gait. The bone wand in its hand pulsed with miasmic energy, feeding off the death around them. “You cannot win,” it hissed. “This town—your family—belongs to me now.”
Ivan charged.
The skeletal creature raised its wand, and tendrils of dark energy lashed forward like vipers. Ivan barely dodged one, the other grazing his armor and leaving a trail of necrotic rot. He slammed into the necromancer with his shield, forcing it back a step.
Their blades met—Ivan’s sword against the jagged, sickle-shaped bone dagger the necromancer conjured with its free hand. Sparks flew, bones cracked, and Ivan kicked it back before spinning and driving his hidden blade into its side.
It screamed—not in pain, but in fury—and slammed its wand into the ground. The earth beneath them pulsed, and a shockwave of purple energy threw Ivan across the street into a pile of rubble.
Blood dripped down his forehead. His handless arm burned where the curse energy had touched it.
He forced himself to his knees, swaying.
“You will die here, mortal,” the necromancer snarled. “And rise again—as my creation.”
Ivan reached into his pouch, pulled out a vial glowing with sickly green energy. It was the last of the anti-curse brews.
“Not yet,” he growled and downed it.
The pain in his arm dulled. His vision cleared. His fury returned.
Ivan sprinted toward the workshop again, ducking beneath another volley of skulls and leaping through the window just as the necromancer let loose a bolt of black lightning that shattered the rest of the windows behind him.
Inside, he reached for another box of different spell scrolls.
But then—he heard it.
The cry.
From outside, through the ringing of battle and fire… the dragon. His dragon. It was alive.
The same pained, sorrowful cry from earlier—only now, it was desperate, calling him.
But it was getting further.
There wasn’t much time.
Ivan’s heart surged as he turned back to the open door frame. He couldn’t leave—not yet. Not without killing that, thing. He couldn’t let it raise his family and neighbors for its evil pleasures.
Outside, the necromancer raised both hands. “Enough!” it roared. “Let this town howl with the damned!”
More corpses exploded into motion. The street became a battlefield of flaming skulls, mutated limbs, and half-dead monstrosities crawling from the embers. The very air warped under the necromancer’s curse.
Dumping the weathered wooden box of scrolls onto the soot-covered floor, Ivan fell to one knee, panting, his chest still burning with effort and rage. He began rifling through them with the flat edge of his retractable blade, his severed arm’s harness grinding faintly as gears rotated and clicked with each motion. Dozens of arcane seals scrawled in golden and red ink rolled out before him, each humming with slumbering power.
His lips curled into a grimace as he sorted them with a soldier’s discipline. One by one, he read the incantations inscribed upon them aloud in a hoarse whisper.
“Fulgur Vēlum!”
The first scroll crumbled into ash, releasing a wave of electricity that danced across his armor and weapons in violent arcs of blue lightning. Sparks crawled across the ground around him, snapping hungrily at the air.
“Ignis Sanctus!”
The second scroll vanished in a burst of flame. Golden fire crawled from his chest down to his boots, wreathing him in a sacred blaze that glowed like the sun, yet did not burn.
“Refrigerium Tactus!”
The final scroll dissolved into a soft, cool breeze, a rejuvenating aura swirling around his battered form. His muscles steadied, the fog in his mind lifted, and his breath returned to him like water to the dying.
Ivan rose to his feet once more, the ragged edges of his cloak snapping in the chaos of wind, lightning, and fire. His armor glinted like blood-soaked bronze beneath the layers of energy now swirling around him. He was no longer a grieving man.
He was a storm made flesh.
“Come on then,” he whispered, his voice low and sharp, like gravel grinding beneath a boot. “One more dance.”
With a roar of defiance, he plunged back through the shattered doorway into the fray.
What had once been a chaotic brawl became something mythic. His shield crashed into the nearest undead, sending it spiraling into flaming timbers. He spun in a violent arc, his blade catching another zombie mid-lunge—electricity crackling from his blade and leather lined chainmail into the corpse’s chest, freezing it in midair. It convulsed, suspended and glowing, before bursting apart in a shower of bone and blackened meat.
Holy fire scorched every step he took, branding the undead with searing sigils as they lunged at him. Each slash ignited them, and every kick turned their rotted flesh to cinders. Lightning leapt from his strikes into the flaming skulls, short-circuiting their unnatural flight and sending them plummeting to the ground, where his blade made short, merciless work of them.
For a moment, he was divine. A living vengeance cloaked in light and fury.
But then, one of the flaming skulls exploded inches from his head.
The force launched him sideways through the smoky air, slamming his body into the cobblestone street with a crunch that cracked the stone and rattled his lungs. His vision blurred—and the enchantments began to fade. The golden fire winked out. The electricity dimmed. The breeze that had soothed his breath vanished like a departing spirit.
Ivan groaned, struggling to move.
The necromancer loomed over him once more, its skeletal frame blackened and cracked but still standing. It raised its bone-carved scythe like dagger, to deliver the final blow.
But Ivan had one trick left.
Reaching under his torn cloak, he yanked a small crystal vial free—a healing elixir infused with radiant essence—and with one desperate motion, he smashed it into the necromancer’s face.
The liquid erupted across its skull, burning with an alchemical scream. Smoke rose in furious plumes as its bones bubbled and cracked, its jaw opening in a silent scream. Blinded, it flailed wildly, the dagger missing Ivan’s head by inches as he rolled to his feet, teeth gritted in fury.
With a savage cry, Ivan drove his shoulder into the necromancer’s brittle frame and slammed his shield into its body, over and over. Each blow cracked a new bone, scattered ribs, snapped arms. He didn’t stop when it collapsed. He didn’t stop when it stopped moving.
He kept going.
Fueled by grief, he shattered every part of its body—splintering spine, skull, sternum—until nothing remained but a mangled heap of charred, twitching bone fragments. Even then, the dark magic fought to reassemble itself. The bones began to pull together in grotesque mimicry of life.
Ivan poured the last of his elixirs across the pile.
The moment the radiant brew hit the remains, a hiss erupted that drowned out even the wails of the damned. Smoke billowed as the bones ignited from within, turning black, then white, then nothing. The remains of the necromancer were erased from the earth, dissolving into ash that the wind carried into the stars.
All that remained was its tattered cloak and the curved dagger, now inert and harmless, lying in the street.
Ivan staggered back, coughing, ribs aching. Blood matted his face, but his eyes burned with determination.
The scroll—the last one—remained in his pouch.
He pulled it free with a trembling hand and unraveled it, his knuckles white around the parchment’s edges.
The ground seemed trembled behind him. Flames danced high above the rooftops. The dragon’s mournful cry still echoed in his heart.
“I’m coming,” he whispered. “We’re not done.”
Holding the scroll aloft, Ivan bellowed with what remained of his voice:
“Ianuae Magicae!”
The scroll erupted in blue fire, sigils blazing in concentric circles around his feet. A column of radiant energy surged upward, encasing his entire body in glowing runes.
With a brilliant flash, Ivan vanished.
All that remained were the burning buildings, the scent of ash, and the silence of smoldering embers.
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