The fire from the tents roared into the night sky. Snow fell endlessly from the heavy clouds, mixing with the floating ash to create a gray, suffocating sludge that blanketed the dead Imperial soldiers. The flames painted the massacre in brilliant shades of orange and red—the collapsed tents, the shattered wagons, the frozen corpses.
Through the inferno walked General Jomong.
He didn't look like a warlord observing a massacre. He walked with a slight bounce in his step, humming a cheerful, upbeat tavern tune. His pristine black hair swayed gently in the searing wind, completely untouched by the grease and smoke that choked the air. His armor, red as fresh arterial blood and embossed with a roaring dragon, seemed to absorb the heat of the camp.
He stopped a few feet from Ryan, folding his hands behind his back and leaning forward with a bright, friendly smile.
"Well, well, well!" Jomong chuckled, his voice rich and full of genuine amusement. "What a spectacularly beautiful mess! You know, I was studying this camp from the ridge. This fire... it's a masterpiece of sabotage. I calculated it took three people. One rat who knew the patrol routes, one arsonist to light the match, and one absolute demon in the woods to butcher the horn guards."
Jomong tilted his head, his dark eyes sparkling with curiosity as he took in Ryan's ash-stained face and the single, glowing green eye.
"But looking at you, little ghost... wearing my Vanguard's clothes but smelling like wild pine and wolf blood... I have to ask." Jomong offered a warm, almost brotherly grin. "Are you the one who threw the match? And more importantly, where is Prince Tarek? Tell me, and I promise you a very fun, very fast death."
Ryan looked at the smiling General. And then, Ryan laughed.
It wasn't a laugh of fear or madness. It was the dark, hollow laugh of a ghost who had already finished his haunting.
"Hahaha..." Ryan met Jomong's amused gaze. "Three people? No. Just me." Ryan straightened his spine, the green fire in his eye flaring. "Your twenty commanders are rotting in the snow. Your seventeen hundred men are currently being eaten alive by winter wolves in the dark. I started the fire. I slaughtered your Iron Fang. I butchered your Long Death."
Jomong raised an eyebrow, looking genuinely impressed. "My, my. Busy boy."
"And Prince Tarek?" Ryan's smile turned vicious. "I cut the fingers from his hands. I broke his mind. If you want your royal prince, he is sitting in the snow to the west, crying like a crippled pig."
Jomong's smile vanished.
It didn't just fade. It was erased. The cheerful, humming man disappeared in a fraction of a second, replaced by a suffocating, apocalyptic presence. The air pressure in the clearing plummeted. The flames of the burning camp suddenly stopped flickering, standing perfectly still, as if terrified to move.
"You mutilated the blood of the Dragon," Jomong whispered, his voice now a hollow, metallic rasp that vibrated in Ryan's teeth.
Jomong snapped his fingers.
The fire came alive.
It didn't just burn; it hunted. Serpents of white-hot plasma erupted from the ground, violently wrapping around Ryan's ankles, his waist, his throat. The heat was instantaneous and unimaginable—hotter than a forge, hot enough to instantly flash-boil the blood in Ryan's veins.
Ryan let out a blood-curdling scream as his skin bubbled and turned black. The pain was absolute, consuming every thought, every memory, every shred of his sanity. He crashed into the snow, thrashing violently as his clothes disintegrated into ash. The snow beneath him hissed into steam, but the unnatural flames clung to his flesh like acid, melting his muscles down to the bone. The sickening smell of roasting meat filled the clearing.
Jomong looked down at the screaming, melting boy, his eyes dead and cold as iron.
"I do not care about mercenaries who fight for coin," Jomong said flatly over Ryan's agonizing shrieks. "I do not care about two thousand dead infantrymen. The Black Dragon has three hundred thousand more. But you touched the Emperor's blood. For that, I will burn your soul to a cinder."
Ryan's vocal cords melted. His screams turned into a wet, airy hiss. His body charred into a blackened, smoking husk. He lay perfectly still.
Jomong scoffed in disgust and turned to the west, walking toward the forest to find his Prince.
Inside the green void of Ryan's mind, the ancient Eye pulsed frantically.
"Healing from this absolute destruction will cost you fifteen years," the Eye warned. "Stay down, Ryan! Let him leave! If you move, he will kill you again!"
In the physical world, Ryan's charred, ruined eyelids snapped open.
"No," Ryan wheezed through a rebuilding throat. "I want to die. But I will die fighting."
The regeneration began. It was a secondary torture. His charred bones violently snapped back into place. Raw, wet muscles spun like red yarn over his skeleton. New, highly sensitive skin stretched painfully over his raw flesh.
He was completely naked, his clothes turned to ash. But lying in the snow a few feet away was a dead Imperial soldier's dagger.
Ryan grabbed it.
He didn't stand. He dropped to all fours, his mind fully surrendering to the wolf. He exploded forward, his bare hands and feet digging into the frozen bedrock, propelling him toward Jomong's back with terrifying, animalistic speed. A deep, guttural snarl ripped from his throat.
Jomong sighed, not even bothering to look back. He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.
The steel dagger in Ryan's hand instantly melted. Liquid, glowing-hot iron poured over Ryan's bare fingers, burning deep into the nerves. Ryan roared in pain but didn't stop. He lunged at Jomong's neck with his bare teeth.
Jomong spun, his eyes narrowing. "Annoying pest."
He snapped again.
A localized tornado of blue fire erupted around Ryan. It lifted him off the ground, spinning him in a cyclone of pure incineration. The pain was blinding. Ryan felt his newly grown skin evaporate. He felt his organs rupture and boil. He screamed until his jawbone literally turned to ash, falling through the air as a scattered pile of dust and blackened bone fragments.
Jomong stared at the ashes. "Perhaps I overdid it. I wanted to drag him back to the capital."
Then, the sickening sound of wet flesh weaving together echoed from the ash pile.
Bones forcefully reconstructed themselves. Veins spider-webbed across empty air. Within seconds, Ryan stood up from his own ashes, gasping violently for air, naked and fully healed.
Jomong took a step back, his composure finally breaking into visible shock. "What in the nine hells are you? You should be ash."
Ryan dropped to his hands and knees. His jaw unhinged slightly, and a horrifying, mournful howl tore from his lips. "Woooooo..."
Jomong raised his hand to snap his fingers again—but the air suddenly grew freezing cold.
"Where is the bear?!" a voice screamed from Ryan's mouth. But it wasn't Ryan's voice. It was deep, scarred, and arrogant.
A translucent, screaming projection of Temur the Long Death flickered violently over Ryan's body.
"My hands!" another voice sobbed from the boy's lips. "Where is my diamond armor?!" Karesh's spirit violently superimposed over Ryan's face.
Then came the snarling of the wolf. Then the terrified gasps of Gero.
Ryan grabbed his own head, his body violently violently contorting as the souls he had consumed fought for control of his empty vessel. "I am the Long Death!" he shrieked. "I am the Wolf! I am Ryan! I am—I AM—!"
Jomong lowered his hand, his eyes wide with revulsion. "Madness. You are an abomination. A jar of rotting souls."
Jomong snapped his fingers relentlessly. Wave after wave of explosive fire slammed into the boy. Ryan burned. He healed. He burned. He healed. Every cycle was slower. Every regeneration brought unimaginable agony, shaving decades off his life.
Ryan fell out of the burning world and crashed into the green void.
The massive Eye floated above him, its light dimming.
"Ryan. You have lost control," the Eye said solemnly. "The vessel is broken. Your body is now a battlefield for the dead."
Ryan floated in the dark, his spiritual form flickering and tearing apart like wet paper.
"Your remaining lifespan is three years and seven months. Every time the fire touches you, it drains. You have seconds left. You are about to cease existing."
Ryan looked up at the great Eye. And he smiled.
"You smile?" the Eye asked, genuinely baffled. "You are facing oblivion."
"I won," Ryan whispered, closing his eyes. "I broke the prince. I burned his army. Death is my reward."
The Eye was silent for a long time.
"You are the most fascinating creature I have ever inhabited," the Eye said, its voice lowering with a strange, ancient reverence. "You used your cunning more than my power. You lost your home, your body, your life... but you defeated an Empire. I will be alone in the dark again. But... goodbye, Ryan of the wild lands."
The green world shattered like glass.
Ryan's eyes opened to the real world.
The fire had stopped. Jomong was gone, having abandoned the "mad beast" to go search for his prince. Ryan lay perfectly still on the frozen bedrock. Through the dissipating smoke, he saw the cold, indifferent stars of the winter sky.
And then, the stars went out.
The temperature plummeted so violently that the ambient moisture in the air froze into glittering ice dust. The shadows in the clearing stretched and pulled together, forming a towering, impossible figure.
Azrael. The Angel of Death.
It was utterly terrifying to behold. It had no face, only a hood filled with the crushing gravity of a black hole. Its skin was the color of a starless void. One eye burned with a sickly, necrotic green fire. The other was an empty abyss that threatened to suck the soul straight from Ryan's chest.
In its skeletal, shadowy hands, it held a massive scythe. The blade wasn't made of metal; it was made of pure, concentrated absence. Where the blade existed, reality simply stopped.
The Angel did not speak. It did not need to. It raised the scythe high above Ryan's chest, preparing to plunge the blade in and violently rip Ryan's spirit from the mortal plane.
Ryan smiled, offering his chest to the blade. Finally.
But as the scythe swung down, terrifying, translucent hands erupted from Ryan's own shadow.
The giant spirit of the Wolf clamped its jaws around Ryan's spiritual neck, pinning him to the earth. Karesh's ghost grabbed his right arm. Temur's wraith wrapped around his legs. Lord Malik's wailing shade threw itself over Ryan's chest.
Every soul Ryan had murdered, every life he had absorbed to fuel his power, piled onto him in a writhing, screaming mass of spiritual chains. They refused to let him leave. They refused to let him find peace.
Azrael's scythe struck the spiritual barrier and bounced off, hitting empty air.
The Angel of Death paused. Its singular green eye narrowed, staring at the boy entombed by the dead he had created.
Then, the shadows parted.
An old man stepped out of the absolute nothingness. He wore dark, flowing robes that seemed to drink the moonlight. His beard was split, half pure white, half pitch black. But his eyes... his eyes were solid black voids, containing an ancient, malevolent cruelty that made even the Angel of Death seem small.
Jomong had seen nothing. To the physical world, Ryan was just a comatose boy in the snow.
But the old man was here. And he was smiling a wide, terrible smile.
"Ryan. My brilliant, beautiful boy," the old man purred, his voice rich, warm, and dripping with poison. "You are a masterpiece. You controlled the Eye. You brought an Empire to its knees. You slaughtered everyone who wronged you." He chuckled, a sound like grinding stones. "I am so incredibly proud of you."
Azrael, the Angel of Death, slowly raised its cosmic scythe, pointing the blade of absence directly at the old man.
The old man didn't even flinch. He simply turned his void-black eyes toward the Angel and gave a single, dismissive wave of his hand.
Azrael lowered its weapon. The cosmic entity of death bowed its head, spread its wings of shadow, and dissolved back into the night sky, abandoning its prey.
The old man turned his terrible smile back to Ryan.
"You thought you could outsmart me, boy? You thought you could just die?" The old man laughed, stepping closer. "Before I gave you the Eye, I knew a wolf like you would try to escape his leash. That is why I placed the curse deep in your marrow."
The old man leaned over Ryan, his void eyes locking onto the boy's terrified green eye.
"You will never die, Ryan," the old man whispered, his voice sealing Ryan's fate. "Even when your lifespan hits zero. Even when your physical body crumbles to ash. Your mind will remain. Trapped. Frozen in the dark. Fully aware of your own rotting corpse... until you finally break, and give me exactly what I want."
For the very first time since his village burned, the hollow emptiness in Ryan's eyes vanished. It was replaced by a cold, suffocating, paralyzing emotion.
True, absolute fear.
"Who..." Ryan whispered, his voice trembling as he stared up at the god of his torment. "Who are you?"