Where the End Begins

A fine rain drizzled down, covering everything around in a thin veil of water. Under ordinary circumstances, no one would have even noticed it.

But not Serodot Antropov.

He lay on the ground, drenched in his own blood. Aside from the rain that fell upon the swamp, there was a deathly silence all around him.

With the last of his strength, Serodot held his severed abdomen with one hand, trying somehow to slow the bleeding. Lying there, he could do little more than look around and struggle to comprehend what had happened.

His entire team of professional mercenaries, his comrades-in-arms, and even his best friend were dead...

Every last one of them lay on the ground, their bodies horribly mutilated. One was missing an arm. Another had no head.

And at the farthest point of the swamp, beside a pedestal bearing the inscription, “The living have the right to live,” stood a black knight with his back turned toward him.

Or so Serodot wanted to think...

The knight stood with his back to the corpse of their paladin, his head bowed.

“You!” Serodot forced the word out with the last of his strength.

“Monster!”

At those words, the knight turned to face him, but continued to stand where he was.

As he lay there in the mud, Serodot had time to analyze the situation.

When they had set out for this cursed swamp, they had been promised good pay upon completing a contract to assassinate a certain individual. The only thing that had seemed suspicious at the time was the small amount of information they had been given about their target.

But no one had paid much attention to it.

As it would turn out, they should have.

The team consisted of five human mercenaries: the paladin, Ekstofer; the archer, Lucian; the thief, Rekteiler; and the warrior, Itek.

It seemed like a perfectly ordinary contract. A team like theirs should have dealt with it quickly and been celebrating their victory by now.

But they would never be able to do so again...

When they arrived at the location, the knight in black armor was sitting on a stone with his back turned toward them.

The team was delighted by how quickly the job seemed to be going and was already preparing to attack.

But in the blink of an eye, a scream rang out from behind them, followed by the sound of something falling into the mud.

Itek was already dead.

His headless body lay on the ground.

Panic and unimaginable terror seized them all.

What kind of creature in this world could decapitate a professional warrior in a fraction of a second—a warrior with resistance to low- and mid-rank melee weapons?

“He’s already dead,” a voice came from somewhere deep within the swamp.

But the corpse was behind them.

“Prepare for battle!” Lucian commanded, sending an arrow straight toward the unknown knight’s head.

To their surprise, it struck him.

There was an opening in the helmet that allowed him to see his surroundings, and the arrow flew straight into his right eye.

Yet, apparently, he simply did not care.

He showed no sign of discomfort. He merely reached up with one hand and pulled the protruding arrow from his helmet.

“I suppose I could walk around with an arrow in my head. But it’s getting in my way. I’ll remove it, if you don’t mind.”

They all stood in utter horror.

The paladin began his attack with the spell Divine Foresight.

As a matter of fact, such an attack could effortlessly kill any mortal creature through divine punishment.

But this situation was different.

The knight simply reached out with his left hand and grabbed the handle of his hammer, and the attack never took place.

The hammer was heavy enough that it had to be held with both hands rather than one. Yet this knight held it in a single hand as though it weighed nothing at all.

“Let’s do away with the toys,” the knight in black armor said.

With a single movement, he first froze the handle together with its base, then broke it with one motion of his hand.

The paladin stood rooted to the spot, already beginning to lose his mind at the sheer power of this unknown being.

But before he could even think about it, the knight drove his fist straight through his chest.

Ekstofer fell dead in the same instant.

The black knight, holding his entrails in his hand, spoke in a calm voice:

“Life is unfair, and anyone can pay the price for their arrogance.”

The thief attempted to sneak toward his opponent unnoticed.

But an unknown force simply sliced him in half.

The black knight stood in front of him, yet the thief was already suffering. His screams rang throughout the swamp before suddenly falling silent.

Pieces of his body lay scattered across the entire battlefield.

One might have thought that Serodot, a powerful mage, could summon powerful magic, use the spell Summoning of the Archangels of Fate, and crush his opponent.

But the situation was different.

Coming to his senses, he tried to cast at least some kind of spell, but he did not have the time.

For a moment, the black knight drew a sword of crimson red, revealing only a small part of it.

Serodot fell to his knees.

Then he collapsed completely onto the ground.

Blood poured from him, his abdomen covered entirely in it. His high-level equipment had failed to protect him.

What else could be said when the black knight had torn through a team of professionals in a fraction of a minute, as though they were nothing more than helpless puppies?

He could not believe that such power existed in this world.

“Impossible...” Serodot whispered.

The knight turned toward him.

With slow steps, he began approaching the mage, like death itself, moving slowly and without haste.

There was nowhere for Serodot to go.

He prepared himself to die.

But then something unexpected happened.

“Stand up,” the knight said quietly.

The distance between them was small; only a few meters separated them.

“I’ll give you a chance to survive. You can try.”

After saying this, he stood completely still.

The rain grew heavier, and it seemed as though a downpour was about to begin.

Deep down, Serodot already understood that there was simply no way for him to win this fight.

But he did not want to surrender.

Grunting with pain and using the last of his strength, he pushed himself to his feet, leaning on his Staff of Foresight.

Serodot was about to attack, but he did not have the chance...

In the final moments of his life, he fell.

An incredible pain pierced through his entire body.

He was no longer capable of resisting.

The black knight stepped right up to the dying mage and looked down at him.

With his final breath, Serodot asked without hesitation:

“Who are you?”

The knight first looked up at the sky.

Then he looked down at the dying old man and spoke:

“I am your death.”

With those words, he drew his enormous sword and drove it through the old mage’s head, piercing straight into the earth beneath him.

They were all dead.

All except him.

Perhaps he might have regretted it.

But he simply stood there beneath the rain, looking up at the sky and dreaming of the impossible.

Removing his helmet, he spoke his final words:

“Every life is worthy of death. Every death is worthy of life.”

And so he stood in the middle of the swamp, surrounded by the corpses of men, gazing into the sky and dreaming of something.

It was a pity that so many had to be sacrificed.

But perhaps it had all been worth it.