There was a man.
At least… there had been.
Now, he was something else.
He was covered in blood. Not spattered. Not stained.
Covered.
Head to toe, soaked in red. It dripped from his face. His hands shook like he was having a seizure. His mouth twitched constantly, like he was chewing through glass.
Blood leaked from the corners of his lips.
His eyes rolled back.
He staggered into the center of the room. Barefoot. Leaving prints behind on the stone floor. Every movement was twitchy. Unnatural. Like his body wasn't fully under his control anymore.
He dropped to his knees.
Then he started drawing.
One hand dragged through the blood. His fingers smeared symbols into the floor—spirals, jagged lines, half-formed circles. The marks didn't make sense. But they came fast, like he had to make them. Like something inside was forcing it.
Then he screamed.
But it didn't sound human.
Too loud.
Too sharp.
The scream seemed to come from everywhere at once.
The blood around him began to lift. Slowly. Thin tendrils rising off the floor, floating toward the ceiling like strings in reverse gravity.
Then something moved in the blood.
It didn't ripple—it shifted. Like it was pulling together. Collapsing inward.
Pressure slammed into the room. A low pulse, like air being crushed.
Then came the shape.
An arm. Long. Wrong. Like it had too many joints.
It rose out of the pool of blood—bone and muscle and twitching wet skin, but no real form. Just pieces that shouldn't exist, dragging themselves upward.
Then another.
A torso followed. Legs. A head with no face.
The blood didn't drip off the thing.
It became the thing.
The man collapsed. Not dead—but emptied. His chest still moved, barely, but his face was blank. His mouth hung open. Blood kept leaking out.
Slow. Endless.
The creature stood over him
i believe im about to die
My name is Malakai.
I was born into a warrior monk tribe, raised far from the rest of the world. We were told we were sacred. A chosen people. That our way was the only way that peace came through struggle, and heaven came through pain. Our god, Nylos, watched all. We were to live worthy lives. That meant discipline. Service. Strength.
From the moment I could stand, my life was mapped out: wake before the sun, meditate in silence, train until the blood left blisters, eat only what you earned, speak only when spoken to. You respect your elders. You serve your community. You sharpen your mind, body, and spirit to prove you are worthy of ascension.
But I didn't care about worthiness. I didn't care about their peace.
I wanted to be strong for me. Not for the village. Not for Nylos. Not for some eternal harmony that no one could ever prove.
It started when I was six.
I stood in the training circle, loud and proud, claiming I was better than the others. I said I wasn't even trying—that if I wanted to win, I would. I lied. I was mediocre. And when the match began, I was humbled. Destroyed. I hit the ground, coughing in the dirt, the laughter dead silent.
The instructor didn't punish me. He made an example out of me.
"Let Malakai be your lesson," he said, voice sharp. "No one stands above the group. We are one. The strong make up for the weak—like Malakai."
I'll never forget the way they looked at me afterward. Not angry. Not mocking. Just... pitiful.
That night, something broke inside me. I made a vow—not to the gods, not to the tribe.
To myself.
I wouldn't be weak again. I wouldn't serve. I wouldn't pretend. I would become strong on my own terms. I trained harder than anyone else. I studied dueling, beast-hunting, odachi technique—everything with edge and blood in it. Meditation? Gone. Humility? Gone. I wasn't seeking peace. I was seeking greatness. I wanted to be feared. Unreachable.
And for a while, I was.
I surpassed my peers. I was faster, sharper, colder. The elders still frowned, but they couldn't ignore the results. My mother praised me—not just as her son, but as a prodigy, a warrior above the rest. I thought I had won.
Then the symptoms started.
Shaking. Fatigue. Dizzy spells. Pain that ran deep and constant. I brushed it off at first. Pushed through it. But it got worse. The elders said it was spiritual rot. A punishment for my selfishness. A curse from Nylos.
I didn't believe that.
But I didn't have an answer either.
Then came the day I collapsed—my vision blacked out during a training session. My mother found me curled up in the corner of the meditation hall, breath ragged. I was too weak to even lie about it.
She didn't scold me. She didn't tell the elders.
She cried. And then she swore me to secrecy.
That night, she wrapped me in old robes and led me past the forest border, the place we were always told was forbidden. I asked where we were going. She said nothing.
Hours passed. The trees thinned. The stars disappeared behind haze. And then... lights.
Not torches. Not fire.
Electric lights. Roads. Signs. Cars.
I stared in silence. Not out of awe—out of confusion.
"What is this?" I asked.
She didn't answer.
We reached a hospital—towering glass and steel, humming with machines I couldn't name. Clean walls. People who didn't bow. People who didn't even know what Nylos was.
And that's when I understood.
The tribe hadn't just kept me sheltered.
They had cut us off.
They had lied.
We weren't a sacred order chosen by a god. We were a cult. One village in the mountains, clinging to rules made by men who feared the world changing without them. Everything I had known—rituals, prayers, enlightenment—it was just isolation. Control.
And I had built my entire life around it.
I sat there, under fluorescent light, while a man in a white coat told me I had a tumor. Inoperable. Spreading. Fatal.
He didn't speak in riddles. He didn't talk about spirit or sin.
He just said I was dying.
That was it.
And for the first time, I felt small.
Not like I had lost a spar. Not like I had failed to live up to someone's expectations.
Truly small.
I wasn't a prodigy. I wasn't chosen. I was just a sick boy from a mountain cult, dying in a world I never knew existed.
My mother still believes Nylos will save me. That maybe my oath, even if forced, still holds weight.
But I know better.
I lied to her. I lied to them. I lied to myself.
There's no god waiting. No redemption coming.
Just a truth I never saw until now:
The world is massive. I am not. And I was never free.