He died.
How or why no longer mattered. He'd long stopped trying to remember the details of his death. There were no heroic last stands, no dramatic final words whispered into the void. One moment, he was alive — surrounded by the faces of those he trusted — and the next, the world was gone.
No pain. No fading heartbeat. Just sudden, jarring darkness.
An infinite, unyielding void.
He lingered in that black nothingness for what felt like eternity. If eternity could be measured where time did not exist. No sun, no stars, no ground beneath his feet. No breath to take, no heartbeat to measure. Just him and the suffocating absence of everything.
In the beginning, there had been fear. The primal, instinctual terror that comes when the soul realizes it's alone. That dread of endless nothing.
But fear doesn't last forever.
Eventually, it dulled — replaced by numbness. Then reflection.
At first, he blamed them. The ones he called allies. The faces that haunted what little remained of his memory. He could see their expressions, smirking in the half-light as the dagger was buried in his back. Or maybe it was a bullet to the skull. Or poison in his drink. The details were hazy now. The only certainty was betrayal.
He spent what could've been centuries replaying it in his mind.
But the darkness didn't care. The void didn't respond. No one came.
And as time decayed, so too did his rage.
Bit by bit, he unraveled himself, tracing every moment that led him here. Every misplaced trust. Every unnecessary mercy. Every time he offered a hand instead of a blade. He hadn't died because he was weak — no, the irony was crueler than that.
He died because he was good.
In a world of predators, the kind man was always prey.
And when that realization struck him, something ancient in the void took notice.
It came like a ripple through the black. The absence of light… shifting.
A presence.
Something vast, hungry, and impossibly old. A voice that wasn't a voice.
"I see you."
And with those three words, the void cracked.
A figure emerged from the nothingness. Horned and terrible. A silhouette darker than the abyss itself. Eyes like collapsed stars, pulling in what little hope remained.
It didn't speak with words. It spoke with meaning.
"You amuse me, mortal. So broken. So perfect. A soul cast aside… yearning for vengeance. What would you give, I wonder, for a second chance?"
He didn't hesitate.
"Everything."
A cruel smile formed in the darkness.
"Then take it."
A single, clawed finger pointed toward him.
"Two wishes. Speak them."
He spoke them without thought, as though they'd always existed in the marrow of his being.
"Power. And a world to conquer."
"Done."
And with that, reality tore itself apart.
---
When he opened his eyes again, there was light.
Blinding, pure, relentless light.
It burned. It seared through his senses like acid. He snarled instinctively, recoiling from it.
"Whoa, easy there!"
A small, spherical machine floated above him. Its shell glimmered with faint blue light, a single, glowing eye fixed on him.
A Ghost.
"You—you're alive! I mean… sort of. I just resurrected you. You're a Guardian now."
It sounded eager. Hopeful. Like it expected gratitude or wonder.
He sat up, feeling his limbs move, alien and unfamiliar. His senses were sharper than he remembered — every flicker of motion, every shifting shadow felt like a threat. His heart, newly beating in this reborn body, was a cold, steady drum.
He looked down at his hands. Calloused. Scarred. Powerful.
A storm brewed behind his eyes.
Guardian.
The word sickened him.
A servant of the Traveler. A pawn in a cosmic game of Light and Darkness.
He remembered fragments now — stories of the Traveler, the Guardians, their eternal war against the Darkness, their desperate, fragile city clinging to survival.
And in those fragments, he saw opportunity.
Not as a protector.
Not as a savior.
But as a predator.
"You okay?" the Ghost asked, concern bleeding through its synthetic voice.
He turned his gaze upon it, his stare colder than deep space. A lesser man might have seen kindness or warmth in those glowing blue optics.
He saw only a tool.
"Fine," he said, his voice a rasped growl.
The Ghost flinched, then gathered itself.
"Right. Uh—look, I know this must be disorienting, but you've been dead for a long time. The world's… not what it was. There's a lot to explain, but first, we need to move. The Fallen are everywhere."
Fallen.
He remembered them, too — scavengers and pirates. Desperate creatures chasing scraps in the shadow of dead gods.
"Lead the way," he murmured.
The Ghost zipped ahead, relief obvious in its tone.
"Okay! Stay low, keep moving. I'll try to find you a weapon."
They moved through the shattered remnants of an ancient city, the bones of skyscrapers reaching for a dead sky. Ash and ruin covered the ground. Bodies long turned to dust.
It should have unnerved him.
It didn't.
He felt alive.
More alive than he had ever been in his previous life. Every step through the wreckage was a promise. Every ruined building a monument to a world he would one day reshape.
The Fallen came.
Ragged, desperate things. Their armor pieced together from scavenged tech. Four arms. Chittering voices. Cruel, alien weapons.
They fired.
He moved.
Instinct drove him. A weaponless man reborn in the crucible of death.
Bullets tore the air around him as he ducked into cover.
The Ghost chirped, a rifle materializing in the rubble beside him.
"Grab it!"
He did.
The weight of the rifle was comforting. Familiar.
The first shot struck a Dreg through the throat. The second, through the eye. The third burst a Captain's skull like overripe fruit.
He moved like a predator — cold, efficient, merciless.
Not a word spoken. Not a hint of hesitation.
"Whoa," the Ghost breathed. "You… you're good at this."
Of course he was.
This wasn't about survival.
It was a rehearsal.
A taste of what was to come.
He cut down the rest with ruthless precision, leaving none alive.
As the last of the Fallen fell twitching to the ground, the Ghost hovered closer.
"I… I've never seen a Guardian fight like that. It was…"
"Necessary," he cut in.
The Ghost hesitated.
"You—you'll be protecting people like that. Helping the Last City, fighting the Darkness."
He smiled then, and it was a thing of cold, cruel beauty.
"I'll fight the Darkness," he said softly, his voice a coiled promise. "But I'm no hero."
The Ghost didn't understand. It wasn't meant to.
He would play the part. Earn their trust. Learn their secrets. Claim their power.
And when the time came… he would burn their City to ash and carve his name into the bones of their world.
A name spoken in fear.
A legacy of horror.
He followed the Ghost into the darkness, a storm in human form.
A Light reborn not to save, but to conquer.
And the Traveler would weep before he was done.