Smoke clung to the sky like a shroud, thick and unmoving. Even the wind seemed afraid to disturb the silence that followed the massacre. Beneath the collapsed thatch and stone of what once was a goblin den, Rikz stirred. Blood clotted at his temple. His ears rang with the echo of screams already past.
He pushed aside a burnt timber beam with shaking arms. Pain surged through his side, but he gritted his jagged teeth and crawled out into the grey daylight.
His world was gone.
All around him, the forest clearing that once buzzed with low laughter, snarls, and crude song now sat in unnatural stillness. Crows circled above. Flies had already found the corpses. The fire had done its job with merciless efficiency—bodies blackened, bones brittle, huts reduced to scorched outlines in the dirt. Forty-two goblins. Only he remained.
Rikz had always been strange, and strange things survive.
Where others celebrated raids and roared in drunken fights, Rikz watched, listened. He observed. He learned the shape of traps, the language of trees. He knew which mushrooms killed and which healed. He was a runt, yes—but with eyes too sharp, a voice too quiet, and thoughts too heavy.
He had hidden when the humans came. Not out of fear—though fear was present—but out of clarity. He saw them from the ridge before the attack began. Ten riders in steel, banners snapping in the morning wind. Fire in their hands. Hatred in their eyes.
They were not soldiers. Not warriors. They were something worse: zealots.
"Purge the filth," one had shouted.
So they did.
---
He knelt beside what had once been the cookfire pit. Now a crater of ash. A half-melted pot lay nearby. Inside, something unrecognizable still smoked. Rikz bowed his head and let silence fill him. He did not cry. His kind were not made for tears.
But something broke.
Not loudly. Not with fury.
It cracked like thin ice underfoot.
He stood slowly. His limbs ached, his bones protested, but his eyes burned with a fire unfit for his kind. Goblins were not meant for vengeance. They were vermin, the stories said. Meat for wolves. Kindling for paladins. Yet Rikz had survived.
That made him dangerous.
---
He searched through the ruins, scavenging what the fire and looters had left behind: a half-charred satchel, a cracked waterskin, a few knives dull with age. He found bones—some familiar. His brother's jawbone, his mother's anklet of rat teeth. He pocketed both.
Then he found the corpse of Goruth, the clan's elder and chieftain. The old goblin's skull had been split cleanly in half, his ceremonial horn still clutched in one withered hand. Rikz knelt and pulled it free. It wasn't a weapon—but it was a symbol. He tied it to his belt without a word.
The sun climbed higher, and the birds returned. Nature resumed its rhythm, indifferent to tragedy. But Rikz felt no peace.
He looked north—toward human lands.
He looked west—toward the deepwoods.
And then, finally, he looked up.
Black smoke curled toward the heavens.
"Let them see it," Rikz whispered. "Let the gods choke on it."
---
By nightfall, he had buried none. There were too many. The ground was too hard. Instead, he piled the bodies high at the center of the camp and set them alight. A pyre for the forgotten. He watched it burn from the treeline, knees hugged to his chest.
The flames danced like angry spirits. He imagined them rising, clawing at the sky, screaming names he would never forget.
When it was done, he turned into the woods and vanished.
---
Days Later – Deep in the Forest
The forest changed as he moved farther from the clearing. The trees grew thicker, darker. The ground soft and wet. Strange lights pulsed in the underbrush—some poisonous, some alive. Rikz walked in silence, eating sparingly, drinking from leaf-cups and stagnant pools.
He had no destination.
Only a direction: away from weakness.
He avoided roads. He avoided humans. He slept in trees, wrapped in moss and silence.
His thoughts grew darker with each passing day. Why were they hunted? he wondered. Why do they call us evil? Savage? He had never raided a village. He had never tasted human flesh. He had never drawn blood beyond training scuffles.
Yet they had come for him anyway.
Something in him—buried deep in his goblin heart—refused to believe it was fate. That goblins were born to die in ditches, to be hunted like rats. If the world hated his kind for being weak, then he would change. He would grow.
Not taller.
But deeper.
---
On the twelfth day, he found a ruin: old, crumbling stone covered in moss. A shrine, perhaps, or a watchtower from a war long forgotten. Within it, he found a corpse—human, half-buried, clutching a book.
Books were forbidden in his tribe. Words were for the humans and their gods.
But Rikz had always been curious.
He took the book.
---
Nights in the Ruin
He spent the next weeks in that ruin, hiding, healing, reading.
The book was in rough condition—mold-stained, torn—but legible. It spoke of herbs, alchemy, ancient languages, and something called "inner flame." A force of power that could be cultivated—not magic, not divine—but personal. Will turned to fire.
Rikz didn't understand most of it. But he kept reading. Every night. Every page. He drew the symbols in the dirt. Whispered the phrases aloud. Listened to the silence that followed.
And one night, the silence whispered back.
---
It began as heat in his chest. Then in his palms. He focused. He repeated the words.
Nothing exploded. No lights danced.
But a small ember sparked on his fingertip. Brief. Faint.
But real.
He stared at it for hours.
---
The Decision
The world would never accept him. That was clear.
But perhaps... he could force it to.
Not through armies. Not through vengeance.
Through evolution.
Goblins were always the bottom. The dirt others walked on.
Rikz would change that. Not for glory. Not for justice.
For survival.
He would become something else.
A new kind of goblin.
One the world couldn't ignore.
---
The Journey Begins
On the thirtieth day, Rikz left the ruin.
He wore scavenged armor, stitched with bark and bone. He carried a crooked staff carved with runes he barely understood. The ember still burned faintly in his palm when he called it. Enough to warm. Enough to light.
He would go to the cities—not to fight, but to learn.
He would watch their mages, their knights, their kings.
And one day...
They would watch him.
Not with scorn.
With fear.