It started as a warmth, a prickling sensation on the back of his neck, like a sunburn. But it grew. It swelled. It became a roaring, ravenous beast that consumed the air, the sky, and the ground.
Norvin opened his eyes.
He was standing in mud. But it wasn't the cold, grey mud of the Marsh Forest. It was red. Thick, viscous, copper-smelling red mud. It bubbled around his ankles, hot enough to blister the skin.
He looked up. The sky was gone. In its place was a ceiling of swirling black smoke and orange embers, choking out the stars.
"Mother?" he whispered. His voice was a dry rasp. "Father?"
He looked down at his feet, at the red muck he was standing in. And then he screamed.
It wasn't mud. It was flesh.
Scattered around him, half-buried in the crimson sludge, were pieces. A hand, rough and calloused, familiar in every line and scar. His father's hand. It was severed at the wrist, the fingers still curled as if holding a farming tool. A few feet away, a torn piece of a dress—the rough, grey wool his mother always wore. And beneath it...
Norvin fell to his knees. The heat seared his skin, peeling away the first layer of flesh, but he didn't feel it. The horror was too absolute.
"No... no, no, no..."
He scrambled through the blood-mud, his hands frantic. He grabbed his father's hand. He grabbed the scrap of the dress. He tried to pull them together, to push the pieces back into a whole, as if they were parts of a broken doll.
But they kept slipping. The blood was too slick. The pieces were too small.
"Father, get up!" Norvin shrieked, tears streaming down his face, instantly boiling into steam against the heat of the fire. "Mother, please! We have to go! We have to run!"
There was no answer. Just the wet squelch of the carnage and the roar of the fire.
The flames licked at his back. Norvin could smell his own hair singing. He could smell the sickeningly sweet scent of cooking meat—his parents, his neighbours, himself.
"Why?"
The question tore through his mind. "Why did we die? We did nothing. We worked. We lowered our heads."
Then, he heard the laughter.
It was a melodic, cultured sound, jarring against the cacophony of the inferno. Norvin looked up, his vision swimming with heat haze.
Through the wall of fire, three figures emerged. They walked atop the mud, their boots staying pristine, hovering inches above the filth.
Knights.
They shone like miniature suns. Their armour was not the battered steel of a common soldier; it was gold. Polished, filigreed, blinding gold. It reflected the firelight, turning the destruction of Norvin's world into a dazzling light show for their amusement.
In the center stood Gareth.
He wasn't wearing his helmet. His face was handsome, clean, and utterly bored. He looked like a god walking among insects. And in his hand...
"Yara!" Norvin screamed.
Gareth was holding her. He held her by the wrist, dangling her slightly off the ground as if she were a ragdoll. She was small. So small. Her feet kicked feebly at the air. Her face was turning purple, her eyes bulging, desperate for air.
Gareth wasn't looking at her. He was looking at his companions—two other knights in equally resplendent armour, their capes billowing in the hot wind without a speck of ash touching them.
"You see?" Gareth said, his voice cutting through the roar of the fire. "The grip strength is paramount. If you squeeze too fast, the neck snaps, and the game ends. You must apply pressure slowly. Like squeezing the juice from a fruit."
The other knights nodded appreciatively, as if discussing the vintage of a fine wine.
"Elegant technique, Sir Gareth," one of them drawled, adjusting his golden gauntlet. "Truly refined."
"NO! STOP!" Norvin lunged. He tried to run toward them, to tackle Gareth, to bite his hand, to do something.
But the mud held him. The blood of his parents acted like quicksand, dragging him down. The harder he fought, the deeper he sank.
Gareth finally looked at him. He smiled. It was a smile of pure, unadulterated malice.
"Oh, look," Gareth said softly. "The insect is buzzing."
He lifted Yara higher. She locked eyes with Norvin. Her mouth opened, trying to form a word. "Help."
Gareth squeezed.
CRACK.
The sound was louder than the fire. It was the sound of a world ending. Yara's body went limp, dropping from Gareth's hand like trash. She fell into the mud, face down, and sank.
"YARA!" Norvin wailed. He clawed at his own face, tearing skin. "I'll kill you! I'll kill you!"
"With what?" Gareth laughed. "With your dirt? With your poverty?"
The other knights laughed too. They pointed at him, mocking his tears, flaunting their golden armour. The metal seemed to expand, growing brighter and brighter until it blinded him.
The scene warped.
The fire didn't go away, but the setting changed. The mud hardened into cold, polished marble. The roar of the flames was replaced by the clinking of silverware on fine china.
Norvin was still on his knees, but he wasn't in Northwood anymore. He was in a room of impossible luxury.
Velvet curtains hung from a ceiling painted with cherubs. Chandeliers dripped with crystals. A long, mahogany table stretched out before him, laden with food. Roast boars with apples in their mouths, towers of grapes, cakes frosted with sugar, goblets of ruby-red wine.
The smell was intoxicating. It was the smell of wealth.
Seated at the table were the Masters. The Noble family that owned the farm where Norvin had been a slave. The Old Master sat at the head, a napkin tucked into his collar, grease staining his lips. His wife and children sat around him, gorging themselves.
They were eating, laughing, completely oblivious to the boy bleeding on their floor.
Norvin felt a surge of pathetic hope. These were his Masters. They were cruel, yes, but they were the authority. They could stop Gareth. They could save Yara.
"Master!" Norvin cried out, crawling forward. "Master, please! Help us! They are killing us! The fire... the knights..."
He crawled toward the head of the table. He reached out a hand, begging.
The Old Master stopped chewing. He looked down.
He didn't look at Norvin's tear-streaked face. He didn't look at his burns.
He looked at the floor.
Where Norvin had crawled, he had left a trail of red mud and ash. His tattered, filthy shoes were scuffing the pristine white marble.
The Old Master's face turned purple with rage.
"My floor," the Master whispered. "My beautiful, imported marble floor."
"Master, please," Norvin sobbed. "My family..."
"You dare?" the Master roared, standing up. He picked up a heavy silver goblet and threw it. It struck Norvin in the forehead, splitting the skin. "You dare bring your filth into my sanctuary?"
"But... we serve you..." Norvin whimpered.
"You serve nothing!" the Master screamed. He walked over and kicked Norvin in the ribs.
Crack. The pain was blinding.
"You are dirt!" Kick. "You are cattle!" Kick. "Your purpose is to work and die quietly! How dare you scream? How dare you stain my house with your misery?" Kick.
Norvin curled into a ball, trying to protect his head. "I can't... I can't endure anymore..."
"Then die!" The Master spat on him. "Your filthy family deserves to die! You deserve to burn! That is what trash is for—to be incinerated so the gold can shine brighter!"
The floor beneath Norvin opened up.
The marble cracked and gave way. There was no ground beneath it. Just a black, gaping maw.
Norvin fell.
He fell away from the light of the chandelier. He fell away from the heat of the fire. He fell into the Abyss.
It was cold here. Silent. The air rushed past his ears, stripping the screams from his throat.
As he fell, the fire that had been burning his skin changed. It wasn't heat anymore; it was corrosion. His skin began to flake away like ash in the wind. He watched his own hands disintegrate, the flesh peeling back to reveal bone, the bone turning to dust.
"Father!" he screamed into the void. "I can't endure! It hurts! It hurts too much!"
Faces flashed in the darkness as he plummeted.
Gareth's smiling face. The Master's angry face. The knights in the medic tent who looked at him with disgust. Thane's cold, calculating eyes.
Every person he had ever met. Every person who held power. They were all there, circling the abyss, looking down at him. They weren't helping. They were watching. They were the audience to his suffering.
"The world is the enemy", the darkness whispered to him. "Everyone who is not you is a threat. Everyone above you is a boot waiting to crush your neck."
He hit the bottom.
But it wasn't rock. It was water.
SPLASH.
Norvin plunged into a freezing, stagnant ocean. The impact knocked the wind out of him. He opened his mouth to scream, and the black water rushed in, filling his lungs with the taste of rot and salt.
He thrashed. He tried to swim up. He kicked his legs, clawing at the water.
'Up. I have to go up. I have to survive.'
But he couldn't. Something was pulling him down. Weights. Chains.
He looked down at his legs.
Wrapped around his ankles were chains made of faces. The faces of his parents. The faces of the neighbours he couldn't save. They were heavy, made of lead and guilt, dragging him into the deep.
He sank. Deeper and deeper. The pressure built in his skull. His vision began to tunnel.
"I failed", he thought, the bubbles escaping his lips. "I am weak. I am nothing."
He hit the ocean floor. Silt rose up around him in a cloud.
And there, standing in the darkness of the deep, waiting for him, was Yara.
She wasn't the little girl who wanted ice cream. She was bloated. Her skin was blue and pale, peeling away from the water damage. Her dress was tattered seaweed.
Norvin tried to reach for her. "Yara... I'm sorry."
She turned to him.
Her eyes were not kind. They were not the eyes of a loving sister. They were black pits of pure hatred.
She opened her mouth, and though they were underwater, her voice was clear and piercing, vibrating through his very bones.
"You promised."
Norvin shook his head, bubbles of denial floating up. "I tried. I tried."
"Liar," the water-corpse hissed. "You said you would protect me. You said we would see the world. But you let him choke me. You watched. You are weak, Norvin. You are a coward."
She stepped closer. She grabbed his throat with ice-cold hands.
"You lived," she accused. "Why did you live? Why is your heart beating while mine rots? You stole my life. You thief. You failure."
She squeezed. Just like Gareth.
Norvin couldn't breathe. The guilt was heavier than the water. He stopped fighting. He let her choke him. He deserved it. He deserved to die here, at the bottom of the world, killed by the ghost of his own failure.
'Let me die,' he thought. 'Please, just let it end.'
But the dream would not let him die. It had more torture left.
The water around him began to boil. Not with heat, but with cold. It froze instantly.
The ocean solidified. The darkness turned white.
CRACK. SHATTER.
Norvin was standing again. He gasped, sucking in air that was sharp as glass.
He looked around. He was in a city, but it wasn't Northwood. The architecture was different—taller, sharper.
It was Ruxwax. The city he had just left. The city he was supposed to burn.
But there was no fire here. There was only ice.
The buildings were encased in glaciers. The streets were skating rinks. The people... the soldiers, the civilians... they were all statues of frozen terror, caught in their last moments of life.
Norvin looked down at himself.
His hands were blue. Frost creeped up his arms, turning his skin into diamond-hard crystal. He felt powerful. He felt strong.
"I did this", he realized with horror. "I froze the world."
"Norvin."
The voice came from behind him. It was a voice he loved. A voice that meant safety.
He spun around.
"Remus!"
There he was. The Old Man. He stood in the middle of the frozen square, smiling that tired, gentle smile. He held a bag of cherries in one hand.
"Remus, you're alive!" Norvin sobbed, running toward him. "I thought... I thought..."
He reached Remus. He threw his arms around the man.
"Remus, take me away! Please, take me away from here!"
Remus looked down at him. He raised a hand to pat Norvin's head.
But as his hand touched Norvin's hair, a sound echoed through the square.
CRACK.
Remus's face shifted. The smile faltered.
A hairline fracture appeared on his forehead. It zigzagged down his nose, across his cheek, down his neck.
"Norvin..." Remus whispered. But his voice wasn't flesh anymore. It was the grinding of stones.
"Remus?" Norvin stepped back, terrified.
"You are heavy, Norvin," Remus said sadly. "You are so heavy."
CRACK.
Remus's arm—the one holding the cherries—fell off. It hit the ground and shattered into a thousand diamonds. The cherries rolled across the ice, turning grey and rotting instantly.
"No!" Norvin screamed. He tried to grab the arm, but it was just dust.
"You break everything you touch," Remus said. His torso began to splinter. Huge chunks of ice flaked away from his ribs, revealing nothing but empty air inside. "I tried to hold you up, but you dragged me down."
"Stop it! Stop breaking!" Norvin tried to hold Remus together, hugging the crumbling statue. "I'll fix you! I promise I'll fix you!"
"Like you fixed Yara?" Remus asked.
Norvin flinched.
Remus's legs gave way. The statue collapsed.
It didn't happen quickly. It happened with agonizing slowness. Norvin watched as Remus's face—his kind, weary face—cracked down the middle. One eye slid away. The mouth crumbled.
"Goodbye," the pile of ice whispered.
And then, silence. Just a heap of glittering dust on the cold ground.
Norvin fell to his knees, scooping up the ice dust, trying to mold it back into a man. But it melted in his hands, dripping through his fingers like tears.
"Traitor."
Another voice. A female voice.
Norvin stiffened. He turned around slowly.
Standing behind him was the Red Ghost. But she wasn't the glowing, ethereal spirit he knew.
She was burning.
Huge flames—the flames of the Dragon—were consuming her. Her translucent skin was blistering, blackening. She was screaming, not in anger, but in pure agony.
"You killed me," she shrieked. Her ruby eyes were melting, dripping down her face like wax. "I saved you! I stopped you! And this is my reward?"
"I didn't mean to!" Norvin cried. "I didn't know!"
"You are a curse!" The Red Ghost lunged at him, her burning hands reaching for his face. "You drain the life from everyone! Remus is dead because of you! I am burning because of you! You should have drunk the poison! You should have died in the womb!"
The fire from her body leaped onto him.
Norvin burned again. The ice melted. The Ruxwas square dissolved into a swirl of grey and black.
He fell again. Spinning. Screaming. Crying.
"She's right. I am a curse. I am a plague."
"Endure. Endure. Endure."
"NO!"
Norvin hit the ground hard.
Thud.
Dust motes danced in the air. The smell of dry hay and old wood filled his nose. Sunlight—warm, golden, dusty sunlight—streamed through cracks in the wooden walls.
The Barn.
He was back in the barn at the Manor.
He was small again. A child of seven. Pain shot through his leg—sharp, hot, sickening. His ankle was twisted at an unnatural angle.
He remembered this. The Noble children. They had been playing -Hunt the Beast. Norvin was the beast. They had chased him. One of them had shoved him off the loft. He had fallen. Snap.
He lay in the hay, sobbing, clutching his broken leg.
"Endure, my son."
Norvin looked up, expecting to see his father. Alden usually came to comfort him. Alden would tell him to be quiet, to not make a fuss, to bear the pain so the Masters wouldn't get angry.
But it wasn't Alden standing over him.
It was an old man. Older than Alden. His skin was like tanned leather, his hands like iron vices. He had a scar running through one eye. He looked like a slave who had forgotten how to bow.
It was his Grandfather. The old man didn't offer sympathy. He didn't look kind. He looked furious.
He reached down and scooped Norvin up. He didn't seem to care about the broken ankle. He held Norvin rough, tight against his chest.
"Does it hurt?" the Grandfather growled. His voice sounded like rocks grinding together.
"Yes," little Norvin sobbed. "I want Father. father says we have to endure."
"Your father is a fool," the Grandfather spat. He walked to the barn door and kicked it open, looking out at the Masters' castle in the distance.
"Look at that," the Grandfather commanded, pointing a gnarled finger at the castle. "Look at their stone walls. Look at their glass windows. Do you think they endure? Do you think they suffer?"
"No," Norvin whispered.
"They take," the Grandfather said. "They take your sweat, they take your blood, and they build their paradise on your broken bones."
He squeezed Norvin's shoulder, hard enough to bruise.
"Listen to me, boy. Forget your father's words. 'Endure' is a word invented by Masters to keep slaves quiet. It is a poison."
He turned Norvin's face so they were eye to eye. The old man's eyes burned with a terrible, infectious madness.
"Don't endure," the Grandfather hissed. "Retaliate."
The scene around them began to bleed. The hay turned into gold coins. The wooden walls turned into piles of skulls.
"Run away," the Grandfather urged. "Grow up. Get strong. Not just strong like a beast—strong like a disaster. Strong like the storm everyone fears."
Norvin stopped crying. The pain in his ankle was still there, but the old man's words were drowning it out.
"Become rich," the old man continued, his voice rising. "Steal their gold. Burn their contracts. If they kick you, cut off their leg. If they spit on you, drown them in their own blood."
"But... I'm just a slave," Norvin whispered.
"Only if you choose to be," the Grandfather roared. He threw Norvin into the air.
Norvin didn't fall this time. He floated.
"Pay them back!" the Grandfather screamed from below. "Pay them back a thousand times over! Be a warrior! Be a monster! Don't die in the mud like your father! Die on a heap of gold with a sword in your hand!"
"Kill whoever you want!"
The command echoed through Norvin's mind, louder than the fire, louder than the water.
"Destroy the world!"
Norvin looked at his hands. They weren't broken anymore. They weren't holding mud.
They were holding swords. Two massive, jagged swords made of ice and iron.
He looked down at the Grandfather, at the burning barn, at the drowning Yara, at the crumbling Remus.
Something inside him snapped. The part of him that wanted to be good—the part that wanted to eat ice cream and be safe—withered and died.
In its place, a cold, dark sun ignited.
"I will," Norvin whispered to the dream.
The fire in the dream turned black. The gold turned to ash. The world dissolved.
"I will kill them all."
Norvin bolted upright.
And then, he woke up screaming.
"Whoa! hold on!"