The villagers were still staring at the burning remains of King's home 🏚️🔥 when a thunderous voice cracked through the frozen air ⚡.
"I SAID I'M NOT DONE!" 😡
King marched back into the village barely thirty seconds after leaving. His axe rested on his shoulder 🪓, his shield strapped tight to his arm 🛡️. Each step made the snow tremble ❄️💥, as if the mountain itself feared his return.
"WHERE IS THE HIGH PRIEST?" King roared 📢🔥.
The crowd split like frightened birds 🐦😨. People stumbled backward, boots scraping ice. At last, the High Priest stepped forward, pale as fresh snow, hands shaking ❄️😰.
"King… listen," he whispered, raising his palms.
"You can still serve the chosen hero. You are strong. The village still needs you."
King tilted his head.
That single movement froze the wind 🌬️❌.
"Serve?" His voice dropped, low and lethal ☠️.
"You expect me to bow to a scarecrow chosen by a traitorous drop of blood?"
He spat on the snow.
"Fuck him and his family."
Gasps rippled through the crowd 😱.
The priest swallowed hard. "He… he is the god's choice."
"Your god has the taste of a drunk goat," King snapped 🐐🍺.
"And you—" He jabbed a finger into the priest's chest 👆.
"You lied to me since I was a child. 'You will be the hero, King. You are destiny, King.'"
His eyes burned 🔥.
"I should've known destiny was blind, deaf, and stupid. And fuck."
People recoiled. A mother pulled her child closer 😨. An elder shut his eyes.
Trying to reclaim some dignity, the priest reached into his ceremonial pouch and pulled out a folded cloth embroidered with ancient runes ✨❄️. It shimmered faintly in the cold light.
"This," he announced, voice trembling but formal,
"is the Sacred Frost Cloth. The greatest treasure of our village. Passed down for centuries. Take it with honor."
King snatched it from his hands ✋.
He sniffed it once, like checking cheap fur, then spoke loudly enough for icicles to crack 🧊💥.
"I'll use it as a butt cleaner."
The village froze.
A woman dropped her bowl 🥣😱.
A hunter nearly fainted 😵.
The chosen hero's jaw hit the snow.
King flicked the sacred cloth over his shoulder like trash 🗑️ and walked away, laughing under his breath 😏.
But he wasn't finished.
Not even close.
He marched straight toward the training ground 🏋️♂️, the place where he had bled 🩸, sweated 💦, suffered 😖, and forged himself into the strongest youth the village had ever seen.
Villagers followed from afar, whispering, trembling 🤫😨.
King arrived, pulled out a firestone 🔥, and tossed it into the wooden equipment shed.
WHOOM 🔥🔥🔥
Flames climbed instantly.
He kicked the training dummies into the fire 🦵🔥. Snapped the iron weapon rack 💥. Flipped the stone weights carved with sacred symbols 🗿.
"Let the snow bury your lies," he snarled.
"This ground taught me strength. You taught me betrayal."
An elder finally shouted, desperate 😫:
"King, stop! You shame the village!"
King spun on him ⚡.
"The village shamed itself when it chose weakness over worth."
His words struck like ice spears 🧊🗡️.
Fear.
Awe.
Sorrow.
All of it mixed in the villagers' eyes 👀.
And King—furious, wounded, unstoppable 🔥—walked away again, leaving flames behind him like scars on the village's soul 🔥❄️.
King wandered through the frozen wilderness for two days ❄️🌫️.
Two days of cursing every step, every rock, every memory of the village 😤. Snow hissed beneath his boots, as if trying to calm him, but nothing cooled the fire raging inside his chest 🔥🖤.
"Stupid village," he muttered.
"Stupid priest.
Stupid god with broken taste."
He kicked stones 🪨.
Kicked logs 🌲.
Kicked anything foolish enough to exist.
On the second day, while stomping through a narrow ice pass 🏔️❄️, he heard screams.
Steel clashing ⚔️.
Horses crying 🐎😱.
A carriage under attack 🚨.
Bandits surrounded a large, decorated wagon 🎭. Soldiers lay wounded in the snow, blood staining the frost 🩸❄️. The bandits laughed as they closed in.
King's eye twitched 😠.
"Finally," he muttered.
"Something I can hit."
He cracked his knuckles 👊 and charged.
No warning.
No battle cry.
Just violence.
He smashed the first bandit's face into a tree 🌲💥, shaking snow loose. Another swung a sword; King blocked it with his shield 🛡️ and shattered the man's arm with a single elbow ☠️. He grabbed two by the heads and slammed them together 💥💥 until they dropped.
When it ended, the snow looked like a butcher's field 🩸❄️. The surviving bandits ran without shame 🏃♂️💨.
The injured soldiers stared at him, frozen in shock 😶.
Then the carriage door creaked open 🚪.
A fat, overdressed teenage girl stepped out 👑. Jewels glittered 💎, furs draped her shoulders, her nose tilted toward the sky.
"You lowborn brute!" she shouted 😡.
"I am the Chosen Hero of the West Kingdom! I came to meet the North's Hero!"
King blinked 😐.
A vein pulsed on his forehead.
"There is no North Hero," he said coldly.
"Only a mistake wearing skin."
The girl puffed out her chest. "How dare you! A wild orphan like you must kneel!"
King raised his axe 🪓.
Not at her.
At the carriage.
He sliced through the wheel 💥, kicked the door off 🚪💨, and tore the banners apart. The carriage collapsed like a dying beast 🐗🔥.
"STOP!" the girl shrieked 😱.
"MY CARRIAGE!"
King walked past her without a glance 🚶♂️.
A sharp voice cut through the air.
"You donkey-brained giant!" 😤
"How dare you touch our royal carriage!"
A fourteen-year-old girl stepped forward. Slim. Sharp-eyed 👀. Hair tied tight.
Ember. The West Hero's younger sister 🔥.
King turned.
"Oh good," he said dryly 😒.
"Another voice to annoy me."
She reached for her dagger—
Too slow.
King moved.
She was fast.
King was a mountain 🗻.
He grabbed her, tied her hands and legs with rope from the wreckage 🪢, slung her over his shoulder like a sack of flour, and started walking 🚶♂️.
Guards rushed him ⚔️.
He knocked them aside with lazy swings, tossing them into the snow like debris ❄️💥.
"PUT MY SISTER DOWN!" the fat hero screamed 😭😡.
"KILL HIM!"
King stopped.
Looked at her.
Then shoved her.
She rolled through the snow like a giant snowball ⛄, jewels scattering everywhere 💎💥.
From his back, Ember screamed, kicking wildly 😡:
"You monster! Release me!"
King laughed loudly 😂.
"Finally someone who understands!"
He kept walking, Ember tied and struggling on his back.
"HEY!" he shouted mockingly 📢.
"WHAT HAPPENED TO THE HERO NOW?"
The fat hero collapsed, sobbing 😭, rage and helplessness twisting her face. She grabbed her last conscious soldier.
"Back… to the North Village," she cried.
"Tell them… a demon kidnapped the Hero's sister."
The soldier fled 🐎💨.
His description was simple.
"A giant… with an axe… a shield…
and the anger of ten thousand storms."
And so King, the unchosen, became something new.
A terror walking the wilderness 🌪️❄️.
A breaker of villages 🔥.
A kidnapper of a hero's sister ☠️.
And the storm was only beginning.