The sky was weeping.
Dark clouds hung low, heavy with the weight of sorrow and fury. The setting sun tried to pierce through, bleeding its golden light through the storm like a dying warrior gasping one last breath. Crimson and orange mingled with the gray clouds, painting the heavens in a maddened hue. Thunder rumbled like the voice of a grieving god, and the wind carried the scent of blood—thick, iron-rich, unforgettable.
He stood alone.
A burly man, tall as a mountain and just as unyielding. His chest, wide and scarred, rose and fell slowly beneath the blood-soaked fabric clinging to it. His shoulders were broad, like gates of war themselves, and his arms bulged with strength forged through battle, pain, and rage.
His beard was wild—uneven, thick, untamed—falling down like twisted roots of a black tree that had seen centuries of war. Some strands were burned at the tips, others matted with dried blood. His long black hair fluttered in the angry wind, stuck to his face in places, streaked with ash and sweat. His eyes were sharp and dangerous, not like a beast's, but something worse. Something that had lost everything and had nothing left but vengeance.
Behind him... was silence.
But not the peaceful kind. It was the silence after madness. The silence after death had done its work and left no one to scream. The battlefield stretched for miles behind him, a graveyard of warriors, horses, and broken weapons. No banners stood, no voices shouted. Only bodies—piled, scattered, twisted.
The ground was scorched. Flames danced on shattered wagons. Broken wheels spun slowly, crackling, the last cries of fallen chariots. Smoke rose like ghosts. The smell of burning flesh choked the air, mixing with the reek of blood and steel. Crows circled high above, crying like they mourned, or perhaps laughed at, the carnage below.
And there, amidst it all, stood the man.
In his hand, he held a massive axe—taller than a man, wider than a door. Its blade shimmered faintly, divine light flickering under layers of blood. Not his own. None of it was his. The axe was heavy, too heavy for a normal man to lift, but he held it as if it were a part of him. The edge dripped, red, steady.
He was not tired. Not in the way normal people get tired. His chest did not heave. His legs did not shake. But inside him, a fire burned, unquenchable. His rage gave him strength beyond limits, a storm with no end.
And in front of him—blocking his path, standing tall like a mountain himself—was another figure.
Not man. Not beast. Something... higher.
Clad in robes that seemed woven from light and storm, the figure glowed faintly. His face was partly hidden beneath a hood, but two eyes blazed through the shadow—calm, ancient, and judging. His presence bent the air around him, like even the world didn't know how to shape itself near him.
The mighty figure looked at the man, not with fear or anger, but with something else. Something cold. Something that asked: Why?
But the man didn't flinch. Didn't bow. Didn't speak with respect.
Instead, he growled.
"I will do it all again."
His voice was low. Deep. A sound like rocks grinding beneath a mountain's weight. It was not just a statement. It was a promise.
"I will kill every last one of them again. Burn their homes. Shatter their bones. Drink from the rivers of their blood."
The wind howled around them, stirring ash and embers. Somewhere in the distance, a piece of armor clattered as it fell from a corpse. The sky crackled, a bolt of lightning flashing across the horizon—but it struck nothing. It only screamed.
"I don't care if I have to go through you," the man growled, raising his chin toward the figure. "Even if you're a god."
There was no kindness in his eyes. No mercy. No guilt. The weight of thousands of deaths rested on his shoulders, and he carried it like armor. Like pride.
"I warned them," he said, almost whispering now. "I begged. I wept. I knelt. I gave everything I had to protect what mattered to me. And they... they took it anyway."
His grip on the axe tightened. His knuckles went white under the blood.
"So I took everything from them."
The divine figure said nothing. Still as stone, as if waiting.
"I am not the hero," the man said, stepping forward, crushing bones under his boots. "I am the punishment."
Birds didn't sing here anymore. Even the sky held its breath.
The figure raised a hand, not in attack, but as if to halt him. To warn him. To remind him of the path ahead.
The man sneered.
"Get out of my way," he spat, voice edged with fury. "Or I'll cut you down too."
The air trembled with the words. Not empty threats, but a will forged from fury so deep it burned hotter than the sun.
He was no longer a man. Not truly.
He was wrath given form. The fury of the heavens turned into flesh. He had lost all empathy, all softness, all care. He had become something else. Something unstoppable.
His name was once sung with joy. Now, it was whispered with fear.
As he walked toward the figure, step by step, the sky cried louder, and the ground beneath his feet cracked.