Salvatore Silvers
~~~
The cultist dangled from Salvatore's grip like a broken puppet, boots scraping uselessly at rubble. Blood ran from the man's mouth, staining his teeth crimson. Around them, the outpost burned, all its walls collapsed, and flames devoured the rest.
"Tell me where your headquarters are. Filth spawn." Salvatore said coldly. He knew asking these fanatics was a waste of time, but if Lady Fortuna shines on him, he may get a hint.
The cultist's lips peeled back in a bloodied grin. His eyes held the glazed fervor of a man ready to burn it all. "All returns to dark, Blind fool."
Salvatore's hand tightened, and the cultist's head burst like overripe fruit, bone and brain matter spraying out. The body went limp, and Salvatore let it drop, watching it crumple at his feet.
“Tch.” His tongue clicked against his teeth as he looked at the body and the outpost.
The young boy who had taken their service, Jin Winters, his voice echoed in his memory. "Loot and lay waste to any outpost you cross. Leave nothing they can use."
Salvatore waved his hand, and the corpse at his feet disappeared into his spatial ring. And Salvatore let out a low grunt.
He looked down at his hands.
Calloused and scarred but still strong despite everything stolen from him. They trembled slightly, a tremor he couldn't quite suppress. He clenched them into fists until the shaking stopped, then let out a breath that carried years of exhaustion.
One day… It’s been twenty-six hours since he'd separated from the group and had reduced six outposts to ruin.
He would've destroyed more if he'd had access to his essence, but most of his strength had burned away twelve years ago, along with everything else.
Now just his daughter remained, and if it weren’t for her, he would’ve never agreed to Jin’s schemes. That girl deserved all the things in the world. That was what he owed her daughter after his wife died because of his glory.
Salvatore sighed.
That boy was playing dangerous games… quest, and untold knowledge, Salvatore knew chaos would never leave him. He just hoped Reyana didn’t get too attached.
Looking back at the ruined outpost with annoyed expressions, they braced themselves for what came next.
Killing wasn't the difficult part for Salvatore. He was a warrior. Even with his essence channels shattered beyond repair, even with his Mantle heart ripped out, he could still end the lives of anyone standing before him, even if that person was a lord ranker.
What hurt was the loss of convenience.
He couldn’t just collect loot with random sweeping gestures. No spatial manipulation to sort through wreckage. No essence-sight to pierce illusions or scan for hidden chambers. Everything had to be done manually, with flesh and bone and time, like he was mortal again. Like he'd never transcended those limits in the first place.
“Let’s just get this over with.” Salvatore relented after a brief struggle to leave the site and move on.
So, he moved methodically through the ruins, taking his time. Drinking when his throat burned from channeling life force. Looting everything worth taking and destroying everything else.
His spatial ring and all of his gear were specially configured, modified at ruinous expense to operate on life force instead of essence.
“That does make them cursed artifacts.” Salvatore let out a dry chuckle. Cursed or not, they worked. But every activation cost him minutes, hours, days from an already shortened lifespan.
He used it anyway. Apart from his daughter, there wasn’t anything to live for.
Salvatore settled into a nice folding chair. He pulled an ornate flask from his ring and took a long pull. Eleven Ambrosia burned down his throat, sweet and fierce. The alcohol soothed his ruined channels like cool water on burned skin.
The drink helped. Not much. Just enough to keep him functional.
He stared into the distance, eyes narrowing on something kilometers away that most wouldn't see. To civilians, to common hunters, even to most Lords, the horizon would look empty. But Salvatore's senses had been honed by his decades of dedication to the martial path. Those senses hadn't degraded with his power, and distance was just a number.
There… something like a platform in the sky. One dark as a void torn in reality. The other burned crimson, edges writhing with spatial distortions that hurt to look at directly.
“Joe,” Salvatore shook his head. “What madness are you pulling now? I just hope you haven’t put Reyana at death’s door.”
The red one was Joe’s bounded domain. He knew, and also knew if he was forced to reveal and push for a domain, situations were not good.
He focused and found that both Joe and the kids were fighting something substantial. Salvatore's jaw tightened, every instinct screaming at him to move, to run, to get there before something went wrong.
But he forced himself still. Forced his breathing to steady. Forced his hand not to crush the flask it held.
‘They all grow, Sal, but if you shield them from the world, what would they do if we are no more?’
He remembered Galadriel's words, his wife, and calmed down.
Joe was there… that red-eyed bastard, the fight was already won. Might take time. Might get messy. But won.
"Trust the crew," The boy… Jin had also said before they'd split up. "Trust me. We've got this."
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Salvatore took another long drink, the ambrosia dulling edges that never quite stopped cutting.
That kid fought like someone who knew exactly what death looked like and refused to meet it again.
Salvatore understood that, and that was the only reason apart from the promise to help Reyana.
He raised the flask for another swing when his body went still. Just... still. The way a predator goes motionless when spotting something that doesn't belong in its territory.
An old man sat beside him. Just there suddenly, like he'd always been sitting on that rubble. Grey hair fell past his shoulders, merging with a beard that flowed down his chest in perfect, unnatural symmetry. White robes hung loose on a frame too thin and pale skin.
Salvatore's eyes narrowed for exactly one heartbeat. Recognition hit him like a hammer, cold and absolute. His hand tightened on the flask hard enough that the metal groaned. Every muscle in his body locked down on the rage that wanted to explode outward in violence that would level what remained of the outpost.
He forced and locked it down.
When Salvatore turned back to watch the distant battle, his voice came out flat. "Revenant."
"Star Killer." The old man's voice carried the cadence of an older time. "How pleasant to find thee in such... industrious spirits. Thy work this day hath been most thorough."
Salvatore took another drink. The ambrosia burned less going down this time. "You here to complain about property damage?"
"Complain?" A dry chuckle rattled in the old man's chest. "Nay. I come merely to observe. To witness. To mark the passage of one who once bestrode this world like a colossus, now reduced to such mortal toils."
"Get to the point, Bloody cockroach." Salvatore kept his gaze fixed on the horizon. "I'm busy."
The Hierarch shifted, robes rustling with a sound like wings on stone. When Salvatore glanced over, he immediately wished he hadn't. Malachar's eyes were voids in his skull—not black, but absent, like someone had carved out the space where eyes should be and left nothing but holes that absorbed light without reflecting anything back.
Looking into those eyes felt like falling. Like watching sanity drain away through cracks in reality that shouldn't exist. Black tears started forming at the corners of Salvatore's vision, his mind beginning to unravel at the edges from exposure.
Salvatore snarled, and the effect shattered, dissipating like smoke in the wind.
Malachar's lips curved in something approximating a smile. "Ah. Nothing seems to faze thee, Star Killer. Even now, even diminished, thy spirit burneth bright as ever."
"I've survived worse than a cheap parlor trick." Salvatore took another drink. "Say what you came to say."
"Very well." Malachar settled more comfortably on the rubble. His bare feet, pale as corpse-flesh left too long in water, rested on stone without seeming to touch it. "I would speak of legacy. Of choices made and prices paid. Of what remains when all hath been stripped away."
"You want to talk about my past?" Salvatore's voice carried no inflection. "That's rich, coming from something like you."
"Dost thou remember?" Malachar asked. "That glorious day twelve years hence, when the Star Killer earned his name in truth? When all the great powers banded together in recognition that thou could not be suffered to exist unfettered?"
Salvatore said nothing. His hand found the flask again.
"Two Overlords fell to thy blade that day." Malachar continued, his voice taking on the quality of recitation, like recounting scripture. "Five Lords reduced to ash and memory. Fourteen Underlords scattered like chaff before the wind. And thy beloved wife, struck down by cowards who thought to use her as leverage against thy wrath."
The flask crumpled in Salvatore's grip. Ambrosia spilled across his hand, running between his fingers. He didn't seem to notice.
"They thought themselves righteous," Malachar said. "Thought themselves heroes, banding together to stop a tyrant. They knew not that in creating thee, in pushing thee past all reason and restraint, they had merely birthed something far more terrible."
"They wanted a monster." Salvatore's voice came out quiet. Deadly quiet. "I gave them one."
"Indeed. Thou didst sacrifice thy essence, thy channels, thy very Mantle to fuel vengeance absolute. The Everlasting Sun sang its final song that day, and the world shook with thy fury." Malachar's smile widened. "I was there, Star Killer. Hidden among the shadows. I watched thee burn away everything that made thee powerful, watched thee reduce thyself to this mortal shell, all to ensure that not one of thy enemies drew breath when the dust settled."
Salvatore drained what remained in the ruined flask. "You have a point, or are you just here to reminisce before I end this clone?"
"My point..." Malachar's head tilted at an angle that human necks shouldn't achieve. "...is that thou art spent. Hollowed. Thy legendary blade lies broken in some forgotten vault. Thy essence channels are shattered beyond all repair. Thy Mantle heart existeth only as dust scattered to the winds." He paused, savoring the words. "And yet here thou sittest, playing errand boy for children who know not the depths of thy sacrifice."
"Those children are keeping your cult from completing whatever nightmare you're cooking up in that cathedral." Salvatore met those void-like eyes without flinching. "Seems like time well spent."
"Rats in the walls." Malachar waved dismissively. "Opportunists feasting on scraps while the Great Work proceeds apace. They are... irrelevant."
"If they're so irrelevant, why are you here?"
Malachar's smile turned sharp. "Because I know thy daughter is among them."
The air went cold.
Salvatore's hand blurred.
His palm struck Malachar's neck. The Hierarch's head toppled from his shoulders, rolling across rubble with a sound like stone on stone. The body remained seated, robes undisturbed, as if losing one's head was a minor inconvenience rather than fatal.
A sigh emerged from the severed head as it came to rest against a chunk of concrete. The body stood, movements smooth and unhurried, and walked over to retrieve its missing piece. Pale hands picked up the head, placed it back on the neck with a wet sound that shouldn't have come from flesh, and everything knit together seamlessly.
"Filthy cockroach." Salvatore spat.
"Star Killer." Malachar brushed dust from his robes with disappointment. "Didst thou truly believe I would risk my corporeal form in thy presence? Diminished thou may be, but thy reputation precedeth thee still."
Darkness rippled outward from beneath Malachar's feet. Not shadow—something deeper, and twisted. The ruins groaned as reality bent around the Hierarch, stone cracking under pressure that came from angles that shouldn't exist.
Two shapes began to form. They rose from the inky darkness. The shapes took on humanoid forms, and his eyes were locked onto their faces...
The first was a woman with silver hair and three eyes, her skin covered in dark scales. One of the ears was missing, but the other was there.
A long, pointy ear.
But before he could form a thought, the second figure finished, and it was a massive figure clad in broken armor, with six massive arms the size of tree trunks, each holding a different weapon. A helm shaped like a roaring lion covering the face.
Salvatore gritted his teeth. He knew both of them, Elarzis the moon mage and Lord Commander Tharix of the Araxana Empire.
Both were once Overlord rankers. Seeing them, something clicked in Salvatore’s mind. Now he knew why Revenant was always present at the end of wars.
“Filthy Necromancer.” Salvatore spat on the ground.
"Behold my collection," Malachar said, spreading his arms like a showman presenting his life's work. "Each one is a legend in their own time. Each one brought low and remade into something far more useful than they ever were in life." His void-eyes fixed on Salvatore with a hunger that transcended the physical. "I would not mind adding the Star Killer to such august company. Imagine it—thy skill, thy experience, freed from the burden of conscience and mortality. Eternal service to the Great Work that shall usher in the new age."
Salvatore stood. His movements were calm. Controlled. He set down the flask with care, making sure it wouldn't tip over despite its damage. When he looked at Malachar, his face was empty of everything except the cold certainty of someone who'd decided how this ended.
"You're going to regret coming here," Salvatore said quietly. "Projection or not."
Malachar's smile widened until it split his face, showing too many teeth. "Am I? Thou possessest no blade. No essence. No power save that which burneth away thy remaining years with every passing moment." He gestured at the four abominations. "What canst thou possibly do against this?"
The corpse-puppets moved forward as one.
Salvatore rolled his shoulders.
"Let's find out."
~~~
A/N: Starkiller!!! Next chapter is something special!
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PS: Psst~ Psst~ Advanced chapters are already up on patreon, you can read upto one month ahead... It would be awesome if you guys, you know...
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You guys want me to do more POV chapters?
