A dozen eager cultists stood in a circle as they waited for the signal to begin. They had waited so long for the promised day, and to finally participate in the most sacred and apocalyptic sacrament was to be the highlight of their entire lives.

  Their short lives, blessed be.

  A layer of ash and soot blanketed everything in the ancient, ceremonial chamber, the altar, the floor, even the cultists themselves. The flickering wicks of a hundred black candles gave off the only light in the dark room. The leader of the ritual, one taller and gaunter than the rest, raised his hands and began to chant, his hollow voice echoing against the sooty stone walls.

  “Wear it. Bear it. Blackened brow,” he began the familiar incantation.

  The rest of the gathering responded with a well-practiced verse. “You are the fire. You are the now.”

  The leader continued, an ecstatic smile spreading across his face. “If you sleep, the world will ache.”

  Excitement thrummed through the blasphemous congregation. “If you wake, the world will break,” they recited. Then, together, master and servants, they finished the necrotic hymn.

  “Nothing improves. Nothing heals.

  This is how the ending feels.

  We have come and we will stay.

  Do it again. Again. Again.”

  The final word faded with a whisper. The chant did not call him. It continued him.

  Kneeling voices dragged the words through the ash like a plow that never reached soil. Malachar felt the ritual settle over him the way it always did: not as heat, not as pain, but as weight. A pressure behind the eyes. A crown-shaped absence pressing down.

  Nothing improves. Nothing heals.

  Yes, he thought. Correct. The truth of it was almost comforting. Nothing was expected to get better. No surprises. No false dawns. This land was a wound that had learned how to stay open.

  The cult spoke again, slower now, as if afraid of rushing the end.

  This is how the ending feels.

  Malachar remembered other endings. Cities collapsing inward like lungs. Fields burning like personal hells of their own. Heroes shouting their final lines with such conviction it had almost felt rude to kill them. Those endings had been sharp. Clean. This one was… granular. Ash between the teeth. Time measured in repetition.

  From the ash, his body returned to him. It swirled and whirled until some outside force willed it into the appropriate shape. Standing nearly seven feet tall, Malachar the Ash King wore a heavy spiked helmet-crown forged from the blackest metal dredged from the deepest, most ragged scar gouged into the earth. Equally sharp pauldrons sat across his broad shoulders and a cape flowed down his back with the color of the deepest ink. His hands were gauntleted malice, his feet were heavy boots of dread. He blinked his smoldering eyes and took stock of where he was.

  He stood where he always stood. The ground beneath him was blackened bedrock, fused by old fires. It had been trampled flat by centuries of kneeling. Nothing grew here. That was the point.

  We have come and we will stay.

  Of course they would. They always did. The faithful outlived the faithful. The chant had outlasted its authors. Some of the words were mispronounced now, syllables rounded off by mouths that had never known a world without him. The magic did not care. It recognized intent, not accuracy.

  Do it again. Again. Again.

  The power stirred—not rising, not flaring, but circulating, like embers raked back into place. Maintenance, not miracle. He felt himself align with the old shape of things: the war that never quite ended, the fear that never quite worked.

  Someone in the circle wept. Quietly. They always did. Then, suddenly, every cultist in the circle except the leader drove a ceremonial dagger into their hearts. They fell to the floor, their life blood gushing from their bodies with each weakening heartbeat, and as they died, each one had a smile on their face.

  It was right. It was proper. It was expected.

  Malachar did not look down at them. He knew their faces already. Knew their children’s names. Knew which ones would die first when the next hero arrived. The chant ended the way it always had. Not with silence but with the understanding that it would be said again.

  Malachar remained standing in the ash, crown heavy, world intact.

  For now.

  After long minutes, the leader of the cult dared to step forward. “My lord, you have returned to us. Praise be to the End.”

  Malachar regarded him with a cold expression. The leader did not see it, did not see his already-tired face because his entire head was covered in that menacing, terrifying helmet. He knew his eyes burned with a hellish glare, though. They always burned like that, as if the nearly seven-foot-tall dark lord needed just a little more help appearing intimidating.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Though the chosen eleven lay dead at your feet, there are more supplicants further in your keep. We are here to serve. What is your command?” the leader asked. Malachar stared at him for a long moment. The lean, wiry man with sallow skin seemed like a vegetable that had been planted too early or too late in the season. His dark brown hair seemed carefully maintained and combed, as if he was concerned about appearances, but he carried himself like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

  “What is your name?” Malachar asked in his deep, sepulchral voice.

  The man sank into a deep bow. “I am Vorren, my liege. Vorren Shadowhand.”

  “Rise, Vorren Shadowhand.” The dark lord flicked his hand in a dismissive gesture. “How long has it been since my absence?”

  “Two hundred and seventeen years, my lord,” Vorren answered.

  Two hundred and seventeen years, Malachar thought. That was faster than normal. It normally takes at least a thousand years for me to return. Perhaps things are changing in my favor.

  “What is the state of the Ashlands?” he asked.

  Vorren gestured to the heavy metal doors that looked to be soldered shut. “Come and see, my lord.”

  Malachar followed the eager cult leader out the doors that opened easily when pressed in the correct location. They were assaulted by a forceful wind that stank of charred flesh, smoldering timber, and blackened pools of pitch. The blasted, ruined landscape spread before him, cracked and raw like a bloated, psoriatic corpse. Dead, twisted trees dotted the charnel field before him, acting as reminders of the beauty that had once been. A foreboding mountain range of jagged peaks stood off in the distance, providing a border to a land where nothing dared to grow.

  “Does it please you, my lord?” Vorren asked, his voice shaking.

  Malachar narrowed his eyes. “A “hero” rose up and slew me before I could finalize my grip on the world. Do you imagine that I am pleased?”

  The cult leader didn’t move, didn’t dare to breathe. He knew his doom was close.

  “And how are my subjects faring?” the dark lord asked, turning away from the terrified man.

  Vorren straightened his back to deliver his report with confidence. “As you can see, Bloodrot Keep fell to ruin after your demise. Your temporary demise,” he was quick to amend. “Your armies immediately disbanded and either turned to banditry or building new encampments.”

  “And what sort of encampments have they built?” Malachar asked, unconcerned about bandits. Bandits were each other's worst enemy, scavenging and pilfering from each other more than anything.

  “Oh, they crumble almost immediately," Vorren said. “They routinely experience famines and plagues, you see. A small town still stands, though. A couple of days’ ride away, just outside of the Ashlands. I believe it’s called Goldengrove.”

  “Goldengrove?” Malachar mused. The dark lord raised his gaze to the sky that was the color of a day-old bruise. “So there is a town founded by traitors and cowards,” he said in a tone Vorren couldn’t read.

  “Y…yes, but with your power, we could crush them easily!” Vorren said. “Goldengrove has no defenses to speak of! The raven spies have told us this.”

  Malachar took a deep breath before continuing. “And what do you know of the hero who ended my previous incarnation?”

  “He…he was a nobody,” Vorren said. “He was naught but a pissant!”

  The dark lord waited for his subordinate to collect himself. Vorren continued. “He was a peasant, one chosen by the so-called gods for his pure heart.”

  “It is how it always goes,” Malachar said. “I rise to power, but just before I can become the master of the world, a lucky little brat finds a way to ruin me. How many times has this happened?”

  Terror shot through Vorren. “I am not certain, my lord.”

  Malachar sighed, an eerily hollow sound coming from his metal helmet. “Of course not. No one knows. Has it always been thus? Have I always been doomed to die and be reborn only to die again?”

  Vorren hung his head. “I do not know, my lord. But your faithful remain. We will always remain to bring you back.”

  The words of the ritual echoed through Malachar’s mind. Nothing improves. Nothing heals. This is how the ending feels. Malachar watched the clouds the color of sickness drift by, finally releasing a gentle ashfall that blanketed the ground like snow.

  “My lord?” Vorren dared to speak. “What are your orders?”

  “My orders?” Malachar asked, coming back to the present moment. “Leave me.”

  “Leave you?” the cult leader asked.

  “Yes, Vorren. Take the others and leave my keep,” Malachar said. As if to emphasize his orders, a pool of bubbling pus pushed up through the lifeless soil and was quickly followed by a stream of blood. Malachar didn’t question it. He had seen worse in the Ashlands.

  “But…where should we go?” Vorren asked.

  Malachar pulled his helmet off of his head, letting his long black hair stream out behind him. It was shot with streaks of gray and anyone who hadn’t seen his magical resurrection would think he was a man in his early forties. But he seemed ageless. Ageless and so very, very tired. Scars crossed his ash-gray face, some ceremonial in their sharp, precise angles but others were messy, received on countless battlefronts. His recently-burning eyes now faded into a dim, beaten copper as he turned to look at Vorren.

  “I do not care. Return to wherever you came from,” Malachar said.

  Vorren flinched. “But you’ll call for us when you need us, won’t you?”

  The flames in Malachar’s eyes roared back to life. He pointed his hand at a nearby spot on the ground. The lifeless dirt shifted and then began to rise as a hideous, deformed creature that looked like it was made of spare parts that didn’t work anymore crawled from the mound. Immediately, Malachar made a fist and the newly-born monstrosity’s neck snapped. It spasmed and died as Vorren stared in horror.

  “Ask yourself what I could possibly need the likes of you for?” Malachar said. Though he had used his magic for sudden violence, his tone was flat, dead.

  Vorren, to his credit, bowed. The man knew self-preservation at the very least. “I will tell the others and we will be gone.”

  Malachar said nothing and only watched him retreat into Bloodrot Keep. It was formed from black stone, towering and terrifying, spikes and studs in all the right places. Chains, too. There were huge chains that hung like the most brutal of wall hangings. But, upon closer inspection, he saw that it wasn’t quite up to standards. The foundation was buckling in places, causing some sections of the front wall to crumble. The drawbridge hung from the main entrance at an awkward angle, like the interior chains holding it upright had become damaged. All the metal palisades were rusting away and the moat was starting to fill with the pus that he had seen leak from the ground. He would really have to do something about that.

  The dark lord looked around his lifeless kingdom and asked himself if he was ready to do it all over again. To raise a kingdom of darkness and domination only to have some blessed hero kill him and make him start over.

  As he was musing about all the renovations he would have to do, a mighty tremor rocked the entire keep. The drawbridge collapsed into the moat which now ran red with blood.

  Malachar ran his hand through hair. Not even a surprise blood-moat could improve his mood.