The sun was setting on the hills outside of Machus City, casting a red glow over the rugged terrain, and Kent was running.

His feet pounding the earth, his breath coming in ragged gasps, the man knew that this was the end. Nothing was truer in that moment. Not the gathering chill against his sweat, nor the barren earth under his boots. This inescapable fate was a cloud of dread, and it had him in its snare.

Though he couldn’t see his pursuer, the cold grip of a hunter’s cowl bled into his heart. A predator. The thing giving chase, and it was a thing, would succeed. It would wrench him into whichever hell was waiting for him on the other side of the fog and he’d be gone. There’d be no memories of Kent. He left his mark on none and his reward was to be forgotten.

Beside him was a woman, a warrior. She was a companion, but not a friend. Yet they were as lovers in their flight from this shadow. Both being pursued. Both doomed as prey. She did not fear in the same way as Kent. He was prone to it. She was tempered. Formed of the same steel and discipline as all who wore the helm of the Pentknight. But she could see the terror in her companion’s eyes. She could see the way his hands shook, the way he kept looking over his shoulder. For him, fate was decided. For her it was to be defied.

“We must fight,” she’d demanded. “It is the only thing that will carry us out of this. You have your Arcana. Use it. We will locate this monster and vanquish it together.”

But her words didn’t reach the elf. His fluted ears were deaf to all but his own beating heart. His useless reach of an escape. The Pentknight had seen the massacre this path followed. It was the same as Zela. Her body not yet cold but wreathed in blackened curses. Eyes still skyward watching silent gods leer back. Zela was the best of their three, and Zela was dead.

The Pentknight knew as Kent did that this beast would reach them. She knew fleeing was the quickest path back to burn upon the family pyre. She did not want to burn yet. There was life left. No longer behind her, but forward. The life she left glimmered on that pyre already. She allowed for nothing else. She’d beg the stars for mercy if she thought they might place pity on her. A bleak twisted thing such as she was. They were cruel. But they were sometimes full of mercy.

Kent cried out as something bit his leg above the ankle. He stumbled and fell to the hard earth, hurt. Though he knew the grip of death would pain him more. Grasping, Kent saw the wound. Saw the bolt. Black as pitch and filled with living death. Poison. The Arcana it held crept from the bolt to the wound to the flesh, and he shrieked. He wept. He wept as he’d not wept since childhood. He was sure now. Death was here. Death lived here in this dying sunset. A colder sunset than he’d ever remembered. It would take him, and he’d leave behind nothing. Nothing but the fear, and the twilight that would bury him.

As Kent lay on the ground, the Pentknight grew angry.

“Get up,” she pleaded. Commanded. “Stand or we will die. We cannot—”

But her neck was struck by another bolt and she fell beside him, dead.

Kent tried to stand. He tried to escape the inescapable, but his sudden bravery was no good. The moment he rose was the moment he fell. He was down again, chains encasing his body and dragging him to meet the earth once more. Chains like glowing coals of emerald, as unyielding as death.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

The hunter’s shadow loomed and the shape it contained belonged to a man. The hunter prowled from hiding, his shroud that of cloak over leather. A hat with a wide brim. Kent saw from the dirt that death carried a crossbow, longer than a man and cruel as the tomb.

“Thought I'd had a new start when I first came to this world,” death said. His voice was soft, quiet. But he was also death, and death’s voice is hard as iron. “Left this sort o’ thing in that memory. But some folks can't leave well-enough alone, can they?

“Please,” begged Kent, chained by the Spell and unable to do more than plead for forgiveness. “Spare my life. I haven’t killed. I’ve never killed anyone!”

“No,” said death. “You might not’ve dragged the blade, but you find them what are wanted for killin,’ don’t you? You’re a beacon for slayers, and that ain’t somethin’ to abide. You kill like a coward.”

Kent’s cries were for himself. For mercy. For salvation. But to death, they were the cries of one who’d taken that which he’d loved. For longer than Kent had years to his life. Family. The only ones who he could call such in this place.

How precious were those that gave life to death. And how unfortunate were those who took them away.

“Where’s the one what calls himself the Yeska?” Death was calm, but impatient. “Lead me to him.”

Kent, the skies opening for a moment, grasped hope.

“I don’t know where the Yeska is. Even I’m unable to locate him, though I have tried. B-but!”

The raised crossbow had hurried his tongue.

“I know where his second is!” Kent said. “Tarnen is his name! Let me live and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know! I promise!”

The hunter, death, unreadable in his raiment, shrugged.

“No. No, I don’t think that’s how this wrangles out. Seems that you tellin’ me where this second of yours is…Well. That’s your only trail. Coward.”

Eyes glimmering, Kent bent to his nature.

“Larith,” he said. “At the temple.”

Kent cried out, feeling death’s wrath crawling toward his chest now, his legs long abandoned to the poison.

“Please!” Kent said. “I’ve---”

“Which temple?”

“The Temple of the Sovereign! Please! Help me!”

Death observed his prey, unmoving. Then the emerald chains dispersed, and Kent cried out now in earnest celebration. Though it was premature.

Death, the hunter, stalked away from Kent, the man lying blackened still. The venom riddling him with pain, his eyes confused.

“The poison!” Kent demanded. “Please! Cure me, I told you what I knew!”

Death paused, his eyes watching only the horizon and the last flickering ribbon of red sunlight.

“That poison is Arcane, coward. Concocted by Bahlgus hisself with a promise of its potency. Ain’t nothin,’ to be done of it. You was dead afore you hit the ground.”

Kent continued, unearthing more. Telling death the whereabouts of any who might interest him in sparing the elf’s life. Death’s silence was the second gift given to Kent. But that was the last of what he gave.

The shrouded man left him.

Kent wailed and wept until he couldn’t. Left only with his thoughts and the coil of the nearby woman. And when he gasped, he feared each broken breath. He counted them, and saw the dim encroach. As long he could count his breaths, he knew he was still able to overcome this. To survive.

But the wind blew cold, the sky grew dark, and Kent was dead.

The shrouded man walked away, the sunset gone above the glowing sapphire of distant Machus City. Larith was a name he knew, if not hardly. Yet still. There was one more task before Larith. There were locations that he listened to from the death rattle. Ones that gave him a faint light.

Death could not hope. But he was no longer death today. He was only the shrouded hunter, and to him, hope was a friend. But his work was done. He’d returned to familiar ground, but it was a grim, wretched thing. A melody he’d thought long gone, now in reprise. No longer a dirge, but neither was it a thing of beauty. Changed. Perhaps, thought the hunter. Perhaps it was welcome.

And so, he made for his next quarry, and he carried with him names he’d wanted never again. But the mantle of a man as he couldn’t be unhooded so easily. He knew he would be death again. But not tonight. And not for many nights yet. So he remained the hunter. He remained the shadow and the shrouded man.

He remained Vengeful.