When the blade sank in his chest, he thought of his late wife.

The woman that he loved since he was a young boy, the same woman who betrayed him. The woman that he killed.

He staggered, eyes bloodshot as he looked at the sharp dagger which rotated on its own as it sank deeper and deeper into his flesh. A cursed weapon, he thought as he pulled the blade out without flinching.

Blood almost immediately gushed from his wound, its rustic smell assaulted his senses. However, it did not take too long for his flesh to start healing—it always heals. Stabbing him was useless, he thought. The dark red smoke seeping from the cracks on the wooden handle of the knife in his hand caught his attention, it trembled under his gaze.

Thaddeus smirked as he tightened his grip around the weapon. "You dared to stab me." He lifted his gaze, eyeing the young man who stood a few feet away from him.

The younger man stared at him, saying nothing. His once kind eyes were now replaced with a steely, cold gaze that bored through Thaddeus harder than any knives ever did. "Do you remember me?" the man asked. "Five years ago…"

"I killed your parents," Thaddeus interrupted him. Smiling, he walked towards his throne, his footsteps echoed behind him. "They had become demons." Memories of what happened five years ago swirled in his mind. He remembered their rotting flesh, their red eyes and saliva that flowed out of their mouths as they stared at him. He thought of the young boy who stood at the corner, watching him slash their throats, dissolving them into nothing.

"You knew…" For a few seconds, he thought he saw a confusion in the younger man's eyes. The confusion was quickly replaced with anger. "They were not demons!" the young man snarled. Thaddeus nodded in response. He sat on the bones that were used to create his throne.

"They were possessed by their cursed weapons," he said and eyed his disciple. "Just like you are."

"They weren't!" the young man insisted. His hands slowly balled into fists as he added, "You are no hero! You are a murderer!"

"People have called me both." Thaddeus' exhausted eyes shifted towards the pulpits that lined his walls. Each one of them had the helmets and shields of his comrades—the fallen ones. He gave a smile that didn't reach his eyes. They were dead. His friends, his warriors, the people who accompanied him on this pointless journey. "But I prefer to be called the mistake. The Useless Chosen One." The savior who always failed to save the ones that he loved. The hero who saved a thousand, yet let the other thousand died. The useless chosen one.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

"You? The Chosen one? Have you forgotten how you conquered and enslaved nations upon the nations of demons? How you burned and murdered people? You are no chosen one! You are nothing but a murderer!"

"I am." He sighed, his aged voice trembled. "I am indeed a murderer." He had long given up on the people who betrayed him and his friends. He had long accepted the fact that he, the one who fought the surge of demons for humanity, was betrayed by the very same people that he saved. He had been called a murderer and a traitor, a rapist and a conqueror. But one thing had been certain, he was the sovereign—the most powerful existence in the Mortal Realm.

"But this has nothing to do with the fact that you, my disciple, wanted to kill me." Thaddeus could feel the young man's hatred towards him since they met. "Please feel free to try."

The Young man frowned. "You scoundrel!"

"I raised you, knowing you would betray me one day. And yet you call me a scoundrel."

Pursing his lips, another dagger appeared in the younger man's hands. Its blade glimmered against the candle lights that were placed on the walls. "You knew that I would betray you and yet you— "

"I told you, for killing me, you have to become like me. A demon." Thaddeus smiled as he watched the hesitation in the younger man's eyes. "To kill me, you need the weapon to own your soul." Killing a person and getting deemed as the chosen one was not an easy feat. "I may have turned my back to humanity. I may be a traitor. But that does not affect the fact that I am the only human who can summon dragons, the strongest in our race." There was not a hint of pride in his voice. He always knew a day like this would come. For a long time, he had anticipated this. Finally, dying in the hands of the person that he saved.

Wasn't that ironic? He chortled. In this journey, the only thing that accompanied him until this day was irony. The painful sarcasm of living a life like his. "Let him consume your soul," he ordered. "Then… come at me." It was an order.

The thick silence was soon broken by the man's agonizing scream. Thaddeus squinted his eyes at the dark red light that covered the young man's body. With his hands around his head, the young man fell to his knees with a loud thud, screaming.

A smile broke through Thaddeus' face. Soon… the demon would consume the young man's soul. Soon… the body in front of him would have enough dark elements to kill him. Thaddeus closed his eyes as the screams of the young man continued to echo inside his palace, inside his home.

Soon… death would finally take him away from the misery that he was forced to live in the last three hundred years of his life. Soon…