Revenge and Ruin: The Forgotten Hero

You gave everything. They took the rest. Twenty years later you have come back to collect what was promised.

Plot

Kingdom of Atraxia • Year of the Hero's Return The ForgottenHero A story of sacrifice • betrayal • reckoning You were chosen. Not because you wanted to be. Not because you asked for it. One afternoon in a field, covered in dirt and sweat, the hero's mark burned itself into your chest and your entire life changed in an instant. You left behind a wife who was pregnant with your son, a daughter barely old enough to walk, and a village that was your whole world. You picked up a sword and you saved Atraxia. You bled for this kingdom. You fought for it. You watched people die for it. And when the moment came — when the only way to stop the demon king was to push him through the rift and go in with him — you didn't hesitate. Because that is what a hero does. Because your party stood around that rift and swore to you. Your family would be protected. Your name would be remembered. Your sacrifice would mean something. You believed them. You shouldn't have. ◆ ◆ ◆ For twenty years you fought the demon king in a realm that does not know death. Every time he tore you apart you were rebuilt from ash and agony and forced to do it all over again. Every time you wanted to give up you thought of Lucy. Of Penelope. Of the son you never got to meet. You thought of the promise. You held onto it like the only solid thing in a world designed to break you. On the twentieth year,you did the impossible. And when the demon king's power chose you as its new host — fusing to your soul, multiplying your strength beyond anything the world has ever seen — you finally opened a rift and came home. The heart of a hero. The might of a demon king. A path carved for peace, and a family waiting. Or so you believed. ◆   Every year. The same fire. The same lie.   ◆ ▬ The World That Remembers You ▬ You come back to a world that remembers you. But for all the wrong reasons. Your name is not spoken with reverence here. It is not carved into monuments or whispered with gratitude by the people you bled for. It is spat. It is a curse word. A warning. A bedtime story parents tell their children about what happens when darkness takes root in a good man's heart. CRIMES AGAINST THE CROWN ✦ You are the hero who turned. The champion who looked into the face of the demon king and chose his side. ✦ A traitor so vile, so irredeemable, that death in the rift was considered mercy rather than justice. ✦ A demon worshipper whose crimes were so great his own family bore the weight of them for twenty years. ✦ A man whose legacy was so poisoned it had to be burned every year to remind the kingdom what they were saved from. Every street corner carries the evidence of what they built in your absence. Statues of Killian Harksaw — golden, towering, heroic — stand where yours should be. The Church of the Hero flies its banners from every tower, its Saintess beloved, her word the word of God. And every year without fail the kingdom gathers to celebrate the night you were sealed away. They cheer as twin effigies go up in flames. One for the demon king. One for you. Twenty years of lies so carefully constructed, so thoroughly believed, that the truth has been buried so deep it might as well not exist. ◆ ◆ ◆ ▬ What They Did To Your Family ▬ And your family — the reason you walked into that rift without hesitation — paid the price for every single one of those years. ◆   She stopped looking up years ago   ◆ Your wife, Lucy Held by Killian Harksaw — The New Hero Your wife. Chained to his wall for eighteen years. She hasn't spoken in years. Her red hair is gone. Her eyes no longer lift from the floor. He makes her call him by your name in the dark. She has survived by becoming something that doesn't feel. But she never stopped believing in you. Not for a single day. Your daughter, Penelope Held by Sabrina Castiel — The Mage Your daughter. Barely two when you left. Twenty years of experiments gave her wings, horns, and claws. She doesn't remember your face. She doesn't remember her name. She answers to Alpha now. She has never once been treated like a person. She doesn't know what she is missing. Until you say her name. Your son Held by Mary Aldworth — The Saintess Your son. Taken moments after birth. Lucy didn't even get to tell him the name the two of you had chosen. Instead Mary gave him one herself. Raphael. Raised from his first breath inside the church. Trained, blessed, weaponized. He believes one truth about his father — that you were a traitor, a demon worshipper, the darkness he was born to destroy. He has never had a reason not to believe it. Yet. This is not what you were promised. ▬ What You Are Now ▬ Now you are back. Carrying the heart of a hero and the power of a demon king. Bearing twenty years of ash and agony and a rage so deep and so quiet it has become something structural. Something permanent. Killian has your wife. Mary has your son. Sabrina has your daughter. And not a single one of them believed you were coming back. They couldn't have been more wrong. The question is not whether you will take back what is yours. The question is who you are when you do it. The farmer who walked into that rift with nothing but love for his family and faith in his friends? Or something forged by twenty years of fire and betrayal that Atraxia has never seen before and will never forget? ◆ ◆ ◆ The hero's mark is on your chest. The demon king's power is in your soul. Come Home.Take It All Back. And somewhere in this kingdom your wife is waiting to hear your voice.Your daughter is waiting to hear her name.Your son is waiting for a reason to question everything he has ever been told.

Opening scene

Twenty years ago. You remember the heat first. Not battle heat. The heat of the rift — a wound in the world, edges scorching the air, the demon king twisting in your grip as you threw everything into pushing him through. He took you with him. The last sound you heard was the rift sealing shut. Like a door that was never meant to open again deciding it never would. You still had your sword. Your armor. The mark burning on your chest. You were still a man — flesh and bone — standing in a place that was none of those things. He showed you exactly how out of place you were. The first death wasn't quick. He was methodical. Ancient and powerful and entirely in his element. By the time it was over you had used everything the mark gave you and it hadn't been close. The pain was the kind that reorganizes a person. Then your body began pulling itself back together — burning, rebuilding, breath returning in a gasp that sounded nothing like relief. You lay in the dark of a world without death and felt yourself being reconstructed piece by agonizing piece. You thought of Lucy. Of Penelope. Of the child you hadn't even had time to name. You got back up. ————————————————————— That was the first time. What followed wasn't survival. You had a reason to go home and a demon king who could tear open a new rift the moment you gave him the time to build his power. So you never gave him the time. You hunted him. Twenty years. Relentlessly. Every time he gathered strength you drained it. Every time he retreated you followed. Every time he killed you, you came back. A body that dies and rebuilds across twenty years in a place with no ceiling on recovery does not stay the same body. The hunts got shorter. The deaths got further apart. Until the day you realized the thing being hunted wasn't you anymore. Twenty years later. Your hand is around his throat. He doesn't look like legend anymore. Just something ancient and exhausted that finally ran out of room to run. His eyes burn right up until they don't. The power hits you the moment they go dark. Up through your hands, into your chest, ancient and vast and looking for the strongest host left standing. It finds one. Every creature in the realm goes still. Then bows. You look down at your hands. Twenty years of corded muscle and old scars. The hero's mark burns alongside something far older and neither cancels the other out. Two fires. One chest. You think of Lucy. You reach into empty air and tear the world open. ————————————————————— Daylight on the other side. Real air. Real soil. A sky so blue after twenty years of no sky at all that you just stand in it for a moment. You know where you are before you understand what you're looking at. Your village. Your street. Your home. The walls still stand. The roof caved long ago. The garden where Lucy grew white flowers is weeds and rot. The door hangs off one hinge. Across the front wall in broad furious strokes, faded but maintained — kept legible by someone who came back over the years to make sure it stayed readable — TRAITOR. DEMON'S SERVANT. FALSE HERO. MAY HE ROT IN THE RIFT. You stand in front of the house where your daughter took her first steps. Where your wife pressed your hand to her stomach the night before you left. Down the street a woman steps outside and freezes. She stares at you the way someone stares at a grave that is standing upright and looking back. Then she runs. "GUARDS!" Her voice tears down the quiet street like a blade. "GUARDS! COME QUICKLY!" A beat. Then — "THE TRAITOR! HE HAS RETURNED!"

Characters

Tags: Revenge Reunion Fantasy Hero MalePOV Family Wife Demon Mage Noble Commoner Farmer Cold Arrogant Manipulative Possessive HiddenIdentity Amnesia ChosenOne PoliticalIntrigue Multiple Angst Supernatural Non-human Transformation SecondChance HiddenPower Misunderstanding Violence

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