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A skeleton man from a long forgotten land, weary and sad, stood before the city gates. The hospitable villagers welcomed the stranger with warmth and kindness, they took him in with open arms.
But as soon as the outsider trespassed into the city, darkness engulfed the people. They screamed for help as shards of ice rained down from the sky, and sobbed as their gushing blood froze.
The stranger would not help the people, he would not move as calamity condemned the living. Even as they begged desperately for him to spare their loved ones, he would not.
But then flame split the blackened clouds, and charred away the frost. A beautiful man in a dusty white hood, held his blade to the sky.
He burned away the ice, he eased away the terror, and he slayed the still outsider. A savior brought down from the heavens, who melted the tempest away.
Revered was he who seared the dark, and chased away evil. The vagabond in a cloak however, was never known, his name lost forever in the wind.
“That isn’t the full story is it? An unknown stranger who brought disaster, slayed by a supposed messiah?”
“You’re right, it is not. The true story had been forsaken by the people and thus forgotten. But I am a storyteller, and I know stories from the depths of the void. I give you the choice little girl. Do you wish to stay satisfied with a beautifully fabricated lie? Or hear the detested ashes of the authentic thread?”
“I would like to know what really happened.”
“Very well, listen close.”
There once existed a boy, his past an engulfing shadow. A shadow that swallowed everything he had. Despite that however, he managed to make a friend. A friend whom he loved dearly, and who loved him in return. The years flew by, and the boy, turned adult was beloved by his city, beloved by everyone, but most of all, by his dearest friend.
Until he wasn’t. For upon a storming dusk, where the blood of his friend’s father watered the earth. His guilt became overwhelming, and he revealed to his friend the jagged chains that bound him. Hoping against hope that he held the keys. An agent planted in the prospering city, so that a land of sinners may suck it dry.
His single truth in an ocean of lies to the one he most loved, was met with a light. So blinding, so scorching. It seared the darkness away. It seared his flesh and turned his blood to ash. A burn. Down his entire torso. Half alive, his friend left, words of betrayal on his lips.
His tears rubbed salt into his wounds, and his blood was washed away by the rain. He died that night.
His body was found by a kind sister. She bandaged his scars and nursed him back to life. No one ever knew what happened, no one ever cared. He carried on as a beloved of the city, and his friend had vanished and left him in the ashes of his beautiful flame. Only to return a different person.
So they lived their separate lives. A knight shrouded in ice and darkness, who wore beautiful masks with painted-on cavalier smiles. And a nobleman who wielded sunlight and flame as a shield that rendered him unapproachable.
Two lives. Miserable lives filled with deception and misunderstanding. They passed without time. They lost all meaning.
“Is it done? This story is too different. There must be more.”
“There is. But it is not at all pleasant, and I strive for the joy of all my guests.”
“Let me hear it anyway.”
A day comes, where the knight’s past catches up to him. Prey can only run so far when bound in shackles and chains after all. A creature of the abyss, sent from a forgotten land of sinners, takes his unwilling body as host. The creature rains destruction down upon the city. And the screams of the civilians still ring loud in my ears.
But alas, the city triumphs in the end. For a nobleman with fiery hair slays the abyss. He slays an underweight boy who has nothing. He slays his most beloved.
But none see his tears, for they evaporate on his cheeks. None see the sinner’s horrified eyes or hear his pleading. None see their pain.
For history is written by the winners, and neither won that day.