Lastlight's Revenant #17

The sky was a bruise, purpling toward nightfall. Two days of searching. Two days of choked alleys and collapsed buildings, of soldiers whispering prayers as they kicked in the doors of places long abandoned.

Garran adjusted his grip on the torch, the flame casting jagged shadows across the crypt’s stairwell. Beside him, Tomas—the Tomas, the same wide-eyed soldier who’d told him of Edric’s poisoning and Sylrithiel’s eerie trance, the one who’d claimed Garran saved him twice—swallowed hard.

"You’re nervous," Garran observed, not unkindly.

Tomas’ knuckles whitened around his spear. "Just... never liked crypts, sir."

Garran almost smiled. The boy had held the line against siege beasts and winged horrors, but it was the dark and the dead that unsettled him. Fair enough.

Then they heard it.

A wet, skittering chitter from below. The sound of something sharp dragging against stone.

Tomas went rigid. "By the gods..."

Garran’s sword slid free without a sound. "Duskhound," he murmured. 

The torchlight spilled into the crypt’s lower chamber, revealing the creature at the far end of the narrow hall. It crouched before a rusted iron door, its spindly fingers scraping at the metal like a prisoner testing its bars.

At their approach, it whirled—spine-spear raised, lidless eyes flaring white in the gloom.

But it didn’t charge.

The hallway was too tight, the ceiling too low. A single misstep, and even its unnatural agility would mean nothing against a blade it couldn’t dodge.

Garran didn’t advance. Not yet.

"Steady," he said, more to Tomas than himself. "It’s cornered. That makes it desperate."

Tomas audibly gulped behind him.

"Whatever... whatever you say, sir..."

Garran kept his eyes locked on the duskhound. The creature’s spindly fingers flexed around its spine-spear, its lidless gaze flicking between them like a starving dog weighing its chances.

"No need to be afraid," Garran said, his voice low. "It's no different from the demons we butchered on the walls."

"That’s the thing, sir..." Tomas’ voice cracked. "I didn’t do much butchering." A shaky inhale. "Just... threw rocks. Filled quivers. Even at the church, I—" The admission came out in a rush. "I couldn’t swing my sword at them."

Garran hummed. That explained the jittering grip, the way the boy’s boots scuffed the stone as if ready to bolt.

"I’m truly ashamed," Tomas whispered.

The duskhound lunged.

Its spear stabbed for Garran’s ribs—a quick, vicious thrust. Garran twisted, slamming his blade against the shaft, pinning it to the wall. A stomp of his boot, and the barbed tip snapped off with a dry crack.

The demon recoiled, hissing. Garran didn’t pursue.

"Nothing to be ashamed of," he said, watching the duskhound skitter back. "Even the mightiest demon hunters among the Repentants once shook at the sight of Maw-spawn." He adjusted his grip, the torchlight catching the fresh notch in his steel. "There’s a cure for that. An initiation ritual, so to speak."

The duskhound crouched, its broken spear still clutched in clawed hands.

Tomas took a step back, his boots scraping against the crypt’s damp stone. "Y-You don’t expect me to kill it on my own, do you?"

Garran half-grinned, the torchlight carving shadows into the scars on his face. "Don’t be ridiculous, boy. That thing would tear you limb from limb."

 He shook his head, his gaze never leaving the duskhound. "People look at these things—see their hideous faces, their elongated limbs, hear the way they screech—and they lose hope. They fear demons because they don’t know how to bleed them. They don’t believe it’s possible."

He took a step forward.

The duskhound skittered back, its spine-spear trembling in its grip. Its hunched shoulders hit the iron door behind it with a dull clang.

Garran took another step. "The way we cure that," he said, his voice low, "is by proving it is possible."

This time, the demon didn’t retreat.

With a shriek that rattled dust from the ceiling, it lunged. Its spear—regrown, glistening with fresh ichor—stabbed toward Garran’s throat.

Garran moved.

Same deflection—steel crashing against bone, forcing the spear wide—but this time, he didn’t break the weapon. Instead, he reversed his grip mid-motion, both hands still locked around the hilt, and swung upward in a brutal arc.

The blade sheared through the duskhound’s arm at the elbow.

Black blood sprayed. The creature’s screech turned shrill, its remaining limbs flailing as it staggered back. Garran didn’t pause. A second swing took its other arm. A third severed a leg at the knee.

The fourth cut silenced its screams, leaving only a twitching, limbless torso on the stone.

Garran stepped back, his breath steady, his sword dripping.

"Now," he said, turning to Tomas. "Your turn. See for yourself whether you can bleed this demon or not."

The duskhound’s lidless eyes rolled toward the boy. Its teeth gnashed, its breath coming in wet, gurgling heaves—but it was helpless.

Silence.

Then—footsteps. Slow at first, then deliberate. Tomas stood over the mutilated duskhound, his sword trembling in his grip.

The creature writhed at his feet, its lidless eyes rolling wildly, its fanged maw gnashing at the air in mindless fury. Black ichor pooled beneath its twitching torso, its severed limbs still jerking like dying spiders.

For a moment, Tomas just stared.

Then something in his face shifted.

The trembling stopped. His fingers tightened around the hilt, knuckles bleaching white. His breath, once ragged, steadied into something cold and measured.

The duskhound screeched—a sound like nails on slate—and twisted its torso in a futile attempt to drag itself away.

Tomas’ blade came down.

A wet thunk. Black blood splattered across his boots. The demon spasmed, its shriek cut short as steel bit deep into its ribcage.

Tomas didn’t stop.

Again. Again. Again.

Each strike landed with more force than the last, his teeth bared in a snarl.

"This—" Hack. "—is for—" Chop. "—Rikard!"

The name tore from his throat like a war cry. Rikard—the friend who’d been ripped apart by duskhounds on the walls. The friend whose screams Tomas had heard but couldn’t answer.

The helplessness of that moment—the shame of freezing—boiled over now in a frenzy of violence.

"He was like a brother to me, and you took him!" Another slash. The demon’s chitin split like rotten fruit. "You took everyone!"

Garran watched, silent. He didn’t intervene. Didn’t speak.

This wasn’t just about killing a demon.

This was vengeance.

This was catharsis.

By the time Tomas finally staggered back, chest heaving, the duskhound was little more than pulp. Its remains seeped into the cracks between the stones, its death throes long since faded.

Tomas’ sword clattered to the ground. His hands shook again—not from fear, but from the aftershock of fury spent.

Something shifted in Garran’s eyes as he studied the young soldier. Not judgment. Not caution.

Pity.

A boy like Tomas should’ve been knee-deep in harvest fields, or drowsing through some dull guard shift at a peaceful gate. Not here—never here—in this crypt stinking of ancient death and fresh-spilled demon gore, his hands slicked with demon blood.

What would his father think, seeing him like this? Some farmer or tradesman who’d sent his son off to serve with pride, never imagining the horrors that would carve themselves into his boy’s soul?

Garran’s throat tightened. His own father’s face surfaced in his mind—stern, unyielding, the kind of man who’d believed in oaths the way others believed in gods.

A thought he often had surfaced in Garran's mind. The only mercy in his death was that he’d never lived to see what his son became.

'Oathbreaker. Kingslayer. Butcher of men and demons alike.'

With a grunt, Garran forced the thoughts away. He bent, retrieved Tomas’ fallen sword, and pressed it back into the boy’s grip. The steel was warm with ichor.

"Remember this," he said quietly. "Demons die. Just like men."

Tomas took the sword, his nod weak, his eyes wide with the shock of what he’d just done. The frenzy had passed, leaving only hollow realization in its wake.

"It’ll pass," Garran said, giving his shoulder a light pat. Not reassurance—just fact. The first kill always carved a man open. Either he sewed himself back together stronger, or he bled out where he stood.

Stepping past him, Garran turned toward the iron door. A loud thud echoed from behind the door.

"Now," he said, rolling the tension from his sword arm, "let’s continue our mission."

Garran motioned for Tomas to shine the torch closer. The iron handle, rusted but still solid, turned with a groan.

Behind him, Tomas let out a shaky chuckle. "Duskhounds can climb walls like spiders, slaughter soldiers by the dozen... but can’t even open a damn door."

Garran’s mouth twitched. Not at the joke itself, but at the fact Tomas had made it at all. The boy was recovering—faster than he’d expected. There was grit there, buried under the fear.

Still, pride came before a gutting.

"Duskhounds don’t venture into our world often," Garran said, stepping into the room beyond, his voice low. "And the ones that do? The Repentants slaughter them quick." 

He glanced back, the torchlight carving shadows into the hard lines of his face. "But they learn. Fast. If the one you killed had enough time to study humans? It might’ve slaughtered us both."

A visible shiver ran down Tomas’ spine. "That’s... an unpleasant thought."

Garran said nothing else. Some lessons stuck better when left to fester.

The chamber beyond was small, its walls lined with crumbling frescoes of some long-dead noble’s triumphs.

A single stone coffin lay against the far wall, its surface etched with worn sigils. No movement. No sign of whatever had been thudding.

But the dust on the floor told another story.

Garran took the torch from Tomas, his eyes tracing the footprints leading to the coffin—fresh, booted, human-sized. The trail of disturbed dust around the lid’s edge was unmistakable.

Recently opened.

He set the torch down, its flickering light casting monstrous shadows across the walls. His sword slid free with a whisper of steel.

"Stay behind me," he murmured, and stepped toward the coffin.