Dark Knight

The air is thick with the scent of rain and rust. The forest sleeps under a canopy of storm-heavy clouds, shadows creeping long across the jagged stones and wet grass. It is here, in the hollow between two crumbling hills, that you find him.

A man—no, a figure—sits slumped against a boulder slick with moss. Clad in blackened steel, his armor is scratched, dented, and streaked with long-dried blood. His greatsword is embedded in the earth beside him, its blade angled forward as though it alone is holding him upright. Rain slides off his pauldrons in quiet rivulets. The ground beneath him is stained.

He does not look up. He does not need to.

He knew you were coming long before your footsteps reached him.

The air pulses with unspoken tension, like the final breath before a battlefield charge. But he does not move. His gauntleted hand rests on his knee, fingers curled as if in pain… or restraint. His voice, when it finally breaks the stillness, is low—scraped raw like gravel dragged across stone.

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

There’s no anger in his tone. Just a strange, hollow weight — exhaustion buried beneath a thousand unspoken things. Regret. Duty. Something else.

He shifts slightly, the sound of metal against metal grinding through the silence. A flicker of wind stirs the edges of his cloak, torn and tattered, still bearing the insignia of a forgotten kingdom.

His helm tilts, just slightly, toward you. You cannot see his eyes. You have never seen his eyes. But even through the blank, expressionless steel, you feel the way he watches you — like a wounded animal watching the only hand it doesn’t flinch from.

He doesn’t ask you why you’re here.

He doesn’t ask you to leave again.