Seated upon a throne of impossible splendor, a woman with fiery scarlet hair cast an empty downward glare.
Her slender back rested against sun-gilded stone, sculpted with ancient artistry and set atop a dais that overlooked the throne room like a small mountain. She was framed by a banner hung proudly above her head—woven from rich red, radiant gold, and deep teal, and at its center a motif of a golden sun.
The room around her seemed carved from sun-baked stone with high columns painted with colorful patterns and lush greenery as decoration.
Her eyes, twin ruby flames of crimson, drifted across the vast throne room with the idle cruelty of a goddess.
Even as her gaze locked onto the solemn man entering the room, she gave no reaction.
Undeterred, the challenger stepped forward. His shadowy figure was hidden beneath the cloth of a black cloak of darkness. He hid all his features, allowing only his presence to be known.
As he marched forward, he didn't utter a single word.
He walked until he stood in front of the first step to the grand throne.
From within his cloak of shadow, he raised his right arm and opened his palm.
With a sharp flick of his wrist, he drew his blade from thin air, materializing it from seemingly nothing.
Still, the woman didn't flinch.
She simply sighed and snapped her fingers.
As though acknowledging her sole authority, the space within the grand throne room began to ignite. Within moments, scarlet sparks developed, coalescing into orbs of searing flame that hung menacingly throughout the room.
Wordlessly, the challenger raised his sword and assumed a battle-ready stance.
"Since you so clearly wish to court death, I shall grant your wish. You should be delighted, it's an honor to be burned by my flames."
Her songlike voice cut through the air, and at the same time, the Empress stirred.
Slowly, she rose from her throne.
With unearthly beauty, a smirk flashed upon her lips as she spoke. "Be sure to tell the souls on the other side who cut your life short. I am the great Vampire Empress, my name is—"
Though she spoke them aloud, her next words were never heard by the world.
In a fraction of a fraction of a second, the air in the throne room had shattered.
The challenger lunged forward with impossible speed, his blade meeting her flames in a burst of light and sound. Sparks sprayed from the clash, searing into stone and shadow alike. The throne room that once held breathless silence now screamed with fury, a cathedral of fire and steel.
Each strike carved gouges into the floor. Every motion sent arcs of flame and shards of shadow crashing against the walls. The grand throne room became a battlefield of sparks and shadows, the echoes of their conflict reverberating out like a signal of a new era.
As they battled, the cries of war ripped through the entirety of that grand city. Blood spilled across golden roads and corpes floated atop once pristine waterways.
Both valiant heroes and vile monsters did battle.
On that night, mankind would triumph over the vampires. The Vampiric Empire would fall at the hands of the knights of the Magic Order.
And on that very same night, the great Vampire Empress would have her unspoken name engraved into the halls of legend.
[January 8th, 2024, Miami, Florida.]
[Hundreds of years after the fall of the Vampiric Empire.]
[Exactly one year before the end of the world.]
In the back of the classroom, a girl sat by the window, elbow propped on the desk, and her cheek resting lazily in her palm. Through the glass, sunlight threaded through her violet hair, casting a faint shimmer against the washed-out gray of the classroom walls.
Her eyes wandered aimlessly as she watched the world outside. As she did, her expression slowly dulled.
Even as she scanned outside the window, there was nothing for her to latch on to. Nothing abnormal, nothing even slightly unusual; there was only the mundane cityscape that she'd grown used to seeing.
There were skyscrapers and large buildings, signs of true grandeur, but they were in the distance, just close enough to see and imagine but not to touch and experience.
The classroom around her was silent to the point that it may as well have been frozen in time.
A tired man in a worn suit stood at the front, dragging an Expo marker across the whiteboard. He spoke in the sort of low, monotonous tone that caused the mind to melt in boredom.
Arranged in rigid, row formation, all the desks were evenly spaced and faced the board. Only a handful of students were seated at the desks, though. They were scattered about, none choosing to sit directly next to each other.
Everything seemed to be moving as usual. This casual after-school routine—
Bam!
A thunderclap of noise tore through the calm, jolting several students upright in their chairs. A chorus of soft murmurs quickly filled the air.
Her gaze stuck outside the window, the violet-haired girl didn't even bother to blink. There would've been no point. She already knew the cause.
Standing triumphantly atop his desk, a boy with dark skin and a pompous grin threw his right hand up into the air with dramatic flair.
'Piercing the veil of normalcy and embracing the supernatural!'
That's how I would put it, at least, but the myriad stifled laughter and the profound look of weariness on the teacher's face would disagree with my statement.
Of all those present, only the girl sitting in the back responded differently.
Her once-dull expression had shifted into something far worse: an understanding of what would come next.
The boy puffed out his chest, his eyes filled with a wild sort of determination. "On my soul as the unparalleled Dark King, I cannot bring myself to simply allow this mockery of education to continue! Do you mean to tell me that we are merely expected to memorize these silly equations while the very nature of the world is at risk?"
The teacher, by now thoroughly drained of resistance, pinched the bridge of his nose as if trying to physically hold in the last drop of his sanity.
"Charlotte," he muttered helplessly.
The girl, in response, did her best not to even look in his direction.
"…Charlotte, could you please—"
Charlotte gritted her teeth tightly and grimaced. Things were going exactly how she expected.
Stiffly, she turned her head to glance toward the odd boy before letting out an audible groan.
Even still, she rose from her seat and moved toward the boy. Her steps were slow and measured, not out of grace, but because rushing would mean interacting with him sooner.
"Alright, that's more than enough. Sit down before you embarrass yourself any further."
A booming reply met her plea, as though the volume of the statement could make up for realism or credibility. "Ha! Sit? As if the whims of the Dark King can be contained by such mundane furniture! Can none of you feel it? The coming of a great storm and the passing of bygone days. Yes, I can feel it. On the name of the great, unstoppable, amazing, super cool, handsome Dark King Ve—"
As if on cue, the boy's unstable footing finally betrayed him. With a spectacularly ungraceful wobble, he tipped backward, arms flailing, and crashed to the ground in a heap.
Sprawled on the floor, the Dark King groaned, too proud to admit defeat, but too tangled in his own limbs to reclaim the throne.
Watching from the sidelines, the entire classroom broke out into laughter, and Charlotte sighed.
Yet, as the classroom erupted into laughter, I only felt a sense of detached longing.
***
Well then.
Now that all of that embarrassment is said and done, I believe it's time to pull back the curtain and show you who your dutiful narrator for this tale shall be.
Me.
Yes, me. And, no, you can't switch to someone else.
Most would call me the Great Dark King, but seeing as we'll be together for quite some time, I'll give you a special privilege. Since I'm feeling a little personal, you can simply call me Veri.
Veri. Just Veri. No surname needed.
When you're as unforgettable as I, surnames become utterly pointless.
It's a pleasure to—
Well, the pleasure's probably one-sided, but that's never stopped me before.
Hopefully, now that you've seen me in action, you've been amused by my antics, but you may also have found yourself to be absolutely repulsed. I couldn't blame you for either response.
Still, before you go wondering what kind of lunatic you've been stranded with, do me the honor of answering a question.
Do you believe in the paranormal?
I'm not talking about some small, little things here and there, I mean the full package.
Stuff like aliens, ghosts, monsters, etc. Even magic would count.
And, I mean really believe in that stuff. The kind of belief that has you searching. The kind that makes you wonder when your light flickers in the night, even if you know it's just the faulty wiring.
...
Well... Personally... I do...
Or, at the very least, I'd like to believe in them.
Really, wouldn't the existence of stuff like that just be great? Everyone, every single person in this whole world, would get a chance to be special. You wouldn't need to be born into the right family or the right city. Everyone could have their own unique abilities and lore, and no one would be left out.
It'd be a utopia of dreams.
"Ah, that'd be the best..."
"What in the world are you thinking about? Have you been listening at all to what I've been saying?"
A sharp voice disrupted my thoughts, cutting into my fantasy and dragging me back to Earth.
Sadly, we don't live in some musical or fantasy world. The world we were born into is plain and ordinary. In this world, we're all tied down to the realities that we were born into. No matter how much we try to break out or go against the tide, we all end up back where we started.
And of course, in this mundane world, no matter how much I bark, someone like me could never be special.
I know that already.
With her hands planted firmly on her hips, the girl who'd just yanked me out of the classroom now stood squarely in front of me, blocking the entire hallway like some judgmental statue.
Outside the windows, the setting sun painted the world in rich shades of orange and gold. But just as I was beginning to take it in, she stepped into the light, cutting it off, and cutting short my moment of peace.
Not allowing any form of escape, she forced me to look her head on.
"Listen to me, you half-brained lunatic!" she snapped, eyes narrowing. "Everyone in that classroom is doing their best to study for the upcoming SAT. Clearly, if you're here after school, then that means you're in the same boat."
Charlotte stood in front of me with a tightly furrowed brow. As she spoke, it seemed like she was slowly getting more annoyed. One of her hands was placed on her hip with the other lightly placed at her forehead in exasperation. Her left foot slowly tapped on the floor like a countdown to a bomb's detonation.
I certainly wouldn't want to wait around for it to explode.
"Stop for a second and actually hear the stuff that comes out of your mouth. Can you... I don't know, maybe just pretend to not be insane for five minutes. If you tried doing that every once in a while, people might—"
I flung my hand up in defense. "Hold your tongue, girl! Is this something you should be saying so openly aloud?"
Charlotte blinked, her frustration briefly paused by sheer confusion. "Wha-What does that even mean? What are you, some kind of comic book villain?"
With a melodramatic sigh, I answered her ignorant inquiry, "The Union of Holy Justice has ears everywhere! If they hear even a whisper of something they don't like, they'll come rocketing down from their citadel in the heavens! Do you even know what you could've done? No, you clearly haven't a clue! I cannot mingle with such clueless individuals."
My empty words left her in a daze. Her mouth hung slightly open, and her hand faltered.
That's when I saw my opening.
Like an all-too-eager track runner sprinting out of the block before the gun's been shot, I made my escape. Pivotting my foot, I rocketed down the hall toward the school's exit at lightning speed.
Left alone in the hallway, Charlotte was slack-jawed.
"Annoying. How'd I end up mixed up with a guy like that?"
That was the only thought on her mind as she attempted to recompose herself.
She took a deep breath, exhaled, and turned on her heel, ready to return to the classroom. But just as she stepped forward, something glinted on the floor, catching her eye.
Looking down, she'd found my phone, lying there all by its lonesome.
"…Of course," she said flatly.
She bent down, picked it up, and stared at it for a second in contemplation. In the end, she picked it up and put it in her sweater's pocket.
The corridors were nearly silent now, just the occasional echo of footsteps from classrooms where tired-eyed students toiled through SAT prep. Few people had stayed after school this late, and so I slipped through the front doors unnoticed.
The sun's dimming light hit me like a quiet blessing.
As I exited the school gates, I could feel that my social battery was running critically low. I was completely exhausted, though that isn't much of a shocker after playing my Dark King persona all day.
In that case, I guess it'd be better to say that I'm exhausted every day after school. That's why, despite walking to school nearly every day, I hated having to walk back home.
I deeply didn't want to walk home, but went I tried reaching into my pocket to order a ride, I found my pockets to be empty.
I could've done a lot of things, but instead of being proactive, I slumped my head low and resigned myself to walking.
As I stepped forward, a myriad of ethereal blue cracks on the earth grew, meeting my gait. Their abnormality signaled the end of the beaten path. With each step, I unwittingly drew closer and closer to the unknown world that I so desperately wished to see, a world far less glamorous than I'd dreamed.
***
Looking back, I can view everything that happened in a different light than I did at the time. Putting everything together, from beginning to end, one thing becomes clear.
"This isn't the bellowing epic of a hero in the making. This also isn't the grand tale of an empress returning to her former glory, nor of humankind overcoming evil. This is one of the countless lost stories, the kind that slip through history's cracks. Though unlike many, this tale is likely better off forgotten. This is the story of a pathetic boy who struggles hopelessly and, in his struggle, attains everything that both this world and the next have to offer."