Rain soaked the city like a sorrowful symphony, each droplet tapping its own note on the cracked pavement. Neon signs flickered above the shattered remnants of what once was a thriving district. This was Earth's last stand, and chaos had become a familiar melody.
He stood there, high above the wreckage, cape torn, breathing steady. The number seven ranked hero on Earth. He wasn't the strongest, nor the fastest, but his words had weight. His voice, laced with poetry, could shatter minds, rally the broken, or seal the fate of villains who dared defy justice.
They called him Verselord.
In a world where powers manifested from science, myth, and madness, his came from the most unlikely source: poetry. With each verse, he could bend reality. A haiku could harden his skin, a sonnet could slow time. His strongest works, the epics, required days of preparation but could bring cities to their knees or raise them from ashes.
But he rarely wrote for power. He wrote to feel human. To remind himself that he still had a soul in a world that had forgotten its own.
"Run!" he shouted to the child, her tiny figure trembling in the rain, pinned beneath the remains of a fallen bus. The creature loomed behind her, a voidborne terror with mouths where eyes should be, born from some failed experiment between dimensions. Its hunger wasn't for flesh, but for memories, for essence. For meaning.
He dove without hesitation. Not because he was sure he'd win. Not even because he believed he'd survive. But because he had to.
A whisper formed on his lips as he moved.
"Though storms may break this fragile form,
Let words strike harder, pure and warm.
One stanza more, before I fall,
To keep a child, a hope, a call."
Golden script unfurled from his hands, wrapping the monster in ribbons of light. It shrieked, thrashing against the weight of the verse, but the spell was incomplete. He hadn't finished the final line. Not in time.
He reached the girl, pushing her from danger's reach just as the beast's maw closed around his side. The light burst. The scream ended. The rain swallowed the rest.
Darkness crept into the edges of his sight, and for a moment, he felt weightless. No pain, no burden, only silence. His last thought wasn't fear. It was curiosity.
Is this what the end feels like?
The world slowed. Raindrops hung suspended in the air, glittering like frozen stars. He saw fragments of memories float by. His first poem. His first battle. His first real loss. All of it, dissolving into black.
He smiled, almost bitterly. "Guess I'm out of lines."
Then came the light. Or maybe it was the dark. It was hard to tell now.
One last breath. One last word.
And then,
nothing.