You left him for dead once. That was a mistake.

Somehow, he found redemption, even after everything he’d done to you. And now the world sees him as a hero.

You can’t see his face without memory choking your heart and grinding your soul into dust. Bitter hatred and helpless frustration well up within you like a volcano’s heart, boiling away until it finds an outlet.

Yet there is no outlet for you. Can never be. There is no justice, no recompense, no satisfaction.

He saved the world. He turned from darkness to become a hero of light. That’s good enough to make up for a lifetime of cruelty and evil, enough to earn the forgiveness of the kings of the world and the approbation of the masses.

It is not good enough for you.

Nothing he does can repay you sufficiently. There is no punishment severe enough, no disgrace deep enough. It might be enough if the world rejected him, if he were banished and despised, locked away to rot forever, thrown into his own dungeons to face his own demonic torturers. It would at least be a start. If anyone were willing to take that step.

Of course they won’t. He saved the world. Apparently the fact that it was his own fault it was nearly destroyed matters not at all.

And your heart grows hotter, your rage molten and roiling, and there must be a release.

It is insufficient to burn him in effigy. Meaningless to rant against him. Purposeless to avoid his addresses. For there is always another story, another family won over by his extravagant bribes and stupidly effective charisma.

They believe him a hero. You are the only one who seems to remember who he truly is, the monster at the heart of every darkness.

At last you can bear it no longer, the fire too strong to contain any longer, ready to burst out and destroy the world if that’s what it takes. You know it’s wrong. You know you cannot seek vengeance without damning your own soul.

Knowledge is a shield insufficient against the flame of hatred.

You slowly realize you cannot bear to live in this world that lauds a monster. Not without trying to correct the mistake. The past will haunt you to your dying day even without the daily reminders of your tormentor’s triumph.

He must pay. He must be destroyed. You no longer know whether it is for yourself or for his crimes that you seek his death, his torment, his disgrace. It has become more than purpose, more than obsession; it has become all that you are.

The quest to reach him is long, worthy of epics in its own right. He has many layers of minions shielding him from the world, managers of his estates and secretaries and an ever-rotating travel schedule and bodyguards and secrecy of the utmost extent. But even as you play the games of the elites, as you ease your way nearer, the interactions themselves feel meaningless and unimportant. They are steps, not actions in themselves. You are driven by your inner flame, pushed onward by the endless power of your hatred for the man who destroyed you twice already. You will not let him win a third time.

You thought him dead once before. This time, you will ensure it.

And then you arrive, at long last, and stand before him. He smiles and welcomes you, asks your name as though he’s forgotten he ever sought and tormented you, smiles his devil’s smile and welcomes you into his lair. The trappings of nobility aren’t enough to conceal the dark aesthetic of cruelty that lies beneath his exterior, the facade of beauty made grotesque by the heart of its master.

His rooms are as lifeless as his dungeons, his smile as cruel as the torturers.

“How can I help you today?” he asks, gesturing for a slave to bring drinks.

You had planned on recounting of his crimes, prepared a declamation explaining exactly how much he deserved this death and more, but words fail you as you stare into his face.

For a moment, you cannot even move. You thought seeing him in pictures was bad enough; thought hearing about his heroism slowly consumed your spirit. Here, now, face to face with your great adversary, you know that your words would be wasted.

You lunge forward, knife flashing from its hidden sheath in a move you practiced a thousand times.

“Die,” you manage, the strangled word choked with remembered fear, drowned in remembered tears.

He staggers back and collapses to the ground; his blood perfectly matches the carpet.

“It’s not enough!” You yank the knife free and stab him again and again. Everywhere you can reach, again and again and again with the desperate frenetic energy of long-built hatred at last given an outlet.

You know it won’t help. You know you can’t ever be free of him, even as he lies broken and unmoving beneath you, but you can’t stop yourself.

This is who you are, and you’ve forgotten how to be anything else. You are vengeance, you are destruction.

“I believe he’s dead,” says a calm voice from behind you.

You jump, startled; you stare wildly at the newcomer, blood-soaked knife raised ready between him and yourself. “Who are you?”

“The question, I believe, is who are you?”

You don’t have an answer. Your hand tightens around the knife, slick and sticky, and you realize there’s only one word that truly describes you now. “I am retribution.”

“Then your work has only just begun.”

“My work is finished!” You gesture back at the remains of your tormentor, the man who at long last will trouble the world no more, even if his memory will never be excised from your soul. But the words feel empty even as you say them.

“Is it? He never sought world’s praise. He was never ashamed of his dark nature. They’re the ones who made him out to be a hero. They see only a story. The villain who became a savior. Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?”

He’s right. He was the heart of the darkness, but not its sole avatar.

It is not he alone who deserves retribution.

The whole world is complicit. Everyone who stood by, everyone who whispered his praises, who smiled at his lies.

The fire in your heart blazes undimmed, and now you know it will never be quenched until the world itself lies dead at your feet.

The slave enters then, the tea tray clattering against the table as she sets it down, and you are already moving. She dies with a quiet whimper as you slash her open, any part of you that could feel remorse long since burned away. You throw open the door, a snarl on your lips, vengeance singing in your soul.

The stranger is right. Your work has only just begun.

And quietly, a voice whispers behind you. “Demons aren’t born. They’re made. Welcome to the family.”