1 Prologue - End of a Life, Start of a Legend

When Mayton opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling, all he could see was whiteness.

''Damn this cell and damn anything and everything that's white. ''

He muttered to himself as he closed his eyes again.

Unfortunately, closing his eyes didn't make much of a difference. Because his cell was brightly lit and the walls, ceiling, everything was fully white. According to the priest who read his verdict, since Mayton was a heretic, he needed to get the darkness inside of him purified by holy light before getting his soul sent to the goddess.

Basically, the church would torture him for a while and then execute him.

He was feeling excited despite everything he experienced recently. Today, according to the guard, he would be leaving his cell for the first time since he got arrested days ago. At least the guard said it was days ago. The only way to learn the passage of time, or frankly anything else, was asking the guard and annoying him enough to make him answer.

Unfortunately for Mayton, the guard simply hated his guts. This made him doubt the validity of the information he got from the guard. For example, Mayton suspected that it was actually a month or more since he got locked up in this damn cell, but the guard was saying that it has been a few days, just to make Mayton feel worse.

''If only I could punch the man in the face who thought of this 'holy' light that would be good.'' said Mayton to no one in particular while knowing his wish was impossible to fulfill.

All this darkness inside people nonsense were ancient beliefs from centuries ago. According to the legends of the church, before the church exterminated them and saved the humanity, there were countless varieties of evil creatures roaming the world. But the most sinister of them all were the demons.

Demons were humanoid creatures adept at impersonating proper humans. They tried to destroy all humanity and extinguish the belief in the goddess and the church. But the demons had something wrong with them which made them go crazy from time to time.

The church claimed it was the darkness in the demons which made them crazy and only holy light could purify them. Mayton, as a so-called heretic who got enticed by the demons, also had the same kind of darkness inside him.

At least the priests said so. Mayton started doubting the church recently. He used to be a low level member of the city guard and even though he wasn't some zealot, he still had a somewhat strong belief in the goddess and the church.

There were miraculous feats performed by the priests on a daily basis after all which increased the church's credibility by a fair amount. Mayton's faith wavered for the first time when he saved an old man, whom the church declared a demon, from a mob of peasants when he was on patrol duty.

The old man he saved wore a tattered black robe and looked emaciated. He was clearly a beggar, thought Mayton at the time. Mayton grew up poor himself, so he had some sympathy for the poor. This prompted him to save the 'pitiful' man. It was easy to disperse a crowd of peasants for a city guard.

The Holy Empire was at peace ever since it unified the world centuries ago and it was mostly thanks to the church establishing the city guards that the peace could be preserved for so long. When you defied a city guard, it meant defying the church. When you defied the church, it meant you were a heretic. And heretics always had the same ending. Getting tortured and then executed.

After Mayton saved the old man from the mob using his authority as a guard, the old man suddenly grabbed his arm and looked deeply into the eyes of Mayton. Then, the old man's eyes shined for a split second as the old man started to laugh loudly. Mayton freed himself from this clearly unstable man's grip and thought this will be the end of this incident.

Oh, how wrong was he. He cursed that madman countless times since then. The man turned out to be a murderous maniac and possibly, a demon from the legends.

One day, after quite some time passed by his encounter with the madman, Mayton was escorting a church convoy out of the city. Their convoy encountered the same madman en route. Since the carriage of the priests in the convoy had symbols of the church, everyone who saw it was to salute it as per customs but this madman didn't salute the symbols.

This prompted a guard to try lashing him with his whip. Miraculously, the guard's whip passed straight through the old man without having any effect on the old man except for his body rippling while the whip was passing through.

After that, it was hell on earth. The emaciated old man slaughtered the whole convoy without breaking a sweat. He used his bare hands to rip them apart. It was a gruesome scene, remembered by Mayton for years. Strangely, he didn't touch Mayton at all. At the time, Mayton thought that it was because he showed goodwill to the man before.

Several weeks later, here he was, found guilty of colluding with demons and awaiting his execution. According to the inquisitor who apprehended him, an old beggar with tattered clothes told the church that Mayton saved the demons life from devout believers in the past and after the church asked around a bit they found out about the first time Mayton met the so-called demon.

Of course this saving the demon accusation was nonsense but even though they knew it was nonsense if the church judged Mayton guilty they could make him a scapegoat and save some face by saying the demon got inside help from a rogue city guard.

This was a huge scandal after all, in this age of prosperity and peace, a demon slaughtered a bunch of priests and guards inside the city. No one wanted to be held responsible for this matter.

There were quite a few guards who also became victims of the demon which raised doubts about the church's competency. The church couldn't be seen as incompetent so they sacrificed Mayton by saying he not only helped the demon to get into the city, he even back stabbed his fellow guards at a critical time.

Mayton did try to defend himself, but no one cared what a small time city guard like him had to say anyway. A priest even hinted that he should feel honored to offer his life for the church.

Mayton sighed loudly. He already made peace with the reality. All he wanted right now was getting out of this ridiculous, all white cell, even if it meant he will be executed after getting out of here.

'' Get up and move closer to the gate'' grumbled the guard while throwing a hostile look at Mayton.

Mayton didn't get up though. It's not like he didn't want to get up, in fact, he wanted nothing more than getting out of here, he just couldn't get up even if he wanted to.

This devout guard probably thought Mayton's punishment wasn't harsh enough, so he took it upon himself to make Mayton's life as miserable as possible for the past few days Mayton got imprisoned here.

The guard gave Mayton less food than prisoners normally get, which was already bare minimum for survival, and instead of food, served Mayton some harsh beatings. After a few days of the guard's care, Mayton couldn't even stand up, let alone walking to the gate.

Since he knew the guard wouldn't listen to reason even if he told him he can't move, he decided to just go ahead and ignore the guard.

''If you don't come here immediately, I'll drag you out'' said the guard, this time a bit louder. When the guard realized he got ignored once more, he stormed inside the cell and threw a kick at Mayton.

Mayton grunted as he thought how ridiculous this guard was behaving. According to the guard's belief he will get punished by the goddess after his death anyway, what's the point of torturing him? Did the guard think that he can make a better job of punishing someone than the goddess? What a laughable notion.

Anyway, after getting ignored twice, the guard finally grabbed Mayton's ankle and started dragging him out. When they were nearly out of the dungeons, loud murmurs of the crowd outside became audible.

From the sound, Mayton understood that there were quite a lot of people gathered to watch his execution. He could only use his sense of hearing properly. His eyes were still hurting too much for seeing clearly because of the 'holy' light, and his body was numb all over after all those beatings.

After getting dragged on the floor all the way to the square, the guard simply tossed him to the executioner and returned to the dungeons. A priest was getting ready to address the faithful who gathered here to watch the church punish this heinous criminal for colluding with demons while the people gathered at the square were raining curses on Mayton.

''Damned traitor!''

''Execute this vile demonspawn!''

''How dare you help demons slaughter your fellow humans! Are you even human?!''

The real culprit, the so called demon, was nowhere to be found though. Mayton heard from the guard that the demon disappeared from the city and no one saw him again. With his disappearance, last shreds of hope for Mayton also disappeared.

This infuriated Mayton to no end. There definitely was something strange going on. What was the point of killing some irrelevant priests and then vanishing?

And as if it wasn't enough, according to the description of the inquisitors, the man who incriminated Mayton by saying he saved the demon before was looking suspiciously similar to the demon himself.

Actually, the church authorities realized that something wasn't quite right too. Unfortunately for Mayton, his death was of use to some higher ups in the church hierarchy to absolve them of any blame.

There was a fierce competition for power going on between high ranking priests. If the priests responsible from this city got such a blemish on their reputations, it would spell the end of their career.

Seeing everything was ready for the execution and Mayton got his head placed on the elevated place near the executioner while kneeling down, the priest finally started his speech.

'' Today we are here to witness the judgment of our most merciful Goddess about a once proud servant who lost his way and committed the most heinous of sins.''

The crowd started chattering after hearing the priest. Everyone agreed that Mayton was a heretic and ought to be executed, but still, they wanted to see the demon more than Mayton. It has been dozens of years since anyone even claimed to see a demon, so people were curious about this mythical race.

The church always depicted them as sinister, blood thirsty giants who fed on human flesh to the masses. Naturally, there were some skeptics, and they wanted to ascertain whether the depiction was true or not.

After silencing the crowd with a hand gesture, the priest continued to babble about how great the Goddess is and how Mayton is such an evil person while not forgetting to pin the blame of the demons escape on Mayton too.

'' Do you repent and accept your just punishment? For repentance is the only salvation for the souls of the sinners.''

asked the priest at the end of his speech.

Perhaps if it was before all this, Mayton would confess to whatever crime they wanted for the good of the church, disregarding all the consequences. Unfortunately for them he no longer thought like that. This injustice made him realize that even if the church itself wasn't bad if he made a sacrifice here, it would only benefit some corrupt priests, not the church itself.

He had to think about his relatives' and friends' futures. If he did confess, he would implicate them. Even if the church knew he was innocent, the civilians had no way of knowing the truth and would still ostracize his friends and relatives.

After waiting for Mayton to answer for a few seconds, the priest signaled the executioner with his head to go ahead and execute Mayton. Moments before his head rolled, Mayton's eyes finally somewhat adapted to the normal world, and he saw something in front of him which shocked and angered him to the extreme.

The so called demon who caused his execution was among the crowd smiling at him creepily!