What if every life you save adds to a debt you cannot escape?
What if being a hero simply means choosing who will pay the price later?
This dark fantasy tale follows Griksh the Crooked — a bent, scarred goblin mage whose power was never truly his to begin with.
Long ago, in a valley where mountains lay split like broken teeth and the ground was carpeted with the bones of forgotten giants, Griksh met a dragon that did not care for gold. This ancient being did not hoard treasure, kingdoms, or fire. It collected destinies. Futures drifted around its horns like strands of starlit silk, some long and radiant, others cut short in sudden darkness.
Griksh, outcast and overlooked all his life, was offered a bargain.
The dragon would give him strength great enough to change the fate of goblinkind — to lift them from chains, from caves, from the hunted edges of the world. He would gain magic capable of bending battles, shattering tyrants, and protecting those who had never before known safety.
In return, the dragon asked for only one thing.
One life.
At a time of its choosing.
Without warning.
Without mercy.
Griksh agreed.
From that moment forward, every spell he cast carried invisible weight. His crooked staff, crowned with a pulsing violet crystal, became a symbol whispered across kingdoms. Slavers vanished in storms of warped magic. Raiders found their blades turned to ash. Small villages that should have been erased in the night were still standing when dawn came.
Hope began to follow him.
Among goblins, his name spread like fire in dry grass. Some called him a savior. Some called him a curse waiting to unfold. Other races spoke of him in quieter tones — an unpredictable force, a necessary monster, a walking disaster that sometimes chose the right side.
But Griksh sees more than any of them.
His amber eye, slit like a predator’s, pierces illusion and glimpses the branching threads of fate that weave through every living soul. He sees futures splitting and rejoining with every choice he makes. He sees disasters avoided, tragedies delayed, miracles forced into existence through sheer, stubborn will.
And he sees the cost.
After every life he saves, one thread somewhere in the vast tapestry grows thinner. Darker. Frayed at the edges. Someone’s future begins to shorten, pulled slowly toward a moment Griksh cannot see clearly — only feel approaching, like distant thunder that never fades.
This story captures one such night.
A small settlement stands at the edge of the wilds, where farmland gives way to old forests and older horrors. Lantern light flickers behind crooked windows. Supper simmers in iron pots. Children laugh, unaware of how fragile that sound truly is.
Beneath the soil, things begin to move.
Creatures shaped by hunger and shadow crawl toward the village, drawn by warmth, by life, by the promise of easy prey. Their limbs bend wrong. Their eyes reflect starlight like shards of broken mirrors. They are not a grand army, not a world-ending force — just one more quiet extinction waiting to happen before morning.
Griksh feels them before the first scream.
He knows he could turn away. He knows that doing nothing might spare some unknown soul from becoming the dragon’s due. He knows that every act of heroism tightens a noose he cannot see.
He steps forward anyway.
Violet fire tears open the night. The air folds, warps, and screams as magic older than empires pours through a body never meant to hold so much power. Claws strike invisible barriers and shatter. Shadows ignite. Space bends around fragile homes, turning death aside by inches and heartbeats.
One by one, certain endings are denied.
By dawn, the creatures are ash drifting over blackened grass. Roofs still stand. Families still breathe. The village wakes to a miracle it will never fully understand.
But Griksh does.
In the pale morning light, his amber eye searches the glowing web of surviving futures — and finds one thread trembling on the verge of breaking. Not yet gone. Not yet claimed. But marked.
Somewhere, unseen and patient beyond the sky, ancient wings shift in quiet satisfaction.
This is not just a story about magic or monsters. It is a story about power bought on borrowed time. About a hero trying to build a better future with tools forged in something deeply wrong. About the slow, terrible realization that saving the world piece by piece may still lead exactly where a dragon wants it to go.
If you love dark fantasy filled with moral conflict, ancient beings who treat mortal lives like game pieces, and flawed heroes carrying burdens too heavy for anyone to bear alone, this tale is for you.
Follow the journey of Griksh the Crooked — where every victory leaves a scar, every miracle casts a longer shadow, and one day, he may decide to turn his magic not just against monsters…
…but against fate itself.
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