The Weight of the Weak 

The battlefield was a massacre waiting to happen.

Blood-red clouds loomed overhead like vultures, casting a deathly shade across the shattered ruins. Ash fell like snow. The land was dead. The silence before the next horror was deafening.

And then—

BOOM.

The ground exploded as something massive surged from beneath—a grotesque creature that seemed birthed from nightmares. It had three gnarled arms on each side, a torso lined with twisted faces, and a mouth that opened vertically like a flower made of blades.

The others screamed.

Kael didn't.

He stepped forward, calm, eyes locked, his green aura igniting like wildfire around him—crackling with intensity, glowing with raw, honed discipline. His presence was suffocating. It wasn't just power—it was pressure, like gravity made of rage.

Behind him, the others froze. Some raised weapons, but their hands trembled.

They weren't ready.

They would never be ready.

Kael's voice was calm. "Stay back. You'll only die."

They knew he wasn't being arrogant.

He was stating fact.

He was no longer part of the group.

He was something else entirely.

---

The creature struck.

Its arm came down like a falling building. Kael didn't move.

Not until the last fraction of a second.

Then—he was gone.

To the untrained eye, he vanished.

To the monster, he reappeared inside its blind spot and drove a fist directly into its gut with such force that its insides burst out of its back. Black blood splattered like ink across the battlefield.

It screamed.

Kael didn't stop.

He grabbed the beast by its throat and hurled it into a crumbling tower. The stone burst apart like paper. Before it could recover, Kael was already on top of it, raining down fists like thunder.

Each strike shook the earth.

Each blow screamed of years of isolation, betrayal, and discipline.

He had trained alone. Bled alone. Suffered alone.

Now he fought alone.

And no one could keep up.

---

In the distance, the team tried to regroup. One of them—Zaren—stepped forward.

"We should help—!"

Kael's glare silenced him.

"You'll only get in the way," he said. "Let me finish what I started."

They couldn't argue. They couldn't even move.

Because deep down… they were afraid of him.

---

The beast tried to recover—its broken bones snapping back into place unnaturally. It lunged in desperation, jaws wide.

Kael caught its jaw mid-lunge.

With a dead stare, he crushed it. Bone cracked, blood sprayed. The scream that followed was muffled by Kael's boot as he stomped down on its skull—again, and again, and again—until there was nothing left but shattered bone and steaming flesh.

The fight was over.

But Kael didn't stop.

He stood there, fists trembling—not from fatigue, but from restraint.

He hated how easy it was now.

He hated that the others thought they understood him.

He hated that they were still alive when so many who mattered had already died.

He turned to them, eyes cold and voice dead:

"Don't follow me anymore."

And then he walked away.

His aura burned behind him like a comet, a trail of emerald fire marking the path of someone who no longer belonged to this world.

---