The battlefield still smoked.
A charred banner flapped weakly in the breeze, half-buried under rubble and the broken haft of a lance. The sky hung grey, swollen with unshed rain, and silence blanketed the scorched earth like judgment day had passed and no one made the cut.
He lay still in the wreckage, ash covering his skin like warpaint. They had all thought him dead—hero, armies, gods. Some probably toasted his death. He didn't blame them.
It had been a good ending.
The hero stood triumphant over the villain. The prophecy fulfilled. The world saved.
But that's the thing about endings: they're written by the winners.
A hand twitched. Fingers curled and he opened his eyes.
Pain welcomed him back like an old friend. His limbs screamed. Magic throbbed dimly inside his chest, erratic and unstable. He should have been dead. He was supposed to be dead.
But he wasn't.
He sat up slowly, wincing as a loose rib clicked back into place. Around him lay the bones of his final stand—blackened stone, torn sigils, shattered wards. The seal that had imprisoned him in his own dungeon was cracked open. That alone was suspicious.
He blinked dust from his eyes and laughed bitterly.
"The script's off," he muttered. "I'm still here."
He staggered toward the center of the ruin, where his throne had once stood. It was gone—melted into slag. But something else remained. A small black box, unmarked and untouched by fire, sat where the throne's heart would've been.
His hands shook as he picked it up.
*Click.*
The latch opened with a hiss.
Inside was parchment, impossibly old yet perfectly preserved. The title shimmered in shifting gold:
THE NARRATIVE CLAUSE — CLASS A: META-LEVEL REDRESSAL PETITION.
His mouth went dry.
He remembered drafting it. Long ago. Before the final war as a contingency. A rebellion not of swords, but syllables.
He began to read aloud, voice gaining strength.
"To the Court Beyond the Realms: I, the Named and Damned, do hereby challenge the validity of the tale told about me..."
As he spoke the final line, the parchment turned into ash—not by flame, but by time itself. The ground beneath him groaned.
Somewhere, the stars blinked in alarm.
And somewhere even further, something ancient began to listen.
———
The wind died and the sky went still.
He rose, back straightening as the contract's final line branded itself onto the air like divine graffiti.
A symbol spun in the sky overhead—an ouroboros around a quill. The insignia of the Interdimensional Court. He felt the shift in gravity before the summons arrived: a pressure on the bones, the taste of ink and judgment on the tongue.
Then came the voice.
Not spoken, but woven.
[You have been heard. Your petition is valid. Summons issued.]
And then, the world folded.
Light peeled away from the edges of space, revealing a door made of silver and shadow. A summon hovered mid-air, humming with raw intent. It was addressed to no one and everyone. He took it.
Lines of ancient contract curled up his arms like ivy, binding but not choking. His body flickered with runes—witness marks.
He chuckled, tired but amused. "So the court still honors loopholes. Good."
From behind, the battlefield cracked—an aftershock from the invocation. The dead did not stir, but the world did.
He stepped toward the door and paused.
He looked back at the ruin one last time, not with regret, but acknowledgment.
"They wrote me as the villain," he said, more to himself than the cosmos. "So I'll sue them as one."
Then he stepped through.
The portal closed.
The battlefield sighed. And the story—the real story—finally began.