His eyes snapped open in the darkness. It was cold and damp, and somewhere in the darkness was the incessant sound of droplets falling into a puddle. His whole body ached. It felt as though he'd been run over by a tank and then some. But he was alive and, more importantly, he could move. And so he did. He stood up and felt the chill of cold stone beneath his bare feet. His vision adjusted not a moment later. Rocks and moss and alien vegetation, crystalline stalactites looming over him.

A cave? How'd he end up here? Where even was here? Strange. Something about this didn't feel quite right. It felt wrong, even. His memories were a jumbled mess of scenes and images that made no contextual sense – some were familiar, however, but most were not. He saw ships – gargantuan barges that sailed across the stars and loomed over entire worlds. He saw men in dark armor, leathery wings sprouting from their helmets. He vaguely remembered screams – so many screams – and so many deaths... by his hand... and by the hands of those who followed him. And pain... so much pain.

And regret – unspoken and unrecognized, marred by fear and guilt. Self-loathing... for becoming the very thing he hated, the very thing he swore to fight against. Cruelty and injustice.

He cringed and frowned and clutched his head.

The droplets annoyed and irked him, but he could do little to stop it.

He remembered a pale, gaunt, black-eyed figure, staring at him from a reflection – hair as dark as midnight, clad in a crown of crimson.

Who are you?

No... who even was he?

The pale horror that was his reflection seemed to have an answer.

I am justice. I am vengeance. I am the damnation of the guilty, the condemnation of sinners. I am the night.

He shook his head. No, none of those things quite answered his question. Those were titles, self-endowed, not a name. He needed a name, an identity, but he found none. Surely, it was somewhere among his shattered memories, but looking deeper into his psyche yielded no tangible results – nothing. Honestly, just trying to pry open and understand the disjointed images and scenes brought only painful headaches. And so, with a resigned sigh, he turned his attention elsewhere. The cave.

He couldn't stay here; he knew that much, at least. He needed to find a way out. He needed to find the light.

He glanced around and, unfortunately, found only a single corridor to follow. No other paths to take. Well, no, he realized, there were others, but only this one seemed to make sense; the others were either too dark or shielded by so many other impossibilities that stepping into them was simply unattainable. And so he didn't. Instead, he walked forward and followed the one path available to him, the only path – in his eyes – that he could've taken anyway.

But... as he neared the path, he stopped. Was this truly the only path available to him or was it simply the easiest one to take? Surely, if he wanted to... if he dared to try... the other paths couldn't possibly be impossible? Difficult, certainly, but never impossible. As long as one set their mind to it and applied themselves fully, nothing ever was. And so... he took a step back and reexamined the other paths.

Impossible... impossible... no... nothing was ever truly impossible. He simply needed to break through his limits. And so he turned to the one that was shrouded in darkness, a wall of shadow and black that kept him from entering. But that did not stop him. He stepped through and kept walking, even when there was nothing to see, nothing to guide him. The end was uncertain, shrouded, but he pushed through, regardless. The darkness embraced him and whispers flooded his mind – angry, spiteful, and hateful whispers, but also whispers of fear. Whoever and whatever he was... whatever he'd done... and whoever he'd been... he had lived in fear all his life, he realized, and that fear had dictated all his actions, good and bad – mostly bad, but a few were good or, at the very least, done with good intentions.

The screams of children filled his ears, followed by other screams, anguished – his own.

WAKE UP!

And still, he strode forward, deeper and deeper into the dark of the shadowed path, never knowing where he'd end up, not knowing if he was moving at all. All his life, he realized, he'd convinced himself of his own certainty, convinced himself that there was only a single path for him. But, what if he was wrong? What if he'd seen only one of those paths and wrongly believed that the one path before him was the only one that existed. But he saw now that there were others... many others; some, perhaps, were harder or more dangerous, but destiny... fate... none of it was set in stone. He and he alone was the master of his path, the master of his life. No other.

He wasn't sure where those thoughts came from or how it came to manifest in his head, but they rang true, regardless. He and he alone ruled his own fate. No matter what he believed... no matter what his visions and precognition told him – nothing was ever set in stone. Nothing.
Slowly, very slowly, a few tidbits of understanding returned – memories long buried and forgotten, jumbled and shattered pieces mending themselves to form a clearer picture. It seemed the pale figure on the mirror was right. Once, long ago, he'd been a figure of justice, the defender of good and the punisher of evil. But, somewhere along the way, he'd lost sight of what he was fighting for, lost sight of why he began his crusade, lost sight of what it meant to be righteous; and so, because of this, he became the very thing he swore to fight against – injustice, cruelty, malice, and sin. He became the embodiment of all of those things.

And he died.

He knew that he was supposed to be dead.

But how... how was he still alive?

Idly, he reached up and felt a rough scar that went around the full breadth of his neck. And, very briefly, he saw the flash of a blade, slicing into and through his flesh and out the other side. His vision spun, then, as his head fell from his shoulders. He saw his death... and the one who inflicted it upon him as his head rolled to the floor. An assassin.

How?

How was it that he still lived?

He squinted his eyes and screamed into the darkness, the resurgent memories somehow making even less sense than if they hadn't been there at all. And still, he pushed forward. He couldn't go back. Though the road ahead was dark and uncertain, to go back was even worse – right back to where he started, covered in the blood of the innocents who'd perished by his hand. No, the only way forward was to not see anything at all, to keep the future shrouded and unformed. His destiny belonged to him and no one else – only him, only his to shape.

WAKE UP!

He stumbled, briefly, before pushed himself back up. And in that brief moment, he recalled a face, a brother – not by bond, but by blood. Many brothers. And he hated all of them, though... he couldn't quite remember or understand why. He fought against them, even tortured one of them to death – again and again, until his mind broke. He ran forward, tears falling from his black eyes.

MAKE IT STOP!

He recalled his sons... or, at the very least, those among his progeny who were worthy of that title – his sons who prowled the night with him, who brought entire worlds to heel through fear in his name. They flayed and tortured untold millions – infants and adults alike – but had subjugated trillions in doing so, brought thousands of worlds into the fold. Was it right? Was it right for him to do just that? Was he justified in his methods? Fear and hatred were his instruments. And he ruled through them – reveled in them, even. But what had it brought him?

In the end, he gained nothing. In fact, it was he who lost something.

He'd lost his sense of justice. Instead of becoming a paragon of virtue, a symbol for the downtrodden and the lost to follow, he became little more than a scarecrow, a symbol of fear, a creature of darkness that was quickly forgotten when it disappeared, leaving no lasting imprint behind. When he disappeared, all his work had been undone – all he'd strove to do disappeared with him. Fear was not a tool of justice, he realized, and neither was hatred.

NO! THEY DESERVED WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM!

No... I could've been better. I should've been better.

Like a fool, he'd placed his trust on the very visions that'd plagued him since he was a child, visions of the end, but he'd failed to realize that those visions were merely possibilities, things that would've happened if an elaborate series of events happened perfectly. But his fate was still his own. His destiny was still his to shape. He'd missed all of that. Blinded, even. Or... simply... he was too afraid to accept it, too afraid to face the reality of what he'd become. And too ashamed to try and seek atonement in his few moments of lucidity.

Ah, that was it. His power. His gift... it was the ability to foresee the worst possible outcome. It was meant to help him prepare, to warn others of what would happen if they failed. But, more than that, his greatest gift had been his unwavering sense of justice, his moral compass, the very thing he sought to enforce and ended up losing. He stumbled again, but he caught himself quickly this time and immediately regained his footing. As before, new memories came rushing out, more scenes and more images of things he'd forgotten.

And he accepted them – accepted that he had been driven to madness, accepted that, in his madness, he had done terrible and unspeakable things, inflicted horrors in the name of some demented form of justice. But with it came resolution. He had sinned, erred, but that did not need to define him. After all, nothing was ever set in stone. Who he was before did not need to burden him now. The Night Haunter was little more than a monster, a spook to keep children from running out of their homes at night, a legend that was passed through terrible whispers. But he was not the Night Haunter. He was not madness and hatred incarnate. He was not vengeance and neither was he the condemnation of sinners as the Night Haunter had believed itself to be.

No... he was so much more than that.

He was Konrad Curze, paragon of justice, harbinger of law and order.

WE ARE ONE! WE WILL ALWAYS BE THE NIGHT HAUNTER!

A light appeared at the end of the path – a way out of the darkness.

Konrad sprinted forward with all of his might, the ground breaking underneath his feet with every step he took. He had to get out of here. He had to reach the light. He didn't know what lay beyond it. And, Konrad figured, it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that he chose this path. He chose. It wasn't determined for him. No one else decided for him. He chose for himself by himself... he was free. True, the visions of the end and the worst would surely still come to haunt him, but he knew what its purpose now was. And never again would he dwell on what might be... never again would the concept of destiny hold sway over him.
Freedom. He could almost taste it.

If his father still lived, despite his old visions, then he... would ask for forgiveness and seek atonement. And then, he'd hunt down his wayward sons... or whatever remained of them. Those who sought to follow him would be given the chance to atone by his side. Those who wished to stay as they were and are would die by his hand.

Konrad rushed into the light and...

His eyes snapped open and above him was the open sky.

AN: Uploaded early cuz I'll be gone for a few days next week and I wanted to leave you guys with a lil razzle dazzle. (Pat)reon will continue updating as normal. The Honored One and the Shattering will update as normal too.