Champions of Punishment

The city of Varn was not built on justice—it was built on bones.

Towering spires of black stone clawed the sky like fingers of a god long dead. The air reeked of smoke, blood, and quiet desperation. In the alleys, men in fine coats slit throats as easily as they signed trade contracts. The law was a myth. Mercy, a forgotten word.

Until they came.

The first sign was the sound—metal boots against cobblestone, steady as a funeral drum. Then the fire, crackling in their wake, licking the edges of the sky. And last, the silence that followed. A silence too deep, too final.

The Champions of Punishment had returned.

No one summoned them. No one knew their names. They appeared only when the rot of a place grew too thick, when the wicked flourished like weeds choking a dying garden.

I saw them with my own eyes.

It was on the Day of Red Ash. The sky turned the color of dried blood, and snowflakes of soot fell like a grim mockery of winter.

I was a scribe, a quiet man who kept to shadows and parchment. That morning, I stood in the square near the gallows where the corrupt governor, Dorian Vask, gave his weekly speech—lies cloaked in silk.

He raised his hand to speak.

And the sky split open.

They descended like angels of wrath—five of them, clad in jagged armor blacker than midnight, trimmed in molten gold. Each bore a weapon forged in myth: a flame-wreathed sword, a hammer that cracked stone, a whip made of chains, a bow that glowed with ghostly fire, and a pair of twin blades that sang with every swing.

They didn’t speak. They didn’t warn.

They judged.

The crowd scattered, screaming. I stood frozen.

Governor Vask reached for the pistol at his side—but the woman with the whip was faster. It snapped once, severing the weapon—and his arm. He shrieked as the Champion with the hammer stepped forward and brought it down.

Skull. Pavement. Silence.

It was over in seconds.

They moved like fire through the city, targeting only the corrupt, the cruel, the untouchable.

A slaver who sold children in back alleys? Burned inside his own warehouse.

A priest who stole food from the orphans he preached to? Nailed to the church doors.

A general who ordered executions for sport? Found cleaved in half in his gilded bathtub.

No trial. No jury. Only flame and steel.

Some called it justice. Others, vengeance.

But all knew—it was deserved.

I followed them.

Not out of madness, but out of hunger—for understanding. Who were they? Why did they come now?

They made their camp in the old cathedral ruins, where light no longer touched the ground. I approached, heart slamming in my chest like a war drum.

The one with the twin blades turned to me, face hidden beneath a horned helm. “You seek judgment?”

I shook my head. “I seek truth.”

He studied me. Then, to my shock, removed his helm.

He looked… ordinary. A scarred face. Worn eyes. No older than thirty.

“We were once men and women like you,” he said. “Until the gods grew silent, and the world decayed. Now we carry out what the divine will no longer enforce.”

“You kill them without trial,” I said. “Is that justice?”

He handed me a scroll—names, dates, crimes, written in ancient ink.

“They judged themselves with their actions,” he replied. “We only deliver the sentence.”

That night, the Champions prepared to leave.

The city was quieter now. Streets empty. Gates unguarded. Crime had vanished like smoke. For the first time in decades, the people slept without fear.

But as the Champions mounted their horses of black fire, the twin-blade warrior turned to me.

“There is another name on the list,” he said. “One that cannot be punished by steel or flame.”

“Who?” I asked, voice thin.

He handed me a mirror.

I saw myself.

I froze.

“Fear kept you silent,” he said. “When others screamed, you wrote. When children vanished, you took notes. You chronicled the darkness—but did nothing to stop it.”

I fell to my knees.

“I was just a scribe…”

He crouched beside me.

“Then write the truth. Not for coin. Not for power. But for redemption. That is your punishment. You live. And you remember.”

They vanished into the fog before dawn.

And I—once a man of ink—now write in fire.

I record every judgment. Every name. Every sin purged by those silent champions. Not to glorify. Not to excuse.

But to remind the world:

When the wicked grow bold,

When laws break and justice shatters,

When no light remains—

They will come.

The Champions of Punishment.

And they will judge the wicked with steel and flame.