Red Horse

The wind howled across the desolate plains, whipping dust into the air like the ghosts of the fallen rising from their shallow graves. In the distance, thunder rumbled—but there were no clouds in the sky. It was not a storm of weather that approached.

It was him.

They say when the world is on the brink, when peace is a dying whisper, the Red Horse rides again.

And today, he rode.

I stood at the edge of the village, barefoot on the scorched earth, my fingers trembling around the rusted spear I’d inherited from my father. Around me, the people of Ashvale gathered in silence. Old men. Tired women. Children who no longer cried.

We’d heard the rumors for weeks—towns wiped out, cities burning, leaders begging for mercy that never came. The Rider didn’t speak. He didn’t negotiate. He came on his blood-red stallion with armor like blackened bone and eyes that burned brighter than fire.

He was the second of the Four.

Famine had already come and gone, hollowing our bellies and stealing our crops. Pestilence followed, whispering sickness into every breath. Now, War approached, blade in hand, and his name was whispered like a curse across the land.

The Red Horse.

And I was the fool who volunteered to meet him.

He arrived at dusk.

No trumpet, no army. Just the sound of hooves—slow, steady, cruelly patient.

I stepped forward.

He was taller than I imagined. Not just in height, but in presence. His armor looked forged from ruin itself, etched with runes that pulsed red in the fading light. His helmet concealed his face, but I felt his gaze settle on me like a weight I couldn’t bear.

“What is your name?” I asked, my voice a cracked whisper.

He dismounted in one fluid motion, sword sheathed at his side. “Names are for men. I am War.”

The villagers trembled behind me.

I swallowed hard. “Then why do you come here? We have nothing left. No soldiers. No weapons. Not even bread.”

He walked toward me, each step leaving the earth darker than before.

“Peace,” he said, “is not the absence of war. It is the silence after the screaming stops. I do not come for what you have. I come for what you represent.”

“And what is that?”

“Hope,” he said. “A village still standing. A voice still questioning. You must fall so that the silence may spread.”

I didn’t think.

I lunged with the spear, a scream tearing from my throat. He moved like a shadow. Effortless. The spear shattered against his chestplate. I stumbled back, heart pounding, but he didn’t draw his sword.

“You have courage,” he said. “But courage does not stop war. Only war ends war.”

“Then take me,” I said. “Spare them.”

He tilted his head. “You offer your life?”

“No,” I said. “My soul.”

That made him pause.

“You would carry my banner?” he asked. “Ride beside me, stained in red? That is what it means to serve War.”

I looked back at the village. At my brother holding our baby sister. At the dying firelight in the eyes of those I loved.

“Yes,” I whispered. “If it means they live.”

He reached out, placing a hand over my heart. I expected pain. Fire. Death.

Instead, I felt… nothing.

A stillness, spreading like ice.

The plains around us shifted. The wind died. My breath slowed.

And then, in a voice older than time, he said:

“Then rise, Rider. The world burns, and we ride.”

The transformation was not sudden—but it was complete.

My armor was no longer rusted. It gleamed crimson like blood on polished steel. My spear was reborn as a blade carved from war itself, humming with ancient hunger. The Red Horse—the one he had ridden—now bowed before me.

I turned to the village, expecting screams. Fear.

But instead… they bowed.

Because in saving them, I had become the thing they feared.

I looked to War—no, the other War. The original. He nodded once and then vanished, like smoke carried off by the last breath of a dying soldier.

I was the Rider now.

And War… was far from over.

Across the world, kings trembled as the sky turned red.

Battles paused as armies felt a cold wind pass through their bones.

In the silence before the storm, a whisper rose from the ashes:

“The Red Horse rides again.”

And the Rider of War had come.