YCH from the talented  risenren!

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The world was dark and cold, like stepping into the very soul of night. A chill wind embraced me, at once both comforting and hostile, like it wanted me to stay but for a purpose I couldn’t possibly know. It froze my skin but warmed by flesh; lit a fire in my heart while chilling me to the bone. It was a world, once. There were just enough signs of that, that someone may have lived here in ages past. The vague remains of plant life here, a footprint frozen forever in time there.

“Nightfall stole this world, you say?” I said to the spirit in my sword.
A silent pause hung in the air, as though the spirit could do little but nod. “It thrived, long ago,” the spirit finally said. The hilt of my sword grew warm as the spirit spoke. “Nightfall took notice and grew jealous, resentful of the world’s warmth and light. Of my success.”
I laughed, without humour. “Your success?” I said. “You’re to thank for the land having light?”
“Do you know how spirits work? Do you know what we do?”
I fell silent. Of course I had no idea. Still, it felt rather farfetched that one being, spirit or mundane, could be to thank for the flourishing of an entire world.

I crossed the field of rime and darkness. The frosty remains were cold beneath my feet, and made no sound even as they crunched beneath me. Vague structures rose around me, though swamped by the shadows that swallowed the land. It must have once been a village, perhaps even a sprawling city. I could almost hear the bustling busywork of whoever once ran up and down its streets, smell the scent of bread wafting from the bakeries and the flowers in the gardens beside the roads.

My sword grew hotter.

I knelt down and ran my hand through the cold ashes that covered the ground, feeling a gentle numbness spread through my claws. It didn’t quite make sense to me. The first I heard of Nightfall, it was from a rapidly-spreading chill. A frosty storm that quickly engulfed the forest I had been trekking through, blanketing the land in thick snow. If Nightfall had taken this world, then why…

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked the spirit. “This place has already fallen. There’s nothing I can do about it. Shouldn’t I be back home, defending my own world from this same fate?”
“If you want to battle Nightfall, you must lure him,” the spirit replied. “Would you rather do that in your own world? Where there is still life to be lost, still land to be frozen? Or a dead world with nothing left to lose?”
“Hmmm.” It seemed a fair point. “But how can he be lured to a land that is already gone? A world he has already taken?”
“He is a jealous sort. Always has been. He thinks of this place as his, even with nothing in it for him to keep. Challenge him for it, and he will come running.”
“But how can I challenge him if…”
“Burn it.” The blade of the sword glowed a fiery red, brilliant as the sun that would no longer touch this land. The sheer force of the spirit lurking within forced my hand up, and my arm trembled as I struggled to contain the energy that pulsed within. “Burn it all.”

The light faded, the energy stilled, and I lowered the blade. I turned my gaze towards what remained of the land I had found myself in. It was already in ruins. Buildings were in shambles, ground was grey and ashen, and the sky was darker than night. But still, it was the only sign I had seen since arriving here that this had even been a world, once.

“Burn it, hero.”

Even if it had no chance of ever coming back, no chance of ever again being anything more than a ruined reminder of what once was, to definitively destroy it all…

“Burn it!”

Trails of flaming light spiralled down the blade, down the hilt, along my arm. The heat of the sun burned through scale, muscle and bone, and my own fire burned in my throat. I flared my wings, stepped forward, and swung a wide arc. And a wave of white fire unleashed from the blade. It soared over the icy ground, which melted in a heartbeat and soaked into the ash beneath.

The blazing arc collided with the frozen spires that rose from the ashen ground, bursting into a clous of hissing steam. I roared and stepped forward again, carving another slice through the air. Another slash of blazing light struck forth from the blade, more hissing steam as the ice crumpled beneath it. The spirit was speaking, or perhaps simply laughing, or gasping – I couldn’t hear it well enough through the roaring blaze and the shattering ice.

The light of the flaming arcs that cut through the air blinded me, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. My mind kept wandering to that forest, where I had fallen asleep in a warm, verdant paradise, and awoken on a sheet of ice. Whoever, whatever, Nightfall was, it worked fast. And though I still didn’t trust the spirit in my sword, it was right – I had to lure the villain away from my home and to me.

And the blaze that now engulfed this ruin would certainly do just that.

The ice had entirely fallen, making way to a tremendous inferno. Flecks of ash flittered through the air as flames licked through the darkness. The remains of whatever buildings once stood here had fallen entirely; the last evidence that there had once been any life in this dead place, reduced to nothing.

I looked at the sky, sucking deep breaths through clenched teeth.

“Come on!” I roared into the darkness, lit by ever-growing flames. “If you want to keep this world, you’ll have to earn it all over again!” I kicked down one of the last remaining pillars of ice, and it joined the growing blaze.

At first, silence.

Then the hint of sound beyond the crackling flames. Gentle beating at first, then faster, louder, closer. The sky wavered like heated air rising from a flame. And all at once, the flames turned from red to a shining blue.

Two orbs of blue mist flared to life in the midst of the dark sky. Heavy pounding, like galloping hoofbeats, coursed through the air, blazing a trail of shimmering frost like a road in the sky above. I drew my sword back and kept my eyes on the thing as it approached. A nightmare horse galloped through the dark, its coat shadowed in shimmering black, its mane and tail a swirling mist of frost. Every beat of its hooves in the sky sent a cloud of freezing air bursting back. The beast stood still in the sky, unmoving save for the wavering of its frosty mane and tail, and snorted icy breath.

Nightfall stood before me at last.

I held my sword at the ready. Whatever the true identity of this creature, from wherever it had come, whyever it was here, I had the strength to take it down. The power of the sun coursed through my veins, my muscles, my blade.

Nightfall glared down at me and stomped a hoof in the air.

“Good eve to you, brother.”