This is the origin story of Hanh, the Tiger-Souled Warlock, and how a single chaotic battle in a cursed chapel led to the birth of the Mythical Bastards.
There are places on the map where the ink fades.
The space between kingdoms. Roads that twist like lies. Spots where birds won’t fly and compasses don’t try. They’d been walking through one for three days. Locals called it the Maw, but Hanh said that was too dramatic. Deth disagreed.
So did the screaming chapel they found on the fourth day.
It should’ve been mimics. That was the job. “Cleanse the chapel, kill the mimics, get paid.” Simple. Bloody. Honest.
But there weren’t mimics.
There was something older.
The air tasted like burnt copper. The ground whispered names that didn’t belong to it. And in the center of the broken sanctuary, suspended in midair like a hymn carved from meat, was a Flesh Choir—a floating, pulsing bundle of mouths, hands, and stitched-together faces all trying to scream the same song.
They’d built it out of the villagers.
That part mattered.
Because it was the moment Hanh tilted his head and said, very calmly:
“I think I’m going to talk to it.”
The other mercs ran. Deth didn’t. She never did.
She stood by him in the grass, bow raised, her breath shallow and fast.
“That thing is singing a lullaby made of spinal cords.”
“Yeah,” Hanh said. “Not its worst quality.”
He was calm, but not cold. That was the trick with him. He wasn’t fearless—just interested in fear the way some people are interested in puzzles.
She watched him draw a sigil in the dirt with his boot and spit in the center.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Improvising.”
The Battle Begins
Hanh stepped through the chapel doors with smoke curling around his ankles. The Flesh Choir turned, its many mouths overlapping in a single, echoing shriek that felt like being slapped with your own worst memory.
He cast Ego Echo—a mocking double of himself made of snark and bad ideas. The Echo snapped its fingers and launched a spell like a middle finger dipped in hellfire. The Choir howled.
It dropped from the air like a falling lung and charged.
Hanh danced back, arms wide, grinning. “That’s the spirit.”
From outside, Deth took aim. Her arrow struck one of the sewn faces mid-song. The voice skipped like a broken record. The Choir lurched and spat a ball of shrieking bile that scorched the chapel floor.
Deth rolled to cover.
“Tell me this was the plan!”
“It’s becoming the plan!”
Hanh threw down a black rune and howled her name:
“Lyra.”
The tiger didn’t appear. She uncoiled—from smoke, from Hanh’s own shadow. A massive, jagged-striped spirit-beast with glowing white eyes and a mouth full of stars. She landed with a roar that shook the pews.
The Choir split apart—six limbs detaching like spiders, swarming.
The Middle: Chaos and Blood
Lyra pounced, crushing one limb and dragging another across the pulpit, leaving ethereal scorch marks where her claws passed. But every time she ripped part of it away, it regenerated—grafting new limbs from leftover bodies. It didn’t bleed. It multiplied.
Deth moved between pillars, loosing arrow after arrow. Hanh was shouting spell after spell, alternating between fire runes and entropy bursts that melted stone but only made the Choir scream louder.
Then it sang. Not just noise—an actual melody. Old. Wrong. A spell built from agony and held notes. Lyra froze mid-attack. Deth dropped her bow. Hanh’s vision blurred. The spell was rewriting pain, and they were the ink.
“I need six seconds!” Hanh shouted, voice cracking.
Deth staggered to her knees. “I’ll give you four!”
She pulled a short blade from her belt and ran toward it.
The End: Broken Victory
While Deth kept the Choir busy—dodging, slashing, bleeding—Hanh carved the final glyph into the stone with his bare hand. Blood smeared into the symbol. His arm shook. The black veins were crawling higher now, reaching his jawline.
He cast Sigil of the Severed Pact—a forbidden rune that breaks magical bonds. It didn’t destroy the Flesh Choir. It turned its own magic against itself.
It began to unravel.
But so did the chapel. The stones cracked. Air folded. Lyra tackled Deth and rolled her out the doors just as the final scream erupted, folding the Choir inward like collapsing lungs.
Then silence.
Not peaceful. Just… done.
When the smoke cleared, Hanh was standing in the crater where the altar had been, hat in hand, bleeding from his ears.
Deth limped toward him, cloak torn, side leaking red. She looked like hell. He looked worse.
She stared at him. Then down at the smoking stone. Then back at him.
“You,” she said, voice rasping. “You Mythical Bastard.”
Hanh blinked. “Is that… a compliment?”
“Absolutely not.”
(beat)
“But it will be.”
She kissed him on the cheek, hard and fast. He flinched, then smiled.
They sat in the wreckage and laughed until it hurt.
Later, Hanh would enchant the first calling card. He’d leave it behind on jobs that went sideways but ended with the world mostly intact. They said:
“A Bastard Was Here. The World’s a Bit Safer. But Also Slightly Not.”
And from there, the name spread.
Not knights. Not saints.
Bastards. Mythical ones.
