The Penitent: The Ghost of the Blight

Purity is not measured in mercy. It is measured in the number of corpses left behind.

In the past year, as the Blight spread across Faulmoor, a name has surfaced in whispers—not a title of rank or lineage, but a name spoken with dread. The Penitent is not a man to be reasoned with, nor is he a soldier to be bribed or turned aside. He is a force of absolute judgment, an executioner who neither seeks nor requires approval. Where the Blight lingers, he follows, and where he walks, no one remains to speak of him.

No one knows who he is. Some believe he is an agent of a noble house, sanctioned to purge the infected without remorse. Others claim he is a rogue, a zealot acting beyond the reach of law, answering only to his own convictions. There are those who say he does not serve any house at all, that he is a manifestation of the land’s suffering, a ghost clad in white who walks the ruins and delivers a justice as unfeeling as the Blight itself. He is rarely seen, and those who have faced him rarely live long enough to speak of it. And those who survive, in time, find themselves struggling to recall the details of what they saw—if they saw anything at all.

The Penitent operates with chilling efficiency. His presence is never announced, nor is it met with warnings or proclamations. He arrives in silence, passes judgment without debate, and leaves behind only the dead. To be seen by the Penitent is to be measured, to have one’s life weighed against his unwavering standard of purity. There are no second chances. A single sign of infection—fever, fatigue, a poorly healed wound—is enough to warrant execution. There is no interrogation, no trial, no appeals to mercy. Mercy, he believes, is the root of all weakness, the rot that allows the Blight to spread.

Though no one has seen his face, his presence is unmistakable. He wears a white cowl, but beneath it, there is no face—only a void, only the absence of identity. His veil lags behind his movements, a breath slower than it should be, as if the shroud itself is unsure whether it still drapes over something real. His armor is practical, built for movement rather than intimidation, though it has long since taken on an aura of dread. The white fabric he wears never seems to stain, even when it should be bathed in the blood of those he kills. Some claim that beneath the veil, there is nothing at all, that his humanity has long since faded from existence. Others whisper that his voice, low and measured, does not sound entirely human, as if it does not belong to the thing that wears the veil at all. He moves with quiet certainty, never rushing, never hesitating, never showing even the faintest flicker of doubt.

His weapon, a long and thin silvered greatsword known only as Sunsorrow, is always wrapped in white cloth, its pristine blade glinting beneath the folds like an instrument of divine punishment. It is a blade that never rusts, never dulls, and never hesitates. Those who have seen it drawn know that its edge is not reserved only for the infected. Any who stand in his way are cut down with the same unwavering precision. The Penitent does not suffer interference. He does not negotiate. He does not see civilians, soldiers, or nobles—only the pure and the impure.

But Sunsorrow is not his only tool. Where steel does not suffice, fire does.

Fire, to the Penitent, is the ultimate cleanser. It does not discriminate, it does not falter, and it does not leave room for doubt. If the body cannot be trusted to remain pure, then neither can the land it touches. There have been countless occasions where, rather than swinging his blade, the Warden simply burned entire settlements to the ground. He carries with him a series of iron censers, each filled with a thick, alchemical mixture that ignites instantly upon exposure to air. With a single throw, the contents explode in gouts of flame, consuming everything in their path. Buildings, bodies, even the very earth itself—nothing is left behind but scorched ruins and smoke curling into the sky like the last prayers of the condemned.

There is no hesitation in the way he wields fire. He does not wait to confirm an infection, nor does he seek to isolate the afflicted. If a town stands too close to the Blight, he will ensure that it stands no longer. There is no difference in his eyes between a sick child and a house that once held the sick—both are fuel for the pyre. His methods are not simply about execution. They are about erasure. The infected do not simply die; they are removed, their existence burned away as if they had never been.

Rumors of his origin are as varied as they are unsettling. Some believe he was once a noble himself, one who lost everything to the Blight and became something else, something more terrible than grief. Others claim he was a priest who once sought to heal the sick but saw too many fall to the disease and came to believe that fire and steel were the only cures. The most disturbing whispers say that he was never a man at all, that the Blight did not claim him but made something new in its place, something unfeeling and relentless, something that now walks in human form but is not bound by human limitations.

Those who fear him do so not just for his actions, but for his beliefs. The Penitent does not kill out of cruelty. He does not act out of malice. He is not a murderer who enjoys his work, nor a brute who revels in slaughter. He is something far worse—a zealot without doubt, a man who believes, beyond any question, that what he does is right. In his mind, he is not the villain of this story, nor its hero. He is merely the executioner of a world that has lost the ability to save itself.

There have been sightings of him across Faulmoor, always where the Blight has taken hold. A village near Duskford, already struggling to survive, was found abandoned overnight, its homes still intact, its doors left open, but its streets empty. Not a single soul remained. There were no bodies, no signs of battle—only the scorched remains of a mass pyre at the edge of the town, as if the Warden had come and carried out his judgment in a single, horrifying night. Another account, spoken in hushed voices by refugees who fled to Southvale, tells of a mother who begged for her child’s life, swearing the sickness had not taken hold. The Penitent did not speak. He simply drew his blade and killed them both.

His name is spoken in fear but also in reverence by those who believe the Blight is a punishment upon the land, a wound that must be cleansed no matter the cost. There are those who see him as a necessary evil, the last hand willing to do what must be done, and there are those who see him as the worst monster the Blight has yet produced. The truth, if there is one, lies somewhere in between.

One thing remains certain—he does not stop.

You cannot bribe a man who has abandoned his name. You cannot reason with a man who has abandoned his face. You can only run, and hope he does not follow.