THE MIRACULOUS RETURN OF DAMIEN BLACK

"What the hell is going on here?"

Upon seeing what was in front of him Damian's voice cut through the silence

Five years ago, before he left, this place was clean, the kind that made anyone hold their breath when they passed by. The grave stood clean and proud, not a single blade of grass dared grow where it shouldn't, and fresh flowers bloomed so bright they pulled bees from miles away.

But what his eyes fell on now made his blood turn cold.

The place looked abandoned, forgotten like yesterday's trash. Worse than that, it had become a dumping ground where people threw their rubbish without a second thought. Mountains of dirt and garbage buried almost everything, and if Damian didn't know the exact spot where they laid his mother to rest, he would have walked right past it without knowing she was even there.

At that moment his hands balled into fists so tight his knuckles turned white. His jaw trembled, not from weakness but from the kind of rage that made grown men take three steps back. The veins in his neck stood out like ropes pulled taut, and when he spoke again, each word dripped with deadly intent.

"So everything just abandoned my mother's grave like this. The military threw away everything that had to do with me like I never existed. Even after I became the god of war, even after I bled for this country and gave them victory after victory, they still couldn't take what belongs to me with the respect it deserves. What the hell is this?"

He turned slowly, his eyes scanning the wasteland around him, looking for something, anything that would make sense of this madness. His breathing grew heavier, and the question that came next tasted bitter on his tongue.

"Could it be that my wife Mabel and her family didn't do a single thing to make sure this place was taken care of after it got abandoned? After they knew how much this place meant to me?"

"Mabel cannot do this to me."

Damian's voice shook with anger as the words tore out of his throat. His chest heaved like a man drowning on dry land, and his eyes burned red at the edges.

"What the hell is happening? Even if they abandoned it, what about my sister Rebecca? Rebecca knew how important this place was to me. She wouldn't have just left it like this, so abandoned that it turned into a rubbish dump. The dirt has almost swallowed everything whole and this place smells like death itself. What the hell happened in the last five years? What the hell happened that made them abandon this place like it meant nothing?"

He stood there, rooted to the spot, his gaze fixed on the tiny portion of ground still visible beneath all the filth and garbage, the only sign that his mother's grave still existed under all that shame.

Six years ago when the war broke out, Damian got selected as a priority recruit to join the military and fight to defend the country. Nobody escaped the draft except for certain families, families like his wife's people, the Nathaniel family, who found ways to maneuver the system alongside other prominent families. They sent their son-in-laws and distant relatives into the war instead of their own blood. Back then, Damian thought maybe it was love that made them allow him to marry their daughter Mabel. He actually believed they saw something worthy in him.

But the moment they got married, that very night, before he could even hold his bride properly, they sent him off to join the military. Though he had to admit, Mabel loved him then, or at least she showed it during the week leading up to their wedding.

The way she looked at him, cared for him, spoke to him with such tenderness, even loved his sister Rebecca like her own blood. She never once said they came from too poor a background for her to associate with. She mixed with them freely, even slept in the small, worn-down room they called home back then without a single complaint crossing her lips. She never looked down on him, not even once. And when he was leaving, she promised him with tears in her eyes that she would take care of his sister. She promised him everything, told him not to worry because she would be waiting for him when he returned.

But then how did this place, one of the most important things in his world, end up looking like a forgotten wasteland?

"You people owe me an explanation for this," Damian said through gritted teeth.

He was about to take a step away from the grave when the roar of heavy machinery filled the air. An excavator rumbled to a stop right in front of him, its yellow body blocking his path like a metal giant. Seven men jumped down from the machine, their work clothes covered in dust and sweat.

One of them, a stocky man with a hard hat tilted to one side, shouted at Damian with the kind of voice that could wake the dead.

"Hey you! Get out of the way! Can't you see we're here to work on this place? What the hell are you still doing here? We stopped people from dumping rubbish in this area a week ago, so did you come here to throw your own rubbish? Get out of here right now! We want to clear this disgusting grave out of this place quickly because the buyer of this land is coming anytime soon, so we n

eed to prepare it."