Prologue

The world is cruel.

Because...

I am cruel.

As I came to, the very first sensation to welcome me was excruciating pain. Every inch of my body stung and throbbed as if being ripped to pieces, clued back together, and crushed under a rock yet again. Horrible nightmarish images of death, of dying, of torment flashed inside my mind.

I could endure it, easily even, as I have actually experienced and lived through such things before. I've experienced a fair amount of torture on myself, as well as seen it done to others. It's not like I approve either of those cases, but, well, such things happen, and quite often to myself.

When most of the pain had subsided, only a dull ache remained throughout my body, and this coldness, this odd chill at the very core of my body.

'Well, well... that was one hell of a way to start a day off...'

But there I was, alive and well, at least to some degree.

Unfortunately, I was incapable of moving. I was stuck in a fixed position, my arms and legs curled close to me, all nestled up.

At the same time I had no sense of orientation, there wasn't any pull towards any direction, and I couldn't sense any movement either. When I tried to stretch my arms and legs, I couldn't put any force into them. It didn't feel like my movement was restricted by some physical barrier, the problem came from inside, as if I couldn't send impulses to my limbs at all.

I couldn't open my eyes either, so my surroundings were left undetermined, too. And it was silent, absolutely no sound, not even the beating of my heart was detectable. Yet, I was aware of myself, I could think and feel, and reflect on how this situation came to be.

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Oddly, even my own sense of time was somewhat strange. Even if I subconsciously counted and kept track on how much time had passed, I felt something was off. It was as if time around me passed by much faster – if I counted 10 seconds, it felt like a millenia had passed. However, at that point I had been there for a few minutes already, which soon turned into an hour.

Then, the point when I had counted an hour seemed to be some sort of a checkpoint, as small changes occurred. The space I was floating in was disrupted, some sort of disturbance ran through it. I also started to feel invigorated – strength, power.

A loud boom resounded throughout the place, the space twisted, and it felt as if my soul was being dragged out to somewhere.

Then, there was the heavy pull of gravity, the cold hard touch of a stone floor, the dusty air tingling my nose, a deep rumbling echoing everywhere around, and the ground shaking. As I lay there, I knew that the time had come, that I was finally unsealed, and could start living in this new world.

As I stood up, balancing myself on my legs, and opened my eyes, I could inspect my surroundings. It was a dark, dusty room, with some braziers illuminating the place. There were many coffin-like caskets, sculptures of various creatures, not any of them human, and what seemed to be a shrine with two broken halfs of an orb lying on it.

I noticed a group of 10 people, wearing armor and brandishing different weapons, swords mostly, but two of them had long staffs. And they were in their battle stances, menacingly, the weapons pointed towards me.