Prologue

«At the End»

It was dark, damp, and cold to the point that he started to doubt how on earth he could still feel everything like usual. There’s no way he could feel anything with a knife embed in his chest like this. In fact, there’s no way he could be sane enough to lay there silently and looked at a girl straddling atop his bloodied body, holding the said knife firmly in her hands. He continued to stare at her not with utter silence, but with something else that wouldn’t make any sense in this situation.

A warm smile presenting itself at his little soon-to-be-murderer was not something she had expected to see when she plunged the knife into his chest.

“You missed my heart on purpose, you troublesome girl.”

His sentence held no trace of malice, and supporting that was his right hand that left the pool of blood to caress her cheek lovingly. She flinched, she had to after noticing the fading warmth of his caring touch. It caused her grip on the knife to crumble along with a part of her resolve, chipping away slowly yet steadily.

Nevertheless, she still donned her mask of façade perfectly without any hint of crack. And just like any cold blooded killer would do to any defiant victim, she started to push all her weight onto the knife, grinding it even more then she had already done the past minutes.

“How are you feeling?”

Her eyes narrowed at the same time the question escaped the confine of her thin lips. They were pressed together and yet those words still won against her resolution. She veiled it with sarcasm that was met with the opposite reaction she had guessed once again. He just put on a strong front and present her with a strained smile, all the while pinching the tip of her nose lightly.

“Not as painful as I thought it should be, maybe you’re doing it wrong?” The question he sent back her way was a sign for her to push every fibers of her being behind the knife, driving it down further. Being rewarded with a muffled groan, her hazel green multicolored orbs locked onto the clear blues beneath with glee. She tried her hardest to find a hint of hatred in them, the act she deemed unsuccessful the moment she realized that it was the opposite.

Her hate, it was confronted with his love.

“You’re smiling like an idiot, why? Are you a madman?”

A single trail of blood trickled down from one corner of his mouth when his lips arced into an even gentler smile. A sight she felt stabbing the inside of her being, knowing that it was sent to her without any thought of hate or revenge.

His feeling was entirely different from her, in the past, at this moment.

He never hated her no matter what she had done, unlike her.

“I’m not a madman, Caeli. Apparently, I’m going to be a dead man.”

Her lips simply pressed tighter into a thin line after the answer he had given her. Facing with the fact he had reminded her of, she gritted her teeth and forced her eyelids shut. He could make out their movements clearly as both of her eyes wandered beneath their cover in confusion, a habit she had picked up years ago.

The girl he had picked up on that fateful night had grown up to be a beautiful girl, yet she still remained the same little girl before him. No matter what he had done, she was still a poor girl who could find no happiness in life. The same girl whose entire family laid wasted by his very hands.

“Even if it’s a job, I still murdered your entire family in cold blood. This is justified. You’re just having your well-deserved revenge, nothing more, nothing less.”

Her aunt died in a car accident, the same car that careen off the cliff because of him cutting its brake cable. Her father died of heart attack when he was being hospitalized due to dengue, the same hospital room he had went in and injected some chemical concoction into the IV drip. Lastly, her mother was murdered by a robber in front of her who was forced into hiding inside of a wardrobe. The robber’s identity was undoubtedly him, and it didn’t help her that she saw his face when he opened the closet, setting up the crime scene.

He chose to let the innocent girl lived. He decided to take care of her himself, and by dirtying her hands with blood of these headless bodies beside them, he forced her to become like him.

A heartless killer…

He had met with a threat from her innumerable times staying together in a small suite dedicated to himself by the organization. She had never succeed even once until now, hence why he’s here on the receiving end of the knife she took care of every night before bed. This was the moment she’s about to achieve the goal she had set up for herself four years ago when they began to live together.

It was kind of sad, seeing the girl who was once so pure had become something like this. With the sole reason of her becoming like this being revenge, he felt even worse taking her in and aiding her in every way possible until this day.

He shouldn’t have let her lived that night.

He should have ended her while she was still pure and innocent. There was a saying that said about how the whiter the fabric was, the easier it would be stained. Just like her name implied, he could have stopped this angel from falling this low into the depth of abyss they currently treaded.

Someone so pure like he did not belong here. She had no need to know about this part of the world. And now, seeing how unfazed she was, driving a knife into his chest, he could not help but sigh uncontrollably.

“I have a question for you, Caeli. I really hope you know the answer to this one.” The smile that had vanished a moment ago emerged once again the moment the girl least expected. Furthermore, this time, the gentleness behind a simple curvature his lips has become seemed to be multiplied tenfold.

This smile once again robbed her of her ability to reply.

It was as if that smile once again robbed her of her ability to reply.

“What’s the date today?”

It was a question so simple that she squinted her eyes in disbelief, contemplating on what was actually hidden behind the naivety of such sentence. Today’s date, there was no way she couldn’t remember such thing. That was because today was an important day everyone knew about.

Since it was so important, there’s no way she would forget that today was an important day people all over the world dubbed as Doom’s Eve.

“Isn’t it September 26? How could I not know? Wasn’t it the reason why you start this bloodshed at our doorstep? You murdered everyone in cold blood, again, Killian.”

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

As her pitch went higher at the end of every sentences, she flicked the handle of the knife still lodged inside his chest with a cruel smile. It was deliberately stabbed so that it avoided all the vitals. She missed his heart, letting him lived this nightmare in the waking world. She wanted him to taste the pain, to share them with her, to have her only kin left on this wretched world to suffer.

“The date has changed, Caeli, dearie…” Letting his thumb that had been trailing a circle softly on her left cheek fell down lifelessly, he heaved out a long sigh, looking into the eyes that she inherited from their father widened in surprise.

It was at this moment that he felt something diverting his attention from the foreign object embed in his chest. It was painful, like someone had just pressed a burning brand upon his eyelids. It was so hot that his tears welled up to counterbalance the feeling.

It was the first time in the last four years that he cried.

“I was a sorry excuse of a big brother, yes? This will be my atonement for whatever I’ve done to you, for dragging you into this matter. Unlike our parents or our aunt, I couldn’t bear to end your life with my own hands, and I can’t let anybody else do it as well. I’m a coward, Caeli.”

The look in her eyes was still as cold as ice when she continued leaning over him like this. She looked at him with so much emotion that he could not avert his gaze, unable to run like he had done in the past.

“I killed to live, and I regret making you do the same, taking lives from others just to extend our own. I’m afraid, Sister, that’s why I choose to stop it now, ending this rotten organization once and for all.”

It came out perfectly as if rehearsed, but he’s still confused.

She still had that look on her face that told him of her resolve to kill, but something else was also there on her pretty face that started to be dirtied with rolling tears. It was something he was so familiar yet unexpected.

The sadness in her eyes froze him like a deer in headlight.

“Why are you crying?”

He moved once again with the thought of getting rid of the tears staining her bloodied face, but just before he could do it, he realized that his left hand was no more. What moved up between their locking eyes was a stump, what’s left of his hand that was slowly disintegrating. It was as if his whole being was just a clump of data, his left wrist was clearly dissolving into clear blue small particles…

It’s not just his left hand, her right cheek’s dissolving as well.

Everything was going to disappear.

“Father and Mother brought forth this downfall of humanity with the research they called [Magic]. Now that they are gone, it fall down to us to end it. Cline started all of this, and it should be Cline who end it. The prophesized Doom has come, dear Sister. The Doom has finally come. The freedom you wanted so much, it was such a short lived present from me, no?”

Caeli Cline, the girl who looked no older than 12 years old, glanced back at the only light illumination this huge laboratory with a solemn look in her eyes. Everything was dyed in madder red, she noted before having to wince as she fell over, her body a hammer missing the nail that was the knife in his chest by an inch.

Both of her hands had started dissolving.

“There was no way the me from seven years ago would believe in any of this. Human trying to rule over nature and create miracle with technology? What a ridiculous bunch of mad scientist, yes, but if those mad scientist were not our parents, maybe we’d still be…”

“Stop! It’s all right already, so stop it, please!”

Her tone was filled to the brim with sadness, somewhat dejected. Was she disappointed because her freedom was so short lived? Was she unhappy because her revenge was cut short? Was it because that everything she had done up until now was all in vain?

His thought revolved around those same principle as he looked on blankly at the girl laying atop of him. She tried to get but failed and fell onto him once again, avoiding the knife completely.

“I’m like, really sorry, Killian,” she coughed amidst all the tears. “You were forced into doing it, I know. Even though it’s our family, even though you’re doing it because of these scums, I still treated you like you’re no different from them all these years… I’m really sorry.”

She was his little angel, the one he cherished so much no matter what she thought of him. He brought her down into this hellhole with him, turning her into demon driven by revenge, and yet she still came back. The little angel he loved with every fibers of his being has come back. He could fell the warmth of her awkward embrace, the wetness of her tears soaking into his bloodied shirt. The blood he bathed in, either his or all these handiwork littering the ground, couldn’t be this warm anymore. It was so warm he wanted to cry…

However, she was already crying his share of tears.

She’s bawling her eyes out, wasn’t she?

With what’s left of his right hand, he slowly pat his younger sister’s head as she buried her face into the crook of his neck. He breathed in her muddied scent slowly all the while glaring dagger at the circular mass of energy at the center of this laboratory. It was this huge glass container with mad red orb inside that brought demise unto humanity along with its advancement. Ironic, he knew it quite well as he was the one who put an end to its creators in the past.

Killing his own parent who treated him like a filth and his sister like a tool, such action had left no taste whatsoever in his mouth. However, when it came to the one he cared the most in his life like his little sister who’s crying her heart out before him, he couldn’t as much as lift his finger against her, no matter how hard he steeled himself to do the deed.

The device that gifted humanity with [Magic] was nothing but a weird machine to Caeli until this day. How it worked was just like how mankind came into contact with petroleum. The machine interfered with planet’s ley lines, sucking the energies out from the home we lived, the dimension we existed, and used them for petty things like fueling machines and necessity in our daily life. Technically it was free of charge, using them for everything we could imagine.

However, just like how mankind used up all the fuel, the planet had passed its point of no return. The Doom’s Day was, regrettably, today and at this very moment.

Such thing was predetermined by this organization he worked for and Caeli grew up inside for the past years. It was run by some shady people who called themselves the Oracles. It was given that with [Magic] at human’s beck and call, something like [Mage] who used technology to make miracle instead of ritual and incantation would appear. He was also one of those [Mage] working for the organization who was behind the ending of many wars in our entire history.

“Hey, Killian, do you, perhaps, believe in afterlife or reincarnation?” This topic surely came out of nowhere, but leave it to her to ask something out of the blue like this. However, considering that this was the girl who immerse herself in literature in her free time, it was not an odd question at this moment.

[Magic] did indeed exist, so why not afterlife and reincarnation?

“Well, that’s quite a question. If it does exist, though, I think I might be over there before you? Waiting for you with smile and all that jazz…*cough*”

“––Killian!? I’m…”

“It’s all right, everything’s all right. You deserve a revenge, those three really loved you, no? Well, it should be four right now, so please count me in as well. I robbed a happy life from you and now I’m trying my best to make it up to you, yes.”

The look she had on her face when his words hit home was something he could hardly stand. Caeli used what’s left of her arms to pull him into an embrace, the second one tonight. After all those years they practically lived in the same room, it was today that she opened up to him. She was the only one in that house to look at him like a human being, the only one who cared for him.

It seemed she still was despite what she had done.

“The world is disappearing and you are still crying like a little kid, well, you technically are. Hey, Caeli, can you do me a favor and call me like you usually do? I want to hear it now, I’ll even give you a milk pudding I made yesterday as a reward. So, please? Can you call me Big Brother again?”

Somehow, he could not sense her breath tickling his neck any longer.

“Caeli?”

Somehow, he could not feel her heartbeat anymore.

It was fast, abrupt even. The disintegration of reality occurred starting from those who delved deep into the arts of [Magic]. The deeper one was, the more knowledge one had. And thus, the more proficient one was with [Magic], the faster one ceased to exist.

[Magic] in this sense was different from magic, it was not something that was bestowed to human by God or Mother Nature, nor was it something originating within oneself. This [Magic] was manmade, something mankind robbed from nature. To put it in simpler term, it was scientifically created by the hand of their father, his and Caeli’s. It was a technology so advanced that it can interfere with reality itself, becoming hands and feet of those who called themselves [Mage].

However, this power came with a cost that no one bothered to pay. It was the cost no one beside the higher ups of this organization, the Oracles, knew about. Caeli did not know of its existence, and he only knew about the cost a moment ago.

The moment when it was all too late already.

[Mages] are those who cause this reality to destabilize itself and ceased its existence, returning everything into its [Root], into nothingness.

“What a joke, humanity. What a ridiculous joke…”

Those were what was left of him who was at the front row seat to witness the moment everything ended, the moment when the core of [Magic] burnt brightly with the intensity that rivaled even the sun. The [Red Sun] that brought forth the prophesized Doom, the end of humanity and this realm.