The night passed in silence. The quietude was unnerving. The smell of ash was effervescent for miles. Red fruits in spherical shapes adorned dying trees whose heartwood was rotten from the inside. The fruits were hollow husks. The fruits used to be yellow.

Penetrating the silent landscape were the rays of cold blue moonlight that cared nought about the daily dallies of mortals. The light reflected off of puddles of muddy water formed of the curious shapes of footprints.

Buildings lay collapsed. No roofs, no floors. Lone pillars stood, testament to the calamity that befell. Shops lay empty. Houses vacant. What remained of the paradise was now a desert.

He woke up from another sleepless night. His stomach bellowed rambunctiously due to hunger. A simply boy. He lived alone. The ruins that were proof of war were his home. His tiny village with one surviving human and millions of cruel memory fragments.

Memories he would pay to forget.

Memories that would shake the heart of the most ice hearted human.

He hated them. His memories.

But life goes on. He had spent an entire day without food. He hoped his juvenile animal traps had caught some rabbits this time so that he could cook a bare meal.

His body smelled like he had just put out a raging fire. It wasn't particularly unique to him. The entire village smelled the same way. The earth, the trees, the fruits and so did the few animals he would occasionally catch.

The boy was seventeen years old. This much he knew. His village was exterminated on his birthday after all. Even though he had lost count of the days he had spent alone since that eventful day, he felt a year hadn't yet passed.

The boy was of average height. His hair was a dead shade of grey. His defining features, however, were his brown skin and red eyes. It was the defining feature of the people he belonged to, the Ebisha.

The Ebisha, a racially isolated group of tribalistic society society that lived in the region of Ebish, a central territory of the nation of Tilmar.

Not a long time has passed since the time when Ebish was a protected state in Tilmar. The Ebisha followed a religion that emphasised on the belief in the Sun god, that forbid them from using any kind of magic. They were complete naturalists.

Magic, however, was one of the most ubiquitous tools of man in the rest of Tilmar and its neighbours. Magic defined everything - status, power, wealth - everything centered around one's ability in magic in society.

Although the percentage of people who could use magic were low, the use of magic and magical tools themselves were ubiquitous in society around the human dominated societies, with the exception of Ebish.

The Ebisha were an isolated people. They were culturally and technologically isolated and willingly chose that path. Their society was inherently tribalistic and what the elder monks said would be law for the people.

Among the Ebisha, using magic was akin to committing blasphemy and would lead to immediate ostracization by the entire community.

Much like how the boy's father had been banished. His father had committed the worst kind of taboo and the entire family had banished along with him to he corner of the village. The boy's friends stopped talking to him, the parents glared at him venomously.

Over time, his family found it increasingly difficult to procure food due to the hostility from the other villagers. His father, on the other hand, was unrepentant. He continued studying magic, his behavior often crazed and unhinged.

The boy, whose name was Cyril, watched all this happen with detached eyes. His life had already been decided when his family was banished. He had no future. Neither did his poor mother and younger sister.

Cyril remembered the days when his family would go without food. How he would secretively give his own share of crumbs to his little sister Nina. How she would cutely reject it and force it into his own mouth instead.

His eyes teared up a bit when he recalled all that he lost. The day of massacre had changed everything. People in uniforms had appeared en masse unleashed their weapons on the village. They were the armed forces of Tilmar, the country that he supposedly belonged to.

Born into the Ebisha, Cyril never really felt a patriotic fervor towards Tilmar. But he had been taught, as a child, that the Ebisha were protected by the Tilmari people. That day all his teachings about history came undone.

Cyril reset his first trap, which turned out to be a dud, before he walked towards the next one. Patiently reminiscing. Time was all he had with him now, after all.

He had picked up his younger sister, and in a panic, quickly ran in the opposite direction of the encircling soldiers. He ran towards the shed used to store dried firewood and hid his sister there. After convincing his sister to stay silent at all costs, he returned to his parents' side only to see HIM.

A man in black uniform and an ecstatic grin on his face. Cyril would never forget that man. With a flick of his fingers red flames rose from the nether and burned everyone in sight, including him.

The smell of flesh burning, the screams of his villagers, the hysterical laughs of the men in black uniforms and the taste of ash were all burned into his memory as he passed out.

The earth formed into hundreds of spikes that pierced into and pierced apart the bodies of people who hadn't been burnt. Artificial earthquakes destroyed any structures built in the village.

When he woke up, he realised that everyone was dead. Corpses lay around him in droves. Some mangled, some mummified by flames and some rotting. Petrified, Cyril tried to pull himself out of the horde of dead bodies. He realised he had been thrown into a mass grave along with every other villager.

It was then that he saw the crying face of his sister among the dead bodies. Shock overwhelmed him. Anguish. Pain. His chest constricted and he couldn't breathe. His eyes began blacking out from shock. He crawled over dead bodies towards his sister, only to realise that she had been decapitated. She had no body below her neck. That day Cyril wept like a baby.

The second trap Cyril set up had caught a rabbit. He skillfully skinned it and deboned the carcass before slowly roasting it on a flame.

He had spent the next fifteen days after the incident soullessly making graves for all the villagers who had been dumped into the ditch. He was the only one left alive, and he had to follow the rituals of the Sun god as he buried the dead. Crying himself hoarse, vomiting from the stench, working himself to near death on nearly no appetite, Cyril buried all his villagers, regardless of whether they ostracised him or not.

He had been burned very badly. He remembered that very, very clearly. However, when he had awoken to see the slaughter, he had very few burn marks on him. However, his body had a sequence of black tattoos all over his body that kept appearing and disappearing. He was left with this mystery, after the tragedy, which he had no answer to.

As Cyril silently ate his meal, he spent most of the day studying the thick notebook that he found stored underground in a metal box under the debris of his home. It was a notebook left by his father, a detailed study of the heretical arts that his father had maniacally devoted himself to, his entire life.

Written in the Ebisha script, the notebook was titled "My Studies of Alchemy". Alchemy, it seemed was the technique to apply magic to transform matter.

Cyril had spent most of his days studying the books contents, experimenting with materials, identifying herbs and minerals and learning the basics of magic from the notebook.

As to why he did that, knowing it was taboo? There was nothing else left for him in this world other than the mysterious tattoos and the notebook. His village, his family, his religion and his god had all died on that fateful day, many months ago.

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Over these few months, Cyril had learned many new things. Among which he figured out that the tattoos disappeared if he willed it to be so. Thus he only willed the tattoos to appear when he wanted to study the curious symbols on them.

The tattoos ran all over his body, from the neck down to his toes. There were myriad symbols among those tattoos, of which he was able to identify the twelve zodiac signs that were mentioned in the notebook in the basics about Alchemy. The twelve zodiac signs appeared in several places, including his hands and feet. But the most conspicuous position was his chest, where they lined up to form a circle around his heart, but the circular arcs connecting the symbols were cracked.

Today, however, was different from all other days that had passed before. As Cyril was busy practicing the basics of transferring magical power through his body from his surroundings, he heard the sounds of a passing carriage driven by two horses. Interrupting his practice, Cyril decided to hide in the ruins and observe the party.

It was a group of five, who seemed to be dressed in blue outfits. Each of them had a chain around their neck on which hung a white tag of some kind.

The leader of the group was tall and slim, had blonde hair and blue eyes to match his fair skin. He took a look around at the ruins of the village, before sighing.

"Carnage. Utter Carnage. The military has destroyed Ebish completely. What in the world led to this? Why did the civil war take place? Hah.."

One of his accompanists, a woman, patted his shoulder in support.

"What happened was a war crime. A tragedy of unexpected proportions. I cannot believe that the Tilmaris conducted a mass genocide of the Ebisha."

While they were ruminating, a member of their corps suddenly signaled out.

"I sense a presence scouting us. There is someone living here. This flame was put out not too long ago, the charcoal is still warm."

"Oh?" The blonde leader of the group of five queried, curious to find someone alive in these conditions. For the most part, he assumed it was a traveller like their group, but from the likes of it, it seemed to be a singular individual.

"Dear friend, we come in peace. Do you mind showing yourself to us? We have no intentions of harming you, but for our own safety we need to confirm your presence." He continued with a confident air, trying to break the ice as he casually sat down near the extinguished fire.

Cyril, the Ebisha, carefully looked on. He waited for any signal from the five that showed they were about to attack, but they seemed relatively carefree. Slowly, but with reservations, he walked out of his hideout and into plain sight. He portrayed the traditional Ebisha gesture to welcome visitors, by clapping his palms together and bowing.

"W..welcome to the village of Tikrit."

The blue haired woman in a battle outfit had a surprised look on her face.

"An Ebisha! Are you a survivor? How do you speak the common tongue?" She spat out questions in a rapid sequence.

"My old man taught it to me as a kid. Who are you? Why do you come here?" He retorted back, curious to know about them.

The blonde haired man who appeared to be their leader tried to light a fire over the remains of the half burned twigs.

"We are mercenaries. We were making a trip towards our new job posting and ended up travelling through Ebish... The Tilmaris have destroyed the entire province and its vibrant and harmless people." Anger writ in his eyes and a tinge of sorrow.

The horrors that man had seen as he passed through the territory known as Ebish were manifold. Each village he had stopped by, each mass grave he had seen, the mangled corpses, the burning ditches and the flies... It had changed him.

"Destroyed Ebish... Do you mean that this massacre has happened to other villages too?" The horror of the statement was not lost on Cyril, who hoped that what the man had spoken earlier was in error. He couldn't imagine that not just his village, but all of Ebish had been massacred and killed by their very own countrymen.

"My friend, it appears you do not seem to know much of what has happened, do you?" The blonde man paused, before he took in a deep sigh and breathed out stale air.

"The Tilmar Republic claimed that the tribal leaders of Ebish were plotting a rebellion against the state. Thus they preemptively declared war on your people... And massacred all the people that they could to quell this 'rebellion'. The ones that survived.. Are being taken to the various cities and 'reeducated' about the world. Tell me, how long have you been here?"

Cyril felt his knees wobble and his heart pound. He suddenly lost his balance and plopped onto the ground, the small pebbles hurting his underside.

"I..I was here when it happened. They burned my family and my people. Somehow I was presumed dead and survived from those dreaded magicians. I..I dug out their graves with my own hands..I..I wonder why I was the only one who survived.."

The girl turned her face away from the scene and looked towards the sole fruit tree which had become a dried husk.

"You survived here...for nine months, without any civilization. Alone... How?"

"...."

The girl was only met with silence. No one had the mood to speak further. Everyone gathered around the fire as the sun slowly began to set and the quietude enveloped the surroundings again. The crickets made no sound. Because there were none. The birds didn't chirp, because the vicinity of the village had been completely destroyed.

Silence and solitude were all that remained. Each of the six people present were drowned in their own thoughts.

-----

Cyril had gone to check his traps and had found three rabbits today. It was his lucky day. He had returned to the ruins to prepare food for himself and his guests. The five mercenaries looked on quietly as he skinned and deboned the rabbits with ease.

"You know," the blonde man spoke hesitatingly, "We come from another country, not Tilmar. Why don't you come along with us, get a life in a city?"

Cyril stopped what he was doing and looked at the flames. "Our faith does not permit us to intermingle with the other folks. It does not allow us to step past the boundaries of Ebish. Besides all I have, is here. Without this, I am nothing."

"But..you still live, my friend. You have a life ahead of you, and you mustn't spend it like this." The blonde man pleaded.

"Even if I step out of here, from what you have said, I will most probably be detained by the military of Tilmar. My brown skin not withstanding, how could I hide my red eyes, the mark of every Ebisha?"

The blonde man looked at the blue haired woman who then spoke out quietly.

"I can help you hide your eyes. I have a magic skill that will transform your eyes permanently, but it will be painful. You will also lose your identity as an Ebisha...forever."

Cyril looked at her, then thought quietly. The Ebisha were all he knew, but he had seen first hand how the people had chained themselves. How his father had veered from the teachings, and how they had been ostracised. Despite these things, he still had pride as an Ebisha. But, he wouldn't be fanatical about it.

"Do it."

-----

A large transmutation array had been laid out. It was circular in nature with various complex geometric shapes inscribed within. The array was vertically antisymmetric, the left half when seen from an angle was the right half turned upside down.

Cyril stood in the center of this array, at the focal point of the directed symbols. The array was drawn with a brown colored powder. The blue haired girl stood outside the array, which had just been completed.

"I will now perform the Articus Vana. Be prepared for pain, but try your best not to move. In the end your pupils should turn black."

"I'm ready." Cyril uttered without any hint of emotion. His face had a determined look on his face.

The blue haired girl channelled her magical power through her hands and into the array, which suddenly lit up like blue fire sparks. The blue energy travelled through the various shapes in the array and a swirling mass of energy descended above Cyril. The blue energy of the array finally reached his feet and the moment it made contact, Cyril felt shock running through his entire body, as if it were going to be ripped apart. His eyesight turned black. He became temporarily blind as pain seared through him. But it still wasn't as bad as those poisonous burns he felt that day before he fainted. The pains of death, that he somehow miraculously survived.

After a few seconds, he sensed that something was wrong. He opened his eyes to see that he had been blasted apart and was lying bloodied on the sand several meters from the array.

Rage filled his mind! All of a sudden all the tattoos on his body glowed vibrantly. They tried to kill him in the guise of trying to help him. He would not trust people again! Not after how they burned his family. Not after how they decapitated his sister. He would never trust people ever again. Just one word swam in his mind like a poison.

Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!

Cyril stood up, half conscious, half maddened and half in grief. He would not leave these five alive! He walked to the five mercenaries who too had been flung away by the impact and lay unconscious, except the girl, who lay paralysed but awake, fear in her eyes as she saw the expressions on Cyril's face. She tried to scream to no avail.

Cyril put each of his hand on the head of a mercenary and the tattoos automatically glowed brilliantly. Suddenly energy from the heavens started being absorbed in his hands and the mercenaries started becoming dried husks of humans. Their skins turned grey before they turned into ash and disappeared altogether as the wind carried the ash of what remained away.

Kill! Kill! Kill!

Cyril stepped over to the next two, which included the blonde leader. Betrayers! All of them!

His hands grasped on the for heads of the two mercenaries. The blonde leader suddenly woke up.

"What are you doing? What did you do?!" His eyes had panic in them.

"Die!" Shouted Cyril maniacally. The power of the world flowed through him as everything began being absorbed and the two mercenaries died unwittingly. Shock and anger written on the face of the leader who wilted away as his life force was sucked out.

Finally Cyril turned towards the blue haired girl, who had tried the magic on him, who lay paralysed and unable to move or speak as she looked at him with rising fear and shock.

The innocent and tragic looking Ebishan whom she had tried to help had killed her friends of with a manic look. His entire body glowed with tattoos which absorbed the life out of her friends. With each action those mysterious tattoos began glowing even brighter.

A hand slapped onto her forehead, as she heard the crazy rambling of death from the mouth of the Ebisha youth. She closed her eyes, as pain ripped through her body and burned her insides to ash. Her blood evaporated and the eyes turned dim and disappeared, and she too disappeared along with her friends into the wind.