A gentle breeze tickled Leo's face, his eyelids felt too heavy for him to open as he let out a grunt. Something did not feel right. He struggled to open his eyes as the sunlight assailed him causing him to hurriedly close them back again.
For a couple of seconds, Leo did not move his body. The grass below him proved to be more comfortable than one would expect.
'Wait...Grass?'
With that thought, his body jerked up as he managed to open his tired eyes. The scene that greeted him made him to pause in shock.
He appeared to be in a forest of sorts, yet what surprised him the most was not the scenery itself but the colors! In all his life, Leo had never seen the world in such bright vivid colors.
Turning his head left and right, Leo scanned his surroundings in surprise. He was able to see things in much more detail than before, the grass, the leaves, he was even able to spot some insects climbing a tree bark in the distance!
Mesmerized with the beautiful scenery he found himself in, Leo remained rooted in place for a few minutes simply basking under the sun, and taking everything in as he pondered over how he came to be in such a strangely beautiful place, his mind inexplicably calm despite the strangeness of the situation.
His hand unconsciously reached to rub the bridge of his nose when his breath suddenly got stuck in his throat, his heart sped up in his chest as he stared at the unfamiliar hand that greeted him.
It was not his! hell, the hand was not even human! As Leo stared at it in disbelieve his gaze unconsciously reached down to the rest of his body causing his breathing to again pick up.
"What the hell!" His voice came out as a toneless guttural noise. It was as gravelly and penetrating as it was gruff, causing Leo another wave of panic as a flock of birds flew away from his sudden shout.
The body he now seemed to be inhabiting appeared to be that of a ghost? a phantom? He did not quite know. His feet did not seem to touch the ground as he hovered a few centimeters above it, while his body shimmered with a hazy black color.
"What is this?!" He muttered, his low gruff voice echoing in the small forest clearing.
Hovering over the small patch of greenery, Leo could feel some sort of strange energy flow into his body, it felt intoxicating as it flowed through his limbs filling him with a sense of power he never felt before.
His gaze glanced at his surroundings only for him to pause in surprise, Leo watched as the green grass and vegetation in his immediate surroundings withered and died, countless almost invisible strands flew from it and into his body filling him with the unfamiliar energy.
Unable to make sense of what was happening, he simply stood there staring at the unfamiliar strands that flew towards him. Soon after, his immediate surroundings turned into a dead zone.
Leo estimated that everything in his ten-meter circumferential was now dead. Taking a step forward, the dead zone seemed to expand as the unfamiliar energy came rushing towards him.
"So anything that's ten meters away from me dies?" He muttered, still not completely used to his new voice.
Raising his head, he momentarily paused at the scene. Up in the sky, the sun was still high up, yet the strange thing was the moons, yes, moons. There was more than one that was visible, one similar to the moon Leo was familiar with, yet the second one was purple.
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"Well, i'll be damned." He muttered while blankly standing there.
"I died. I know that for a fact, then I went to that...place..." He said, a shudder running down his spine remembering that space. He tried to recall his memories for anything that could help explain his current situation.
"And then?"
His memories abruptly ended there. Leo could clearly remember dying, he could remember his past life, the hell that came after. But, he couldn't remember her name!
His memories were still there, yet something seemed to be messing with them! The harder he tried to recall, the more they seemed to slip away from him!
"No, no, no, NO!" He roared, his scream echoing throughout the now quiet forest yet he didn't care.
He could care less for his other memories, anything but her! A sharp pain suddenly assaulted him causing his body to collapse to the ground while clutching his head in pain.
"Argh!" Another inhuman roar that shook the forest escaped his mouth. The pain was becoming unbearable even for him, but he prevailed while desperately holding on unto her memory.
Nothing was gonna take that away from him, nothing! Gritting his teeth, Leo frantically tried to stay conscious, as the pain was growing stronger by the second, yet he refused to give in!
Something told him that if he ended up succumbing to the pain and losing consciousness, he would end up losing her as well. So he held on. Minutes, ticked by yet it seemed like hours to Leo.
The hazy black smoke that was his body was constantly contracting and expanding bringing him a great deal of pain. If it was an ordinary person, they would have surely succumbed to it by now and lost consciousness, but not him. Leo was anything but ordinary, the life he lived hardened his will making him different from the average person.
Time slowly passed with him fighting against the pain, when suddenly, as fast as it came, it disappeared leaving him collapsed on his back once more.
"W-What the hell was that?" He struggled to speak as he tried to stand up only to fail, his body had no strength in it so he simply laid there trying to recover. A small chuckle escaped his lips as he looked at the sky.
"Maria, Haha! Maria!" His chuckle turned into a loud laugh as he repeated his lover's name. Leo remembered, whatever it was that tried to take her memory away from him had failed.
A blue screen suddenly shook him up as he blankly stared at it.
"Wha-"
Before he could finish his sentence the screen abruptly disappeared as another one took its place.
"Host?"
Leo was unable to understand what he was seeing as the screens quickly appeared and disappeared one after another before he was ultimately left with a final one.
Age: ~ Affinity: Chaotic Neutral Magic: Dark Skills: -Life steal (S-Rank) -Death's kiss (S-Rank) Titles: The End - Otherworlder> "What the fuck is this?!" He shouted as he stared at the screen, stunned.