He couldn't sleep. That night, the nightmares had been keeping his eyes open and red. The short spurs of fantasy accompanied by light layers of sleep were confounded with reality at times, filtering images through his flickering eyelashes that, in his stupor, seemed real. His lips pushed out unintelligible blabbering at times, when the difference between reality and slumber was too diluted to realize, between gasps, that his terror came from nothing but memories.

Between rough heaves and drowned wheezes, the man finally woke up and sat on his bed, with sheets covered in sweat regardless of the temperature. He held both sides of his head and tried to scream, but, still holding onto a sliver of sanity, he remembered the dark color of the sky outside and bit on his lip instead, letting a river of blood flow to the tattered wooden planks below his feet.

After ten more minutes in sorrowful silence, he finally let go of his head and cleaned the sweat from his brow, and the blood from his chin. With a sniff, he let his hands drop to his knees. Those hands, covered in scars that looked like scorch marks, were steady regardless of the condition of his body.

He blinked once. His head turned towards the sword laying against his bed and the rusty dagger on top of the nightstand.

"Pull your shit together, Kei..."

Grabbing the sword on his way up, he left the bed and walked towards the empty kitchen. He looked back at the corridor, the desolate room's doors making it look darker than it really was. A few months back, he would have felt sad as his eyes detailed that lonely house, but now, he would only find it strange if there were to be anyone but him inside it.

The young man poured himself a glass of water and drank it. He dried his mouth with his cuff as he crossed towards the entrance of his house, but before going out, he checked if his sheathe was properly adjusted. With no more preparation than that, he went out and closed the door behind him.

In front of his eyes was a picture he did not recognize. As he lifted his eyes, he saw the village of Seashore, late at night, with its people behind locked doors and safe walls. He could not say that there was a nostalgic feeling to it, since he could not even find in his memory the street in front of him.

The cobblestone covering the roads, the brick tower in the middle of the village, and even the brick-layered houses were strangers to the blond man's eyes. His porch, the only one remaining wooden and crooked, didn't even feel like home. As he looked at the place in which he stood and found himself surrounded by stone walls, chimneys and street lamps lit by faint warm light, another fear took possession of him. How could one feel like a stranger in a place where one had grown up?

He walked into the street with that alienating feeling in his gut, and didn't waste a second to head towards the rainforest. After a few minutes of walking out of the village's new wooden barricade, Kei stumbled upon the unfinished riverbank beside the river.

Although the original idea that the black-haired man had proposed— the creation of a dam— would have been ideal to stop the floodings, it was simply too ambitious and unrealistic for a section of the river just a few miles from the ocean. Instead, the architect proposed the creation of an artificial riverbank that would allow the river to raise even five meters without breaking and flooding the village.

Since Lourgh held the papers of ownership and the land had been transferred to him in shady dealings with the baron tainted with the smell of money, he could do as he placed in his area without asking the baron for permission. For the most part, the old man had been splurging money on making the village grow and making it look more like a small city than a poor village.

He crossed the feeble bridge to the other side of the river without much issue. In days where it hadn't rained, even if one were to fall inside the water, it would be easy to just swim towards the riverside. He touched ground again and walked into the rainforest, immediately unsheathing his chipped blade.

The darkness of the rainforest soon wrapped around him. He knew the place so well that he had not considered taking a torch with him, although for the most part, he would be avoiding places where moonlight couldn't reach.

He stammered his way through the forest with his weapon ready and his eyes vigilant, waiting for something, anything hostile to appear so he could unleash his anger and frustration on its body. His palms were aching to stab and hack away at flesh until the nightmares vanished from his mind and he could sleep at least one hour, only to repeat the same routine another midnight. He craved to kill and hunt as he always did, but that night, it was different.

The forest was eerily silent.

The usual sound of slithering centipedes was not there. The crawling horrors had disappeared. All that remained was a sharp humming on Kei Predsman's ears, louder than the sound of dripping water that wasn't present that night. The creeks that parted the grass and created the usual marsh didn't produce the noise of flowing water— in fact, there was no sound at all.

How many times had he seen the tree beside him?

Silence was suddenly broken by a sinister laugh. He looked around to find only the forest shrouded in deep darkness, as if the trees had been swallowed by the night.

A sharp sound came from the back. Kei turned around immediately to violently swing his sword, but he noticed his hand was empty, and there was nothing to attack. A shred of dust danced on his palm as he opened it, trailing off into the infinity of the dark sky.

"What a merry... Merry day it is!"

Kei shifted in place. Sweat had begun to pour from every pore of his body, and his feet had been nailed to the ground. What a terrifying, yet shrilling voice that was.

"How many years! How many centuries, how many millennia has it been?! I've slept soundly in the dark, but now my dear, my deaaaaar mother has shone the light of salvation through the shrouds of this damned place! Oh sweet, glorious mother! Both in life and death I serve you, although my soul has left your side oh so many years ago! What a delight! Delightful! Kuhahaha!"

After the voice devolved into a macabre fit of laughter, the earth below Kei's feet suddenly moved forward, shooting him into the penumbra like an arrow towards it's target. His screams were deafened by the sound of the terrifying laughter that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time, until finally, suddenly wrapped by a searing light, he stopped.

He fell on his knees, touching the surface of a marble floor. He immediately looked up and saw a magnificent shrine dressed in the finest stones he had admired, crafted with such expertise that it seemed surreal, and at the same time, felt more solid than the reality of his own home.

Before his eyes could appreciate it's full beauty, the pillars that sustained that heavenly structure fell apart. A cloud of dust was raised as the world seemed to crumble, and Kei was pushed back. He grabbed onto the ridges on the floor and tensed his every muscle, until a few seconds later the storm of pulverized marble finally stopped hitting him like hail.

As the scene settled into a pacific silence once more, nature became sovereign of the temple. Vines and roots a million began growing around every piece of broken stone and every severed pillar, turning the white visage into one of green and darkened brown, demonstrations of ancient life that were overcome by moss, weathered by the passing of time.

His eyes stopped in the very center of the desolate shrine.

A rectangular altar carved out of marble was the centerpiece of the shrine, but its beauty had been washed away and its space had been reclaimed by the devouring maws of the forest.

Atop the altar, a yellow skull rested trapped by the snaring vines that wrapped around its empty eyes. A shimmering silver blade dug through the very top of the cranium, belonging to a beautiful sword of a gold-plated hilt and an intricately decorated grip, with jewels decorating it to the pommel. Ten holes could be seen on the broad of the blade, letting the light shine through its pristine long edge.

A screech echoed in the air, with its origin being the disembodied skull on the altar. A purple fire was suddenly lit inside its pitch-black sockets, and its unhinged jaw opened slightly to let out a burst of disquieting, potent laughter.

"Kuhahahaha! Oh, what mercy this is! Between this painful sea of curses I've found a blessing, oh, what a blessing! The mother doesn't speak to me since ages of yore, but she has spoken! She has spoken, to me! To this wretched, broken, pitiful, miserable sinner!!" The raging flame inside its eyes grew even larger, breaking its way out of the sockets and setting ablaze the skull in its entirety.

Kei stood up with haste and ran towards the altar with a panicked face, driven by a violent impulse to grab onto the sword. He held the ornate grip and felt his face convulse into a pained expression, as the very essence from his innards had begun to reach out for the blade of the sword. His body was engulfed by a flame of dark blue fire, and between screams and calls for help, it was swallowed by the blade he formerly held.

"I am useless, but you aren't! Heed your divine call, and be the Champion that our mother had long lost!"

With a last call for a meaningful death, the skull was consumed to its very ashes by the raging purple fire.

A cruel laughter resonated in the forest. A shrill voice that would make anyone's hairs stand on end. A declaration of death that, somehow, was also searing like the light of the sun.

"Gasp!"

When he came back to his senses, Kei was kneeling down on the marsh. He quickly pushed himself up and stammered back until he hit his back against a tree, his thoughts still scattered through the air. What was that extreme discomfort he was feeling? What was that invisible weight on his hands? He looked, and found the gold-plated sword he stole before.

From the ten holes on the blade, two of them were lit. The first, purple. The second, blue.