On a patch of grass, two kids continued to run around: a boy and a girl. The girl looked around six years of age, her blood-red hair and dress fluttering in the wind. It was tied into a ponytail, and a few strands hung over her warm, crimson eyes. Standing beneath the gaze of sunshine, her pale skin seemed to glisten, radiating a soft, warm glow. She danced in the wind, fields of grass rising as if to cheer her on.
Behind her a boy of the same age stood, a pleasant smile on his face as his dark blue eyes gazed at her. However, that smile was slowly growing distant, reducing into a depressing frown and confused look of mere desperation.
Soren scratched at his chest, wondering why he suddenly felt so thirsty. This thirst, though, was different from the thirst he felt when deprived of water. It had grown so intense that it made him throw such a gaze at his friend; his eyes trailed every inch of her body as if he was frenzied and only moments away from madness.
His demented gaze finally landed on her neck, her pale, slender neck. Beads of sweat rolled down, turning the collar of her vibrant dress wet. He gulped and shifted his leg, but his gaze remained on her, refusing to let go.
The young girl paused upon noticing that her friend had stopped participating in their little game. She turned around and faced him with a smile, but soon that smile waned, and a frantic expression took place on her face. Her shoulders tensed, and her eyes continued to tremble.
She sounded like someone who had just seen a ghost. "So-so… Soren? What are you?"
But he didn't answer.
Drowned in his thoughts and worries, his gaze had shifted from her to himself. He was now gazing at his bloodied hands and feet, and after a while he turned back to her to see the blood trailing down from the right side of her shoulder.
"No… Did I do that?"
But it couldn't have possibly been him. Why was his friend bleeding while he was soaked in dark blood, barefoot, and bruised? It didn't make any sense.
He took a tentative step toward her, prompting her to awkwardly shift away from him, and just as he took another step forward, something suddenly slammed against his chest.
It was hard and incredibly heavy, easily lifting him up off his feet as a rush of blood filled his mouth. His back hit a wall, and his head swayed, turning violently as he spat out a mouthful of blood. He slowly shook off the dizziness and stared at the charred ground on which he stood. A second later, he felt something cold against his throat.
Swaying once more, he turned and saw a polished silver sword held firmly in front of him, its tip grazing his neck. It was only firm for a few moments, though, because it began shaking the moment he looked up at who was holding the sword.
He heard a short gasp and then trembling words. "So-so… Soren?"
He narrowed his eyes at those words, wondering who the blonde woman before him was and why she could possibly know his name. As he pondered, new thoughts suddenly flooded his mind, memories… memories that he would rather have forgotten.
A dying village, a group of desperately fighting soldiers, and hope, the foolish longing for survival. And with those memories came the realization of who it was standing before him.
His eyes widened as they trailed away from her and to himself. He was sprawled on burnt ground, his entire body pale and neat, a bit too much for someone who had just been through a dire battle. He felt cold, and it only grew worse when he touched his face.
There were drops of blood on his chest that seemed to have fallen from his chin, still warm. His chest rose and fell slowly; it wasn't clear to him why, but his heartbeat felt too distinct. His fingers looked like perfectly sculpted jade, and so did every inch of his body his eyes could see.
"… Impossible."
His face turned pale at the sight before him. In that moment he forgot all about the devastation that had hit the village, all his attention fixated on the fact that he should have been dead but was somehow… alive.
While he was deep in thought, the same trembling voice sounded once more. "How are you still alive?"
It was a strange question but a reasonable one nonetheless. He had seen the gargantuan silhouette in the sky crash down on their village, obliterating everything in its path. A hurricane gale occurred, sweeping clouds of dust into the air and leveling the entire village.
The walls crumbled, the ground collapsed in on itself; not even the bunker remained standing. He should have been a bloody paste, just like anyone who had met the attack head-on. And yet, here he was completely unscathed.
At this point, there was really nothing to answer his questions. So he kept his face as it was, awed with dread, and gazed at the young woman holding a silver sword above him. Her face wasn't drowned in fear. Rather, her eyes slightly widened, and her lips slightly gaped, contorted in both worry and shock.
Louisa looked like a dead woman. Her entire body was drenched in crimson liquid, her face awash in the fetid black blood of Shadow Beasts. Her left hand was mangled, and a claw went across the side of her face, forcing her right eye to remain shut, drops of blood trickling from the wound. Her clothes were ragged and torn, bruises and lacerations spread across every inch of her body, and her once pale skin was now reddened and slowly turning dark. She was tired as well, her chest rising and falling with grave intensity.
He felt deeply sorry for her, but for some reason, he was finding it difficult to manifest that feeling. His emotions were suppressed, somehow, and all he could do was stare at her, his expression of surprise slowly growing bleak. Soon, it vanished completely.
A moment later, he shook his head. "I don't know."
All he could manage to do at that moment was force a pale smile on his face, prompting her to step back a bit and heave a sigh. A warm smile spread across her face as she looked at him. After a while, she lowered her blade and took a few cautious steps toward him.
It seemed that Louisa had grown less weary of him but still had a few questions she wanted to ask.
Standing less than a meter away from him, she knelt on the floor, looked him deep in the eye, and said nothing. Many seconds of tense silence passed, and all she did was stare at him with her warm smile and blue eyes. However, she refused to let her eyes wander anywhere other than his face.
He continued to smile anyway as he said. "You don't look great."
She remained silent for a while.
"And you look dead."
Chuckling slightly, he turned and looked at the destruction that had ravaged their village. All he saw was charred ground and dead trees in the distance. His senses had improved tremendously, and all he could hear was the howling of the wind, punctuated by the sound of Louisa's breathing. No one would be able to tell that a settlement once existed here; not even their proud walls remained. They had been crumbled to dust and most likely were part of the darkened soil he was sitting on.
He turned back to Louisa and said. "All I can remember was the giant tentacle swinging in the sky. What ha…"
Knowing what he was about to ask, Louisa simply cut in.
"You should thank Captain Amger for that. He was able to discover the heart of the fog."
She took a deep breath.
"One of the mages caught on to me on time… I shielded her during the explosion, and that's how I managed to survive. But everyone else…"
Her voice turned into a whisper as she continued.
"… We should think about what to tell Sir Amger… about you."
Soren sighed.
"How do I explain something I don't understand?"
Louisa scratched her head, throwing a furtive glance to the side.
"That's the thing, you see. I'm certain that he has seen many strange things, having lived through three decades of the plague. But you, you're different. You don't tick any of the boxes I know of."
She paused.
"Your heart, does it beat?"
He shook his head and said,"It's only faint."
Pushing himself up off the ground, he added.
"This fire, did you burn away the fog after finding its heart? And about those cannons… You knew, didn't you…"
She furrowed her brows, letting him continue.
"… That we were all going to die."