Clouds gathered to form a massive black mass over the Vargrim Forest, and after a rumbling peal of thunder, the rain began to pour heavily. Plants and flowers opened their leaves, while animals of all kinds hid in their burrows.
In the center of the dark forest, the thick smoke faded; ash drifted lightly with the falling raindrops. The fire lit by Yamikaji and his followers was extinguished, and the Revarge he had brought showed signs of drowsiness and exhaustion until sleep overcame it, and it collapsed onto the mangled body of the boy.
But after what? After the cabin had turned into a pile of charcoal? After Takeshi's books had turned into fleeting ash? After his sword had been stolen? After that boy had been eaten alive?
The Revarge collapsed over the torn, neglected corpse and fell into a deep sleep. Takeshi remained in his place, unable to move. The effect of the poison had weakened, but no will to move remained in him.
"How can I even follow them? How can I find them? How can I recover my sword?"
Takeshi felt high walls closing in on him from every direction. He fell on his face in the mud, despairing.
"Why? Why do I still remember? Why do these events repeat in my head?"
Although Takeshi's feelings were conflicted and he did not know what he should do, his memories began to play in his mind over and over—not the happy kind, which could barely be found amidst his cursed remaining memories, but the painful ones.
One memory in particular was etched into his mind, repeating in his thoughts without pause during these few minutes.
***
Years ago, in the midst of a fierce battlefield, a wounding war broke out.
Corpses were piled on the ground, drenched in blood, with dead eyes and pale hands being pecked at by hungry crows. Under a sky blackened by smoke and on cracked earth longing for rain, instead of raining water, the sky rained scattered blood.
A full-scale civil war had erupted, leaving behind massacres and countless dead; the war swept through the eastern Autumnlands of Orival—it even erased an entire city from the map.
The ground shook lightly; with every moment, the tremors grew stronger. Their source was a massive army of over ten thousand men, all wearing dark green armor and armed with sharp swords and spears, ready to enter the depths of the ongoing war.
They reached the site of the massacre. Their leader, a large, elderly man with a thick beard, stepped forward. Riding a black horse, he surveyed the scene with narrow eyes.
His deputy, a blond man in his twenties, stepped forward from the army and asked:
"Do you think this is the work of Tridora?"
The leader's features tightened and his teeth ground together as he replied:
"That man does not enter wars directly. If it were him, none of these accumulated corpses would remain… That man entering the battle is unfair."
The name Tridora once struck terror into all the inhabitants of the Autumnland of Orival. Some called him the strongest and others called him the most dangerous, to the extent that he would end wars alone just by intervening.
This made all humans appear weak in Tridora's eyes, making him a still man who did not enter wars because of how boring they were in his view. In the present time, Tridora had become merely a person whose existence some were unsure of, except for those who had seen his cursed power and brutality.
The deputy bowed slightly and said:
"True. I apologize for the misjudgment."
The leader turned to his men and stared at them with his piercing grey eyes. He raised his hand toward them and ordered:"Leave one unit here to bury the dead. The rest, follow me now! Today we shall create a true massacre."
They carried out his orders without complaint. Most of the soldiers returned toward the mountains, while one unit remained at the site—only five men. Unlike the rest, their armor was old and worn, and their weapons were small and fragile; it was clear they were unsuitable for this task.
"Why do we have to do this? I'm afraid… I'm afraid of seeing blood, so what about touching and burying corpses?"
"At least this is more merciful than shedding more blood and making people like us bury the dead."
"Shut up and do your work!"
As they were talking, a faint movement came from beneath the corpses. The five men turned at once, and one of them drew his sword toward the source without saying a word.
Slowly, a child of about ten years old crawled out from under the pile. His eyes shined with a glimmer of hope as he steadied his feet, giving his back to the men without noticing them. It was Takeshi.
Then he spoke in a voice that contradicted the light in his eyes, as he watched that army leaving the site of the massacre:
"I don't understand—"
A sound came from one of the unit members behind him, and that long hope in Takeshi's face turned into a vacant look full of hatred. He turned slowly toward them, frowning. He leaned over a corpse, pulled out a broken sword, and spat at them, saying:
"I cannot trust anyone… I hate you—I hate humans."
***
In the present time, the sun slid in its path toward sunset. The rain eased and a rainbow appeared in the sky, while Takeshi remained in his miserable state, replaying the tape of his life and waiting for his fate.
That memory repeated in Takeshi's imagination to return him to his former self—to someone who could not trust anyone. Not only that, but to return him to a person who kills so as not to be killed, despite that being what he always did.
But the difference was killing in cold blood, without mercy, compassion, or a drop of blood. If he possessed these two traits, he would have killed the three who ambushed him and stole the last thing he owned.
"What have I done with my life?"
The small spark of hope in his chest was extinguished, and he fell into a pit of despair. It was true that the effect of the poison had clearly diminished, but searching for Yamikaji now was like searching for a needle in a haystack—or even worse.
But suddenly, Takeshi felt something familiar. As soon as he felt it, his features soured further, and his mixed expressions blended with malice and hate.
Suddenly, a man's voice appeared addressing him.
"Have you given up?"
A man appeared with coarse white hair, a tall stature, and a strong build. His features were stern, and his eyes were sharp like a carefully whetted sword. In fact, he looked exactly like Takeshi.
He stood firmly before Takeshi, waiting for an answer to his question. His pure white clothes remained clean and dry, unaffected by the mud or rain, while his dark cloak hung motionless, unaffected even by the restless winds that swept through the forest.
"You are just a ghost… You are dead… I saw you die before my eyes."
Takeshi whispered, realizing he was seeing a ghost from his imagination, and aware of his state and loneliness.
"I never expected my son to be such a failure—"
"Shut up!! I don't consider you my father at all!! Don't call me 'son' ever again, even if you are just a phantom in my mind!"
Takeshi screamed, venting his anger on something intangible.
Takeshi realized that what he was seeing was just a fabric of his imagination, come to rebuke his shattered conscience. He thought this phantom had formed because of his strong memory, and what increased the validity of his theory was the formation of the phantom of the person he hated most in a moment of despair and surrender.
The phantom shook its head as it drew closer to its son and asked:
"Did you let them take the sword your mother gave you?"
Takeshi raised his head in despair, saying:
"My mother is the one who gave it to me… Don't act as if you did anything good in my life, you scoundrel—you are the one who destroyed it in the first place—"
A slight smile appeared on his father's face, and he said:
"And what of it?"
The air filled with a nauseating sound like the movement of spider legs searching for a lost fly. The Revarge monsters were moving with the sunset and the emergence of the moonlight, searching for a delicious prey to eat.